It’s hard to believe another month flew by and it’s time for me to recap what I made.
Dark Chocolate Dark Brown Sugar Cookies
Peaches and Cream Fluffy Muffin Cake
No-Ice-Cream-Maker Salted Caramel, Bourbon, Nutter Butter, and Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream
How to Make Easy Pickled Vegetables
100% Whole-Wheat No-Knead Make-Ahead Dinner Rolls
Healthy Dark Fudgy Avocado Brownies
Homemade Cinnamon Chip and White Chocolate Peanut Butter (GF)
Easy Homemade Cinnamon Raisin Bagels (vegan)
Soft and Chewy Honey Roasted Peanuts and Butterscotch Cookies
The Best Vegan Blueberry Muffins
Hot and Sour Broiled Tofu (vegan, GF)
25 Fast and Easy Recipes In a Snap
Softbatch Funfetti Sugar Cookies
Triple Peanut Butter Monster Cookie Bars
Soft and Chewy Seven Layer Magic Bar Cookies
Cream Cheese-Swirled Cherries and Mixed Berries Cake
No-Knead Buttery Parmesan and Sour Cream Bread
Chocolate-Covered Microwave Peanut Brittle
Noteworthy Events and Reflections
For the recipes, I’m proud to have baked two items with avocado, brownies and muffins, and we loved them both. Couldn’t taste the avocado in either, and the vgean blueberry muffins are the best blueberry muffins I’ve ever had, healthy or otherwise. I’ve wanted to make brownies with avo for years, and glad I finally did.
Lots of cookies this month – Dark Brown Sugar Chocolate, Smores, Honey Roasted Peanut and Butterscotch (learned that most of you don’t seem to like nuts in your cookies either), Softbatch Funfetti, Triple Peanut Butter Cookie Bars, Seven Layer Magic Bar Cookies. After tossing around ideas for Smores, Funfetti, and the Seven Layer Cookies for literally years in my head, finally manifesting them and posting about them felt great and they’re items I’m checking off my own mental and culinary bucket list.
I made bagels, another bucket list item. My husband, the bagel lover, thoroughly enjoyed them, which made it more rewarding.
I also made 100% whole wheat, no-knead, make-ahead dinner rolls. For anyone who’s a bread baker, you know that 100% whole wheat is a hard feat to pull off, and I’m very proud of that recipe. It’s also no-knead and make-ahead, which are feathers in the cap, so to speak. However, people don’t seem super excited about the rolls, even though I always get lots of emails and requests for whole wheat recipes. It’s the savory recipe principle, below.
Savory recipes this month included Tofu, Parmesan and Sour Cream Bread, and a How To Pickle Vegetables post. These posts always tank statistically compared to my desserts and sweet recipes, but I still post them because not everything is about the stats, and sometimes I just want to make tofu, or pickled vegetables, and figure I’ll blog about them because I was going to make the food anyway.
Lots of fruit and berry recipes this month – Fluffy Peach Cake, Mixed Berry Cream Cheese Cake, Blueberry Muffins, and Blueberry Dutch Baby.
I bought a new camera and I love it.
Related to my cookbook, Peanut Butter Comfort: I gave away a copy and a food processor and had an amazing amount of entries;I saw my cookbook on the shelf at Barnes & Noble; and I keep seeing ads for my book from Amazon on my own blog. Super surreal.
We’re in Aruba! If you follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, then you’ve seen some pictures. We have a house here and come twice a year for a month, December and August. I am fortunate to be in such a beautiful place with my family, soaking it all in, making memories and watching our daughter have the time of her life. And it’s not too shabby for mama, either.
Previous Recaps:
What did you do or make in this month that was memorable?
I’m always amazed by how much you cram into a month, you are seriously a blogging superwoman! ;) Those whole-wheat dinner rolls are leaping out at me again, can’t wait to try them!
And this is just what I’ve blogged about. There’s a whole other series of projects going on :)
If you want my rolls, well, I want your latest ones!! They look incredible!
such an array of perfectly baked goodies….drooling over the snaps yummm
:-)
Where can I find the ingredients for your Skinny Caramel Frappuccino? I had copied the recipe without the ingredients! Eeek…
You would go to the RECIPE to get the recipe
https://www.averiecooks.com/skinny-caramel-frappuccino/
You know I love the savory posts the best. I can look at and appreciate a cookie/muffin/bar, but if I’m ever going to actually make something from a blog, its going to be savory. Otherwise, I use the sweet recipes as inspiration only.
I go into sugar shock seeing all these treats! I know you’ve got helpers to eat them all, but man…I wish I could bake this much!
I made refrigerator pickles today. I’m going to check your recipe after the fact to see how closely ours are….something tells me they’ll be pretty similar. :D
I just comment replied to another person about the savory principle that even tho the sweets get more comments and oohs and ahhs, I have a feeling, view for view, that the savory recipes are made in higher proportion. Not necessarily made more, b/c I know my readers make loads of desserts, but of those who do read the savory posts and not click off, I have a feeling that proportionately, they’re made more.
