This roundup includes some treats I made for Christmas as well as some cookies I made with a Christmas gift. So even though we're well into the New Year, we're going back to the holidays a bit! Also a "healthy" treat for breakfast and an old standby cookie.
Turtle Thumbprint Cookies
I made these for our Christmas Eve celebrations and they didn't disappoint. I probably could have added more caramel based on the recipe photos but I did the amount it called for, haha. Maybe the cookies in the photo are larger for better visual effect?
Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze
We made this last Christmas and Christian wanted to make it again this year. We also had a request for it because my sister in law loooooved it last year. I wasn't going to include this in today's roundup since it's a pretty unique thing and I've made it already, but that just shows how tasty it is!
(Customized) Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies
One of my Christmas gifts this year was Tessa of Handle the Heat's "Perfect Cookie Kit." It comes with 2 spatulas, 3 cookie scoops, a 6-piece cookie cutter set, cookie "adventure booklet" and access to her Perfect Cookie Course! (I love the cute sprinkle print on the spatulas and cookie cutters.) I decided to follow her adventure booklet for my first bake using the set and customized her bakery style cookie recipe to make them "extra soft" and swapped out some chocolate chip cookies for mini candy coated chips. They came it SOOOO GOOD. Christian said top 1 or 2 cookie I've ever made. Keep in mind, I've made the plain Bakery Style cookies before and those also came out amazing, but there's just something about this kit that made them more magical, haha! Or maybe it's because I've had more practice making cookies, you decide ;)
Blueberry Oatmeal Muffins
Christian wants to try some "healthier" treats this year with less refined sugar so I tested out this blueberry muffin recipe that uses honey as the sweetening. You could definitely tell there was no sugar, but they were tasty and a nice easy breakfast or snack. I added oats to the top of some (as per the recipe,) left a few plain and added some dark brown sugar to a few.
Blossom Cookies
If you can believe it, this was my first time making kiss cookies! We had some Grinch milk chocolate kisses that I mainly bought for decor (I don't like milk chocolate) so it seemed like a perfect way to actually use them as intended - for food! Ha ha. I did a half batch and made 2 of the 4 variations in the recipe. Chocolate and Peanut Butter! The recipe also has a Gingerbread and Sugar Cookie variation. They were so fun to make and it was very satisfying pushing the kisses into the warm cookies.
Funfetti Crumble Cake
One of my cousins was visiting from out of state recently and we had a family get together to finally meet her almost 1 year old. I figured I should make something a little festive and this funfetti crumble cake was the perfect choice. The crumble was a little weirdly flavored for everyone, probably because it was dark brown sugar, and was a little too sweet. I probably won't make it again but it was fun to try!
So much baking, so little time! We've got some Thanksgiving themed bakes in here as well as some any-time-of-year treats. We'll see what kind of things I whip up for Christmas in my next baking roundup!
Soft Triple Chocolate Cookies
I'm still trying to bake my way through Tessa of Handle the Heat's cookie handbook and made her triple chocolate cookies. The website doesn't seem to be on her website but you could try her Double Chocolate Cookies instead! They were sooo soft and delicious!
Autumnal Birthday Cake
We visited Christian's family for Thanksgiving and this was our contribution to the table. Maple cake with a maple meringue frosting coated in pecan pieces. It was pretty good, although sometimes too maple-y for me. Christian loved it.
Apple Cider Cake
This was a fun one! Back in October I bought this adorable NordicWare Autumn Delights Cakelet Pan because it was on sale for about $20 at the King Arthur flagship store. I wasn't sure if I'd find a recipe for it, but I needed it. You know how that is, right? When we visited Christian's Mom for Thanksgiving I decided to try this Apple Cider Cake recipe and bake some of the batter in the pan. The recipe was for a bundt cake so I figured it would work here as well. So we had a pan of cute cakelets and then a larger loaf.
The Easiest Pizza You'll Ever Make (King Arthur Flour)
The day after Thanksgiving (after having leftovers for lunch) we made some pizza dough for dinner. The recipe makes 4 pizzas so we each got our own. I believe this is the first time we've made this particular recipe, but it's fairly similar to all the others out there. Christian and I did pepperoni and bacon but his Mom & her husband used the turkey & ham leftovers to make some fun pizzas! I only took a picture of mine though, haha. We baked them for about 15 minutes at 500 degrees and they were so tasty!
K.I.S.S Brownies
I had some buttermilk in the freezer (from Christian's birthday cake) that I needed to use up so I found this brownie recipe for a bit of it. I tried baking them in one of my Le Creuset baking dishes but I think the shape made them come out a little weird. I baked them 10 minutes longer than the recipe said and they were still very soft and gooey (not a problem for me, but Christian likes brownie edges and very cooked brownies, ha ha.) Probably won't make them again - mostly because I don't keep buttermilk on hand - but they were tasty!
Perfect Buttermilk Biscuits
To use more of the aforementioned buttermilk, I decided to finally try to make "real" biscuits. Normally I do quick drop biscuit recipes but this one required me to do the pat and letter fold method, it was fun, but very messy. I made a few of them look like Christmas trees but it was too annoying to use the cutter so I switched to squares after. I baked a few fresh and the rest were frozen so we could have biscuits on demand whenever we need!
