Baking: Scones

I don't think there is anything I love more than scones. They're so freakin' good. And to be completely honest, a fairly new discovery for me. We were doing a Tea Tasting for work and this little bit of heaven passed through my lips. And I'm not much of a breakfast sweets kind of girl. But I could eat these for breakfast every day.

I've eaten them many times since that day, but I've never made them! So, I went directly to Smitten Kitchen and searched for scones. There was only one entry, and I was heartbroken to begin reading that she HATED the recipe. But I kept reading... there had to be a "but..." And there was! Another recipe that was perfection. At it was.

Technically, this is the second time that I've made this recipe. The first was for Janices' bridal shower. I cut them out of the dough cookie cutter style with a shot glass. Tiny little round goodness. But I forgot to take pictures of them.

I had some leftover heavy cream, so I whipped some up on Monday morning. For the first time in nearly three weeks, Chris and I had an entire day off together. It was a beautiful day full of refrigerator shopping, termite work inspecting and reconnecting. We REALLY needed it and it was perfect! (In other news, did you know how expensive refrigerators are?!) Back to the point... I wanted to make a nice little breakfast to start the day. Scones & fried eggs. Excellent.


These are FANTASTIC! Seriously, go make them. Now.

Baking: Orange Chocolate Torte

Real Simple does this thing... Fake it, Don't Make It. I'd never done it because I feel like it's cheating. Go big or go home... yes?

However, after my last time crunch/heat disaster, I thought I should try to do something a bit more quickly. I only had about an hour to shower, change, get dressed, bake and get out the door. Enter the Chocolate Orange Torte.

And yet, I STILL ran out of time! There was no muffin mix, so I went with cake mix instead. It took nearly twice as long to bake! And I remembered the cooling issues of the past, so knew that I needed to leave some time for that. But we were already 20 minutes late to our little dinner/The Closer party. So, I decided to improvise. I skipped over to the bathroom and grabbed... are you ready for it... my hair dryer! It has a cooler setting. I rocked it.

The other slight issue. The sauce. Chris made an executive decision while I was in the shower to reduce the crap out of my sauce. And he made it candy.


But again, like last time, it tasted F-A-N-TASTIC! not so much pretty, but tasty as if it were made from scratch. Perhaps this will be one to perfect :-)

4th of July Trifle

I realize that at this point it is the 11th of July and I am slightly behind in the blogging. Opps. But really, the 4th of July Trifle could occur on any date.

Martha is responsible for this deliciousness. I made a Martha cake for Christmas last year. Some kind of 10 layer gingerbread debacle. 6 hours after I began, I cursed her name and swore that I would never bake her again.

But the trifle was so amazingly super easy. I would link the recipe here, but I can't find it! Apparently Martha does not believe that the 4th of July Trifle could occur on any date.



So I will do my best to remember. There was a store bought Angel Food Cake (Martha told me to STORE BUY!) You cut the cake into pieces. In a pan, simmer some sugar and lemon juice, to a boil and then paint the angel food pieces with it.

Then there was some cream. I'm guessing it was whipping cream.. and.. probably something else. (I suck at this part, but you could just throw together some cream!)

Then there are layers... fruit, cream, cake, etc.

I kept giggling to myself as I remembered that episode of Friends when Rachel makes the Trifle for Thanksgiving dinner. Hers included Lady Fingers, Cream, Chocolate, Peas, Carrots and Hamburger Meat. HA!


I think next time I would make it look prettier. Lucky for me, the drunk pool party people didn't really have a thing for aesthetics.

Baking: Apricot Crisp. A THANK YOU!

Thank you thank you thank you thank you to all the comments about my new venture in photography. I am so excited and thrilled and amazingly thankful for how supportive you all are. Thanks!

So, back to our regularly scheduled programming

Smitten Kitchen strikes again. God I love her. Last Saturday I climbed out of bed bright and early and attempted the Breakfast Apricot Crisp. It was fantastic!

And beyond easy. Probably could have done it with my eyes closed!


The rest of the making process was boring... so no photos.

I decided to add some raisins. I added it into the "crisp" on top. And they got burned. Those things blueberry looking things are actually crispy raisins. Note - if you want to add them, add them to the apricot mixture. More moisture. Less crispy.


I picked out most of icky crispy raisins and served it over vanilla yogurt. And it was fantastic!


