Tag Archives: baking

Bake a little bit

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I really do enjoy baking up something delicious. Here are two of my latest efforts, starting with these:

Cookies

These yummy cookies have a little bit of everything: peanut butter, chocolate, and caramel. Deee-lish.

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Peanut Butter, Chocolate, & Caramel Cookies*

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 package of rolos
Beat first 4 ingredients at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla, and beat until blended. Stir together flour and next 2 ingredients in a small bowl. Add to butter mixture, beating until blended. Cover and chill 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350°F. Shape a 2 tbsp. dough around each rolo, using lightly floured hands, and roll into balls. Place 3 inches apart on ungreased or parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Bake for 13 to 14 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes. Transfer to wire racks.

Oh and I also had a chance to make these:

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These were surprisingly easy to make. The hardest part is probably getting a hold of the pan (luckily my friend Emily provided that for me). We added chocolate sauce to the mix and it was the perfect addition.

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Here’s what it looks like before you flip them out of the pan.

Les Madeleines**

2/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooked
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon orange extract
1/2 teaspoon shredded orange peel
1 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray pan with non-stick spray. Sift together flour and baking powder in small bowl. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat eggs, orange extract, and orange peel on high speed for 5 minutes. Gradually beat in powdered sugar. Beat another 5 minutes or until thick.

Gently fold in flour mixture, then melted butter. Mix until smooth. Spoon into the cups, filling about 3/4 full. Bake approximately 8 minutes, or until edges are light brown. Cool in the pan around 1-2 minutes. Yields: 24 Madeleines.

I’m not sure what I’ll make next, but any suggestions are welcome.

Currently: Catching up on Grey’s Anatomy and all my little projects

*Recipe courtesy of People w/ a slight tweak and inspired by HIMYM
**Recipe courtesy of Emily’s Madeleine pan package

Marshmallow Mermaid and other delicious adventures in Waitress pie making

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Some friends and I decided to have a Waitress night where we made some of the pies Jenna creates in the movie Waitress and then ate them while we watched the movie.

Waitress is a movie starring Keri Russell about a woman who works at a pie diner (It also features Nathan Fillion, Jeremy Sisto, and Adrienne Shelly). Jenna (Keri Russell) has a terrible husband and a wonderful gift for making pies. She escapes her world by creating pies in her head. It’s full of memorable characters, some great quotes (both funny and sweet), and mouth watering pies.

We found someone who had already collected copy cat pie recipes for the movie (check it out here) so all we had to do was gather ingredients and start baking. We decided to each make a different pie; Emily made I don’t want Earl’s baby pie, Courtney made the Lonely Chicago Pie and I made the Marshmallow Mermaid Pie.

You know dinner is going to be excellent when your cart looks like this, haha.

You know your night is going to be excellent when your grocery cart looks like this, lol.

Now we knew we wouldn’t want to eat all three pies in one night and we wanted it to be easy to share so Courtney and I made our pies in tiny little chicken pot pie tins. One regular pie recipe made three mini pies. I was a little nervous because although I love cooking and baking I haven’t made very many pies. But all the pies we tried ended up coming out great, even though we were pie novices.

Me putting on my best Betty Crocker pose!

Me putting on my best Betty Crocker pose, bahaha. It’s not Martha level unless you pull out the kitchen aid and the cardigan set ;)

I made the Marshmallow Mermaid pie. It was very delicious, but very sweet! It was good we made it in mini size. It’s not too crazy. Basically you make a graham cracker crust, add a marshmallow filling, offset some of the sweetness with unsweetened chocolate shavings, and top it all off with colorful mini marshmallows. Here’s the recipe I used:

9 graham crackers
1/2 C. sweetened, flaked coconut, toasted
5 Tbs. butter or margarine, melted
34 lg. marshmallows (8 oz.)
1/2 C. whole milk
1 1/2 C. heavy or whipping cream
1 oz. unsweetened chocolate, grated

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine coconut and graham crackers in food processor until coarse crumbs form. Combine crumbs and butter with fork. Press to bottom and side of 9-inch pie plate. Bake 10 minutes and cool on wire rack. Heat marshmallows and milk in 3-qt. saucepan over low heat until smooth, stirring constantly. Remove saucepan from heat. Cool completely (30 minutes.) In large bowl with mixer at medium speed, beat cream until stiff peaks form. Fold marshmallow mixture into whipped cream with grated chocolate. Spoon filling into cooled crust. Refrigerate pie at least 3 hours or overnight. Top with mini marshmallows, maraschino cherries and rainbow sprinkles.

A tiny marshmallow mermaid pie.

A tiny marshmallow mermaid pie!

The other pies were amazing too. The Lonely Chicago was a delicious mix of chocolate and berries. I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby/ Bad Baby pie was a savory quiche with ham and brie (Emily gave tips for those recipes in her blog, MoviesnMayhem). A round two is definitely in order. This was so fun and there are many more pies to make.

Currently: Enjoying see my apartment decked out for Christmas and watching Jane by Design

P.S. All the pie recipes in this post came from here and here.