Lunch Lady Brownies
Christian requested brownies a few weekends ago so I decided to make Jenna's version of Lunch Lady Brownies. I looove fudgy brownies and these have frosting and sprinkles too, what's not to love? They're super quick and easy to make. He said they're his new favorite. I still think extra fudgy brownies slightly edge these out, but I love the frosting and sprinkles for added yummy-ness!
Scones 2 Ways
Handle the Heat's March baking challenge was Scones so I made a batch and split the dough in two to make lemon poppyseed and chocolate chip scones! I'm still not perfect at cutting the butter into the flour, it always seems to melt out of the scones. But they were still tasty!
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Bars
One weekend I wanted to bake cookies but didn't have any butter thawed from the freezer so I searched brown butter recipes and saw these bars. I love a good chocolate chip cookie but bars are so much easier. Overall it took about 45 minutes to make, that includes the 30 minutes to bake!
Braided Stromboli
I was making stromboli for dinner and decided to try out a new recipe. I searched King Arthur Baking for a recipe and found this braided version. Instead of their filling I did pepperoni and caramelized onions. I had way too much pepperoni for what they called for so now I can still make MORE stromboli with it, haha! I split it in half rather than making one large one so I could put more cheese in Christian's. The dough was very easy to work with and came out so tasty. The texture of the bread was perfectly fluffy.
Molten Peanut Butter Fudge Cake
While visiting Christian's family we had a birthday get together for his older brother and I wanted to bake something special to celebrate. He likes dark chocolate and peanut butter so this peanut butter fudge cake sounded perfect! Unfortunately I made a mistake and decided to reheat it the day of the party (I made it Friday, we drove up to Missouri on Saturday and had the "party" on Sunday) so it would be molten again, and it made the cake a little greasy. So it is definitely NOT a looker. Lesson learned.
Pizza
I had to make something round for Pi Day so pizza it was! I've been trying to find a substitute for the amazing pesto we get at the local farmers market but this one also failed the test. I used the recipe from our King Arthur Baking School class.
Ombré Citrus Cake
I've had this recipe from Turkuaz Kitchen saved for a year and finally made it! Betul's recipes are always beautiful and her Instagram videos are so soothing. This recipe was super easy to make but I was scared about it coming out as pretty as hers. I actually made two because I had a lot of orange slices. Techically didn't have enough of the blood orange syrup for both cakes, but that's okay! Half of it is supposed to be served on top as a drizzle when served so I just skipped that step. Next time I may try to make the slices thinner so I can use more for each cake.
Heart Shaped Layered Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies
I made this as a very special Valentine's Day dessert! I slightly modified it by leaving off the cacao nibs and putting m&ms in the brownie. It took a LONG time to bake in the heart shaped pan so the outside came out really cripsy and the inside was undercooked with a large hole in the center. (I stopped cooking it after an hour, haha...the recipe says 25-27 minutes for a normal pan and that it would be "slightly longer" for the heart shaped pan...) So while I'm a little disappointed in the bake of the brownie the flavors were great! I don't mind undercooked brownie but the hard as a rock exterior was not my favorite. Next time I'll just use a normal pan.
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
I always forget I have oats so I decided to whip up some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I went with the recipe in Tessa's Ultimate Cookie Handbook. For me it was a little too oaty, next time I might do less oats and more chocolate chips. The flavor was great though, I love the spice level from the cinnamon.
2 Hour Fastest No Knead Bread
If you've been around long enough you'll know I constantly make this bread recipe for our lunches. This time I did a slight variation and did a cup of whole wheat flour and the rest regular flour. It added a nice bit of nuttiness! Next time I might go for 2 cups and see how that is!
Brown Butter Blueberry Muffins
Another bake I come back to time and again. It's so easy and tasty. I used frozen wild blueberries instead of normal sized because I prefer them small. I also chilled the batter overnight before baking to help them puff up and be extra tall (the recipe says to put frozen blueberries in after this step, but I do it before because I don't mind if they turn blue.)
Chocolate Truffles
I had some leftover heavy cream to use up and in addition to making some "cream" biscuits that I forgot to take a photo of, I also made some delicious truffles. I didn't really need a recipe but decided to try Tessa's. Hers was interesting because there is a little corn syrup in it to help thicken them. After rolling them out I covered them in sprinkles and coconut. I should have done more with coconut but wasn't sure we would like the combo. Spoiler alert - we did!
Lots of Christmas weekend bakes in this one! Plus two more recipes I've had on my "to bake" list for a bit. Almost everything came out exactly as I'd hoped! Love when that happens.
