If you are lucky enough to live in one of the five boroughs of New York City, then you are within tasting distance for these delicious-looking treats from Baked in Red Hook, Brooklyn. For the rest of us, at least there's a picture at which to gaze. There's also a blog entry that goes along with this image, all about how painfully difficult (because there's just so much to eat and photograph) it is to be a food blogger. Vanessa, I feel your pain!

Few and far between are the people who don't like blondies at all. They have the thick chewiness that is usually associated with brownies, but are more substantial and often more satisfying. This batch of Toffee Crunch Blondies, baked by The Canadian Baker, looks to be even more satisfying than the average blondie because it incorporated chopped up Skor Bars into the blondie batter. The Skor bars melt into the blondies as they bake, creating little pockets of buttery toffee/caramel and chocolate, a nice change from the plain chocolate chips that are so often used in blondies. Alternatives to Skor include Daim, which you can usually find at Ikea stores or other importers and can be used in cakes and cookies, as well as in blondies, and chopped up Heath bars, which will add a similar flavor. The recipe for these blondies can be found here.

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:

Now that you have finished your cake, let's review the steps. You read your recipe carefully, preheated the oven, made the streusel, greased the pan, creamed the butter, added the eggs, finished the batter and baked it. It's time to taste it.

The cake is moist, rich and delicious. It isn't a light, spongy cake, but it is very tender and does not seem heavy or dense. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a cake with this much streusel on it – in fact, there was nearly as much streusel as batter in the recipe! I loved how simply pressing the streusel mixture into big chunks before spreading it on the cake resulted in professional looking and tasting topping. Aside from the hitch with the incorrect baking time being given in the recipe, I didn’t have any problems and found the recipe to be easy to follow. This cake is a little too rich for everyday breakfast, but it is a great choice for special occasions and is classic comfort food. The recipe says this serves 10-12, but I far prefer to cut it into 16 smaller slices.

Thanks for watching this "episode" of Cooking Live with Slashfood!

[Photo by Nicole Weston]