The first time I came across the term 'brown butter,' I was reading a menu at an Italian restaurant. I was 20 and functioned under the firm assumption that butter was bad. I couldn't imagine why any thinking person would create a sauce that was based solely on butter. However, one of my dining companions ordered that pasta dish and when the plates arrived, I was entranced by the sweet, nutty smell that was gently rising from her plate. She noticed my fascination and offered me a bite. The forkful of pasta instantly converted me from a butter avoider to a butter lover .

Despite my affection for butter, I don't use brown butter in my own cooking frequently. However, since reading Nicole's post on Baking Bites that details how to make it, I'm thinking that I need to cook up a batch and find an excuse to gently toss some veggies or pasta in it.

It's getting to be the time of year when our thoughts turn to baking apple crisps and pumpkin pies. Often times recipes for those desserts just contain a reference to a spice blend designed specifically for those dishes. But what if you don't want to buy a little plastic container marked "Pumpkin Pie Spice" and already have your own store of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cloves and allspice? Nicole at Baking Bites has posted recipes for Pumpkin and Apple Pie spices and includes tips for tweaking those recipes according to your particular tastes. So go forth and bake for the holidays, knowing that your spice blends are unique and fresh because you made them.

There's a new kid on the blogs, you might be thinking. But look a little more closely and you'll see that Baking Bites is actually an old friend who's gone through an extreme makeover. Our very own bakerina Nicole Weston's personal food blog, Bakingsheet has been transformed (of sorts - technically, Bakingsheet is still out there) into Baking Bites, with a different name, a fresh look, and all kinds of delicious new things. Take a peek!

Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone.

The whole idea behind having pancakes on Fat Tuesday is to use up the butter, milk, eggs and other indulgent ingredients that you might having lying around the house so that you won't be tempted during Lent. But because everyone likes pancakes and not everyone observes lent, calling the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday "National Pancake Day" makes the tradition open to all - and I think that we can all agree that more pancakes are not a bad thing.

For my pancake day breakfast, I opted not to go with something decadent, but instead with something more wholesome so that I don't feel too bad about starting the day with a couple more pancakes (topped with maple syrup, of course), than I need.

At Trader Joe's the other day, I picked up a container of Dark Chocolate Covered Dried Cherries on my way to the checkout. Unlike chocolate-covered raisins, each piece was huge and there was clearly a high chocolate-to-cherry ratio. Chocolate and cherries are a great combination as it is, but Trader Joe's tends to carry some high-quality brands (under their store name), so I didn't hesitate to put them in my cart. My immediate thought was that they would be good in a cookie, so I baked up a batch to share with some friends. I used one of my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes, which turns out cookies that are just sweet and buttery enough to be dangerously addictive, with a slightly chewy center and crispy edges. The cherries added some extra chew to the basic recipe and the chocolate brought it all together.

A light panna cotta is a great way to end a romantic evening, like Valentine's Day. It is easy to prepare and can be set up in advance, which leaves you free to worry about other aspects of your night. When discussing panna cotta, "light" usually refers to the delicate texture and melt-in-your mouth appeal of the lightly gelled dessert, not necessarily to the fat or calorie content of the treat. There is nothing wrong with a little indulgence, but it's nice when a dessert that is light in texture is also light in the stomach, so I have made this panna cotta a little more figure-friendly by using yogurt and light cream (half and half) in place of the all-cream standard. I added some berries for color and a little bit of sugar for sweetness. The result is a dessert with the appealing texture of panna cotta, far less fat and the slight tang of yogurt.

Chocolate pudding cake is an intensely satisfying, yet simple, dessert. As it bakes, it separates into two layers - a tender chocolate sponge-type cake and a very rich chocolate sauce/ pudding base - so the cake needs no accompaniment unless you want to throw a scoop of vanilla ice cream into the bowl, too.

The second best thing about this cake (the flavor is the first, of course) is that it is incredibly easy to make because it is mixed in the pan that you bake it in. This means that cleanup is minimal and that you can have a delicious, from-scratch dessert on even a very busy weeknight. Not that you shouldn't have it at other times, as well. Any excuse is a good one for chocolate pudding cake.

I am not a big fan of creamy things, including cream-based soups and cream-based drinks and desserts. That means that while I like the flavor of Bailey's, I just can't drink very much of it at one time. When I got a bottle of the new Bailey's with a hint of Caramel Irish Cream Liqueur, I loved the flavor (more than Jonathan did) and began to come up with recipes that would show it off. I settled on baking a batch of cookies, though the liqueur would do well in a cake, too.

To play up the caramel flavor, I used brown sugar in the cookies and stirred in a combination of white chocolate and butterscotch chips. The overall flavor from the liqueur was subtle, but noticeable, and the mix of sugar, chips and Bailey's was a winning combination. The cookies are on the softer/chewier side, so the chips actually stand out as adding a slightly firmer texture to the treat.

If Bailey's isn't your thing, or if you can't find the caramel, not to worry. I included some variations after the recipe:

I love making pudding cakes. I find them to be both easy and satisfying, especially on a cold evening where the dessert can really warm you up. A basic recipe for one will have egg whites folded into a flavored batter, much like a souffle. Unlike a souffle, however, pudding cakes are baked in a water bath that keeps the bottom portion from puffing up as it cooks, leaving a thick pudding at the base of your baking dish. The top portion of the cake, uninhibited by the insulation of the water bath, bakes into a light, moist sponge cake that provides a perfect contrast for the pudding below.

