SMiLes by Meg

Tag: baking

Matzo Crack

Happy Easter! This is a late post because I just got back from seeing my family for the first time since moving to DC, and it was a much needed little getaway. We laughed a lot, spent a lot of time in the sun, and generally just enjoyed some time together. Definitely worth the upcoming week of quarantine while I get tested, etc. I made the recipe for this post before we left so I could leave a treat for our cat sitter. Fortunately, since last week’s post, we were able to get our hands on some matzo, and therefore …

Almond Horn Cookies

This weekend I started a two week vacation, and so far it’s been lovely. Yesterday, Erik and I went for a bike ride around Antietam Battlefield, and this morning I baked cookies and read a book that has been taking me way too long to read. However, we are yet to find matzo in DC, so if anyone has any leads (or boxes to spare) we would be very grateful. The cookies are Passover-friendly, which also means they’re gluten free. They come together quickly, are relatively easy to shape, and look like something you’d find in a real bakery (not …

Blackberry Lime Muffins

I really intended to make a pie today. It’s Pi Day, and it’s a Sunday, and Erik has been patiently waiting for me to make him a pie for six months. But then I remembered the important part about pie – you need to let the dough chill, preferably overnight, which wasn’t going to happen when I started looking at recipes at 1pm this afternoon. The plan had been blackberry pie, so instead I made blackberry muffins. These were quick, made a little more interesting with some lime zest, and will hopefully be a good breakfast/snack/treat for the week. Start …

Brioche

I feel like I’ve been holding out on you. The past couple of months, I’ve been making a LOT of sourdough bread, using a recipe I haven’t posted here. It’s perfect and easy and we don’t buy bread anymore (except when I’m too busy to bake bread and we find our bread box empty mid week). But this will not be the week I share that recipe. Instead, I’m sharing a different sourdough recipe from the same book – one for sourdough brioche. This bread doesn’t taste sour or anything. Sourdough starter just serves as the leavening agent. It tastes …

Rainbow Snickerdoodles

This is going to be a quick post because Erik and I are about to sit down to some much needed Schitt’s Creek time, but this weekend I made some very big cookies that are kind of adjacent to a snickerdoodle. When I think of snickerdoodles, I think of cinnamon. But Hummingbird High’s cookbook had a couple of variations to snickerdoodles that piqued my interest. I mostly want to make her matcha snickerdoodle variety. Unfortunately, the Giant supermarket around the corner most certainly does not have matcha powder as a standard item. They do, though, have rainbow non pareils, so …

Small Batch Boxed Mix Brownies

In my former life as a teacher, I used to bake for my students as a treat every so often. I’d make some really big batch of a recipe (usually cookies) so I had enough for all of my classes and anyone else that stopped by. Want to know what their absolute favorite thing I ever made was? Boxed mix brownies. Just plain old Duncan Hines brownies. As a baking blogger who thinks that she makes brownies much better than what a box can do, I was pretty offended. But there really is something about a boxed mix brownie that’s …

Small Batch Olive Oil Lemon Bars

Happy Valentine’s Day! Erik and I just finished a feast and I’m writing this as I’m about to slip into a food coma powered by Schitt’s Creek on the couch. We ordered cook at home hot pot and it was perfect – lots of delicious food, a fun thing to do. Highly recommend. If you’re in the DC area check it out – Fat Choi Hot Pot. Also in the Valentine’s Day trend, Erik has been talking about how much he loves lemon bars for weeks now, and I thought it was probably a good time to make him some. …

Small Batch Magic Bars

If you’ve known me at any point in my life, you know that a constant is my all time favorite dessert: magic bars. I’ve shared my favorite recipe for them before, and even tried some seasonal variations, but I haven’t made any since COVID started because I know myself and my complete lack of self control. If I made a full pan of magic bars, I would eat a full pan of magic bars. Then, this weekend, Alexandra sent me a recipe for a salted caramel pretzel version that looked great, and reminded me that I was really missing a …

Flourless Chocolate Mini Bundt Cakes

Ends of vacations are the worst. Though as COVID vacations go, this was a pretty good one. Erik and I spent a few days at a cabin where we could go for paddles on my stand up paddle board in the marsh. We saw lots of cool birds. We saw the wild horses at Assateague National Seashore. It’s snowing out right now. And I made these really good mini cakes, the last of which I just ate for second breakfast (first breakfast was cold pizza and a smoothie to cancel out the cold pizza). I bought the mini Bundt pan …

Peanut Butter Miso Cookies

I’ve had these cookies on my list for months. Originally they were going to go in my Christmas cookie boxes, but we had red miso, not white miso, in the fridge, and I like to follow recipes exactly (much to Erik’s general dismay). But now that I’m back in the baking game, I needed to give them a go, especially because they seemed like a perfect cookie to bring with us on our mini vacation this week. I made these cookies last night right before we were going to try an at-home fancy 5 course meal where the restaurant sends …