A SUMMER-Y SUMMARY

Hi followers! I had such a fun summer! I'm very sad it's over, but I'm excited to tell you all about our cooking and baking.

Of course we had lots of good breakfasts. One breakfast that smelled AMAZING was Lemon Strawberry Dutch Baby with Ricotta Cream.

The first step is making lemon sugar, by mixing sugar with lemon zest.

Then you make a dutch baby batter and pour it into a hot skillet.

This is me sprinkling the lemon sugar on top.

The dutch baby looked beautiful all puffed up.

But the ricotta cream is definitely what makes this recipe unique! The dutch baby would be good on its own, but the ricotta cream takes it to the next level.

We got really REALLY lucky this summer and found some late-season rhubarb!!!!!! We used it to make Rhubarb Ricotta Almond Cake. This cake was moist and delicious. There is almond extract in the batter which gives it extra great almond flavor. You could serve this cake for brunch or breakfast, but we brought it to a dinner and served it with whipped cream. Rachel would really love this cake, so we'll have to make it for her some time!!

I like how this cake shows both the rhubarb and the almonds on the top, so that you immediately know what the flavors are going to be.

A fun and different kind of breakfast that we made was Everything Bagel Breakfast Pizza. This was so popular that we needed to make a second one, and we added an extra egg on top for that one because the runny yolk is the best part and everyone wanted one!

We used a bit of bacon on top, but smoked salmon might be a great healthier option!

The slices with a full egg definitely looked the best too!

We had leftover bacon from what we cooked for the pizza and so we did an experiment and used it in some pancakes. We started with our usual Everyday Pancakes batter, which makes great light and fluffy pancakes, and then sprinkled bacon on top. These kind of combined a pancake and bacon breakfast in one bite!

A good thing about just adding the bacon on top is that it's easy to leave out for anyone who doesn't want it. My friend Gloria was sleeping over when we made these and she just had hers plain.

You couldn't even tell that there was bacon in there once you flipped them, so it was kind of like a surprise!

A fun breakfast that we made when our friends Kate and Matthew came to visit was Pull Apart French Toast Bake. This was so good that we made it more than once! It ends up being similar to any other baked French toast, but we still all really like it.

First you partially cut through the bread. This is me spreading it out before we poured the egg mixture on top.

This recipe is kind of silly because once it's done, you just end up serving it with a spoon, like regular baked French toast. I guess you could actually pull it apart with your fingers, but it's hot and messy so I don't really understand why anybody would!!

After we made our Almond Rhubarb Ricotta Cake, we were inspired to try some other ricotta cakes. Any-Berry Lemon Ricotta Cake was the next one we made, and it was very good. The ricotta gives cakes lots of moisture and the berries added a lot of flavor.

This was one of those cakes that we were so excited about that we cut it before we remembered to take a picture!

Another berry cake that we tried was Berry Cream Cheese Cake. This cake is unusual because the cream cheese is left in chunks, instead of blended in. I think I'd prefer the cream cheese blended, but my big-little sister loved it this way.

We sprinkled turbinado sugar on top which both looks pretty and adds crunch.

A cool thing about this cake, is that the recipe suggests variations with other fruit, like cranberries or apricots. I think it might be fun to try cranberry for a breakfast when we host our family for Thanksgiving!

An interesting recipe that we tried was Overnight Waffles. These waffles are unique because they're made with yeast! A fun fact is that my mom actually first used this recipe as an appetizer for KooKoo and Gerry's engagement party! She made the waffles and cut them into little hearts and drizzled them with maple syrup and garnished them with bacon and then served them as a passed appetizer, which I think sounds very fun. But she hadn't made them since and I wanted to see what waffles with yeast were like.

A good thing about this recipe is that you make the batter the night before, which is helpful if you're looking for a recipe that is mostly done in advance.

It looks spongy, just like bread dough, in the morning because of the yeast!

These waffles were kind of controversial. They are extremely buttery and have a great, light texture and I loved them. However my mom thought that the yeast gave a strong flavor that she didn't like. If you try these, definitely let us know what you think!!

An interesting new breakfast that we tried was French Breakfast Puffs. These are baked in muffin tins and then dipped in butter and cinnamon sugar. These were really good. I loved them. My big-little sister said that they were to die for and my brother thought that they were amazing!