There was a bit leftover that I ate all by itself the next day and it was even better.

Today I made a strawberry version (red for Fourth of July!) and it was damn good. So good that we ate it before I remembered to take photos.

Baking: Bowl Style

I've been baking on the run recently. Quick, fast & easy is good. But it also has to be fantastic! Like, "I've-Never-Seen-These" fantastic. Smitten Kitchen NEVER dissapoints. I wanted cookies, because they travel well and the website has a search function. Voila! Margarita Cookies.


Holy crap how have I never seen, heard, eaten, fallen in love with, these cookies yet!? They are fantastically delicious and I adore them to pieces and will make them all the time. They're sweet. But salty. FULL of flavor. And delicious.


Go. Make them. Soon!

Baking: Vanilla Cake & Anne's Birthday

I am so amazingly lucky to be surrounded by this group of smart, funny, attractive, ridiculous and fabulous women. To tell the truth, I'm not really a girl's girl. I don't make friends with women that often. And when I do, I'm not crazy close to them. It's an independence thing I guess.

Regardless, this group of women is so amazingly awesome and I am so proud to be able to call myself a part of this circle. I so look forward to our monthly gatherings that I'm thinking they should DEFINITELY be more than monthly. Hell, I'd be thrilled to catch up weekly!

Tonight was a special gathering... it's Anne's birthday! We headed to Camilo's restaurant in Eagle Rock and then to a wine bar next door. The food was excellent, the wine spectacular and the company superb.

How lucky am I?!

Anne is, by far, the nicest person I've ever met on the entire face of the planet. She will go out of her way to help you, just because she knows it will take a load off of your shoulders. She is talented beyond belief. I am super envious of her design skills. Her husband is to die for. She's just all around fantastic and I am thrilled to have her in my life.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNE!

I wanted to bake for her. We bought her some sort of paper cutter machine (one part because she really wanted it and another part because we knew she'd make fabulous things for us!). But EVERYONE needs a homemade fantastic cake on the birthday!

So I ran home from work and whipped up Martha's Yellow Cake. Yeah, I should have reached for the backup box I have in the pantry because I was SOOOOO far behind schedule, but you can't box it for a birthday! Only from scratch for my besties. Then the Vanilla Bake Shop Buttercream Frosting. YUUUUMMY!

Here came the issue. I was out of time. I iced them before they were cooled. BAAD choice when you've got 4 (count 'em. FOUR) sticks of butter and some sugar that you need to stay in place. I decided to chance it. There was some sliding. Opps. Into the car. MORE sliding. By the time I arrived at the restaurant, there was icing everywhere except where it need to be.... on the cake! The Maitre'D was awesome and said they'd fix it. Apparently, by "fix it" he actually meant that they would put some raspberries on top and call it a day. (at least they matched my cake plate... I appreciate that!)


Whateves. When you've got the most supportive ladies behind you, a hot mess of a cake is more hilarious than disastrous. And it's still delicious!

Baking: Strawberry & Banana Bread

I'm so bad at eating fruit before it goes bad. But I feel dumb buying one banana. If I have just one, I might want another. And then I won't have it. So I buy four. And they all go bad. I am a genius.

But rotten banana=banana bread! I googled "rotten bananas" to see what would pop up. Some muffins, some cakes, some breads. But this one caught my eye, Banana Bread with Booze and Raisins. Love Banana.Love Bread.Love Booze. Love Raisins. Perfection.

But I had a bunch of strawberries that were on their way out. So I substituted strawberries for raisins.

I also took out the walnuts. Mostly because I don't like them.

It ended in a tasty disaster. I didn't drain the booze because I didn't let it soak for an hour. So it was quite moist. And the strawberries are more moist than the raisins. So, it's almost swimming in moistness. It fell into a pile of disaster when I took it out of the pan. I'm going to call it Bread Pudding.

Strawberry White Chocolate Cookies

Last week at Costco, Chris bought me a strawberry orchard. An entire shelf in our fridge is full of strawberries! So, I had to put them to use!

There was a BBQ this weekend in need of cookies and I felt the need to fulfill! I'd never baked strawberry cookies. Hell, I'd never heard of strawberry cookies! But, a quick little google search pulls up a nice little recipe for me!

It was quick and easy and put a dent in my strawberry problem!

And they were yummiliciously good!


I've been to busy to bake recently, and this makes me sad. It felt so good to be back in the kitchen!

