Carrot Halwa

I've been wanting to make carrot halwa for about two years.  The first time I tried it was at a diversity event at work, and I loved its flavor and texture.  When I got home, I found a recipe, saw that it was time consuming, and added it to my "things to make in the future" list.  A week or so later, Scott and I were eating at the Indian restaurant behind our apartment, and they had it on their menu.  I was incredibly excited to introduce the dessert to Scott and have a source of carrot halwa so close to home.  If I could pop into the restaurant and buy some whenever the urge hit, I wouldn't have to reduce lots of milk and grate carrots!  It was perfect!
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Magic Middles

These cookies are inspired by the Keebler Magic Middles I sometimes ate as a kid when I was in elementary school.  I'm not exactly sure why I remembered these particular cookies (they were discontinued before I made it to double digits), but when it happened, I was walking home from work and thinking about a brown sugar cookie recipe in my great-grandmother's 1933 datebook and how to modify it.  I'm lucky to have a copy of the datebook; it is filled with tons of recipes that I'm excited to try and some that should be left alone (like home remedies for illnesses that you probably don't want to read about in a baking blog...).

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Chocolate Crunch Bars

I sometimes feel the tiniest bit guilty when I make these.  Not because of the name, or the fact that they contain a nice amount of butter and sugar, but because they are so easy to make and are my "Oh my God, I promised I would make something and it is already 10 pm and I'm super tired" cookies. 

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Rosewater Pistachio Cookies

I used to eat a lot of rosewater and pistachio nougat as a kid.  Every year, family friends would give us a box or two (along with other tasty treats) for Persian New Year.  Some years the nougat would be individually wrapped, and other years it was packed in a golden box filled with flour that would dust my shirt in a telltale sign that I had been eating candy before dinner. 
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Melted Red Onions with Balsamic Vinegar

Last week Scott made the most amazing French onion soup.  It started with some homemade stock and ended with me practically licking the bowl.  In the middle he made caramelized onions.  Not just any caramelized onions, but the most beautiful, slow-cooked, perfect caramelized onions I had ever seen.  When he showed me how they had cooked down to almost nothing, I knew that he had found the perfect cooking method for the balsamic onions I had been thinking about since our trip to Italy two weeks ago.
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