January 2015 Wrap Up

I gave the oven (and myself!) a bit of a break this month and didn’t do as much baking. Or at least it felt that way until I started writing it all out for this blog post – I guess I ended up baking more than I thought! But the month didn’t fly by in a haze of flour and sugar, so it seem like I was baking as often. I tried out a few recipes I’d wanted to taste and decorated some cakes and cookies I was really happy with.

Breads & Muffins

We are all fans of eggnog in our house, but by the end of the holidays, there is usually a carton in the fridge being ignored. I’ve made different muffins and scones in the past as part of my holiday baking, and this year I tried a new muffin recipe for eggnog oatmeal muffins. I liked the texture of the muffins, but the eggnog flavor was very subtle.

I had part of a can of pineapple chunks leftover and have always read rave reviews of banana bread (and carrot cakes) made with pineapple, so I thought it was time to try out one recipe. I made this banana pineapple coconut loaf that calls for crushed pineapple, so I used my potato masher to crush the pineapple chunks. I used only 1/2 cup of sugar and didn’t measure the bananas – I just used 2. The texture of the bread was more fluffy and crumbly than my usual banana bread recipe, so it was difficult to cut. Roy prefers the more dense and moist banana breads and wasn’t a huge fan of the pineapple pieces, and neither was Leighton. Riley and I were happy to eat it though! If I make this again, I’d add in a 3rd banana to see the difference in texture. And I’d really like to try it with fresh pineapple and not canned.

I tried a few loaves of the sourdough bread that I mentioned last month, but have yet to have consistent success. I made one great loaf and 2 that weren’t edible (in my opinion anyway, although Leighton still was happy to eat it!). I have the starter in the fridge and will pull it out and start feeding it again to see if I can get another good loaf. If I ever figure it out, I will share the recipe I have found that works!

Brownies & Bars

Although I am not a huge choc-o-holic (I’d usually choose salty snacks over sweet treats), I do enjoy sharing the Snickers bars that the kids get on Halloween! I’ve come across lot of different copycat recipes on Pinterest, and this recipe for homemade Snickers bars has always intrigued me. I am so glad I tried it out because it was super simple and really delicious, and for those of you not wanting to turn on the oven – this recipe is for you! I made a few changes for my version: I used a 9×9 pan, I used roasted salted peanuts, and I used milk chocolate chips. You can cut the bars really small, so one pan goes a long way. I highly, highly recommend these!

The tub of marshmallow fluff I used for the homemade Snickers was originally intended for some fluffernutter or s’mores bars. Because I used it all for the Snickers, I had to go buy some more so I could try out these other two recipes! The recipe for the fluffernutter bars made a delicious peanut butter cookie bar, but I thought the marshmallow fluff was wasted in them and wasn’t a necessary addition at all. I love the idea of the soft peanut butter cookie bar, but if I wanted to make it as a fluffernutter, I’d just layer some marshmallow fluff between two slabs of the cookie bars instead!

I used more of the jar of marshmallow fluff to make this recipe for s’mores bars. The only change I made was to use milk chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet. These were a big hit, and I thought they tasted better on day two because the graham cracker flavor really came through.

Cakes & Cupcakes

I made two pretty cakes for the same day at the beginning of the month – a snowy hills train cake for Emily’s 2nd birthday and a snowflake & rose cake for Bryn’s 1st birthday. They both incorporated snowflakes and names on snowflakes, as I detailed in this collection (all of the inspiration photos are linked there as well). I also made some blue mini snowflake cupcakes to accompany the snowy hills train cake.

Bryn’s mom, Shelise, had asked if I could do a lemon cream cheese filling for the cake (I made this lemon cream cheese buttercream with this lemon curd) and if I could do something other than plain buttercream on the outside, so I made a crusting cream cheese icing (using these two recipes: 1, 2).

The filling and cream cheese buttercream were so delicious and I had some leftover that I didn’t want to waste, so I asked Kim and Chris if they wanted a cake. I quickly baked a vanilla cake and decorated it as a very simple purple ruffle cake and sent it home with Kim for dinner dessert (she confided that the icing smelled so good in the car that she took a swipe with her finger while she was driving home! And they almost ate it for dinner, but ended up eating some and then having dinner later!).

As I’ve shared before in my chocolate and vanilla cake recipes post, we love the Smitten Kitchen Best Birthday Cake, and as I’ve done for the past 5 or 6 years, I made it with custard for Roy’s birthday. It’s always a big hit with Roy and Leighton, but Riley still isn’t sold on the custard!

Cookies

I made two sets of decorated sugar cookies this month. The first collection was for Charlie’s Dad’s 70th birthday, and I did an assortment of 70s, cupcakes, candles, and happy birthday messages. The second set was a wedding gift for one of Roy’s employees to serve at the informal post-wedding celebration she and her new husband held after they eloped earlier in the month. I was excited to make these simple black and white bride and groom cookies (inspiration) and then added in a few wedding date and message cookies as well (inspiration: 1, 2, 3).

Decorations & Toppers

All of the toppers I did this month were for the two cakes I made. For the snowy hills train cake, I made the train cake topper, snowflake #2 topper, snowflake name, and positionable snowflake toppers. For the snowflake cupcakes, I made the double layer snowflake toppers. And for the snowflake & rose cake, I made the snowflake #1 topper and the snowflake name.

Scones & Biscuits

I made two new scone recipes this month. The first was this recipe for dill and cheddar scones. I made a few changes: I halved the recipe, I used 1/2 cup butter, and I baked at 375 for 18 minutes on a silpat. The texture was great and I liked the flavor to accompany soup for dinner, but I don’t think the rest of my family appreciated the dill as much as me!

I combined two recipes (1, 2) for lemon poppyseed scones to come up my own based on preferences and what I had in the fridge:

2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
3.5 tsp baking powder (maybe more would help lighten up the Greek yogurt)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp poppyseeds (1 – 1.5 would likely be a good amount)
8 Tbsp butter
2/3 cup Greek yogurt
1 egg
1/4 cup lemon juice
zest of 2 lemons

I made 12 scones and baked at 400 for 14 minutes on a Silpat.

I really enjoyed these, but the texture wasn’t fantastic after the first day, although the flavor was still okay. Because of the glaze on top, I didn’t refresh them in the oven, but I am wondering if that would have helped the texture. I am guessing the Greek yogurt caused them to be more dense after day 1.