This is me dipping the tops. Grandma Linda, do you like my flamingo pajamas?!

This is the finished product. They are simple, but taste great.

We made a LOT of traditional muffins this summer, so we have a long muffin section! A fast recipe that was easy to make but turned out really well was Perfect Strawberry Muffins. These muffins are especially soft and moist.

My brother doesn't always have time to bake with us, but he made these for us with my mom!

They are topped with a vanilla sugar and my big-little sister thought that added a nice touch.

I like oatmeal based muffins a lot because I think they create a nice texture, although you have to choose your recipes wisely because it can also make baked goods gummy. We made Maple Brown Sugar Oatmeal Muffins this summer, but this would actually be a great recipe for fall. My big-little sister loved them and kept taking more!

Muffin pictures are a little bit tricky because they don't always show much, but you can see the oats in these.

People are always looking for ways to use up zucchini from their gardens and these Zucchini Bread Muffins were good. My mom thought that they were too sweet though, so if you make them, you might want to cut back on the sugar.

We used dates for our dried fruit and added pecans for flavor. The pecans added a lot so I'd definitely recommend using them.

A very easy and very good muffin recipe for when there isn't a lot of time is Blackberry Muffins. I'm sure that you could make these with another fruit though if you wanted to.

You can tell from the picture that these are very simple muffins, but simple can be good!

A very interesting muffin that we made this summer was Seedy Maple Breakfast Muffins. My Uncle Tata sent my mom the recipe and there isn't an online link, but just tell me in the comments if you'd like it and I can sent it to you! This recipe is gluten-free and egg-free, and in our experience a lot of baked goods without wheat or eggs don't come out well, but these muffins are fantastic!

These muffins have tons of seeds and they're delicious, but they're also very messy!

My brother had a friend staying with us and so my mom wanted to make a muffin for breakfast that she was sure any kid would like. She picked Baker Style Chocolate Chip Muffins and that was definitely a good choice!

I especially recommend eating these warm, when the chocolate is still melty! I dipped mine in milk, like a chocolate chip cookie, and it was great!!

We also baked lots of scones this summer. Although our first scone recipe is actually nothing like a traditional scone. We made Granola Scones and these taste EXACTLY like my Grandma Linda's amazing granola. The problem is that as scones, they are very crumbly and fall apart. My dad said they were "super weird but very good!"

You can kind of see how these just look like a pile of granola pushed into a triangle!

We got really into savory scones this summer, which are maybe slightly less traditional but great when you don't want something sweet. We made Sun-dried Tomato Scones when we had family visiting and these were a huge hit!

We served these for breakfast but they would also be great served with soup or salad for lunch.

Another savory scone we tried was Cheddar Cheese and Scallion Scones. These come from the King Arthur flour website. Did you know that they have recipes?! Well they do and especially the scone recipes are excellent.

These scones would be great for fall with tomato soup!

Continuing with our savory scone theme, Basil and Parmesan Scones were some of my favorites, just in terms of the texture. They didn't have enough flavor though, so I think that if I made them again I might add in some extra cheese and nuts.

It was fun to go out and pick basil from our herb garden to make these.

Double-Decker Filled Scones were probably my second favorite scones that we have ever made. We used fig jam to fill these, but a very cool thing about this recipe is that you can use almost any kind of filling that you want! I think that I'd like to try a nut butter or fruit mixed with cream cheese!!

First you freeze discs of dough and then you slice them in half and fill them. They kind of look like weird hamburgers here!

Once we baked them, the jam oozed out and formed delicious sticky bits, almost like gummy candy!

This is what they looked like sliced. This is really a recipe worth making!

Another sweeter scone was Buttermilk Lemon Apricot Scones. These weren't too sweet though. And I really liked the chewiness of the apricots.

I think these were the only scones that we made that we did as drop scones, rather than patting them out and cutting triangles. Drop scones are definitely easier, but did you know that they end up puffier and more tender? Scones that are patted out tend to be flakier.

We entertain a lot during the summer and made some really great recipes that are good for when you have people over. A huge hit that we made was a Ricotta and Tomato Jam Jar. This is whipped ricotta with pesto and tomato jam layered on top. You serve it on toasted baguette and it is fantastic!!!! I cannot recommend it enough. And you can whip the ricotta and make the tomato jam and pesto in advance and then just assemble it all at the last minute. We actually took ours to a party at the beach.

