Back To Basics

Do you know what I realized today? I don’t have a recipe for good old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies on this blog! That’s silly because I have a tried-and-true recipe, and these cookies are so delicious the recipe needs to be shared. Any last minute bake sales, cookie exchanges, or dessert and 9 times out of 10, this is the recipe I reach for. Not only does it make awesome cookies, they can be used as the cookies in ice cream sandwiches or you can make them into little bowls and fill them with whatever you desire!

My recipe is from Allrecipes.com and I haven’t changed it at all. Why mess with perfection. This makes a good base cookie recipe too, so instead of chocolate chips, you could use raisins, dried cranberries, nuts, or whatever you like.

A Long Time Pumpkin

One of my best friends got married earlier this month, and for her bridal shower I made some fall-themed desserts. I made orange velvet brownies (instead of red velvet) cut in the shape of pumpkins and leaves and pumpkin cookies. Both desserts went over really well, but it was the pumpkin cookies that had people asking me for the recipe! Well, here I’m finally getting around to it (it only took two months!)

 

Fall

As much as I dislike cold weather, I love fall. The leaves changing colours, Halloween, the beginning of sweater seasons – they are all reasons I love fall. But one of the main reasons I love fall is apple picking. 

I loved apple picking as a child, and I still love it to this day. I remember as a child going apple picking with my mom and my sister, and my tradition was to pick one apple at the very beginning of the day and spend the rest of the time at the orchard polishing that apple. Then, just as we were about to leave I would eat my polished apple and I swear it was the best apple in the world. 

Usually when I go apple picking, I go a little over board. My goal for apple picking this season was to pick my weight in apples – but luckily that didn’t happen! I only picked 10lbs of apples, but still that’s a lot of apples. So I immediately started baking! I decided to start with the classic Apple Crisp. I love how it makes the house smell wonderfully of cinnamon and apples! Here’s the recipe:

Intimidating!

If you’ve read my previous blog entries, you'll know caramel was the bane of my existence for a while (I’m slowly starting to show it who’s boss...) However, there are other foods that I find extremely intimidating and I worry that if I attempt them, I will just be adding a new bane to my list.

Choux paste, and specifically profiteroles, were one of those foods. 

If you’ve ever seen how choux paste is made, you’d think it was a little weird. There should be no way to make a dough on the stove top and have it work out. And then those little blobs of dough are supposed to become really light and fluffy? It seems impossible.

Well, you’ll be ecstatic to know that it does work and it’s not hard to do! I promise!

Home from Vacay

Wow, it seems like forever since I’ve last posted here, and that definitely makes me a little sad! I began this blog with the hopes of posting at least once a week and sharing my passion for baking with anyone willing to read my ramblings! But  I definitely haven’t been holding myself to that.

Recently I have been finding it hard to find the time to do the writing of the posts, I haven’t had an issue with the baking part! Not only have I been busy finishing my Master’s in Biology (I have officially passed!); I also got a new job and went on vacation for two weeks! I’ll write more about those exciting events in another post. Right now I want to share a recipe I found before I left on vacation.

Pretzels are one of my Mom’s favourite foods. Anytime we go to a Cirque du Soleil show, or any type of circus/show/sports game, she has to get a pretzel. So by proxy, I have come to love pretzels as well. I tried making them once before, but they weren’t true soft pretzels. They didn’t have that dark brown, snappy exterior and the sea salt typical of soft pretzels. So, I decided to try my hand at them again, and boy, were they awesome this time!

Salty 'n' Sweet

If you like candied bacon, chocolate covered pretzels, or any other combination of salty and sweet, these cookies will be just up your alley! If you like oatmeal cookies, you’ll like them too.

I was looking for a quick recipe to whip up this week, but still wanted it to be a little “different”. That’s when I came across Smitten Kitchen’s Crispy Salted Oatmeal White Chocolate Cookies. 

These came together in about 10 minutes, and only took about 15 to bake, so in no time I had a delicious cookie that can also satisfy that salty craving. 

As a side note: I would normally have more pictures in this post, but for some reason the blog software won't let me load pictures that are portrait orientated...

Allergen Alert!

I’m getting pretty bad at this... it’s been far too long since I’ve posted on this blog. It’s not that I haven’t been baking, last week I actually baked twice, I’ve just been rather busy. Finishing up my thesis, trying to find a job, who knew growing up took up so much of your time!

