Baking Christmas cookies has been one of my favorite things to do during the holiday season for as long as I can remember! (Probably since some time in elementary school when my mom started letting me use the oven, haha). I feel like every year, I try to challenge myself in some way to do better than the previous year. Usually, I am working on baking / decorating them up until the last possible minute before leaving the house for Christmas dinner.. but this year I finished FOUR whole days early! It's a Christmas miracle, LOL.
Read MoreCandy Cane Christmas Cookies
Baking is one of my absolute favorite things to do around the holiday season. I always end up trying to make 70 different things, and it's my pride and joy to craft up the very best Christmas cookie platter that I can to bring over to my grandparents' house for dinner on Christmas day.
I was flipping through an old cookbook (Very Merry Cookie Party) I found the other day - and came across this recipe. I thought they were the perfect little festive cookies! The best part: no icing was involved to decorate - so it was very "fuss-free" and didn't require much skill to pull off at all. ;)
Read MoreSalted Caramel Apple: A Thanksgiving Pie Experiment
For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to take my first stab at making a salted caramel apple pie. It was only the second pie ever that I've ever made - ever. Over the summer, I made my first pie - which was a simple blueberry pie. I figured I would write a blog post about my pie-baking experience thus far, as it's definitely one of my newer food experiments that I've recently tackled (and a skill that I'm determined to hone). I used Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book for a reference / recipe for both the crust and the pie filling. If you don't own the book, and are interested in baking pie - I highly recommend their book! It's filled with everything from tools to technique to seasonal recipes - and great for beginners. Four & Twenty Blackbirds is a sweet little pie shop based in Gowanus (Brooklyn, NY) and they were a place I frequented during my Pratt days. Their pie is literally to die for - so if you are in the area / in NY, I highly recommend giving them a visit!
Read MoreApple Bread
Last Friday I baked apple bread for the first time ever. I’ve made many variations of banana bread before, but I’ve never even heard of apple bread until I started researching quick/easy apple recipes last week. I went apple-picking recently, and I have been wanting to bake something with the apples since bringing them home from the farm. They basically have been sitting in a box in the kitchen begging for me to bake something yummy with them. My first thoughts involved attempting a salted caramel apple pie because I’ve also never baked an apple pie before… but my lazy ass didn’t feel like it. I feel like you really have to be in the mood to commit time into making the perfect pie, and I guess I wasn’t feelin’ it last Friday. I made my first pie ever this summer (a blueberry pie), and it was fun and delicious and everything, but it took me the span of 3 days to make it between getting all the ingredients, making the dough from scratch, letting the dough set in the fridge, prepping the filling, cutting / weaving the lattices, and then FINALLY putting it in the oven. It was a lot of work – work that my lazy ass didn’t feel like doing at the end of last week. I do want to attempt an apple pie some day, but last Friday was not that day. Let’s be real – we all have our lazy days. Maybe I’ll feel more motivated for a special occasion … (Thanksgiving, mayhaps?)
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