Mille Feuille
I wanted to make something other than Christian's pie (below) for Christmas Eve and remembered we had frozen puff pastry I've been meaning to use. I googled and found this recipe for mille feuille (or napoleons, except this isn't almond flavored.) Objectively a simple recipe, but still messy and time consuming, ha ha! The diplomat cream was a little loose so they slid around a bit by the time I took the final photo, but they were a hit! Everyone that ate one said they were delicious. I don't like pastry cream so I didn't have one. We have some leftover cream and egg whites I need to use up too...
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| Not as pretty later in the evening, haha! |
Lemon Raspberry Pie + King Arthur Flaky Pastry Dough
This was Christian's Christmas Eve bake, but I helped a bit so including it anyway ;) The pie dough didn't come out right but I'm not sure what he did wrong since his pie crusts are usually good. Perhaps the instructions for the recipe were weird or he didn't cut in the butter enough. But the filling of the pie was very tasty even though that recipe was a little all over the place too, ha ha!
Cinnamon Babka
I made chocolate babka earlier this year (and again this weekend) and wanted to try my hand at cinnamon for our Christmas morning breakfast. The recipe was from America's Test Kitchen, the same place I got the chocolate one from but the method was very different. Mine didn't come out looking how I hoped - the filling melted into the bread more than it was supposed to and there was a lot of it at the bottom of the loaf. If I make this again I may double the filling or see if I can find a recipe that uses a different rolling/twisting method. It still tasted great!
Chocolate Babka
As mentioned above I already made this once, but it deserves another mention because its so tasty! And pretty easy to make, even if its a bit messy! It was a hit on Christmas morning and kept us all stuffed until early afternoon at Grandma's.
Chocolate Mousse Cake
I had some leftover heavy cream from all my Christmas baking so I decided to make a recipe I had saved back in October to use it up. This was my first time making a mousse and a layered dessert of this type. It was easier than I thought it would be but also a little nerve wracking. My ganache was a little bit oon the thin side but other than that it came out great! (I'm annoyed because I KNEW it was thin and I was doing a time lapse video and didn't want to stop it to add more chocolate...grr!)
Lemon Blueberry Loaf
I knew I was most likely going to have an extra lemon after baking Saucy Chicken Picatta meatballs for dinner one night so I decided to try and make this loaf! Before using the lemon for dinner I zested it for this recipe and had just enough juice left over as well. I like small, wild blueberries so I used some frozen ones to make this and I think next time I'll use a few less because it was a bit more blueberry dense than it would have been if I used normal size berries. It affected he cooking time a bit because of the extra bulk. But, even with the extra cooking time it was delicious! A perfect breakfast for cold winter mornings.
We've got a very brown roundup this week. I guess that's normal for Fall/Winter though. Most of these came out well, but one was a bit of a mess (at least in my opinion.) My next round of bakes will probably be more Christmas-related. We're two weeks away so gotta get it all in now!
Herb & Olive Oil Focaccia
I've been waiting for enough of our currant tomatoes to ripen before making focaccia and finally admitted defeat and made one without them. I like adding them because they're a fun pop of color and one of the few ways I enjoy tomatoes (because they're so small!) I decided to try a different focaccia recipe since I bought King Arthur's "Italian Style Flour" when we went to the Vermont store and the bag said it was great for focaccia. I decided to go to the source and found a recipe where they used the same flour.
Maple Pecan Sticky Buns
Normally I follow my Aunt's recipe for sticky buns but decided to give Jenna's a try. Hers has a LOT more butter, ha ha. The process to make them was a little longer but super simple. Even before they fully rose in the pan I could tell they were going to be TASTY! (That could also be because there's over 2 sticks of butter in them. Maybe I didn't bake them long enough or there was too much topping, but a few of the rolls had some raw dough at the bottom. I was going to reheat them at my friend's so I left them as is instead of baking them longer at home.
S'mores Bars
I made these when I went to visit my friend Kristen to meet her new baby. She LOVES s'mores so the second I saw this recipe on Instagram I knew I had to bring them for her. I made my own fluff because we didn't have any and I think that was my fatal error. They definitely didn't come out looking as nice, but they were edible. But I'm glad I brought the Cinnamon Buns with me too so she doesn't think I'm just a horrible baker ;) (don't worry, she knows I can bake, ha ha!) Here's a "before baking" photo because the baked ones were too ugly!
Apple Cider Cake
I made this last Thanksgiving for Christian's family and decided to make it again this year for mine. Originally I wanted to make all of it with the NordicWare Autumn Delights Cakelet Pan I bought last year but unfortunately they decided to stick to it this time and I didn't have time to clean it out properly so I baked the rest of the batter in a normal bundt. store. It was a hit again this year, even with my brother who isn't super int eating desserts.
