Blogosphere overview

It seems like Christmastime is the time for cookies in the US. Ok, to be honest, seems like any time is cookie time in the US. But I have noticed a significant increase in cookie recipes on food blogs recently. Every food blog and their friend are doing cookie recipes. There is no way I will have time to bake any cookies before Christmas, I'm currently struggling with even making room for working and sleeping. And watching Big Bang Theory marathons. It's brilliant. I love Sheldon Cooper.

Anyways, as I'm so busy lying on my sofa and watching Big Bang Theory, I don't think there will be any Christmas cookie baking for me this year. And I have to say, it's not a big Finnish Christmas tradition anyways. We bake gingerbread, and that's pretty much it. At least in my family. But there are so many lovely Christmas cookie recipes around, I thought I would make a summary of a few really good ones that have popped up in my RSS feed recently. Maybe I can try them after Christmas. Oh, except after Christmas I start my new life. Which has no sugar in it. At least until I can squeeze my butt back into my jeans. But maybe next Christmas?

Is there anything more Christmas-y than cranberries? Well obviously lingonberries. But as they are not available in these parts of the world, cranberries are the closest substitute, and these recipes look absolutely delicious.

Cranberry ginger sugar cookies from 365 Days of Baking

Cranberry cashew chocolate chip cookies from Cookies and Cups

I have seen recipes for these chocolate crinkles on many cooking and baking blogs, so you might have seen some variation of these before. They look absolutely delicious.

Chocolate crinkles from AJ's cooking secrets

Then there is this whole thing about Christmas and peppermint. To be honest, I had never associated peppermint with Christmas, it's not a thing in Finland. Or maybe it is, and I'm just totally oblivious to it. I'm very sceptical about the whole thing, but I would be willing to give it a try. And the recipes below sound like good places to start. 

Peppermint sugar cookies from Bakerella. Gorgeous!!

Peppermint white chocolate chip cookies from Closet Cooking

Peppermint dream butter cookies from Recipe girl

This is a nice twist on the traditional gingerbread.

Chewy Gingerbread Cookies with Double Chocolate Chunks from Lulu the Baker

I love buttermilk, so any excuse to use it are always welcome in my book.

Buttermilk chocolate cookies from Barefoot and Baking

And to end, a few different types of butter cookies. Make one, make two, make them all.

Swedish dream cookies by One Perfect Bite

Scotch shortbread and Berlinerkranser from Simply so Good

Well, those should keep you busy for a while. Hopefully you find an interesting recipe to try, and have a look at the wonderful food blogs featured here. And maybe I can squeeze in a batch of one of these cookies somewhere in my busy Big Bang Theory watching schedule.

Blogosphere overview

I've been meaning to do this for quite a while, maybe making it a weekly or fortnightly feature, maybe alternating with my Friday quickies. I follow quite a few food blogs. Currently I have over fifty food blogs in my RSS feed, and the number is constantly growing. I get so annoyed if I find a great food blog which doesn't have a rss feed. I don't have time to go through a great number of individual blogs one by one, so if I can't subscribe to it, I will forget about that blog. Which is a shame, but then again this food hobby would get totally out of hand without the help of things like RSS feeds and Pinterest boards which allow for a quick overview of lots of things in a short time.

In my opinion, food blogs seem to fall into one of two categories. There are those which are as much concentrated on food photography as actual recipes, and these blogs usually are not updated very often. However, the photo shoots look absolutely professional, and as much effort has been put into making the photos look gorgeous as in the cooking and recipes themselves. Then there are food blogs which are updated more often and have more of a focus on the actual food, but the photos aren't always quite as impressive. For me, having a good mix of both types in the blogs I follow is important, as I want to ogle the gorgeous photos but also want enough blogs which are updated often to make sure I have some new blog entries to cheer me up and inspire me every day.

I guess this is as good a place as any to remind you of my Pinterest boards, which can be found here and the board for the blog specifically is here. Feel free to have a browse around or to follow if you feel like it.

Anyways, my point was that there are so many great blogs out there, and not nearly enough time to try out all the recipes. But I thought maybe if I highlighted some of my favourite recipes from my favourite blogs, this might help someone else find these great blogs and maybe try out some of the recipes. 

A lot of the American food blogs (and a lot of the ones I follow happen to be American) have only just recently got over their pumpkin and Halloween obsession, and are now full of Thanksgiving recipes. I bet after Thursday, the focus for the next few months will be on Christmas recipes. Trying to avoid pumpkin and cranberries, here are a few recent favourites of mine:

Baker's Royale recently published a recipe for Caramel Rum and Banana Bread Pudding. It's actually three recipes in one, as there is a recipe for the Caramel Rum, the Banana Bread and the pudding which brings them together. You could choose to make just one or the other, the Carmel Rum sounds great to eat with ice cream, or maybe stuff into cupcakes or in a cake as well. 

Brown Eyed baker impressed with a recipe for Salted Caramel Apple Cheese cake. This looks so good I could just eat the picture of it. Salted caramel anything is just genius, and caramel and apple is of course a classic combo. So salted caramel apple cannot be anything but absolutely awesome. 

Chocolate covered Katie is a blog with healthier variations of desserts, cakes and sometimes other things as well. This time Katie is sharing a recipe for making oatmeal in the slow cooker, which I think is a really great idea. 

This recipe from My Little Kitchen is not quite recent, but I just love these piggy buns, they are too cute to be true so I had to bring them up here. 

That's all for this time, a bit heavy on the sweet stuff. I'll try to get in some recipes for proper food next time. However, I have to admit the blogs I follow are quite heavy on the side of sweets and baking. Hopefully you found a new blog to follow, or a recipe that inspired you.