Well, I finally got around to baking something I had been dying to try and needed to share it with you. Peanut Butter Bread. Doesn’t it just sound devilishly good? We all know how much I love peanut butter, and I am a sucker for a good sweet bread, so I had to try this. I felt like there was something missing in my life and this bread would fill it nicely. I modified the recipe a bit, to up the ante so to speak. I added chocolate to make a Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl Bread. Oh yeah!

An Update from the Busy Bee (That's me!)

Oh boy, who knew so many things could happen at once? I guess it’s that time of the year though, end of the school semester, start of wedding season, taxes, etc. Because of all this other (unimportant) stuff going on, I haven’t had much time to update this blog. That’s not to say I haven’t been baking!  On the contrary!

 

This is post is just a quick update with what I have been baking recently, although there will be no recipes. Instead, I hope you simply enjoy looking at the pictures of delicious treats and become inspired to try and bake something new! 

The new bane of my existence...

At first it was frosting. My cake frosting never come out right - it was either too runny or too solid. After many failed attempts, I finally started to get the hang of it. Now I have come to another hurdle in my baking career...

Caramel.

Even the word makes me frustrated! I have tried making caramel twice now (once for caramel brownies and this time), and both times it hasn't been what I wanted. It's not that I burn the caramel, or it crystallizes, but rather that it just gets too dark. It looks like molasses! And I refuse to wimp out and make my caramel sauces out of those caramel candies - so I need to figure out how to make this work!

Anyways, onto my recipe for the week. I had the inspiration to turn a Twix bar into a cookie. Now - I know what you're going to say. A Twix is a cookie, just dipped in chocolate; but what I wanted was a cookie with chocolate chunks in it and caramel puddled on top of it. So I found recipes for a chocolate chip shortbread and a caramel, and went to work.

Tweedle-Yum Baking

Well this past week was an exciting one - I got my first commission to bake someone a dessert! I was elated, because I have been considering expanding my baking into a part-time business, so this gave me the opportunity to try it out.

I met the woman who commissioned me at a party a couple months ago, and she asked if I’d be willing to make her a pie for her birthday. I was thrilled at the opportunity and agreed immediately. She then told me all about the wonderful pie she wanted.

It’s called the “Fat Elvis Pie” and she saw it on the Food Network. It consists of a pretzel-peanut-graham cracker crust, a chocolate pudding-type layer, a layer of bananas and a peanut butter cream pie topping. It sounded amazing! And I had never really attempted a pie like this before, so I was ready for the challenge.

 

I did a lot of research: watched clips from the show, looked up recipes for all the components (I couldn’t find a single recipe for the whole pie, so I had to take 3 different ones!), looked at pictures and went to the website of the bakery that originally made the pie – I wanted to make sure I got this at least somewhat right. I wanted everything to be homemade and wasn’t going to cut any corners! Since I couldn’t find an exact recipe, I’m calling this pie my own, except, I decided to call my pie the “Slightly Overweight Royalty Pie”.

So here are the recipes I used. After making the pie once, I realized where I would have changed things in terms of the assembly, so I’ve included them at the bottom.

Best of the Best

This week, my baking challenge was to combine some of my friend's favourite treats into one ultimate dessert. She isn't a fan of cake, but she does like cheesecake and brownies - so I needed to find a way to combine them.

 

After a bit of searching on the Internet, I found a recipe for Brownie Mosaic Cheesecake from one of my regular cooking blogs, Smitten Kitchen. The task seemed a little daunting - making brownies, a chocolate crumb crust and cheesecake? This was going to take all week!

So I started on Tuesday making the brownies. I used my fall-back brownie recipe that makes deliciously fudgey brownies. All the ingredients are just thrown in one bowl so that made step 1 a little easier.

Wednesday was cheesecake day. I decided to modify the crust recipe from Smitten Kitchen, because I was making mini-cheesecakes and in the past my crusts have been very soggy. The cheesecake recipe was very basic - just 4 ingredients - so I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out. However, it would make my life easier, so I decided to give it a try!

Good things come in small packages

I have been wanting to make mini pies for a couple weeks now. I had seen a picture of them on Pintrest and thought they were just the cutest things ever - so I had to give them a try! Have you ever noticed that if you miniaturize anything it instantly becomes 100x times cuter?

