u/CookieMonsteraAlbo

Checkerboard cookies are one of my “white whales” when it comes to baking. They either spread and I lose the carefully created pattern, or all my best efforts at precision measuring come to naught and the pattern is wonky, or has gaps where the pieces didn’t fit perfectly together. Aren’t slice and bake cookies supposed to be easy?

Happily, I think these are my best effort yet - the shapes stayed fairly crisp and defined, they didn’t spread, and they even kept most of their square shape in the oven though the corners did round out a little. There are still a few gaps where the dough wasn’t 100% flush, but I’m super happy with the progress.

I’m not sure the cherry flavor really came through, despite using freeze-dried cherry powder - they mostly taste like amaretto/almond extract. But that’s okay! I’m considering these a major win!

This reduced sugar recipe from America’s Test Kitchen has been languishing in my baking queue since those fever dream months of 2020 when everyone was stockpiling toilet paper and other household supplies. At one point, I happened to mention to my husband that we were getting low on oatmeal, and, bless his heart, he decided to remedy that situation by buying a 10lb container from Costco.

We are a two-person household. We were never going to eat 10lbs of oatmeal, and we were socially distancing. I wasn’t bringing baked goods to the office. I wasn’t bringing baked goods to friend and family functions. It was just me, my husband, and 10lbs of oats.

So, for longer than I care to admit, I must have made every conceivable variant of oatmeal cookies, baked oatmeal, oatmeal muffins, and at one point, an oatmeal pie. I saved this Bundt cake recipe during my quest to use up all those oats, but it always fell to the bottom of the list because, well, low sugar just sounds like low joy, right?

I wish I could say this was worth the wait. It was okay - I probably should have used a strong, dark honey because it was really the only flavor. Instead, I (ironically) used my giant Costco bottle of raw honey because I didn’t want to use up my nice honey. The texture was a bit dense, though it was moist enough. It would probably be okay with fruit on it, but by itself, it’s just kind of blah.

I saw this recipe for “pancake bread” on the King Arthur Flour website a while back and immediately slotted it into my 52 Weeks of Baking planning document for Week 17. It was easy enough to throw together - I had all the ingredients on hand. And the end result was… fine. The quick bread was plush and moist, with a pleasant subtle maple flavor (even with the optional maple flavoring). Does it taste like pancakes? No, not even when slathered with extra butter.

Overall, it was good, but not great. We served it with a side of breakfast sausage, but I low-key wish we’d made actual pancakes. I probably wouldn’t make it again, but now I know!