You might even be able to make the tomato jam with fresh summer tomatoes and then can or freeze it. The colors would make this a beautiful appetizer for a Christmas party. You could even serve it in a tree shaped dish!

Another very successful dish was Everything Smoked Salmon Tart. We served it for my big-little sister's birthday party and she said that my mom "outdid herself," which is her highest form of compliment!!

This is actually very easy to make - it's mostly just assembly. But it looks beautiful!!

Stuffed Pretzel Bites were another recipe from my big-little sister's birthday party and they were also a big success! They're basically like homemade pigs in a blanket, but way better.

Serving these with awesome mustard makes them even better!

One of my favorite things that we made all summer was Khachapuri Adjaruli, which is a Georgian Cheese Bread Boat. There are no words to even explain how good this is! It's so good that as soon as we ate it this summer I said that I wanted to have it again on my birthday!!!!

First you make a dough and let it rise, and then you shape it into a boat. It kind of looks more like an eye, but Georgian Cheese Bread Eye sounds less appetizing!

Then you fill it with a cheese mixture.

You bake it to cook the crust and melt the cheese and then you add in an egg yolk and butter.

You stir the yolks and butter into the cheese.

This is what the final product looks like. You can pull off pieces of crust and dip it into the cheese, but we thought it worked better to cut the whole thing into slices with a pizza cutter.

After having so much success making naan, we tried making Homemade Pita Bread. This was a fun project, but it didn't turn out super successful. It was okay, but the pita got hard really quickly and wasn't worth the effort.

The first step was making and kneading dough. Check out my big-little sister's fancy nail polish!

Then this is me rolling it out.

The pita did puff up beautifully, which was very cool.

We served it with a Smashed Chickpea Salad. The chickpea salad was delicious. It had lots of herbs and tasted fresh and lemony.

I would definitely make this salad again. It would be great served on top of any kind of bread or even as a scoop on top of a green salad.

A huge hit of the summer was Dill Pickle Chicken Salad. Multiple people who tried this said it was the best chicken salad they had ever had! The pickles add lots of tang and great flavor. But even Alec, who doesn't really like pickles, loved this! I also liked that this doesn't have very much mayonnaise. It has more Greek yogurt, but you would never know that unless someone told you. One thing that we experimented with making this multiple times was different ways of shredding the chicken. Using the food processor shredded it more finely, which my dad preferred. But Rachel taught us that you can also shred chicken in a stand mixer using the whisk attachment! Doing it that way gives much bigger pieces, more like pulled chicken. I liked this way more.

We served this on brioche, and also made a brioche slider roll version for the beach.

A fun recipe that we made for my dad was Tuna Crunch Sandwiches. Tuna has too much mercury in it to be healthy for kids, so I didn't get to have this, but my dad really liked the crunch.

We took pictures of our sandwiches open faced, because otherwise you can't really see anything!

I love cooking in August because of all the delicious things to make with fresh corn and tomatoes from the farm that is near our house. One fun recipe that we made this summer was Cheesy Corn Garlic Bread.

First you cook the corn with parsley and chives and garlic and butter on the stove. I love how bright and summery this looked.

This is delicious, but extremely messy! The corn fell off and it was tough to eat.

Hot soup isn't what people usually thing about in terms of summer food, but in my opinion, this Summer Smoked-Salmon Chowder is the best soup that we have ever made. This soup uses hot smoked salmon, which has more the consistency of a regular salmon filet, rather than cold smoked salmon, which is the kind of smoked salmon that we usually think of.

The corn and zucchini helped make this soup feel summery.

We made lots of really great salads this summer. We don't have specific recipes, but we made lots of salads that were mostly greens and grilled vegetables with burrata on top. They were fantastic.

For this salad we used tomatoes, grilled corn, grilled zucchini, grilled onions and grilled peppers, but you could use any grilled vegetables that you want! I bet that we could make a really good version with grilled delicata squash for fall!

