Blueberry Sour Cream Coffee Cake and Peppermint Cheesecake

A-Tooch was a bake-a-holic this holiday season. Between Christmas Eve, Christmas day brunch, (ahem) the quarter century A-Tooch birthday and New Year’s, there has been plenty to celebrate with, of course, food.

Sadly, documenting all of the goodies would overload the blog and your brains so I’ve chosen some of the best to pass along.

For Christmas day brunch at the Tooch household I had my mind set on two things: sweet and salty. To accommodate the tastes of our dozen guests, I adapted Sugarlaws Mini Spinach Frittatas recipe. So delicious and simple! I tripled the recipe — making some mini frittatas with ham steak and fontina cheese and others with diced onions, red and green peppers (ah, so festive!) Highly recommend these little guys for a brunch affair!

For the brunchie sweet tooth, I browsed about a million blueberry coffee cake recipes before settling on Emeril’s Good Morning America “Breakfast in Bed” recipe to guide me. This recipe should be renamed “the most bowls you will ever use to bake.” Whatever, I was at my parents’ house with gracious dishwashers, so I went with it.

Bowl #1: Plenty of fresh blueberries, tossed in a tbsp. of flour

Bowl #2: A tasty mixture of cinnamon, sugar and brown sugar

Bowl #3: Nothing says delicious like a stick and a half of butter (other ingredients later added)

Bowl #4: I layered each of the ingredients in the bundt pan — first, the cake mixture, then the blueberries and finally the cinnamon sugar mixture. Repeat.

I have to say, despite all the hoopla the end result was one of the tastiest I’ve ever made. Moist, dense and delicious — everyone who tried it loved it. I’d imagine this recipe would be just as good without the blueberries or even with another type of berry substituted.

In my baking frenzy, I decided to also whip up a peppermint cheesecake that proved so tasty it appeared on the table during several holiday meals. Jacked the recipe idea (of course) from the Hershey’s website, which is actually host to a ton of simple desserts. I used my own cheesecake recipe to whip up the simple base: 3 packs of softened cream cheese, 3 eggs, 1 cup sugar, 1 tbsp. vanilla. Blend, drop it in your crust and bake for 45 minute. YES, it’s that easy.

Then, I blended 1/4 cup of the leftover cheesecake mix with my favorite, melted peppermint Hershey kisses. I swirled the mixture with a fork. After baking, the sliced pie looks awesome.

Even people who weren’t huge fans of peppermint enjoyed this cheesecake. What’s not to love about 3 packs of cream cheese, I guess?