The Adventures of a Frustrated Baker

This idea kind of stemmed from two things, one my craving for delicious pancakes and my family's love of all things bacon.  With as popular as the bacon/chocolate combo is these days I felt I needed to finally hitch myself to that particular bandwagon.  Before you totally reject this recipe, you know cause seriously bacon and chocolate is weird in pancakes, I must tell you I slaved over this one.  I sort of wrote it myself...well I used an old hand written pancake recipe scribbled into one of my notepads and tweaked it until it tasted just right...and now that I have guilted you all into reading further...I think you should all try it too! Now, I doubt it is truly a nutritious breakfast, but it was a special treat and we all enjoyed it very much.  The trick is, sigh...don't judge me, the trick is to put actual bacon grease in the pancakes in order to provide more bacon-y flavor.  You should all try it at least once.  They are delicious a...

Our garden, as previously mentioned, seems to think that we only need and want ginormous zucchinis and so has been mass producing crazy sized versions of this vegetable.  After doing a couple of pasta dishes, I realized that my zucchini arsenal of recipes was tapped and I turned to baked goods in order to use up some of our years long supply.  I have never tried zucchini in baked good form.  I know, I know, crazy!  But I just have never gotten around to it I guess.  For my first zucchini baked goodie, I chose cupcakes of course, and, while I myself did not really enjoy them (I guess I don't like zucchini baked goods...) my family and friends seemed to like these cupcakes and so I will share them with you too! One of our ginormous zucchinis.  Yup, that is a Morton salt container back there... Shred your zucchini using a cheese grater or food processor in order to get about 2 cups... Gather up all of your ingredients. Whisk or si...

Originally this recipe was going to be joined with my post for the sliders, but with all the pictures I had of those and then all the ones I had for this recipe, I felt that they could each stand on their own.  So the day that I made the sliders I searched all of the whopping two grocery stores we have here in town for slider buns only to be disappointed.  I so badly wanted to use my Williams Sonoma slider press...then it occurred to me, why not make my own buns?  I had seen a recipe on another blog recently that featured hamburger buns...why not give it a try and just make them extra small for sliders?  With that decided, we headed home and  I got to work! I made these on a marathon cooking day...I was making sliders, grilling up one of the monster zucchinis from our garden, making these slider buns and zucchini cupcakes! Yeah, it was a busy day in the kitchen here.  Anyway, the great thing about making breads is that you h...

I just love sliders, don't you?  They are all cute and tiny and if done right you can pack a pretty good wallop of flavor into those teeny tiny 2 bite burgers.  A few weeks ago, we had some beautiful weather in which I decided to make these little gems.  They came to me early in the morning as I was getting up, or maybe they were the remnants of a dream, not sure that it really matters.  All I know is that morning when I woke up and saw the gorgeous sunshine, I decided I had to have sliders with jalapenos and shredded cheese mixed in.  My sister-in-law of course mightily agreed (she's got a thing for everything peppers...) since this sounded like the perfect summer meal on such a perfect summer day. Assemble all of your ingredients and throw them all into a large bowl and mix them together.  Let sit a about half an hour to let the flavors blend. Grab your slider press if you have one, and place down some foil or parchment paper for...