Brown Butter Pecan Pie Bars
One weekend I was hanging out at my parent's house and my Mom and I decided to get some Christmas baking done. We made a batch of pecan pie bars because they freeze nicely and we can pull them out right before our annual Christmas Eve gathering. They were very simple to make. Our only issue was the edges browned pretty easily even when tenting with foil. I also thought ours came out too short but after we cut them into squares they looked more like her photos! We won't know the full verdict on taste until Christmas, but I enjoyed my sample piece!
Paw Print Peanut Butter Blossoms
I've made this recipe before, but this time I switched up the presentation! My brother in law saw a picture of paw print cookies and asked me to make them for him (my sister doesn't bake.) I thought it would be fun so I told him what ingredients I needed and then got to work. I made the cookies slightly larger than the original recipe says so I would be able to fit a Kiss and 3 chocolate chips. I actually tested 3 different sizes, varying from 60 to 40 grams, and deemed the 40 gram version best. Not too big, bit still enough room around the chocolate. And yes, I weighed every single cookie, precision is fun!
Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread
We've been getting a lot of zucchini in the garden this year and they are HUGE. I've been using some (of one zucchini) for dinner and the rest to try different baked goods. This time it was Jenna's chocolate chip zucchini bread. This recipe has some spices in it so it felt nice for the approach of Autumn. (I made this in the middle of September)
Recreating Trattoria Sostanza's Meringue Cake
When Christian and I were in Florence on our honeymoon we went to Trattoria Sostanza, which I had been to on my first trip to Italy in 2017. I told Christian his life would be changed after eating their pollo al burro (butter chicken.) We also got their "dolce con fragoline" (meringue with strawberries) to share for dessert. It actually came with raspberries but it was DELICIOUS! We didn't know what to expect with that name, but they said it was like a cake. Out came 3 layers of meringue with layers of vanilla semifredo (gelato/ice cream) speckled with chocolate. I was inspired to try and make my own after they kept sharing photos of other diners eating it on their Instagram stories. I already make my version of their butter chicken at least a few times a year, why not this?!
I started by googling Meringata as that is what some of the Italians were calling it in their captions. I found this recipe that seemed pretty good, but it just used whipped cream in the layers. Then I found a simple semifreddo recipe and pulled out my Native Vanilla Madagascar vanilla beans for that perfect vanilla flavor! I also added in a few chocolate chips since I didn't have a chocolate bar on hand. Instead of freezing it in a loaf pan I used a round spring-form pan since I wanted it to be a circular cake. I also made three meringue discs hoping I would be able to slice the semifreddo in half to make two layers (I didn't know how much the recipe would make.) Unfortunately, it was too thin to split so I only used two of my meringue discs. I used the third for something else.
Next time I'll double the semifreddo recipe and buy a chocolate bar to shave into pieces for prettier flecks of chocolate. Perhaps I'll make it for this year's Christmas celebration so we don't have to worry too much about it melting, ha ha! Dye the meringue red or green perhaps??
No Churn Ice Cream
Not exactly baking, but I still include ice creams since they involve using baking tools, haha! We had leftover heavy cream from the above meringue cake so I wanted to try and recreate my favorite Talenti gelato flavor that they have sadly stopped making - Coconut Almond Chocolate. I found a recipe for a simple chocolate chip ice cream and also added some sweetened coconut flakes and chopped up almonds. Super easy, the hardest part is whipping up the heavy cream.
Conchas
I'm on the King Arthur Baking email list and this month they're focusing on Mexican Pan Dulce ("sweet bread") recipes. Fany Gerson, a Mexico City-born pastry chef created this recipe for the series. They look so fun and pretty so I had to make them! The recipe for the dough was pretty simple, a starter and then a brioche-type method for completion. They're topped with a simple cookie dough, much like craquelin for cream puffs, which I have been wanting to try making for quite a while (I'm not a cream puff fan so the motivation for that particular version was low, ha ha.) I made the topping a little big but they turned out alright after I peeled off the excess. Next time I may make some more slashes in the topping but these came out pretty good for my first try!
Double Chocolate Halloween Cookies
I couldn't go through October without making a Halloween-themed recipe.These were part of Handle the Heat's October Baking Challenge so it was fun to know I was baking these cookies along with the rest of her community. They were super easy and came out great! Christian especially enjoyed them because they tasted like Oreo cookies thanks to the black cocoa. Totally worth the splurge for Halloween colored M&Ms, ha ha. I did have a coupon so they weren't full price, but still expensive.
2 Hour Fastest No Knead Bread
It's been a while since I've made this no knead bread so I decided it was time to skip making sandwich bread this week and turn to this crusty deliciousness! I always double this recipe because I like it to be nice and tall and we have a larger dutch oven. This recipe is great because all you need is a bowl, a couple bowl scrapers (to help shape the dough) and a dutch oven.