This roundup is full of bakes Christian and I did for our Halloween party. He's been wanting to have one for YEARS but Covid ruined that. So happy he was finally able to do it this year. I have a few things I want to bake next, we'll see how successful they are.
King Arthur Baking School - Pizza Perfected Class
Starting off with my King Arthur Baking School bakes - Pizza Dough and Semolina Pizza Dough! I was always afraid to try hand stretched dough but this class made it so easier and now I'm sure it will be our top made pizza. Make sure to check out my recap post on the class and learn how to take one of your own! Unfortunately, the two recipes we used weren't on their website.
Depression Cake - Halloween Style
We have made a depression cake many times over the past couple years and thought it was the perfect choice for our dirt cake. We made the recipe as usual and added crushed Oreos and gummy worms to the top.
Healthy Birthday Cake Break - Halloween Style
Another Halloween spin on a treat I've previously made (for Christian's birthday.) For this we just used Halloween sprinkles instead of plain rainbow. Yummy yummy!
Halloween Sugar Cookies
Christian 3D printed some Halloween cookie cutters so we could make some spooky cookies for our party. This recipe was super easy to follow and delicious! Will definitely have to make these again for Christmas!
King Arthur 'Our Favorite Sandwich Bread'
Another recipe I have made multiple times. The first time I made this recipe the bread didn't come out the best but this time the bread shape is much better! It also helped once I bought a slightly smaller loaf pan. Previously I only had a 5x9 but now I have a 4.5x8.5 and it does the job so much better. We love having it with honey (or a mix of honey and butter, yummmm)
Continuing on with the Disney trip recaps, let's talk about FOOOOD! One of Christian and my favorite parts of a Disney trip is trying all the new treats and snacks. We had a quicker visit this time and focused mainly on Animal Kingdom Lodge restaurants and the EPCOT Food & Wine Festival. Outside of that we did have a few snacks at Magic Kingdom, the Grand Floridian and Animal Kingdom.
Lots of fun new treats in this baking update! Some were easier than others but all were delicious. It was Christian's birthday last month so of course there were some extra special desserts for him!
English Muffins
I never thought making English Muffins could be so easy. They're such a tasty breakfast (or any time) treat but I never feel like paying the price for them unless they're on sale. This recipe from Preppy Kitchen was super simple and easy to follow! My only problem was I don't have a round cutter so I used my Mickey one instead. They came out pretty big, more like double the size of a normal English Muffin. I'm not complaining, more tastiness! Will definitely be making them again, but I might try to get a smaller cutter so they're more reasonably sized.
Chocolate Chip Graham Cracker Cookies
This was an interesting bake because Christian wanted to test out using our induction cooktop to make cookies to see if we can do it while traveling. I made half a batch of dough and we made 4 in a dutch oven on the cooktop, 4 in a skillet on the cooktop and the remainder normally in the oven. Obviously the oven came out best, but thee other two weren't horrible. Definitely serviceable for travel cookies. They cooked in the dutch oven for about 20 minutes and on the skillet for 30. Wee probably could have cooked them longer for both methods but we were afraid to burn the bottoms. As you can see in the photo below, the non-oven ones look a lot wetter, even though they were fully cooked.
Hurry-Up Biscuits
I had some heavy cream left over from a recipe where I only used like 2 tablespoons and was originally going to make no-churn ice cream but we didn't have sweetened condensed milk - oh no! I googled recipes to use leftover heavy cream and came upon this super simple recipe. They came together in literally 5 minutes and then baked in the oven for a little over 20 (the recipe says 17-20 but I made larger biscuits). They were super delicious, will definitely be making them again next time I have leftover cream! We ate them with some wildflower honey...YUM!
Homemade Oreo Cookies
I had this recipe saved for a few weeks before I finally had time to make them. Oreos are Christian's favorite cookie so he was pretty excited when I made these large homemade ones. Maybe if we make them again I'll splurge on the black cocoa powder so they look even more real!
Chocolate Buttermilk Fudge Cake by Jim Dodge
Christian and I saw this cake while watching In Julia's Kitchen with Master Chefs and decided it should be his birthday cake this year. I'm not a big fan of making layer cakes or frosting but for a special occasion I'll toughen up. Unfortunately I had HUGE issues with the frosting. For some reason it split and the butter separated and wouldn't come back together. After some almost tears and over an hour I finally rescued it by adding in some warm milk. (At first I tired heating it u over the stove which seemed to work, but then if I let it sit to cool down it separated again.) Eventually I got it together and it tastes amazing even if the full cake looked like a hot mess (hence why I'm sharing a slice here instead of the full cake, ha ha!)
Healthy Birthday Cake Bread
I saw this bread on Instagram and immediately knew I wanted to surprise Christian with it for a birthday breakfast. I had my mom buy one of the ingredients because it's not something we usually buy and didn't want to tip him off. I also got very lucky and the day before his birthday he had to leave the house to film some stuff for work so I was able to bake it and hide it without him knowing! It was really tasty and something we'll probably make again. It's also sort of healthy (minus the sprinkles!)
