We’re just a couple days away from Thomas turning three months old and I can’t believe how time has flown. Well, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. The weeks are flying by that’s for sure, but those middle of the night feedings are still something else. My sleep deprivation is not as bad as it was those early weeks when it felt like a horrible combination of being drunk and hungover at the same time, along with feeling like someone was pounding my head with a hammer while I was underwater. After not being able to stomach the sight and smell of coffee during most of my pregnancy, I’ve welcomed it back in my life with open arms. Coffee, I promise I will never leave you again.

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The last few days have been filled with cold medicine, kleenex, and binge-watching Netflix. I don’t know how they do it, but our favourite shows seem to always know when we’re feeling run down and they all come back at once to make us feel better. Lately, Trevor and I have been enjoying the last season of Girls (sob), the mid-season return of Last Man on Earth and the newest season of Love. Cooking has been pretty minimal due to lack of energy, so I’ve been making a point to clean out the freezer and eat all the leftovers. It’s times like these that I’m grateful for batch cooking.

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I’m pretty sure this toasted coconut chocolate chip cookie dough fudge is everything I ever wanted in a dessert. As a chocolate-loving adult, it incorporates everything I love – rich milk chocolate, toasted coconut and chocolate chip cookie dough. And if you think you are too old to enjoy cookie dough in all it’s unbaked glory, one bite of this fudge will definitely change your mind.

When I was a teenager, I bought my fair share of homemade chocolate fudge from the local Christmas Market in my little hometown in northern Saskatchewan. As much as I now love living in a big city, I do miss the small-town charm of Christmas Markets filled with friendly neighbors and local vendors. I’ve visited and purchased presents at a couple of the markets in Toronto over the past few years, but sometimes the crowds can be quite suffocating (think crowded, delayed subway – ugh). Thankfully with this recipe, I can get my fix in the comfort of my home and it also gives me the opportunity to enjoy a few pieces and then give the rest away to friends and co-workers.

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I know we’re at the very end of rhubarb season, but I couldn’t let the season go without sharing my Grandma’s recipe for rhubarb meringue cake. It’s also a bittersweet day because today would have been her 83rd birthday. My Mom sent me a photo of her handwritten recipe last month, but I was so caught up in all my jam making that I didn’t have any rhubarb to spare. Once I slowed down on the jam production, I set aside some extra stalks.

When I first made this cake, I had no visual guide and only a very briefly written recipe, so I was constantly texting my Mom questions: What size of cookie sheet do I use? How thick is the cake suppose to be? Is it supposed to be meringue? How thick??? My fingers turned red and went numb chopping up stalk after stalk of rhubarb and after I spread the thick, fluffy meringue onto the unbaked cake base, I started panicking and was convinced that I had done something wrong. We were just about to eat supper (poor Trevor was hovering around the counter waiting for me to move so he could get his food), so I put the cake in the oven, set the timer and hoped for the best.

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As a food blogger, it’s pretty funny how dependent I am on the weather. Not only do I try to take my photos on days where the weather is nice (hello natural light!), but the heat, rain, and levels of humidity all have a weird impact on what I feel like making and eating. For example, I’m less likely to make something heavy, like a cake or batch of cookies, when the sun is shining and an extra layer of sunscreen is a must. I’m also less inclined to turn on our oven, even though we pretty much always have our air-conditioning running whenever we’re home.

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Ever since I purchased my new, fancy-pants 11-cup Cuisinart food processor, I’ve been on a chopping, slicing and pureeing crazy spree. In the last two weeks, I’ve made falafels, granola (3 batches), homemade veggie burgers and chopped a variety of vegetables for homemade soup. To say that this upgrade was a well-needed purchase is an understatement and I’m thrilled now to be able to make things that my previous 3-cup little baby processor couldn’t handle. A few of the items on my to-make list include hummus, homemade peanut butter for Trevor and another batch of these quinoa brownies.

