These are celebratory cupcakes. Why, you ask? Well, today is the 5th Birthday (anniversary?) of this here Cup of Sugar :: Pinch of Salt website. Yup, it was 5 years ago on a snowy weekend that I started this adventure and who knew I would still be going strong 1152 recipes later. So happy birthday, CSPS. Have a cupcake on me!
The very first thing that you will notice about these cookies is the smell. Open the container or parcel that they are in and the glorious smell of coconut is almost overwhelming, in an amazingly delicious kind of way. Coconut overload. They are crunchy, with the soft bits of coconut sort of weaved though. The chocolate is just a bonus, but makes them pretty over-the-top, if you ask me.
I’m sure you’ve all gathered that I have this thing with Sea Salt, especially mixed with sweet things, so I was over the moon when I was gifted some lovely salts from Atlantic Salt Works from right here in Massachusetts (Gloucester — pronounced Glaah-stah, from those of your “from away”). The one that I was most intrigued by was the Coffee Sea Salt which sounded just perfect for these cookies. Perfect!
Breakfast. They say it is the most important meal of the day. I, sadly, am never talented enough to pull off a big breakfast, and there are lots of people who need something on the table quickly. That is where this Overnight Baked Blueberry French Toast comes it. With a little planning, you can actually have this on the table in a little over half an hour. Basically, you just have to spend 10 minutes the evening before whisking the milk and eggs together and cutting bread, and in the morning, just place it in the oven (you don’t even need to preheat, though I preheated to about 200F before I put it in — my oven is from 1954; it needs to “think about things” before moving). Voila, on the table 35 minutes later.
A note: the recipe is for a full 9 x 13 inch (like the size of a brownie pan), but the picture is actually of a much smaller version (I halved the recipe). I’m single and didn’t want to be eating French Toast for three days.
Here’s a quick and easy recipe that I threw together… ok, I actually threw it together twice, because I made both a raspberry version and a lemon curd version. These two shortbread bars are actually very similar — identical until the top part, actually. I wanted to show how versatile this recipe is, and that it is super super easy to make. Start to finish in under an hour, though they do take a while to cool. I made 12 oblong bars out of each (4 x 3 cut), but you could do 4 x 4 so they are almost cookie-sized.