SMiLes by Meg

Tag: candy

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 …

Peanut Brittle

Back to Christmas cookie boxes this week with one of the two non-cookie recipes I put in the boxes this year: peanut brittle. I think it’s fitting to still be sharing cookie box recipes because some of the cookie boxes I mailed out (3 day priority mail about 2 weeks before Christmas) just this week got to their destinations. USPS needs its funding restored. Anyways, peanut brittle went in the boxes this year as a compromise. I really wanted to try to recreate Williams-Sonoma peppermint bark, but then once I started looking at recipes realized it was a project in …

Gingerbread House

Like everyone else on Instagram, I decided this was the right weekend for a gingerbread house. Next weekend is Cookie Weekend (if you live in DC and want a box of cookies, please let me know!) and the weekend after that is Ravioli Weekend and the weekend after that is Christmas, so there really was no other time to do this. I’ve had a set of gingerbread house cookie cutters for a couple of years now, but hadn’t yet successfully baked the components in a way that they would fit together to make a house. I decided I needed a …

Kit Kat Cookies

I think the complexity of my baking actually increases the busier I am at work. This probably makes sense, since baking is one of my favorite stress relief activities, but still is a bit counterintuitive. So this weekend, when I had a lot going on for work, I wanted to make something that was a bit more time-intensive. I also saw these cookies on Cloudy Kitchen’s instagram and couldn’t get them out of my head. Kit Kat bars are my favorite standard candy bar most of the time (Butterfingers are my favorite specifically when I’m golfing with my dad). And …

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 …

Homemade Reese’s Cups

My Instagram followers were very excited about this recipe, so I wanted to get it up early enough in your Sunday that you would still have time to make them before the weekend was over! Also, if you don’t follow me on Instagram, but are interested in sneak peeks of what I’m making and gratuitous pictures of my cat sitting at the counter, you can find me as @smilesbymeg. Basically this came about through some mindless scrolling of my NY Times Cooking app, which I was really on to find a dinner recipe (I settled on pumpkin coconut curry). Then …

Chocolate Peanut Butter S’mores

I’d love to tell you a cute story about my weekend, but I’m trying to beat the buzzer getting this posted on Sunday. TL;DR: Erik visited, which made it my absolute favorite weekend of the summer, despite working over the holiday. Now for some baking! First, make the peanut butter cookies. Start by grinding up the peanuts in a small food processor. n a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar on medium high speed for about 2 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolk and beat to combine. Add the maple syrup …

Whopper Cookies

This recipe comes from a text Erik sent me (probably a month ago) saying that I HAD to make these cookies and how good they were. Well, he’ll be here in 3 days, and he wasn’t wrong – I just hope there’s still some left when he gets here! First, melt some butter. And by some, I mean quite a bit. Next, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. Set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together the melted butter, sugar, and brown sugar until no lumps remain. Add the eggs and vanilla extract …

Halvah

Here’s how deciding on this week’s recipe went: Last Wednesday, I start thinking about what I wanted to make. Laura is coming into town to visit, so I think maybe it would be fun to do something a little more hands on and bake together. I decide on macarons. Thursday, I realize Laura won’t actually be in town long enough to make macarons. But that’s OK, I’ll make them myself. They’d be a good Easter recipe, and I should probably practice once first. I start looking at Cloudy Kitchen’s posts. Saturday, Laura is supposed to arrive within an hour and …

Honeycomb and Chocolate Cookie Cake

So this weekend was a baking adventure x 100. I was out in Duxbury, hanging out with all of Team Muncey, and gave my mom the task of picking the dessert I should make for a dinner party we were hosting. She pulled out the Farmhouse Cookbook, which I like a lot, and picked the honeycomb and chocolate cookie cake, which I’ve had my eye on for awhile, so obviously I agreed immediately. My mom went out to buy ingredients, and when she came back, I started the process. And then I stopped, because she “didn’t even think we might …