Daring Bakers Challenge-Challah Bread (Whole Wheat)

May’s Daring Bakers’ Challenge was pretty twisted – Ruth from The Crafts of Mommyhood challenged us to make challah! Using recipes from all over, and tips from “A Taste of Challah,” by Tamar Ansh, she encouraged us to bake beautifully braided breads.

Have I mentioned I'm addicted to baking bread?

'Cuz I am.

It's forreals.

So, I was ridiculously excited when I saw this month's Daring Bakers Challenge was to bake challah bread! Challah bread is special braided bread from the Jewish culture. Even though I'm not Jewish, I had already been completely on the challah train! I'm not sure if you knew this, but challah bread makes THE BEST french toast, and can also be used in some other great bread-based recipes. It's also delicious all by itself :). Plus, if you want, you can easily fold mix-ins into this recipe and have like chocolate challah, etc. You can read more about that in the recipe, though :).

On a side note: challah. Say it. It's fun to say.

Now say it in baby talk.

Because everything sounds funnier in baby talk.

Michael and I speak baby talk to each other pretty much all day every day. It drives everyone crazy. Makes certain people uncomfortable. But we find it "hilawium". 

It am be hawd to twanslate baby talk into da witings of da blog. Youse just has to twy to heaw it, tay?

Anyway.

Challah.

don't judge me too much. Please come back and read again. I promise I'll refrain from the baby talk :P.

Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Brownies

You like chocolate, yes?

Obviously you do-because we all know that is like...70% of what ends up on this blog.

Do you also like peanut butter?

Chances are good you like that too.

What about cookie dough?

C'mon....who doesn't like cookie dough? Am I right?

Even if you think you don't like some of those things, these brownies may change your mind. I fed some to a friend of Michael's (who was being a sweetie and fixing my computer), and he is not a pb fan, but he LOVED these brownies. Like-went crazy for them. Told Michael he'd better marry me. He also was sad after he was done eating it. We've all been there.

Now...these brownies will cause you to have to do a lot of dishes. And they're super rich. And probably (definitely) not good for you. But they are SO worth it! It's like...a fudgy brownie + peanut butter cookie dough + thick, delicious chocolate ganache=YUM. (It actually tastes fairly similar to a certain Buckeye Cake.) I needed to use some of the peanut butter I had laying around the house (PB Crave, specifically), so for the peanut butter cookie dough I actually used PB Crave Cookie Nookie--so the cookie dough factor was amped up. But you can totally use whatever peanut butter you like. If you have some cool flavored pb's this is a super fun way to experiment with diff. combinations.

Quick and Easy Mac and Cheesey

Since on Monday we talked about easy--this recipe is the ULTIMATE in easy. Like, it's kind of shocking how quickly you throw this together. This takes no more time than the boxed stuff, and it's a lot more...real.

It's not the most amazing, gourmet tasting, macaroni and cheese. But, it's better than the boxed stuff and just as easy.

So get yourself some Mac and Cheesey!

I'm spending today running around from Penn Station (I get back to NY from Maryland this morning) to home to get ready, then an audition, then recording my Voice Over Demo. I should prob. whip some of this up today, actually.

Quick and Easy Mac and Cheesey

From Picky Palate's "5 Minute Homemade Mac and Cheese"