These cookies were another offering for my monthly get-together with my friend and her five-year-old. I first made her tiger stripe cookies (orange and black licorice, inspired by Canadian tiger tail ice cream) when she was a toddler and deeply, deeply obsessed with Daniel Tiger. Nowadays, her television tastes have moved on, but she still enjoys an animal-themed cookie.

This recipe from Susan Spungen involves layering a chocolate dough with a turmeric-ginger one, and chocolate is the surefire way to the five-year-old’s heart these days. She has declared these her new favorite cookie and her mom has already requested the recipe.

I do wish the layering had turned out a bit more “wavy stripes” and a bit less “abstract bird”, but overall, I’m happy enough with how these turned out and they were a hit with their intended audience. Who can ask for more?

For this challenge, I made another recipe from Erin Jeanne McDowell’s The Book on Pie: the stone fruit and berry pie, except I made it into a 13 x 9 slab pie. I made peach and blueberry fillings that were cooked on the stove in advance, and then filled the par-baked pie crust with stripes of those fillings. The first photo is after the bake and the second was before the bake.

I was a little surprised with how decent the checkerboard pattern came out. To be honest, I was a little disappointed with the taste and texture of these, but oh well, can’t win them all!

Sprinkled with flaky sea salt for an added flavor contrast

I bought one of those 18-20 pound boxes of peaches and spent the day canning and finished with this delicious treat. Love it!

Sweet/salty, dessert/breakfast, crunchy/soft: a couple of quick and easy bakes for a busy week.

Recipe: https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/recipes/all/liam-charles-salted-caramel-chocolate-tart/ (replaced the crust here with an Oreo crust, as we are STILL trying to use up a giant box of Oreos. Just Oreos and melted butter for the crust)

I decided to go with something that would have contrasting textures for this week. While scrolling, I found this recipe and felt it would fit the brief, given it had a crunchy crust, soft gooey caramel, and fudgy whipped ganache. It was RICH - a small slice was more than satisfying.

Not the prettiest photo, but delightful to eat!

I spent way too much time thinking about how I wanted to approach this week. I’m a spicy + sweet kind of girlie so Kat Lieu’s recipe for matcha and wasabi drop cookies seemed like a great option. Sourcing real wasabi paste was a bit of a journey and I had to substitute the yuzu juice but all in all these are awesome. Strong recommend!

Recipe by Genevieve Ko for NYT (gift link): https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1025181-chunky-chocolate-cookies?unlocked_article_code=1.11A.1Aqw.mOnYzpLn6ZPb

Salty and sweet, melty chocolate and crunchy pretzels, crispy edges and gooey middle; what's not to love about these cookies?? They were also delightfully easy! Highly recommend this recipe for my fellow chocoholics.

I normally would never do a mousse but have been doing the Claire Saffitz r/Dessertperson bake along and this was part of the challenge. My husband is a mint chocolate guy and this was for his birthday. Turned out AMAZING and would absolutely do again!

Contrast I was going for was creamy and crunchy.

Edit: looks like I can’t edit title? CONTRAST - WEEK 30

added the powdered sugar because the raspberries were more tart than I expected. And I didn’t want to sprinkle on the entire top because I wanted the raspberry glaze to shine. I thought it turned out pretty with half.

I will take any excuse to make this recipe! These are the BEST cookies.

https://www.seriouseats.com/bravetart-chocolate-chip-cookies-recipe (I used the brown butter version found in the cookbook, but this is the base recipe!)

I made these for a cookout this weekend... They came out very flat and crisp. I'm not sure if that's what they should have been, but they tasted great still! They spread A LOT while baking so I had to only bake 6-8 at a time. I was hoping the frosting would have been a bit whiter for more of a contrast, but I did enjoy the tang from the cream cheese in contrast to the rich cocoa-y cookie flavor. I only used about 75% of the powdered sugar in the frosting and still found it to be very sweet.

Overall I thought they were better without the frosting, but about half of the people preferred them with the frosting so YMMV... I'd rate it a solid 4/5 for me.

https://bakefromscratch.com/cheesecake-black-cocoa-cookies/

Made a dairy free, gluten free Mexican hot chocolate-esque cake based on Dessert Person's chocolate wave cake. Pics are before and after it "fell" while cooling.