A big hit that we had for dinner was BBQ Salmon Bowls with Mango Avocado Salsa. We actually made this with Arctic char because my dad doesn't always love salmon. Everybody loved it. I don't usually like mango and so I just started with a little bit of salsa on the side, but I actually loved it and ended up adding more on top. The fish ends up crispy and there's a rub on it that is amazing.

My big-little sister says this is one of the best dinners we have ever had and my brother loved it too!

We grill a lot when we have friends over for dinner, and then serve a bunch of sides. An interesting new dish that we tried was Upside-Down Tomato Corn Cake. This was a dish with lots of potential, but it needs some work to make it really good. The problem is that it lacked flavor. It was just too plain and bland. I think if we made it again, we could add herbs and grated cheese to give it more oomph!

This dish looks absolutely beautiful on a platter though!

Do you remember how I said in my last blog post that I was going on a trip and I thought that it was going to inspire lots of good cooking ideas? Well we went to Italy and it did!!! We ate tons of amazing food and took a cooking class and so when we came home, we made lots of pasta. A cool thing that we did while we were in Italy is we went on a fancy picnic and some of the food was served in glass jars with attached lids. We decided that would be a great way to bring food to the beach! One beach jar dish that we made was Summertime Grilled Corn and Crab Pasta Salad. This was actually very bland. We quadrupled the dressing and added tons more lemon and garlic to fix it. Red pepper flakes would be good too to add some heat.

Doesn't the pasta salad in a jar look super cute though?!

One of the best pasta dishes that we have ever made is Zucchini Butter Spaghetti. This recipe was so good that we made it multiple times. This is a recipe that doesn't sound that special, but actually turns out to be incredible.

The zucchini almost melts into a buttery garlicky sauce. Everyone who has had this dish loves it!

My favorite pasta dish that we made was probably Cherry Tomato Pasta Alla Vodka. This isn't a very healthy dish, but it's definitely worth having as an occasional treat because the vodka sauce is so creamy and delightful! It would be a really good dish to serve at a family dinner in the winter or fall. I'm actually planning on requesting this for my birthday dinner along with the Georgian cheese bread!!

This pasta shape is called busiate and this is my new favorite pasta shape! I like pasta that you can stab more than noodles that you have to twirl. And this shape cooks very nicely and traps the sauce really well!

A pasta dish that we adapted a bit was One-Pot Orzo with Tomatoes, Corn and Zucchini. We added shrimp and feta to it, which I think added a lot. My dad thought that it would also be good with lobster meat or fish.

This could really be adapted into any kind of seafood stew.

Another summery pasta dish that we tried was Caramelized Corn and Asparagus Pasta with Ricotta. The noodles were super flavorful because there was turmeric in the sauce. My big-little sister said that they were great I thought that the caramelized corn added a very nice touch and the asparagus was very bright too. The turmeric does make it a little messy though and made everyone's hands yellow.

Unfortunately this is a really bad picture. For some reason the light turned out weird. But it was delicious!

Yet another pasta dish we made was Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce With Onion and Butter. This sauce is an extremely simple sauce that really highlights fresh tomatoes. Ours was more chunky and less saucy, but you could puree the tomatoes with a food mill if you wanted to. We used lumache as our pasta, which holds sauce very nicely. Lumache is a shell-shaped ridged pasta and lumache means "snail".

You can see how the lumache does look similar to snail shells.

A recipe that we made to go with the pasta was Bread and Cheese "Meatballs". The part of Italy that my family went to was Puglia. A long time ago, Puglia was a poor part of Italy and people couldn't afford meat so they made "meat" balls out of stale bread. We ate a lot of bread balls while we were in Puglia, so we decided to make our own. We used brioche for our bread which added nice flavor. My family thought that these were even better than the ones we ate in Puglia!

We started with a mixture of pulsed bread, garlic, parmesan, parsley and eggs.

Then we cooked them in a pan with a simple tomato sauce.

We also made lots of pizzas with fresh summer ingredients. We used lobster, leeks and corn for one of my favorites.

We didn't use a recipe for this, but we sautéed leeks and corn in butter and then added in the lobster meat. It was delicious!

But probably our most successful summer pizza is called Big Little Summer Tomato Pizza. The only person who didn't like it was my big-little sister, which is ironic! She doesn't love raw tomatoes. I didn't used to either and this pizza is one of the things that converted me!

