Welcome to more Baking with Megan! One of the few things getting me through the past year. Once a week I find a new recipe to try and make a mess in the kitchen! I'm definitely going to keep up this habit after we get back to more "normal" times. I used to love baking when I was younger but I just "never had the time." Now that I have all the time in the world I'm getting back to my love of making sweets! When we can have gatherings again I'm sure my family will enjoy munching on these treats.
I'm also going to keep making our own bread bi-weekly and pizza doughs! (But I will still keep frozen pizza for emergencies.) Every other week I make a double batch of dutch-oven bread and we freeze half. If you're wondering why I don't just make the regular recipe - the size of the bread is better when the recipe is doubled. It's not as tall when I just make the single batch. A half is just enough to get us lunches for the week. We're big fans of toast with fried eggs.
Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sharing these again (first posted here) because I made them again with the recommended chocolate melting wafers. Boy did that make a huge difference! They were already delicious but the addition of big melty bits of chocolate made them even better! I made a full batch, baked half and froze the other half. Then as we randomly needed dessert I would take a few out of the freezer and bake on demand! I might start making and freezing dough for these regularly so I always have some on hand.
Double Chocolate Chip Orange Cookies
We had extra oranges from when I went a little citrus chicken crazy one week so I asked Christian what he wanted to use them for and he said "something with chocolate." These were just the ticket! Super gooey and delicious with a hint of orange.
During quarantine I've been on a bit of an America's Test Kitchen kick on PlutoTV (free TV!) and they did an episode featuring a German chocolate cake. I've been into pecans lately (as evidenced in Baking #3) so I knew I would like this! It was one of the more involved recipes I've done over the last year but boy was it tasty!
I was SUPER excited for this bake! I've really enjoyed all of Tessa's recipes that I've tried and when I saw she did her version of Little Debbie's Cosmic Brownies I knew they would be perfect! She is very into the science of baking so she got the texture right on! I bought a 1lb bag of Rainbow Candy Coated Chocolate Chips so I can make this a million times over (or add them to chocolate chip cookies and regular brownies!)
I binged the whole first season of Nadiya Bakes on Netflix in one day and had to make these onion pretzels immediately after! The recipe is from episode 6 - Baking on a Budget They’re surprisingly easy and very tasty! This was my first time making a bread dough with anything extra, now I may try it more often. In addition to the usual bread ingredients you’ll need fried onions, onion powder and chives!
These were a major fail but I'm sharing them anyway because I added a powdered sugar glaze and we ate them warmed up so they were more like a cookie than a donut. They were supposed to be delicious cinnamony donuts but they came out as dense blobs. The cinnamon sugar wouldn't even stick to them!
And a bonus! Meringue snowmen! We made these for Christmas by whipping up a meringue and piping it into "melted" snowmen shapes. Not the cutest but they were fun.
It's been a while since I've done a baking roundup on the blog! The last one was in June, whoops! (and check out part one.) I was going to share in order of what I made but then I decided since I made so many pecan recipes I would group them together for this post (plus some misc. recipes)
Maple Oatmeal Sticky Buns - my Aunt's recipe
I'm a big cinnamon bun fan and this recipe is one of my favorites (although I haven't tried to make many on my own.) I prefer maple sticky buns to ones with frosting - unless we're talking about tube cinnamon buns or Cinnabon at the mall, YUM!
My aunt's recipe uses a bit of oats for added texture. This was the first time I made them without my Mom and I followed the recipe and only rolled the buns out to 10x4. Next time I'm going to roll it out more so there will be more swirls.
This is one of two recipes I found a week or so before Thanksgiving that I decided to make. I ordered a couple bags of pecans to prepare and set out on my mission! I tried this recipe first because I figured I would like the second one better (it included chocolate!) I only made half the recipe because it used a LOT of butter. It was really tasty and a nice light dessert, we could have had it for breakfast too.
Brown Sugar Maple Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars
Here's the second recipe I made Thanksgiving week. Christian and I made it together for our solo Thanksgiving celebration. I really love this recipe because I love pecan pie filling but not pie crust (I'm weird) so having the cookie-like crust on the bottom made this the perfect combo. Plus - who doesn't love chocolate chips!?
Braided Pesto Bread - my own concoction
Christian and I attempted to make pesto with basil from our garden but unfortunately it didn't come out too great (we didn't have enough basil) and the cheese was too chunky - I don't like cheese to begin with. SO I decided to make pesto bread out of it! I used a super simple bread dough (1 cup
warm water, 2 tsp yeast, 2 1/2 cups flour, 1 Tbsp olive oil and 1 tsp
salt,) rolled it out, spooned on the pesto, rolled it up, cut it in half
and braided it before making it into a circle.
I wanted to use up some shortening we had from when I made beignets earlier in the year and decided to see how it would work in a sugar cookie. A super simple, easy treat!
Something I make all the time and one of my favorite easy desserts! All you need is butter, chocolate, eggs, flour and sugar. I made these on my birthday with new Mickey Mouse ramekins Chrisitan got me, so cute!
Dutch Baby Pancake - various recipes (I think I used this one)
We love having breakfast for dinner and some nights I feel like making it extra special. I've made a few dutch baby pancakes and they get better each time! I don't think I've mastered the art yet but at least they taste good!
