When I made the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with cranberries and pecans a few weeks ago, I kept getting distracted by the recipe on the facing page. Macadamia chocolate chip cookies. Yum, right? I was this close to making this one instead, but I didn’t have enough macadamia nuts. So I added them to my shopping list and made sure I bought some at the first opportunity. I’m so glad I did, because this cookie was worth going out of my way for an ingredient. (more…)
This week’s cookie is a festive tropical combination of pineapple, coconut, and crunchy pecans. I’ll admit, I had a few issues with the recipe. But don’t get turned off, because the final result is fantastic. I ended up eating way more than my share of these cookies, and they were really popular with all my coworkers. This cookie is definitely a winner. (more…)
Welp, I was planning on making a completely different cookie this week. Usually I just wing it and pick a recipe last minute, but I saw an interesting recipe while I was choosing last week’s cookie, and I reeeeeally wanted to make it, but it required a few specific ingredients that I didn’t have. So I went out and visited two different stores to get what I needed. And when I started getting ready to bake this weekend? I realized I didn’t have any milk. D’oh! What cookie recipe needs milk!? The one I wanted to make, apparently. (more…)
You may have noticed this site has been absent for awhile. A looooong while! I’m so sorry about that. Is anyone even still out there? If so, thank you so much for your patience.
My site had a wee problem that was way beyond my abilities to fix. I was able to rope in a friend of mine to help out (thanks J!), but unfortunately we both work full time, so it all had to be squeezed in evenings and weekends. Which meant that it just dragged on (and on and on). But now it’s done and we’re back!!
I’ll be posting a new recipe later today, and probably at least a couple times a week as I try to catch up – the site may have been down, but I’ve still been baking every week. And I have so many cookies to share with you all.
Guess who got a new cookbook! Yup, yet another new baking book for this girl. I was flipping through the pages when I first got it, and there are so many delicious-looking cookie recipes that I can’t wait to try. I swear I just bookmarked every single page in that section. And first up is a pumpkin cookie, because it’s that time of year again – pumpkin season! I made pumpkin cookies for the first time last year, and they were so good I knew I wanted to make some more this year. And this recipe takes the idea of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and bumps it up even further with the addition of dried cranberries and toasted pecans. (more…)
I didn’t have anything particular in mind this week, so I made myself comfortable and flipped through a few of my cookbooks looking for inspiration. This particular recipe is a cookie that I’ve been wanting to make for awhile (I say that a lot, don’t I? well it’s true – there are a lot of cookies I want to make!). Doesn’t this cookie sound amazing? Not sure why I kept bumping it, but I suspect laziness and that one extra step of cooking the pecans in melted butter. Yup, you read that right. The pecans are cooked in butter first. Which honestly? Took no time at all. You just melt the butter, and then cook for a few minutes. Pfft, done. And it was totally worth it. They smelled absolutely amazing, and added another layer of flavour to an already delicious cookie (brown sugar, butterscotch chips, and buttery salted pecans? yes please!) (more…)
In sharp contrast to these amazing cookies (so amazing), there is sadness at work this week – one of our coworkers is leaving us. Boo. You hear me? You know who you are. Boo. Which is why I wanted this week’s cookie to be a little special. Something to remember us by (he’s going to miss my cookies most of all, you know it’s true). He’s told me that peanut butter cookies are his favourites, and I could remember seeing this awesome looking peanut butter sandwich cookie in my travels through my cookbooks one day. I knew I had to find that recipe. Luckily I could remember which of my books it was in (looking for a recipe with no clue which book it’s in? not fun.), and even luckier, I’d had the foresight to flag it with a post-it note. We were go for cookies. (more…)
After making chocolate chip cookies last week, I was thinking of doing something completely different this week. But. I remembered a recipe I’d bookmarked a while ago and I suddenly couldn’t get it out of my mind. Yes, it has chocolate chips, but it’s not primarily a chocolate chip cookie. What really caught my eye was the dried cherries and candied orange peel. Does that count as completely different? Yup. Close enough.
