SMiLes by Meg

What's Cooking

Bourbon-Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches

I don’t think I’m patient enough to make ice cream sandwiches. I can make cookies – those are quick. I can make ice cream – at least then I can throw it in the freezer and let it finish making itself. But I’m not good at the make-ice-cream-then-wait-long-enough-but-not-too-long-to-fill-the-cookies part of things. This time, I ended up with too melty ice cream when I wanted to fill the sandwiches. Sometimes I end up with rock hard ice cream that doesn’t sandwich well. Someday I’ll find the right balance. Either way, These are filled in my freezer right now, and I think …

Creme Fraiche Scones

Happy Easter! This is the first year (I think in my entire life) where I’m not home with my family for Easter. 2020 is a weird year. I was feeling pretty sad about it (and still am, to be honest), but decided that I would make the best of it, so Madison and I are having a little Easter brunch of our own! We exchanged Easter bags, because we don’t have baskets, and I’ve already started my chocolate consumption for the day. For brunch, I made scones, supplemented with mimosas in fancy glasses, of course. Next up: painting rocks (instead …

Coconut Granola

Not a single person took me up on free delivery of baked goods in Boston last week. How is that possible. How are all of you NOT in need of some cookies for quarantine? Just meant this week I needed to find something to make that I actually could justify for myself. I eat granola every morning, and have made various granola recipes over the year, but hadn’t made one recently, so thought that would be a good option. Last year, before Star Market opened three steps from my door, I was still shopping primarily at Whole Foods. They have …

Brown Butter Blondies

Week 2 of quarantine baking and I still haven’t come up with a good word for it. “Quaranbaking”? “Sugar isolation”? Those are both so bad. If someone has already figured this out, let me know. I’m also quickly realizing that baking treats when you don’t have a kitchen to offload them into is a different experience. This week, a friend in the building requested blondies, so that’s what I made, and now they aren’t in my kitchen! If you live in the Boston area and are looking for something sweet, PLEASE let me know – I will happily make it …

Sweet Potato Bread

There’s a lot going on out in the world these days, but one of the silver linings is that engagement on my baking social media posts is way up – you all must be stuck in the house all day without anything to do or something. For me, baking is a way to bring order and control when I feel like other aspects of my life are not in control. I think a global pandemic is pretty high up there on the “out of control” spectrum, so it was really nice to be able to take an hour this morning, …

Candy Cookies

I’m calling these Candy Cookies because I’ve made M&M cookies before, and these are different enough that they needed their own post. Plus, you could put any kind of candy into these and get a good result – the original recipe from Weeknight Baking actually included sno-caps, too, but sno-caps were inexplicably sold out out every store I checked. They must be good quarantine snacks or something. Regardless, I decided to just double the amount of M&Ms to make up for it, and no one ever complains about double the M&Ms. Start by melting the butter. Just chop it up …

Tahini Brown Sugar Cake

When I picked this recipe, I didn’t mean for it to be a clear-out-the-pantry recipe. And I’m not sure what it says about my pantry that this recipe did clean it out – I only had to buy some buttermilk and unsweetened chocolate, and happened to have everything else on hand. I did pick it entirely because I wanted to use my sprinkles. I didn’t expect this, but leaving the sprinkles in an airtight jar resulted in them all starting to clump together. I’m guessing because our apartment is a bit on the warm side, and maybe because I should …

Sprinkles

This week in life-changing recipes, I learned how to make sprinkles. And I think I’ve found a new favorite thing to make. What’s better than a recipe that eats up 15 total minutes of your day and gives you a product that is infinitely customizable? I found this recipe in Weeknight Baking, which every person needs in their life. The book calls them overnight sprinkles, but I’ve found that most overnight recipes actually work great as over-workday recipes, if you’ve got a bit of time in the morning. For these, I did them on a Thursday morning, and when I …

Caramel Peanut Brownies

“;.////////////////////////////////////p;//” – From Elwynn, who decided to walk across my iPad when I started typing this up. He did capture how I feel about this week though – I could use another 3 weekends right now. But I think that’s just February for you. Fortunately, I did get to spend some time making something new – caramel peanut brownies! Meg Fay, one of the other second years at my firm, has a birthday this week. She requested something “chocolate and peanut butter, or chocolate and caramel” and I was able to find something that was chocolate and peanut AND caramel. …

Fig and Olive Oil Challah

This was fun to make. I’m home for the long weekend, having a girl’s weekend with my mom, and she agreed to humor me and make a complicated braided bread on Saturday night. I love challah, she’d never had challah, and the idea of somehow getting a flavor woven into the challah made it a recipe I couldn’t skip. Start by making the base dough. In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk together the yeast, warm water, and teaspoon of honey. Let sit for 10 minutes until it starts to foam up. Add the remaining honey, olive oil, eggs …