Baking: Cranberry Scones!

More cranberries!

I’m about to give up on this, but then I only have 3/4 pouch left.  So, after talking about making scones for weeks, here I am! I dug out a recipe on Martha Stewart site (a place I haven’t ventured to in a long time) and made these 🙂

You can find the recipe here: http://www.marthastewart.com/338474/cranberry-scones

There were a few modifications to the recipe.

• As usual, I used Gluten-Free flour because thats all I have now. And its a lifestyle I’m working on. There is one thing to note about gluten-free anything is that it makes baked goods slightly more dry and in the case of an already pretty dry baked goods, like scones, there needs to be some moderation if you like.
• I estimated the amount of butter, mostly because I only had two little slabs left so I could only work with what I had…
• Half and half means milk and cream.  I used almond milk (2/3 cup) and then instead of cream, I used raspberry yogourt.  I would have preferred to use vanilla but it was a choice between raspberry and blueberry.

The scones tasted good but I’m guessing because of the gluten-free flours, it felt even more dry than it usually would.  The cranberries added a burst of flavor and there were still hints of the raspberry yogourt in there which really helped.  However, I’d say it was a success because matched with tea in the morning, it was pretty good 🙂

I don’t make scones often so there’s still a lot of improvement that I can make on this.

Do you like scones? What do you like to add to it? 

I still have one more cranberry baking adventure. Any suggestions?

Christmas Baking(?): Cranberry Jam!

Okay okay, its not exactly baking but I promise the coming weekend, I’ll get back on it and I’ll bake A LOT!  I have a few things bookmarked to do already.

But, this weekend, I promised my mom that I’d try my hand at making some cranberry jam.  It not exactly Christmas related but its red so still feels very festive 🙂

Plus, jam is relatively easy to make.  Just need to stand around while it boils in water and the mixture gets a bit more solid.

Cooking Cranberry Jam

Here’s the instructions adapted from a recipe on the Martha Stewart site:

http://www.marthastewart.com/343503/spicy-cranberry-jam?search_key=cranberry%20jam

This was originally a Spicy Cranberry Jam, however, my mom and I aren’t much of “spicy” people so we took out the jalapeno and compensated with a little bit more sugar, something like 1/2 cup to 1 cup more sugar to make it not so sour.

I tasted it with some whole wheat bread and it was pretty good. The consistency is perfect, just like fruit  jam/jelly. Its more a jelly form.  It tastes sour but not so much that its hard to swallow.

Healthy choice for sure 🙂

What jams do you like to make?

Rhubarb Compote!

TGIF! We’re finally at the next weekend?

Last weekend I ran out of time so there was no time to bake AT ALL! However, my mom made it clear on Wednesday night that we had to get rid of ALL the rhubarb.  I went straight to search up something.  She seemed like she really wanted to make jam out of it.  I just worry about how sour it would turn out.

After some research and debate, I ended up with choosing to make Rhubarb Compote!

My first time doing compote and here’s how it turned out:

Rhubarb Compote cooled off and stored in a jar 🙂

Here is the link for the recipe: http://www.marthastewart.com/336492/rhubarb-compote?search_key=rhubarb

I followed most of that recipe.  I did add a few little strawberries to the mixture.  For one, I was hoping that it would make it a little sweeter.  Second, I had some in the fridge and wanted to use them up 🙂

This is an extremely quick recipe.  The preparation work, especially cutting the rhubarb is the most time consuming.  Other than that, you pop in a large saucer and you stir while it simmers on reduced heat.  Extremely fast and easy! What more could I ask for, right?

My mom was the first to taste it and she put it on her toast as jam.  She said that it tasted good just a little sour.

Later on after dinner, I wanted to try it with a banana, cut into pieces 🙂

Banana topped with Rhubarb Compote

Then my mom came up with adding in some mango to it! I love mango so it was a keeper!

Add in some Mango! Yummy!

Healthy and delicious! It tasted fantastic! The mangoes were very sweet, banana was perfect (not too ripe and not too raw) then mix in the tart and a little sourish taste of the rhubarb compote and we’re in business! 🙂

I would eat with ice cream but I ran out.  It is also a good combination if that’s more your style!

My rhubarb is almost all used up! I believe the last batch will be done this weekend..then I continue with requests 🙂

Feel free to drop me some requests if you’d like and I’ll line them up to try one by one!!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie!

This week’s star is rhubarb! I love rhubarb to bits! Right now, my garden has one plant of it and its growing like mad. Its probably from all the rainfall that has fallen in the past 2 weeks…NOW, I’m in emergency baking mode.  My mom has put down orders to get rid of ’em all this coming week!

