Eat The Love - Recipes, Photographs and Stories about Desserts, Baked Goods and Food in general, with a healthy dose of humor and happiness for the food obsessed

Gingerbread Stout Cake

This gingerbread stout cake uses stout beer for a complex depth of flavor. It’s balanced with a tangy cream cheese frosting and crystallized ginger on top!

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Sliced gingerbread stout cake on a plate surrounded by fresh ginger root, candied ginger, and ground ginger.

I’ve been seeing Claudia Flemings’ cookbook The Last Course pop up all over the place lately. It’s an older cookbook by the pastry chef from the famed Gramercy Tavern in NY and it has sadly been out-of-print for awhile. But thankfully the publisher has brought it back and everyone seems to be raving about the new edition! I haven’t gotten a copy of it (it’s on my Christmas list!) but I have seen her gingerbread stout cake show up a lot on my social feed and I couldn’t wait to make a version of it.

I’ve use stout beer in recipes like my Irish Drunken Cake and my pumpkin eclairs as well as beer in my baked goods like my Mexican chocolate pecan pie and my Apple Brown Betty with IPA beer. Heck I even have my beer cheese dip on constant rotation for parties. But the idea of using a stout in a gingerbread sounded genius! The bitter heaviness of stout plays so well with the warm winter spices. Think of slices of this cake like a better, more adult version of the Starbucks gingerbread loaf.

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Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

These chewy (and not cakey) pumpkin snickerdoodles have a nice intense pumpkin flavor because you reduce the pumpkin puree down before baking!

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Pumpkin Snickerdoodles cooling on a wire rack, with one cookie that has a bite taken out of it.

“These are PERFECT!” exclaimed my brother when he bit into my pumpkin snickerdoodles. I’ve made various different snickerdoodles in the past, including a classic snickerdoodle, a gluten-free snickerdoodle and even a caramel apple snickerdoodles. But then I had leftover pumpkin puree from baking my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and I thought, I gotta use this up before it goes bad! And yes, pumpkin snickerdoodles are exactly as amazing as they sound.

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Brown Butter Blondies

These Brown Butter Blondies are an easy-to-make chocolate chunk cookie bar that have an incredible depth of flavor from browning the butter beforehand!

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A hand reaching out to grab a brown butter blondie from a plate of blondies, surrounded by chopped chocolate.

I’ve long loved my friend Michelle’s blog Hummingbird High. I met her years ago in Portland, before she moved to San Francisco where we did not hang out together (I don’t know why that is, probably because we were both insanely busy), and then she left SF to move to New York and then when she moved back to Portland. In short, I knew her before she moved three times! And in that time I’ve watch her explode into the Rockstar that she is. Ever since she announced her cookbook Weeknight Baking (<-affiliate link), I’ve been anxiously awaiting it. And it Did. Not. Disappoint. I immediately wanted to make every single recipe but ended up making the Brown Butter Blondies because blondies and baked bars (like my apple pie bars, salted caramel bars, brookie bars, and hermit cookie bars) have totally become a holiday tradition.

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Eggnog Cinnamon Rolls

These eggnog cinnamon rolls use store-bought eggnog and have a bourbon cream cheese glaze! They’re one of the best holiday morning treats you can make.

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Eggnog Cinnamon Rolls in a pan, next to nutmeg and an offset spatula used to spread the bourbon cream cheese glaze.

If you poke around my blog you’ll noticed that I have a mild obsession with eggnog. I’ve made eggnog pancakes, eggnog cheesecake, apple fig cobbler with eggnog biscuits and even a triple layer spice cake with eggnog frosting! And I also happen to have a (un)healthy love of cinnamon rolls, like my sweet potato cinnamon rolls, my pumpkin cinnamon rolls, my rosemary and pistachio cinnamon rolls (they sound a little weird but trust me, they are SO. GOOD.) and my quick and easy cinnamon rolls. But somehow, I have NOT gotten around to making eggnog cinnamon rolls…until THIS YEAR. And can I just say I’m regretting my life choices in not actually making these earlier?

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Monster Cookies

This is the best monster cookies recipe out there, completely packed with hearty rolled oats, peanut butter, M&Ms, Reese’s pieces, and chocolate chips!

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Monster Cookies on a table surrounded chocolate chips, m&m and reese's pieces candies.

I would like to take this moment to just shine a light on my friend Shauna Sever who I absolutely adore. She used to live here in San Francisco but somehow she convinced herself that the cold blustering Midwest was beckoning for her, and now SF is just a little bit less warm because she is not here. But from her move, came her latest cookbook Midwest Made (<-affiliate link), which I just adore. And from that book, I came across monster cookies which are kind sort of like my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, or my skillet cookie with M&Ms or my bakery-style chocolate chip cookies. But not really, because these cookies are a thing ALL. THEIR. OWN. And what’s even more strange, having grown up in the Midwest (St. Louis – don’t @ me, it’s really the Midwest) I had never heard of them!

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