Baking: Hamantaschen, Round 3

The Monday after I baked Round 2, I got an email from I Shot the Chef. She baked Hamantaschen that weekend too and hers were PERFECT! They were mocking me in their pretty little crusts.


So, Round 3 was a must. I took Jen's advice, using the paddle attachment. I never really thought that the paddle attachment would be able to do much work. Honestly, I had no idea what it was for. Apparently it is good for most of the baking I do. You learn something new everyday!


The dough came together perfectly! It was a bit sticky, but decided that after a bit of time in the fridge and some flour when I rolled it out that it would be fine.

So, I moved on to the Chocolate Nut Filling. Holy Crap this is good. I decided to switch it up and make my own filling instead of the preserves that I'd been using. It was surprisingly easy. Until I blew up the Magic Bullet. Yeah, apparently it does not like hazelnuts as they get stuck under the blades and the machine begins to smoke. Also, more than likely, there were too many nuts to begin with.


I destroyed the other nuts with a plastic bag and hammer. Worked well enough.


The sticky dough came back to haunt me. It sticks to EVERYTHING. No matter how much flour you use to diffuse it's stickiness. My only hope was that it would stick to itself and create magazine worthy hamantaschen.


THEY STUCK TOGETHER! No where near as pretty as I Shot the Chef's, but a much better showing than Round 1 or 2.


Unofortunately, they don't taste anywhere near as good as the recipe from Round 1 & 2. They taste blah. The dough is too dense I think. Or perhaps it's the filling... the fruitiness makes a difference I think.


I think I'm done with Hamantaschen. Forever.

Baking: Meyer Lemon Cupcakes

Why do I do this to myself? Damn you Martha Stewart.

See, someone posted the Meyer Lemon Raspberry Cupcakes from Vanilla Bake Shop on my local Knot Board. How could I not make an attempt!?

The cupcake. The lemon curd. The icing. Oh my.




3 hours later...

How can it take so long to make cupcakes?!

Is it worth it?


Definitely.

Baking: Hamantaschen, Round 2

I am going to make these cookies look beautiful if it kills me.

They taste so amazingly delicious that it's sad they look so disgusting.

We went to Canter's Deli last week and I tried some of theirs. Mine totally taste better, which is weird to say about an institution like Canter's. And I feel wrong for saying it. But their version is dry and crusty and mine have a hint of orange. I totally win.

The Canters version does look really cute though. Almost a totally enveloped jelly center. Very little jelly peeks through. Perhaps that is the trick.

I tried thicker dough, less jelly, more overlapping twist.




I got one good one. OK, maybe two if you stretch. Hard.




Who's up for eating ANOTHER batch?

Baking: Hamantaschen

I adore Smitten Kitchen! The food. The photos. All of it is delish! I saw these a few days ago and knew I needed to have them in my life.

So, I broke out the KitchenAid and went to town. I love this mixer so much... definitely my most favorite wedding present.


I was surprised at how simple the mixing and the rolling and the cutting was. I didn't have a circular cookie cutter, so I used a wine glass!

Note: do not use this much jelly. It's too much jelly.

I used Fresh Cherry Jelly from TJ's. The cherries are so big and yummy! Makes excellent PB&J.

Pinch and turn the corners. They look really adorable before baking.

Then you bake them and they look like poo.


But they are pretty damn tasty. I am definitely going to attempt this one again. I think a thicker dough, less jelly, harder pinching. Should do the trick!

Cooking: Pear Pie

My office loves all things sugar. Cake. Pie. Cookies. Cupcakes. Brownies. We have one of these on regular rotation in the copy room. Problem is, we all got fat. So we cut back. But now it's Birthday Season. We have at least one a week and everyone deserves cake!

I was in charge of yesterday's birthday and decided to switch it up. Was going to attempt the Smitten Kitchen's Pear & Almond Tart, but got scared of all the steps and the immense time commitment required of the crust. So, I found a frozen crust from Ralphs (that crap was awesome and I got more compliments on the crust than anything else) and a recipe for Pear Pie. I'd never even heard of Pear Pie, but I had all the ingredients and it was so super easy.

And DELISH! You can taste just a hint of the ginger. It's not overly sweet and was just perfect. The top collapsed from a nice structured top into a mess over the pear, but I actually thought it looked kind of neat. This one's going in the arsenal of baked goodness.