This pizza has a mixture of different kinds of tomatoes and herbs and honey and burrata cheese and is amazing!

Of course this wouldn't be my blog if it didn't include lots of cookies. Soft Batch Chocolate M&M Cookies were very good. We used bittersweet chocolate wafers and white chocolate chips because that's what we had, and they turned out great.

You could add some candy eyes to these and they'd be a great treat for Halloween!

Another chocolate based cookie that we made was Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies. These are soft and reminded my mom a bit of Devil's food cake. My friend Gloria really liked these!

These could also be a good Halloween cookie if you used a toothpick to spread the marshmallow to look like cobwebs. Can you tell that I'm getting excited for Halloween?!

We have definitely mastered Rice Krispie treats and we've already told you about our very favorite recipe. But we wanted to try something different for my cousin Jonah and so we mixed some milk chocolate into the basic recipe. The chocolate melted and mixed in and I loved these. But we didn't think about how the texture would be affected once the melted chocolate hardened. It made these Rice Krispie treats less soft and my mom didn't like that.

The chocolate firming up did help these to cut cleanly though!

A hugely successful Rice Krispie treat variation was Cookie Butter Marshmallow Treats. I cannot say enough about how fantastic these are! If you like the flavors of Biscoff cookies, you will LOVE these!! These have a white chocolate topping and my big-little sister thought that part was even better than the Rice Krispie treat. My mom thought that these were one of the best things we made all summer.

If you make these though, it is very important to keep them chilled. They get way too goopy otherwise.

We tend to bake brownies a lot over the summer because they are sturdy, which makes them a good dessert to bring to the beach. A basic but good brownie was Seriously Fudgy Homemade Brownies. They have chocolate chips in them and are a safe bet. I like brownies with peanut butter cups or other add-ons more, but this is a good classic recipe.

A very important debate is considering the center piece brownie versus the edge piece. My family mostly likes middle cut pieces because they are gooier, but my brother likes the crispiness of edges.

A brownie that is slightly more sophisticated for dark chocolate lovers is Salted Dark Chocolate Brownies. Grown-ups who like dark chocolate tended to like these and I did too. My mom and brother didn't love these.

The flaky salt on top is great for people who like the salty sweet combination.

My favorite brownie of the summer was OMG Peanut Butter Cup Brownies and my mom agreed with me. These are incredible!!! You have to like peanut butter though, obviously!

My big-little sister was wearing some serious jewelry to bake these!

At the end you add a peanut butter chocolate drizzle on top of chopped peanut butter cups.

These are peanut butter galore!

And then when you cut them, you can see the peanut butter cups in the middle.

An interesting brownie that we tried was Oreo Cream Filled Brownies. You use a jelly roll pan to make a thin brownie layer for these and then you cut it in half crosswise and spread filling over half and top with the other half to make a sandwich before you cut them. This isn't something that you'll hear me say frequently, but these were really too sweet.

These look cute but if I made them again, I'd half the filling. That might reduce the sweetness and balance them better.

Another extremely successful brownie was Peanut Butter Cup Brownies. These were fantastic. And a great thing about this recipe is that the batter is made using the microwave, so it's a good recipe for kids to make.

There were supposed to be mini peanut butter cups on top. We didn't have those so we used Reese's Pieces instead and that turned out great. And I actually liked the color they added!

If you like fruit desserts more than chocolate, Plum and Cream Scone Cobbler is a great summer dessert. And you could definitely substitute peaches or nectarines if you like them better. The biscuits on this are really good. But Brown Sugar Berry Cobbler, which we've blogged about before, is still definitely our favorite!

Of course we forgot to take a picture before we dug in! But that tells you how good this smelled!!

Since it's almost October when we're telling you about this, it seems appropriate that the best dessert that we made this summer would actually be GREAT for fall! It was Maple Walnut Cheesecake and it was beyond fantastic!!!!! If you want to make a special dessert this fall or winter, this should be it!

This cheesecake looked beautiful and would be PERFECT for a Thanksgiving table!

It was so much fun cooking this summer after being inspired by our Italy trip. We're already very busy with apple and pumpkin baking, so I'll have lots more to tell you about soon. And in very exciting news, we have another trip planned that I think is definitely going to inspire more cooking. AU REVOIR for now blog friends!!!!!!!!!