First off Happy Mother’s Day to all the yummy mummies out there!

This mother’s day I wanted to bake something a little more special than just a cake, and seeing as how I had just made my mom a Carrot Cake for her birthday a couple weeks ago, I thought I would hold off on another cakey creation, that we would eat for about a week… So I thought about what my mother might like instead, and then it came to me. A Cheesecake!

A couple reasons for this is because a. my mom had actually came home from work one day a while back with a brand new springform pan for me, cause she knew I didn’t have one, and b. because every time my mom has gone on a cruise ship (and believe me, she’s been on a million) she always says she loves having the NY Cheesecake.  I remember she would go to High Tea every day on the ship just for the cheesecake, and was rather dissapointed once when they didn’t have any! Shocking, a cruise ship with no Cheesecake! So I thought it would be nice to bake her one from scratch, non of this no-bake, pre-bought cardboard tasting cheesecake. Nope, it would be straight fom the oven! And, even though It was hard, I waited the agonizing million hours for it to bake, and cool completely, and store in the fridge over night. Luckily she wasn’t home at the time so I could do all this without her knowledge, and have it ready for the reveal on mothers day morning. Along with pancakes for breakfast and of course home made strawberry coulis! I also found the cutest mothers day card, which I thought was quite fitting! (see below)

Now, I think I had only ever made a cheesecake once before for thanksgiving, a pumpkin one, and it didn’t turn out so great. But! this one is definitely a winner and a great basic like Dorie says. You can add many variations to it or have it just plain. I stuck with plain, and made some strawberry coulis to go with it. The recipe is super easy to follow, and I highly recommend the water bath, and hair dryer technique!.. you’ll see.  Enjoy! Love you mom! (more…)

So I’ve been wanting to bake something more fruity ever since I made the carrot cake last week. I do love all the chocolatey things and cakes and all the good stuff. But lately i’ve been wanting to bake something with apples, that seems a little lighter and healthier. (ok, i know it’s not exactly healthy.. eating an apple on it’s own would be a lot better, which I have been doing also!) But I had wanted to use up some green apples that were sitting on the counter. Of course I searched for recipes on the web, and in Dorie’s Book to find an apple related recipe that was lighter and less dense than say, an apple pie.

So I stumbled upon this recipe, and decided to combine it with a recipe I found in Dorie’s book for Dimply Plum Cake. I really liked her’s but found It was a bit smaller than I wanted to make so I combined the two recipes to make something inbetween. Instead of chopping the apples up and incorporating them, I sliced them and layed them on top of the cake like Dorie’s plum cake. This recipe is worth trying for sure. 

Dimply Apple Spice Cake

Ingredients

• 2 cups plus 2 Tbsp all purpose flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1/8 tsp allspice
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 3-4 apples, cored and sliced
• cinnamon sugar for sprinkling

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spay a 9×13 baking pan, dust with flour and tap excess off.
2. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, all spice, cinnamon and nutmeg. Whisk to combine well and set aside.
3. In bowl of stand mixer, combine sugars and butter and beat on medium high until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well to combine. Add vanilla extract and beat to combine.
4. Turn mixer on slow and fold in flour mixture a little at a time until just combined.
5. Spread mixture evenly into prepared pan. Layer top with apple slices so they all face the same way, and sprinkle top generously with cinnamon sugar.
6. Place in oven and bake until cooked through, when top slightly bounces back to the touch, about 30 minutes, you may need an extra 5 minutes if it looks too soft, so just turn the oven off, and let them sit for another 5 minutes before you take them out.
7. Remove from oven and let cool completely before removing from pan, cutting and serving. These would also be good with whipped cream, cool whip or a dollop of ice cream. 

Yet another chocolate chip cookie. I wonder how many there are out there?? I made the Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies by Martha before and said they were the softer more cakey cookie recipe I use. This one is the opposite. These are crunchier, softer in the middle and crisp on the edges.  After coming home from the gym (yea, gym and cookies? not a good combo! But I’ve got another membership, and been going everyday this week! good for me right?) my mom requested some chocolate chip cookies that were crispy and thinner than the last ones I made. So I grabbed my book and got a recipe. Her and my brother consumed the entire first batch.. yes the entire cookie sheet. Alright I may have had one..or two. Sorry mom. I’m sure it was mostly Nick… right? So if you’re looking for a crunchy chocolate chip cookie I suggest you give these a try.