First up had to be my first trial for a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie! Who else loves it? Because I am obsessed with the store-bought ones…of course, its always more natural to make it at home.  PLUS, I had a pie shell that needed to be used for baking.  Usually, I’d make my own but hey, lets take it easy for once…especially since I’m owing another blogger a recipe to go up that has to be postponed just a little bit while I get rid of the rhubarb.  Next week, it’ll be all about chocolate..but today, it’ll have to be about rhubarb!

I usually venture onto Martha Stewart‘s site to find some recipes but her site (at least on my tablet, haven’t checked on my laptop) is ridiculous to understand how to make the damn recipe so I gave up and googled it which led to a recipe on the Food Network! C’mon, that’s gotta be sure fire, right?

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

For the recipe, you can find it right here: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Dessert/Berries/recipe.html?dishid=4042

Topped with Ice Cream!

We all had rather different opinions on this pie actually.  My boyfriend started it off and ate it without the crumble topping and thought it was SUPER SOUR! With the crumble and after a few bites, he slowly adapted to it.  Because he said that, I went off to the freezer and topped mine off with a scope of Maple flavored Soy based Ice Cream.  I found it still a little sour but when you eat it as a whole experience, it tasted pretty good.  Rhubarb is supposed to be a bit more sour in taste so, it makes sense.  My mom was the only one who said that it wasn’t sour and she said that she liked the fact that it was just the crumble topping that felt like it was sugary to balance the taste.

Other than that, the texture turned out great plus, it looks and smells awesome! I might still search up another recipe or modify this one a little bit the next time I make it. In the meantime, I’m going to search up what to make with the rest of the rhubarb.

Last year, I made it some Baked Rhubarb (HERE), Rhubarb Crisp (HERE) and Strawberry Rhubarb Crumb Bars (HERE) which were all quite delish! Check it out if you’re interested! 🙂

Any suggestions for what else I could make?

Peanut Butter Cookies!

I promised baking! And here it is! I only managed to start prep work at 11pm to make these but they were all done by midnight!

We all went to bed with a delicious baked goods smell in the air! Talk about some sweet dreams in candyland, right?

This time up, I was craving something with peanut butter.  My boyfriend and I had miscoordinated and we ended up with two jars of peanut butter sitting in the fridge so seeing as thats the case, I decided to make something with it.  I love cookies! And these ones were simple and quick.  Only deal was that I was reading some comments and they all had some criticism about the sweetness or the lack of it.  I never have problems with that though. The reason why I never liked peanut butter cookies were that they were overly sweet.  If these weren’t, it sounds like a done deal 😉

I found this recipe on Martha Stewart and you can find it right here: http://www.marthastewart.com/339730/peanut-butter-cookies

Its nothing absolutely creative and I didn’t do much modification to it.  The bake time is actually not accurate in this one. They were in the oven for 15 mins and it was already good.  However, all ovens bake differently so just keep a close eye for when it turns golden brown.  The only thing was that I didn’t sprinkle any peanuts on it because I just don’t have any at home.

The recipe yielded the exact amount (or almost) the same.  I ended up with 25 cookies and they estimated 2 dozens :).  Thats about the closest I’ve ever gotten what the recipe says.  The texture of the cookies when the first came out of the oven were quite soft. It smelled extremely awesome! Once they cooled down,  it turned to be more crunchy and crumbly.  Less moist and soft.  It wasn’t dry though.  The first bite had a good mix being still a bit moist in the center and the outer part was crunchy and it somewhat melted into my mouth.  It wasn’t too sweet either (for me)!

I would never eat peanut butter cookies in abundance but these ones do taste quite good.  The key to this is to use a peanut butter which is less oily because it pulls out a lot of oil from both the peanut butter and the butter. My peanut butter was Just Peanuts so it had some peanut oil residue under the cookie.  However, I imagine some of the other brands with other sorts of oil would create a less healthy blend and feel more greasy.  I’m saying it could be a possibility.   Not sure if that would actually happen.  The taste of the peanut butter will also determine what your cookie will taste like.

Choose your peanut butter wisely 😉 Watch the baking time.  Only two suggestions I offer for this.

This recipe is a winner for some delicious crunchy peanut butter cookies! Now I have the peanut butter cookies all settled in for both soft and crunchy! Its made the end of my weekend quite happy 🙂

*Almost* Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cookies!

