WARNING: The photos your about to see will make your mouth water!

I hope you grabbed a drool bucket...or at least a napkin. Here are a few things that have been baking in my kitchen over the past few weeks. I have begun the Pastry program at Le Cordon Bleu but I still do a lot of baking in my own kitchen because people just really seem to love my goodies and when I stop making them (I tried taking a break since I bake 5 days a week in class) they seem to go through withdrawal. So here you are ... enjoy...and if you want any recipes or have any questions...you can always feel free to e mail me at Lauren.glinski@gmail.com or check out my full album at this link and leave me a comment here or there.

Let me begin with one of my favorite desserts ever! CHOCOLATE BABKA CAKE...if you don't know what it is, my heart aches for you but yet you will live a slightly skinnier life for not understanding how amazing this sweet chocolate bread is!!!

Back in New York, Brooklyn more specifically, there is a bakery "Your Baker" that would make this cake or bread whatever you want to call it. My grandfather used to bring it for dessert as a special treat and i always loved it. (let me explain something about my family, and more specifically about my grandpa, the Ravi family loves there dessert! And, every night we would have dinner together and he would always have some form of dessert, often an Entenmann's goodie but sometimes something even better, like this Babka cake...oh and he also always brought fresh italian bread..he always brought italian bread, even if we were ordering chinese food for dinner or eating tacos, he always had the bread...another reason i have a rather large butt!)

OK moving on....this Babka recipe is perfect and i tweaked it and tweaked it to recreate what I remember from after dinner treats from Brooklny...which is nice since I am on the West coast these days ... it is sooo good. It is a semi-sweet dough, twisted with cocoa powder and chocolate shavings baked into a cake shape (or any shape you like) top with streusel and a drizzle of chocolate. YUM

I made these one day when i was bored and had to clean out my cubbard.

These are yummy! These are devil food chocolate cupcakes with a homemade sweet graham cracker crust stuffed with a giant marshmallow and topped with whipped chocolate ganache. The middle cupcakes are topped with toasted grahams and a drizzle of ganache....look inside these things

The cupcakes below were EVEN better!!

These have a cinnamon graham cracker crust with yellow butter cheesecake batter topped with homemade chocolate frosting, dipped in chocolate ganache and topped with toasted coconut.

And some of them had a chocolate surprise baked into the middle...yum!

Key Lime pie with graham cracker crust and Chantilly cream.

Strassburger and Bryssellkex cookies.

French apricot macaroons.

Pate a Choux also known as "shoe" paste ... really its cream puffs filled with delicious pastry cream.

These are my famous and incredibly delicious banana bread truffles taken up a notch with toasted coconut. SERIOUSLY these are sooo deathly delicious and i have no words to describe them.

If you are ever in Vegas ... i suggest you place an order so you can try some of my truffles!!