I baked this batch in individual ramekins, which makes them look a little more elegant than a pudding cake baked in one large dish and scooped out for serving. As an extra touch, I also used Meyer lemons in place of regular lemons. They add a lot of lemon flavor without any of the sharpness that is usually associated with lemons and lemon juice.

After making margarita cupcakes, I started to wonder what other cocktails would transfer well into cupcake form. The tequila/citrus combination worked so well in the first batch that I decided to try for another, similar drink: Tequila Sunrise. A tequila sunrise is typically made with orange juice, tequila and a splash of grenadine and was easy to adapt to my recipe.

The results were great. The cupcake was moist and lightly orange flavored with a small hint of tequila. These cakes are not particularly sweet, but the icing is, so while it is a good idea to keep the layer of frosting on the thin side, you really need it to make the cocktail-cakes work. Both the orange and the tequila flavors are brighter in the frosting and you can really taste the small splash of grenadine, which I kept to a minimal amount to avoid a pink-colored frosting, that brings the cupcake and the cocktail together.

This is a great cupcake recipe for a party, like New Year's Eve, and can even be brought out for a brunch if you have no objection to cupcakes in the morning.

Looking for a way to use up some leftover eggnog, I considered possibilities like eggnog cookies and eggnog cheesecake before deciding to make up a batch of eggnog popovers. A popover is made with an egg batter, very similar to crepe batter, that puffs up in the oven, literally popping over the top of the tin that it is made in. Since the batter is similar to pancake batter, I was hoping for something that would be appropriate for breakfast or dessert and that is exactly what I got.

The interior of these popovers is moist and tender, almost custardy, while the exterior is light and crisp. They're best when they're still hot or warm, but are still tasty at room temperature. You can really taste the eggnog flavor, boosted with a bit of nutmeg and vanilla, and they go wonderfully with maple syrup or powdered sugar.

By now, with all of our Christmas cookies recipes - Gingersnaps (two ways!), Cranberry, Orange & Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies and Chocolate Peppermint Drops - your cookie plate is going to look very appealing when you put it out with a nice variety for Santa on Christmas Eve. But Christmas just isn't quite right unless you get to spend some time decorating cookies. Not only is it a great creative outlet, but you get to eat the results.

Rather than opt for the traditional gingerbread men with royal icing, especially in light of the fact that I made gingery cookies last week, I opted to make some of my favorite Vanilla Cutout Cookies. These cookies are soft, but not cake-like, and are very easy to make. They use both butter and buttermilk in dough, both of which add a richness to the cookie, and vanilla extract with a touch of almond to keep the flavor bright. As always, I recommend using a very high quality vanilla extract or something even more vanilla-y, such as vanilla bean crush or vanilla paste to boost the vanilla flavor.

Hanukkah is known as the "festival of lights" and is a holiday in which oil has a special meaning. To put it very, very briefly, Hanukkah celebrates a miraculous occurrence where one night's worth of oil burned for eight. There is a lot of oil used in foods that are served for this holiday and much of it is used for frying. The two most well-know Hanukkah staples are sufganiyah (jelly-filled donuts) and latkes, or potato pancakes. As good as these two foods are, health-conscious holiday revelers don't always want to completely blow their diet with a meal of entirely fried foods, nor do they want to restrict themselves to only a few bites of this holiday favorite. Recognizing the health conscious, many people who host Hanukkah parties plan to serve baked latkes, as well as fried.

Baked latkes are often undercooked and not nearly as crispy as fried ones, but this recipe makes an excellent stand-in that is better than most. A minimal amount of oil is still used to grease the baking sheets, and the latkes turn out to be very crispy and very satisfying - with far less fat than ordinary latkes. They have a good potato flavor and, because they are thin, are not undercooked in the center.

Gingersnaps are snappy in both name and flavor, even though they are not always as crispy as the name seems to promise that they will be. To honor both types of cookies in our ongoing Christmas Cookie of the Week feature, I have two recipes for gingersnaps: one crisp and one soft.

The crisp cookie is from a recipe that has been circulating around the blogs for about 2 years now and it comes from Chez Panisse, though it was originally posted by Renee of feeding dexygus seconds. The cookies are very thin and each piece of dough is sliced off a frozen brick, so the cookies turn out in an unusual rectangular shape. They are buttery, flavorful and, due to the fact that they are extremely light, they are very addictive.

The second recipe is for chewy, soft gingersnap cookies. I spotted this recipe and was immediately attracted to its simplicity and the fact that it uses part whole wheat flour, since it never hurts to get a couple extra nutrients in during the holidays. The cookies are moist and surprisingly satisfying. I used pearl sugar to finish them off, but you can use any coarse sugar to create a nice, crisp top.

I was looking for something to spice up my pancakes this morning and I couldn't stop thinking about the Cranberry, Orange & Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies I made earlier this week. Chocolate chips are for "special occasion" pancakes and I'm not a fan of dried fruit in them, but I thought that orange would be a very welcome flavor in my breakfast. I ended up adding in the zest of one orange and a splash of cinnamon. The resulting pancakes, when topped with maple syrup as well, virtually screamed fall. The tender pancakes were addictive and there was just enough flavor from the orange and cinnamon to make them interesting, without becoming overwhelming. What a great way to start of a Sunday!