And what you see here is only HALF, not even, what I bake for the month, given all my other commitments and projects. You have no idea. I mean you kind of do, but if you saw how much food I truly have, you’d die :) That’s why I donate. We can’t possibly keep up some months. My helpers don’t need it all either!
I couldn’t get passed the salted caramel, bourbon ice cream!
I am not even an ice cream person and it’s possibly the best ice cream Ive ever had, and I am really hard to impress when it comes to ice cream!
Oh my gosh my tummy is doing kart wheels! All of it is like unbeatable!
:)
You can count me as one if the people who was excited by the whole wheat rolls:)
As for my favorite stuff I made, probably these horseradish deviled eggs with a crumb topping:
https://scrumptiousgruel.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/you-an-never-have-too-many/
Happy August!
I love horseradish – bet those are so good! And glad you like the WW rolls!
Averie, you must be so proud of all the amazing recipes you came up with!!! And the fact that you have so many followers, well it just shows how talented you are! I love it when people do of their life what they’re really good at and follow their passion, rather than money.
I hope you have the most amazing time in Aruba, you are so lucky, it must be wonderful there. Going to the Carribeans is one of my dreams :)
Again, thank you for sharing all your amazing recipes and I will keep you updated with the next recipes I’m going to try :)
Thank you for making more of my recipes than any other person I know of! It’s hard to beat one per day! :) Or at least 20 per month! I am grateful to have people like you as friends and readers who are so willing to try it all! It all goes hand in hand – I couldn’t have a blog without readers and people like you who make things! And one day you WILL get to the Caribbean. You can bring your daughter and make wonderful memories :) xoxo
What a busy bee you’ve been :) Great roundup as always!
Thanks, Gerry! You are always busy too!
I think I’m totally going to make those dark chocolate dark brown sugar cookies like in the next two days!! Can you really beat any of that title? No, no you can not.
Ok they are really good cookies – but, if you are going to make cookies, my favorites from this month would have been the Smores or the 7 Layer Cookies. But totally different flavor profiles and textures – so just make whatever sounds good to you! Keep me posted!
I love seeing your savory recipes, too. My husband and I were just talking about pickling some of the cucumbers we have growing in the garden, so I needed the reminder about that post :)
Noteworthy for me this month: highest views ever on my blog, yippee! I’ve also loved spending time with my best friend while she’s visiting NY from SF for the summer.
Congrats on your blog growing and glad you liked the pickle post!
I can’t believe it’s already August! The summer is flying by. Hope you have a good time in Aruba! I agree that if I simply want to make something, sweet or savory, I try to blog about it. But sometimes it’s so much fun to make something and know I don’t have to take pics and write about it.
The thought of ‘personal’ cooking is almost obsolete for me. If I’m doing it, it’s going onto a blog, a book, or a sponsored post for someone else. I wish there were hours in the day to cook for just me and not write about it/take pics of it, but I need more hours :)
Seeing your cookbook on the shelves has to be pretty cool indeed! I love those savory recipes–they are always different but easy to do. I hadn’t thought about pickled vegetables since I tried a store bought version and thought “ick”, so it was great to see a homemade version that looked as good as it tasted. As always, those desserts never cease to amaze me….loved the avocado brownies! My hubby and I got our workroom cleaned and completely de-cluttered last weekend. Its a weird highlight, but it felt so incredibly good to get it done. Clutter drives me nuts. Have a wonderful time in Aruba!
Clutter drives me NUTS too! I despise it and am always in a state of paring down, dejunking, donating, and passing along – from food to old kids clothes to old running shoes. I just have to move it along out of my little 4 walls :)
And as always, thank you for making more of my recipes than almost anyone else – and for being so adventurous and trying them. From avo brownies to pickled veggies. That is just awesome. And Happy bday!!!!! hope it’s a wonderful day and that you have at least a little leftover cake yet to enjoy :)
What a great month for you, Averie! It has got to feel amazing to see your cookbook in print! The highlights for my month are not cooking related. I learned a new spin in skating that I am very excited about!
That is so cool that you are still pushing yourself in skating and learning new things and working hard!
I just saw your cookies on dessertstalking that were the recipe of mine that you tried. They look so good!
Don’t get disheartened about the savoury food posts – after seeing your tofu post it actually inspired me to make some tofu noodle dishes, which I’ve never done before, mainly because when I’ve had tofu in the past it has always seemed rubbery. So baking it on high beforehand seemed like a great idea!
So even if you think people aren’t reading or enjoying those posts, they are, they might just not be as vocal about them as the cookies!
What you just said about ppl reading the savory posts and actually TRYING them vs. reading them and gushing on about them in the comments is exactly what happens with savory posts. They get lower views, ppl don’t comment as much, but view-for-view, I think those recipes actually get made, rather than just oogled and raved about from afar, so to speak, i.e. gooey cookies & desserts. Just based on the anecdotal stories I have after 4+ yrs of this. And so glad you re-tried tofu and enjoyed it! Success! love it!
Somehow I missed the No-Ice-Cream-Maker Salted Caramel, Bourbon, Nutter Butter, and Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream. Must try for sure!
Perhaps the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten in life. And ice cream is not my thing. So it takes a LOT to impress me :)