Some of you may remember last summer when I made my chocolate espresso quinoa cake and if you compare the ingredients list from that cake to these brownies, they don’t appear to be that different from each other. Where I think these brownies really shine is the crazy addictive chocolate date icing. Rather than using powdered sugar, I used medjool dates, which are naturally sweet and full of potassium and fiber. Ever since I had my first medjool date, I’ve had to keep a package hidden somewhere in my fridge for when I’m craving something sweet.

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Back in the fall, I purchased some 100-calorie peanut butter chocolate bars from Costco as an easy, portable purse snack. These bars was especially handy because I take a zumba dance class on Wednesday nights and I’m always famished on my hour-long bus ride back to our apartment. Being only 100-calories though, the bars never satisfied me after my workout so I wasn’t really that sad once we finished the Costco-sized box a few weeks ago.

Or so I thought. Lately, I couldn’t stop thinking about them. The calorie content may have been pretty miniscule for a post-workout snack, but the taste and the texture was something I couldn’t get enough of. It reminded me of a soft peanut butter puff wheat square with a hint of chocolate. Growing up, I loved homemade puff wheat squares, but I stopped making them a couple years ago when I read about corn syrup being pretty much one of the worst things you can put in your body (thanks Jillian Michaels). Since then I’ve completely sworn off baking with corn syrup, even though I know that I can’t completely avoid eating it (like in the 100-calorie bars).

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I realize that I’m a little late on the whole “happy new year” bandwagon. Just a little bit. I had every intention to post this recipe earlier this week, but then life happened. We returned from my parents house, the weather in Toronto took a turn for the worst, Trevor got sick and had to stay home from work and I tried to go to bed at a decent hour to avoid catching his cold. This was all in the span of a little more than a week. All I can say is that I’m so happy it’s the weekend!

I hope that the first little bit of 2014 as been treating everyone well. And for those people who have made New Year resolutions, I hope you’re still on track. In the past, I used to scoff at the idea of waiting until the beginning of the year to make resolutions. Now I believe that anyone who is willing to look at their current situation, acknowledge that they want to make a change and make that first step deserves an applause, no matter what time of year it is.

I’ve made a few resolutions this year and one of them is to be more organized with my blogging. Since it took me six days to write this post, I realize that it’s going to be a long, slow process. But, I figured that writing about my resolution here would be a helpful reminder to get my butt in gear and make some long-term changes.

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It’s been two weeks since we returned from the farm and we’re still making our way through all our apples. Yesterday was a landmark day in that we finally managed to fit them all in the fridge. Our crisper is full to the brim and we have apples spilling over each shelf. We’ve been keeping our grocery shopping to a minimum as to not disrupt the current organization of the fridge. Even at our rate of eating 2-3 apples per day, we realized that we’re still not making much headway.

I realize that this may sound a little complain-y, but I don’t mean to be. In a few months, we’ll miss these apples especially when I have to resort to going back to the grocery store to pick up some tiny, flavourless ones probably shipped in from somewhere in the States.

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Welcome to the new layout for She Bakes Here!

For the last couple of months, I’ve been working with the brilliant and talented Lindsay over at Purr Design to help make the scary leap from Blogger to a self-hosted WordPress site. Not only did she transfer every single file and comment, she also helped streamline my recipe index and made my recipes much more printer and user friendly. You can even like, tweet and pin each post! After being stuck with the limitations of Blogger for the last 2 1/2 years, I’m pretty much leaping with joy over the amount of freedom I now have. The popular post listing on the side bar? All Lindsay. The fact that my tweets show up again on the blog? All Lindsay again! (PS: I plan on tweeting more, I promise!)

So have a look around and let me know what to think of the new look. I’m still in the process of formatting each and every of my almost 200 posts, but if anything doesn’t work, feel free to pop me an email or comment.

In the meantime, I have a special recipe to share. Special for you because its delicious and you don’t have to turn on your oven to make it, special for me because it’s part of a fun memory I have with one of my closest friends.

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