Have you ever heard of these cookies? Kitchen Sink Cookies for short apparently…

These ones came up in my search when I was digging up recipes based on another blogger’s comment for Coconut Cloud Cake post. Brian at Hard Ticket to Home Video commented that “mixes coconut, toffee and dark chocolate”.  I have never baked with toffee so I had to run off and look for that.  Of course, the trusty Walmart Superstore here has everything and I managed to pick up a pack of toffee bits on Saturday.

I changed it around a bit to match the tastes of my boyfriend and his family, which will be delivered to them tonight 🙂

I found this recipe on Martha Stewart`s site.  The link to the original recipe that inspired it is: http://www.marthastewart.com/332894/everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-cookie

 

These cookies are quite easy to make as its pretty much mixing the wet ingredients then in another bowl the dry ingredients. After that putting it together and after having the cookies dough done.  Its time to add all the contents: dark chocolate, toffee bits, coconut shreds, dried cherries, pecans, oats and pretzels.  Point is, its supposed to have EVERYTHING…

My version doesn`t change much for the dough.  I did remove the salted pretzels and dried cherries.  Its not hit in their families and then swapped almonds to replace the pecans.  Also, I didn`t have any dark chocolate on hand so I used some semi sweet chocolate chunks.  Plus, the intended recipients aren`t big fans of dark chocolate and more semi-sweet.

 

Obviously, this one fits in all my nono`s. So I couldnt`t try it out.  However, what they do feel and look like are Oatmeal cookies with Chocolate chunks, coconut, toffee bits, and almonds.  Now that sounds like a winner combination right. My mom did help me out to taste it and she said that it was a bit too sweet (but she always thinks that) however, she did say the taste was pretty good.  The texture of it was not too hard and all the ingredient choices matched up to a good taste.

If you don`t like any ingredients or you want to swap things in and out, as long as you know the end result taste works for you, then go for it.  It should work out fine. 🙂

Seeing as I`m a beginner with toffee bits, what else do you recommend I do with it? Any other great recipes or types of cookies or cakes that it would work well in? I was thinking maybe fudge might be a good option? I don’t know.  I’m not experienced with fudge either..Give me some suggestions.  I’d love to hear all about it 🙂

Coconut Cloud Cake!

Doesn’t that sound delicious? Apparently, last night at my boyfriend’s mom’s birthday gathering with the family, it was a huge hit! Everyone told me how much they liked it and for the first time, one of them even asked for the recipe.  Another reason why I need to post it up PRONTO! 🙂 But seeing everyone enjoy it makes me happy because its why I do it!

Before I get ahead of myself, I was asking with another recipe, what to make for Easter and Marilyn @ MKG-Memories-Keepsakes-Gifts told me that sour cream coconut cake is a must.  I can’t eat sour cream, so I found myself a coconut cake with everything that I could eat. Awesome suggestion Marilyn!

This was found here: http://www.marthastewart.com/349949/coconut-cloud-cake

This cake could get complicated to make and my forewarning is that in general its not complicated however, it does take several steps and before putting this frosting, you need to wait for the cake to cool down for an hour.

The texture of the cake was pretty nice and fluffy.  Everyone described it as “light”.  I’d say thats a good word for it.  The frosting was very delicious.  I actually like it being made with egg whites. It gives it a little nice texture different from whip cream.  I haven’t had whip cream in such a long time, it hard for me to actually describe it. I did like it a lot though.  The taste was very good. If it was something I’d make regularly, I might decrease the sugar just a tad.

There was a good amount of modifications that I made.  For one, I didn’t have cake flour so I used all-purpose flour.  Superfine sugar was replaced by granulated sugar.  All cream of tartar was removed.  You will notice if you click through to see Martha Stewart‘s cake that hers has a little frosting center.  However, due to time constraints, I had to skip that step, instead I covered the exterior with frosting and then added a bit more coconut on the top.

I think it went pretty well. It looks pretty decent and the taste was totally awesome! My boyfriend said he felt like it was a slice of heaven 🙂

Any other Easter baking traditions to share? I’ll probably be baking on Wednesday night again 🙂

Spiced Carrot Cake

I’m FINALLY back with some baking! I think I’ll start making Wednesday my baking day…let’s see how that schedule holds up. I’m planning to get back to cooking on the weekends and some continuation of the A Bite of China Project! Just need to find some time to head out to the Chinese groceries soon 🙂

So I had a few recipes I was looking for and I ended up looking up Martha Stewart’s Easter dessert slides and this  Spiced Carrot Cake came up.  The other choice would’ve been Oatmeal Shortbread, but I’ve been doing  A LOT of shortbread in the last few baking posts that I wanted to switch it up a bit.  So here it is!

