SMiLes by Meg

Tag: light

Nutmeg Tart

Another rainy weekend, another baking adventure. Since I’m still thoroughly enjoying funemployment, I spent the weekend in Duxbury with my parents. I love being able to hop on a train and be with my family in about an hour, and nothing beats running to the beach and back, even if its pouring rain while you do it. Plus, I’m very into the series of books I’m reading right now (The Wheel of Time – no spoilers, please!), and my favorite place to read is the wood paneled room in their home, snuggled up on the recliner with a big fluffy …

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

This week the humidity finally broke, meaning mornings and nights were once again bearable for baking. To take advantage, and because I had promised a friend I’d bring dessert to dinner on Friday (hi, Josh!), I decided to make something from my pre-blog life that I was actually astonished I hadn’t posted before: Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes. These cupcakes were a team dinner staple at the Baran household in high school (hi, Jen!), and I always had at least two. I made them once or twice in college, but college was pre-SMiLes by Meg, and I have no idea why …

Sesame Seed Cookies

To be honest, I did NOT want to turn on the oven today. It is ridiculously hot. And while we have AC in the bedroom, there is not AC in the rest of the apartment. The thought of taking a kitchen that was already 90+° and turning an oven up to 375° seemed insane. But after spending a lot of time looking through no-bake and icebox recipes, I just couldn’t find anything I was actually excited about. And I’ve been meaning to make these cookies for weeks, since I found them and thought they sounded interesting. So I sucked it …

Gevulde Speculaas

Another week, another of Ottolenghi’s Sweet recipes. This time, in looking for something fittingly sophisticated for a book club meeting, I settled on a cookie that looked rich in spices and like it would pair equally well with tea or red wine, depending on what road the night took. Plus, the contrasting colors make for an impressive display, which never hurts when you’re laying out a spread of food for guests.

Strawberry Shortcake

Happy Easter! After a wonderful day with family out in Duxbury, I’m still not quite ready to go back to school work, so blogging it is! This year’s Easter recipe evolved quite a bit from its original idea, and strangely went from more adventurous to more traditional, rather than vice versa. Every year, my mom and I think it will be a good idea to make some big and beautiful Easter dessert, and every year we all get too full on brunch to actually eat dessert, leaving full cakes untouched. This year, I wanted to be cognizant of that.

Peppermint Meringues

Christmas is a week away and I still haven’t made my cookie tins! Looks like I know what I’ll be doing in my five days post-finals (other than all of the shopping I’ve been neglecting). You can count on the fact that I’ll be making these again for my tins. They were surprisingly easy, and seem to hold up really well when rattling around in a tupperware all day, which means they are perfect cookie tin cookies. Bonus: they look super impressive.

Premium Chocolate Mousse

Last week, I told you I’d be doing two weeks of pie posts from Thanksgiving. But then, on Tuesday, I made a recipe that changed everything: Chocolate Mousse out of my Science of Good Cooking Cookbook. You can wait on pumpkin pie – this recipe is an immediate need-to-know. In fact, I think The Science of Good Cooking may be making its way into my regular rotation of cookbooks.

Nutella Rice Krispie Treats

Good thing it’s Daylight Savings Time, or I wouldn’t have gotten this blog post up in time! I was really torn about whether to bake this week, because I made some chocolate cupcakes with butterscotch filling last week, and had been kind of planning on using those. But then I decided that since the base chocolate cupcakes were the same as ones I have made in the past, I couldn’t use a slight variation on them. Instead, at around 6pm today, I asked my roommate for some ideas on desserts I could make quickly, and she recommended Rice Krispie Treats. …

Simple Fruit Tart

I’m writing this post from my phone, sitting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I decided not to bring my laptop and the house decided not to have super consistent internet. Overall, this is a great feature, because it means I spend much more of my time hiking and biking and reading than looking at a screen. However, when it came time to blog, it did make it a little trickier. 

Eclairs

Happy Mother’s Day! This year, we started a new tradition – my cousin Kim and I cooked brunch for all the mothers on my dad’s side of the family – my mom, her mom (hi Gail!), our grandmother, and my godmother (our aunt). Brunch is my favorite meal to cook, but terribly difficult to make dessert for – it’s already pretty sweet, and everyone tends to feast and get full since it’s the first meal of the day.