SMiLes by Meg

Blueberry Cream Cheese Breakfast Buns

We had a very full weekend, and I’m very tired. We spent a lot of time biking around, in the sun, generally enjoying the outdoors, which means I’m sunburnt and ready to go to bed early. But also means I had so much fun, and there’s lots more to come – we’ve got camping trips planned for the next two weekends! So for baking, I was kind of craving some kind of breakfast sweet all weekend. I thought about making pancakes, but then realized this was a blog opportunity, and ended up pulling out my Magnolia Bakery cookbook to see

Blueberry Cheesecake Bars

It’s a rainy day in DC today, and I’m very happy about. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the weeks on end of perfect Fall days, but sometimes you just need an excuse to curl up in cozy clothes all day, drink coffee out of your biggest mug and refuse to leave the apartment. This will be that day. Yesterday was not that day – it was mid-70s, and we had some friends over for pre-dinner roof drinks. After last week’s experiment in keeping the blog post’s baked good for ourselves all week, I was more than ready to

Mixed Berry Crisp

Hi all. Did this post come after midnight? Maybe. Was that because I was having a great Sunday hanging out with my family? Definitely. Don’t worry – Erik informed me I still have 4 hours (ish) Alaska time before this is late. Start by combining the berries, cornstarch, brown sugar, lemon juice and salt in a medium bowl. Spread into an 8×8 pan sprayed with cooking spray. In a large bowl, stir together the oats, almonds, almond meal, brown sugar and salt. Sprinkle in the olive oil and stir until combined. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit. Bake at 375°F

Classic Blueberry Pie

Today’s recipe was both the first thing my mom wanted me to make and the last thing. She started with “please make me something with these blueberries.” Then we went down the rabbit hole of “should we make a braided bread instead?” And then we decided yes, we should definitely make a braided bread. The grocery store disagreed – no yeast to be found anywhere, except the local French bakery, which only had fresh yeast, and that seems like way more work than I wanted. So we came back to blueberry pie, and I got to play with pie stamps!

Blueberry Rhubarb Compote

People will probably have a number of complaints about this post. For example, you may be thinking, “Meg, you just made a Blueberry Rhubarb Galette. You can’t repeat flavor combinations so quickly.” If you have that complaint, you obviously aren’t in Alaska right now. When I arrived in Alaska last week, Erik had acquired, no joke, an entire trash bag full of rhubarb, cut out of a friend’s yard: And then, while I was there, another friend, Nate, brought over a full Tupperware of blueberries he had picked himself along a trail somewhere. When you have access to rhubarb and

Blueberry Rhubarb Galette

When I tried to explain to my brother what a galette was, I told him it was kind of like a deconstructed pie. You use pie dough, it’s filled with fruit, but instead of a pie plate you just kind of fold the edges over themselves and leave it a little open in the middle. He responded, “so hipster pie?” That’s kind of right. But I’d never made one before, so I decided to go for it. And i’m glad I did! Because I then had my friends over for dinner (hi, Josh and Sungho!), and served it for dessert,

Clafoutis

Explaining what exactly Clafoutis is is a difficult thing. I’ve compromised and categorized it as both a pie and a cake, but the dessert itself is somewhere between a souffle, crepe, custard, and pancake. A little light, a little eggy, a little cakey, kind of creamy – you won’t really know what I mean until you try it for yourself. Fortunately, if you started right this second, you could have a piece in an hour.

Lemon Berry Stripe Cake

This weekend I decided to bake something exciting. I had the time. I had a book club (which meant it would disappear quickly). I hadn’t made a cake in far too long. Also, Cate made it a couple weeks ago and I got jealous. So I pulled out Ottolenghi’s Sweet cookbook and found the most colorful, interesting looking cake I could: Lemon Berry Stripe Cake.

Lemon Blueberry Ricotta Cake

It feels like forever ago that I made this cake. (It was Thursday.) I brought it to brunch on Friday with some coworkers, but since then I’ve spent two nights up in Vermont with my cousins, making Friday brunch a distant memory. Fortunately, I remember that it got a lot of compliments.