The recipe is right here: http://www.marthastewart.com/315931/spiced-carrot-cake?center=276968&gallery=275096&slide=262144

There were some minor modifications made. For one, I don’t own a round pan so its square.  Thats just aesthetics, of course.  I’m sure it won’t make much difference to the taste.  Right now, my house is filling up with baked goods smell again and this smells delicious 🙂

Fresh out of the oven!

Okay, focus back to the changes I made.

– I used the 1 teaspoon cinnamon instead of 1/2 teaspoon cardamom

– Since I’m lactose intolerant, I don’t have any yogurt, so I replaced it with almond milk.  I was going to use water but then I felt that almond milk may probably provide a thicker complex to it, making it resemble the consistency of yogurt more.  It didn’t seem to make much of a difference.  Of course, my second option could have been soy milk as well.

-I omitted the glaze or confectioners`sugar since it was already sweet enough and we have balanced lifestyle to work on 😉

This one is a winner in terms of carrot cake.  It smells amazing, it looks awesome, the texture is fantastic.  The only thing I would change when I bake it again (and I know I will) its probably less sugar.

What difference in taste will happen with using cinnamon over cardamom? I have never used cardamom so I don’t own any.  Definitely down to try it if it is enhances the taste or gives it a little something special.

I want to continue with some Easter baking..what do you suggest? Cupcakes? Spring Sugar Cookies? Shortbread?

Valentine’s Baking: Skillet Baked Chocolate Chip Cookie

Whats a good morning (any day) without a little sweet tooth craving fulfilled, right?

I was going to make a huge chocolate cake for my boyfriend.  As he is trying hard to stay fit (aka lose fat gain muscle), I didn’t want to make him lose track so I asked him what he wanted.  He saw this and wanted me to do it right away. Last night, I went downstairs to bake this gigantic cookie.  However, I didn’t want to use a skillet so I just used a square baking pan.

This recipe was from Martha Stewart’s site and if you want to try it, just go to this link:

http://www.marthastewart.com/355774/skillet-baked-chocolate-chip-cookie

This was a crazy easy recipe to do.  I didn’t do any adjustments to it.  However, I don’t own any semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips at home but I still had a bunch of chocolate chunks.

The only long part was waiting for the giant cookie to come out of the oven, since its in there for 40-45 minutes.  Of course, this gave me time to finish up my last movie in the marathon (The review will be up a bit later today) After about halfway through baking time, the house started smelling like chocolate and sweets.  A mouthwatering aroma…and it wasn’t even done yet.

Just look at that right there.   That’s what a piece of this cookie looks like.  I can’t eat chocolate but my boyfriend gave it a little time to cool and cut this piece out right away to try.  I know when he really loves something and this one, he totally loved it.

Try it out! Whats a better time than Valentine’s day to treat yourself and whoever you choose to spend it with sharing a giant chocolate chip cookie, right?  Chocolate is just right for all occasions.

Dried Cranberry Shortbread Hearts

I promised that I would get you some Valentine’s baking yesterday but something came up and I didn’t quite manage to get that up.  You know, life happens.  I guarantee it was nothing bad though.  Just some changes might or might not happen in life and if it does settle down, I’ll share it with everyone.  For now, let’s turn our focus to my first Valentine’s baking.  I know I know, Shortbread…again, right? To be honest, shortbread is starting to grow on me. And I can actually eat this and its easy to make.

Doesn’t this look cute and delicious?

Right here is the recipe if you’d like to try it out.  Found this on the Martha Stewart site.

http://www.marthastewart.com/338922/dried-cranberry-shortbread-hearts?center=276967&gallery=874690&slide=338922

This is a super easy one. Unless you can cut beautiful hearts out of a sheet, I’d recommend a cookie cutter.  That’s the reason why its taken me so long. I was going to make them into cupcakes.  You know its sweet to give someone you loved a cookie shaped in a cupcake, its like calling them that, right?

Other than being easy to make, this one had a wonderful texture.  Its probably one of the best shortbread recipes I’ve had.

Just look at it. Its not too dry and crumbly but was balanced with a bit of nice slightly moist balance.  The dried cranberries really give it a nice little touch.

I managed to get 5 hearts out of this with a whole bunch of tidbits on the sides.  So far I haven’t found the heart to eat the beautiful shortbread hearts.

 How could you right? They just look so nice!

10 days from Valentine’s day now! Any ideas what else I should bake?

I probably will be back with something else on Friday. The office is still a bit hectic and have a few sudden things resulting from what happened to take care of.  Lets hope I can still manage to keep up with my posts 🙂

Happy Monday everyone!