Well, I finally got around to making them today since I had a relaxing Sunday all to myself and had some leftover pie crust sitting in my freezer.

The recipes are from all over the place, so this is more a tutorial on how to make mini pies. You can use which ever crust and filling recipes you prefer. Just make sure you finely dice all the fruit in your filling (if it has any) so it will fit into smaller crust. I will provide you with the recipes I used, but honestly just let your creativity run wild!

Old Reliable

One of my goals in baking is to create an arsenal of tried-and-true recipes. Recipes that, if ever the need arises, are guaranteed to be the most delicious thing you've ever tasted!

This is a recipe I recently added to my list - carrot cake! This is my future brother-in-law's absolute favourite cake, and with him asking for it on his birthday each year, I’m sure I’m going to get plenty of use out of this recipe! I myself wasn’t a big fan of carrot cake when I was younger - vegetables did not belong in desserts - however, I think a cake like this could change anyone’s mind.

My future brother-in-law doesn’t like pineapple, nor raisins, in his carrot cake, but he's ok with nuts, so I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com that fit that criteria. I followed the reviews posted with the recipes for modifications to make it amazing, and I have to say it worked! Here it is:

Best memories as a child

I don't know about you, but some of my best food memories as a child are from eating unbaked desserts. Whether raw cookie dough, brownie batter or cake batter - it was always delicious and made even more so by the fact it was forbidden (it had raw eggs in it after all). But my mom usually allowed me one little taste and it was the best. So now as an adult, I love indulging my raw dessert tooth.

I've been checking out some new blog recently, trying to start the year off fresh and new, and I stumbled across Chef in Training (also on blogger). She posts some of the most exciting and enticing food I've seen!

I came across her chocolate chip cookie dough truffles, and thought those would be heavenly, but then something else caught my eye. Cake Batter Truffles. Yes, you read that right. Cake batter, in a truffle! So it was decided, I'd be making those this week!

Here is the recipe, slightly adapted from Chef in Training (and she got it from The Girl Who Ate Everything):

Breakfast: the most wonderful meal of the day!

I am a firm believer in breakfast. Not because it "gets your metabolism going" or "gives you energy for the rest of your day", but because it has the best food! At what other meal can you have something sweet or savoury (or both) and get away with it? Crepes, bacon and eggs, omelettes, you name it - breakfast has it.

I used to eat the same breakfast every day for over two years. It was a slice of multigrain toast with low-fat peanut butter and flax sprinkled on top. Delicious! But, over the past year or so, I've decided to expand my breakfast horizons. It started with making smoothies for breakfast during the week (a very portable breakfast, so you can get an extra 15 minutes to sleep in) and on weekends I began making waffles.

My obsession with waffles comes from the restaurant Cora's. They have delicious waffles, and topped with a mountain of fresh fruit and a bit of whipped cream - it's heaven! However, I know waffles aren't a good thing to be eating every morning, so I searched for a healthy, whole wheat version. I'm not too sure where I originally got this recipe, it's been a while, but I've made some modifications to it, so we'll call it mine! Here it is:

Bland Land

Welcome to Bland Land, Population: this muffin recipe!

I don’t know about you, but after this holiday season, I needed a break from all the chocolate, pie, ice cream and various other sweets that made their way into my house. Which is why I scoured the internet for new healthy recipes to get me excited about eating healthy again.

I started following the Skinny Taste blog recently and it seemed like the ideal place to find a new recipe to try. That’s when I happened upon a Low Fat Papaya and Coconut Muffin recipe. It sounded delicious and exotic! I’d never had papaya, and never had coconut in a muffin. So needless to say, I was excited to try the recipe! Since I wasn’t sure how to tell a ripe papaya apart from an unripe one, I took the authors advice and went with mango instead. And to make my life easier (have you ever tried to cut a mango?) I use store bought frozen mango chunks to make the puree.

Unfortunately, they left me disappointed. I mean they aren't bad, they have a really great texture, and they're sweet - they just don't have a distinctive taste. So, although I’m going to post the recipe, I suggest you don't make it as written. Either I did something wrong, or the recipe is just a little on the bland side. But I said I would post my foibles, so here it is.