Of course, the thing that really attracted me to this cookie was the inclusion of candied orange peel. If you’ve been to this blog before, you’ll probably know that I loooove citrus. And the thought of tart cherries, orange and chocolate? Well that just sounded amazing, right? (more…)
This weekend I was just craving a chocolate chip cookie. Chocolate chip may sound like a really basic cookie, but there are sooooo many different ways to make them. Dense and chewy, crisp and crumbly, with nuts and all kinds of other inclusions (and that’s just a few examples – it’s never-ending!). This week we’re making a soft, cakey chocolate chip cookie. I know not everyone likes cakey cookies, but I’m definitely partial to those soft, fluffy little bites. And my coworkers always love them too. (more…)
If you’ve read many of my posts, you’ll know that I generally prefer savoury things over sweet (which is really weird for someone with a baking blog, right?). I mean I love chocolate (loooooooove), and cakes and cookies and pies are always welcome, but I’m not a big fan of purely sugary sweets. I’ll pass on most candies. If I’m asked to choose between fruit or a vegetable? I’ll almost always go for the vegetable. I could eat an entire bag of fresh peas in one sitting, but if you offer me some cherries, I might have one or two if I have any at all.
I grew up in a small town with a lot of fruit orchards, and almost everyone had apple and cherry trees on their property. I distinctly remember my best friend and I climbing and parking ourselves up the cherry tree for the day, eating every cherry within reach (and hoping her parents didn’t see us and yell at us to come down and stop eating all their cherries). I don’t know if my tastes changed as I grew up, or if I just got it all out of my system when I was younger. Regardless, when I see fresh cherries at the farmers market, it just doesn’t really excite me. Meh. Which is unfortunate, because there are a lot of them, and I can acknowledge that they look amazing right now at their peak. (more…)
I’m about to shock you all. Ready? I’ve never had a s’more. Yup. Crazy, right?? Seriously. Never. How, you ask? I’m guessing it’s simply because I never went to camp or joined Girl Guides or anything like that. And from what I hear, it’s one of those treats that you really only have when you’re camping. Am I right? I guess I was just never in the right place at the right time.
Well I’ve mentioned the last few months that I’ve been trying to make a certain s’mores cookie recipe that was requested by a coworker. This? This is not that cookie. Unfortunately the cookie in question requires refrigerating overnight after forming the cookies. And honestly, I just don’t have room for that in my fridge. So this cookie might just have to satisfy her craving. (spoiler – it totally did. she’s loving these!) (more…)
You may have heard it said that if you want to get serious about baking, you should absolutely be measuring your ingredients by weight. If you already have a scale, check it out. Measure out a cup of flour and weigh it. Now measure another cup and weigh it too. Are they the same? Probably not. Whether or not you stir your flour first will make a difference, as will whether you scoop vs spoon your flour into the measuring cup.
They might not be off by much, but if your aim is to make multiple batches of something and get consistent results every time? Yeah, you’re definitely better off going with weights.
That said, keep in mind our parents and grandparents probably baked all their lives without kitchen scales. My mother didn’t even have a proper set of measuring spoons – she literally used a teaspoon and tablespoon from the cutlery drawer. (more…)
I’m still visiting the farmer’s market every weekend, and I just can’t say no to all of the lovely, plump berries in season right now. We’re nearing the end of the strawberries, but the raspberries still seem to be going strong. I’m not the type of person who will sit and snack on them on their own, but I’ll happily use them in smoothies or turn them into popsicles. (more…)
Some flavour combinations are so natural it’s like they were just made for each other – like lime and coconut, chocolate and espresso, and of course peanut butter and chocolate. But then there are combinations that seem so opposite that they kind’ve catch us off guard, like rich chocolate with hot peppers, sweet peaches with spicy jalapeños, and tart apples with savoury cheese. This is one of those flavours that sound weird until you try it. Sweet strawberries with sour balsamic vinegar? Yup. Somehow those two flavours meet in the middle to create something unique and delicious. (more…)
A couple weeks ago I made some lemon buttermilk popsicles, which I could have happily eaten all by myself. And I mentioned that a lot of people seemed really wary of eating them because of the word “buttermilk”. Weirdos. But eventually they tried them and loved them as much as I did. With that experience under their belts, I figured they’d be more accepting of another buttermilk recipe. And apparently I was right about that, because these were all gone within half a day. Plus “blueberry buttermilk” is a combination that I think we’re all a lot more familiar with. (more…)