So you think that I would know by now, from baking so many things, the proper way to add ingredients. Sadly I have proved myself wrong. As I was making these last night (post gym) I thought it would be easiest to quickly make them(so I could go shower, change and eat them, obviously..and undo all the hard work at the gym.) But in doing so I made a mistake. While adding the eggs, one at a time, I thought what the heck, why not crack them on the side of the bowl, while the paddle attachment is on low. Why not indeed…Oooh maybe because half of the egg shell fell into the bowl and continued to beat into the cookie dough. Yes, this happened. Luckily my instincts kicked in and I turned the down the mixer to off, or so I thought. The swtich turned out to be the locking swtich, so I quickly pushed the (right) switch to off, and proceeded to dish out the hunks of shell. Luckily they hadn’t been smashed to little bits and I got them all out safely. Please, don’t do this. It is not fun.

Recipe from: Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips or 2 cups store-bought chocolate chips
• 1 cup finely chopped walnuts, or pecans (optional)

Directions

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
2. Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
3. Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed for about 1 minute, until smooth. Add the sugars and beat for another 2 minutes or so, until well-blended.
4. Beat in the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each egg goes in. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients in 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is incorporated. On low speed, or by hand with a rubber spatula, mix in the chocolate and nuts. ( The dough can be covered and refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen. If you’d like, you can freeze rounded tablespoonfuls of dough, ready for baking. Freeze the mounds on a lined baking sheet, then bag them when they’re solid. There’s no need to defrost the dough before baking – just add another minute or two to the baking time.)
5. Spoon the dough by slightly rounded tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between spoonfuls.
6. Bake the cookies- one sheet at a time and rotating the sheet at the midway point- for 10-12 minutes, or until they are brown at the edges and golden in the center; they may still be a little soft in the middle, and that’s just fine. Pull the sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to rest for 1 minute, then carefully, using a wide metal spatula, transfer them to racks to cool to room temperature.
7. Repeat with the remainder of the dough, cooling the baking sheets between batches.

Enjoy with a nice tall glass of milk!

After having the baby shower this weekend, I think I need to stay away from cupcakes for a while (we’ll see). I had wanted to enter the Iron Cupcake Challenge this month, but never got around to it as I was busy with the baby shower. But please vote for the people that enterered! I really wanted to, I loved the Coffee theme! I was going to make Mocha Cupcakes.. maybe i’ll have to make them sometime anyways.

xo Bakeaholic

With Halloween just around the corner I thought I’d make some Halloween sugar cookies! Last weekend I made the trip to my favorite baking supply store – Scoop&Save. I only go there once in a while because its pretty far away, about 40 mins to drive there. So i stocked on some decorations and cookie cutters, royal icing mix & piping tips etc. I wish I lived closer so I could go all the time.. although it’s probably best that I don’t! I found this recipe in Baking: From My House to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. I made my pumpkin tarts from it as well. I really like the recipes in there, and my favorite thing is all the pictures! I really hate cookbooks that don’t have pictures.. as many people know. haha. I always make sure when I get a cookbook that it has a good amount of pictures accompanying the recipes. I’m glad I got this book for my birthday! I thought about joining Tuesdays With Dorie but being a student/working it’s a little hard to commit to baking every other Tuesday. So I’ll just got through the book on my own and experiment! Ps. I went to see Celine Dion Tuesday night..soo good! Now all I have stuck in my head are her songs..Which means Im definitely listening to her while I bake. . .ohh Celine!

So here’s the recipe:

*Just to let you know, these take at least 2 hours to chill prior to baking..which I only found out once I had my oven pre-heating and got to the end of my mixing & finished reading the bottom of the page..Oh well! I just had to wait a little longer before eating baking and decorating!

Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

From Baking: From My House to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons (10 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Whisk the flour, salt and baking powder together.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed for a minute or so, until smooth.

Beat in the sugar and continue to beat for about 2 minutes, until the mixture is light and pale. Add the egg and yolk and beat for another minute or two; beat in the vanilla.

Reduce the mixer speed to low and steadily add the flour mixture, mixing only until it has been incorporated — because this dough is best when worked least, you might want to stop the mixer before all the flour is
thoroughly blended into the dough and finish the job with a rubber spatula. When mixed, the dough will be soft, creamy and malleable.

Turn the dough out onto a counter and divide it in half. If you want to make roll-out cookies, shape each half into a disk and wrap in plastic. If you want to make slice-and-bake cookies, shape each half into a chubby sausage (the diameter is up to you — I usually like cookies that are about 2 inches in diameter) and wrap in plastic. Whether you’re going to roll or slice the dough, it must be chilled for at least 2 hours. (Well wrapped, the dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.)

