the signature cookies

When in doubt...bake these deliciousness:

They're really easy to make and they make A LOT! Oh these are oatmeal butterscotch cookies.

Dude so I got this really cool and awesome measuring cup thing from Jen! So nice! :) It's super cool. Doesn't the sugar just look tastier? Haha.

There's not much I can say about this so I give you the recipe!

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup white sugar (I use way less)
  
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I use a little less but I like brown sugar)
  
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 2/3 cups butterscotch chips (I kinda just eyeball this depending on how much you like it)
  
• 1 1/2 cups walnuts or almonds (I eyeball this too depending on how much I like)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a large bowl beat the butter, white sugar and brown sugar together. Add the eggs and vanilla, beating well.
3. Stir together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir until blended. Stir in the oats and the butterscotch chips. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until the edges begin to brown.

Oatmeal butterscotch cookies courtesy of allrecipes

Mmm yummyness.

blueberry + almonds = yummyness

one of my staples for sure.

ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/4 cups plus 3 tablespoons sugar [i use less than a cup and i like to use brown sugar for half]
• 2 whole large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla or 1/4 teaspoon almond extract [i always use more ...mmm vanilla]
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 cups blueberries (15 ounces)
• 1/2 large egg white [i take some of the egg white from one of the two eggs cause i don't like having an extra yolkness chilling around]
• 1 cup sliced almonds [i use toasted whole almonds and coarsely chop this, i definitely use more than a cup cause i love almonds and its so delicious and gives it texture]

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and butter a 2- to 2 1/2-quart (2 1/4 inches deep) ceramic or glass baking dish.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. [i'm lazy so i don't do it]

3. Beat together butter and 1 1/4 cups sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. [i do this by fork but electric mixer is probably lots faster, but this is my workout :)]

4. Beat in whole eggs, 1 at a time, then vanilla.

5. Alternately add flour mixture and milk in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture and beating on low speed after each addition until just incorporated.

6. Fold in berries.

7. Spoon batter into baking dish, spreading evenly. [somehow my mixture is pretty thick and sticky, but it still turns out fine, probably overmix and berries not defrosted all the way]

8. Lightly beat egg white with a fork and add remaining 3 tablespoons sugar and almonds, stirring to coat. [this is a must!! super yummy!]

9. Spoon topping over batter and bake in middle of oven until golden brown and a tester inserted in center comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour.

10. Cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes.

this is really easy to make and so good!

blueberry-almond coffeecake recipe courtesy of epicurious

- n

tea and crumpets!

For my friends birthday, she had a tea and crumpet and Pride and Prejudice party. Why, what are tea and crumpets? I had no idea... Haha, nevertheless what a perfect opportunity to bake! For some reason I had this idea that crumpets were small cute dessert things and I've been dying for another opportunity to use my mini muffin tins. So I made bakewell tarts...or the closest I could get them.

I actually forgot which site I got the recipe from...but I kinda adapted from several. Also a big difference was that I used puff pastry instead of making my own dough. Yes lazyness also wins...plus I had some in the fridge.

So I didn't know what to put it in...I think normally they have fruity things so I made blueberry jam. I basically heated up brown sugar and when it was mostly melted, I dumped my thawed blueberries in. I cooked that until the blueberries were almost no more and it was thick. Half of the tarts had blueberry and the other half had nutella. I topped the ones with nutella with sliced almonds. I forgot to take pictures of the process once again... but I took pictures of the results.

Nutella filled tart.

Inside nutella filled tart

Inside blueberry jam filled tart

My little platter of goodies :)

To end, in the words of Mr. Darcy: I love you....most ardently. [only for Tammaymay]

-n

tartness!

yay for harvest thanksgiving! gave me reason to bake :)

i had leftover cranberries... so i decided to make cranberry almond tartlets! i could not find a 9-inch tart pan so i bought 6 4-inch tart pans. they're very cute! having a food processor makes things so much easier. i made this over the course of 3 days since there wasn't enough time. i made the crust first and supposedly it makes 12 4-inch but i only got 6. i must've done something wrong but it turned out alright...

blind baking is scary and the crust slightly shrunk, but it was fine. then i made the filling. caramel is not really my friend. the caramel seized when i added the butter and cream mixture and i heated it, but it was stuck...but most of it was still fine. i mixed it with the frozen cranberries and almonds.

then fill it in the pre-baked shells and bake! as you can see, i overfilled the filling cause there was extra...but its okay...



so overall, i think it turned out right. i liked the tartness of the cranberries against the caramel and the nice crunch from the almonds and the flakiness of the crust. a little complicated and time consuming but good!

cranberry almond tart, recipe courtesy of smitten kitchen

i love tarts. no fear of tarts anymore :)

- n

happiness in the form of cakes

i first heard pchung was going to propose to jen on wednesday and i was super super excited and super super happy and every positive feeling you can possibly feel. in my happy state i decided i just had to bake something for them. dude serious dilemma. but i finally settled on double chocolate cake from smitten kitchen. i've wanted to bake a cake for a long long time, but was always way too lazy. but since this was super super special, i had to do it.

i spent three days on this cake because i didn't have 5 + hours to spare in a single day. friday afternoon i did the raspberry filling. my bad at not documenting each step but again i was lazy. it was really easy. food processors=easier life. straining out the seeds was kinda a hassle but it was fine. i fridged it until i needed it which wasn't until two days later. i would suggest not making this first. when i took it out of the fridge to spread on the cake, it became solidified in a almost gelly consistency. i had to bring it to room temperature and mix it like crazy but it turned out fine. make this the day of, it'll probably be better.

the next day i made the cake. it was easy, except my pans were different sizes and i had SO MUCH batter that i used three cake pans. and it finished baking in like 40 minutes. good thing i checked cause it smelled done. its good to make this the day before since you need to wait for it to cool down.

sunday morning, i made the frosting and halved the recipe. it was surprisingly easy. i cooled it in an ice bath and assembled the cake. i had to shave off the volcano like dome to make t it looked really really ugly so i decorated it was raspberries. the frosting got hard so the raspberries wouldn't stick so i used a dab of icing as glue.

yay! i actually didn't get to see it eaten but i did eat the scrapes and it tasted pretty good. :) it wasn't as hard as i expected! its very do-able and a good recipe!
happily engaged :) and no, not cause of the cake (stolen picture from jen)

okayy, so there was another cake i made for melody and jr's birthday! i was super excited for their birthday too cause they're super cool and awesome! i decided to bake cranberry vanilla coffeecake since i found fresh cranberries! it was cranberry season! i love surprises :)

the ugliness because i ran out of powdered sugar. it looks diseased...

ahh, much better!

the recipe calls for vanilla bean which is i did not have because i am cheap. so i added vanilla extract to the cranberry mixture and the cake itself. i'm sure it would taste much more delicious with the vanilla sugar. a very do-able recipe!

recipe courtesy of epicurious

- n

food is life

i like to bake.

almond pear galette, recipe courtesy of cheri

- n