Getting Ready To Bake:

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

If you are making roll-out cookies, working with one packet of dough at a time, roll out the dough between sheets of plastic wrap or wax paper to a thickness of 1/4 inch, lifting the plastic or paper and turning the dough over often so that it rolls evenly.

In case your wondering..that’s Jordan’s hairy arm..not mine! haha

Lift off the top sheet of plastic or paper and cut out the cookies — I like a 2-inch round cookie cutter for these. Pull away the excess dough, saving the scraps for rerolling, and carefully lift the rounds onto the baking sheets with a spatula, leaving about 1 1/2 inches between the cookies. (This is a soft dough and you might have trouble peeling away the excess or lifting the cutouts; if so, cover the dough, chill it for about 15 minutes and try again.) After you’ve rolled and cut the second packet of dough, you can form the scraps intoa disk, then chill, roll, cut and bake.

The First Few!

If you are making slice-and-bake cookies, use a sharp thin knife to slice the dough into 1/4-inch-thick rounds, and place the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1 1/2 inches of space between the cookies. 6. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 9 to 11 minutes, rotating the sheet at the midpoint. The cookies should feel firm, but they should not color much, if at all. Remove the pan from the oven and dust the cookies with sugar or cinnamon sugar, if you’d like. Let them rest for 1 minute before carefully lifting them onto a rack to cool to room temperature.

Repeat with the remaining dough, cooling the baking sheets between batches.

One of these things is not like the other…

Storing: The cookies will keep at room temperature in a tin for up to 1 week. Wrapped well, they can be frozen for up to 2 months.

Enjoy!

So here in Canada it was thanksgiving this weekend! Of course I was in charge of two things, decorating the table and baking. Last year I made this pecan pie, which I saw on Martha Stewart one day. I have actually never made a pumpkin pie and decided I wanted to this year! Well, I guess technically I still haven’t. I made a large pumpkin tart, and little pumpkin tartlets.

My aunt gave me a large tart pan for Christmas and I still haven’t christened it! So I decided it was time to tart it up!..or at least bake one. For my birthday my boss bought me a new cookbook, this book, Baking: From my Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. So I decided to look through it for a potential thanksgiving recipe! I came across the recipe for a pumpkin pie/tart and gave it a try. It was sooo good. I made it a week or two ago for a dinner with my cousins, so I could test it out! It was de-lish. So I decided it would be a great thanksgiving dessert. You can make this as a pie, but if you use it for a large tart, you have enough filling left over for little tarts! which is what I did.

If you love pumpkin pie {like me!}, I would definitely try it as a tart!

Here’s the recipe from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie (or Tart)
(If you make this as a tart, you’ll have filling left over, which you can use to make mini-tartlets; bake the minis at 400 degrees F for 10 to 15 minutes.)

- makes 6 to 8 servings -
Adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours

Ingredients:

1 9-inch single crust Pie Dough , partially baked and cooled, or one 9-inch tart shell , partially baked and cooled
2 cups (canned) unsweetened pumpkin puree
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/3 cup sour cream
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
Pinch of ground cloves
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of salt
3 tablespoons dark rum <— I left this one out!**
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
Lightly sweetened lightly whipped cream, for topping

Directions:

Getting ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 450°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone baking mat and put the pie plate (or tart pan) on it.

Put all of the filling ingredients in a food processor and process for 2 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice. Alternatively, you can whisk the ingredients together vigorously in a mixing bowl. Rap either the work bowl or mixing bowl against the counter to burst any surface bubbles, and pour the filling into the crust.

Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 300°F and continue to bake for 35 to 45 minutes longer (20 to 25 minutes for a tart), or until a knife inserted close to the center comes out clean. (If you don’t want to create a slash in your masterpiece, tap the pan gently—if the custard doesn’t jiggle, or only jiggles a teensy bit in the very center, it’s done.) Transfer the pie (or tart) to a rack and cool to room temperature.

Serving: Pumpkin pie and whipped cream are naturals and, if you’ve tested the pie’s doneness with a knife, you might want to serve the whipped cream as a cover-up. I like this pie chilled, but others are fans of it at room temperature – decide for yourself.

Storing: Like most pies, this one is best served the day it is made. However, you can make the pie early in the day and keep it refrigerated until needed.