SMiLes by Meg

Tag: pistachio

Cherry Pistachio Oatmeal Cookies

This was one of those weekends where the only way I was going to have time to bake was if I pulled out Weeknight Baking. And made drop cookies, which are, besides bar cookies, the least time intensive baked good I can make. In looking at cookies, I decided to go with an oatmeal base, because I like the chewiness that comes with that. However, I am a firm anti-raisin baker, so I needed something else to go in them. Fortunately, Weeknight Baking had a solution: cherries and pistachios. Dried cherries are actually my favorite dried fruit. They’re a bit …

Mint Chocolate Pistachio Fridge Cake

The best-tasting treats are not necessarily the prettiest things I make, even if that rainbow cake was pretty delicious. No, they’re the dump-everything-into-a-bowl-and-hold-it-together-with-chocolate recipes. They’re quick to make, clean out your pantry, and give you just the right amount a sweet and crunchy. Take this Mint Chocolate Pistachio Fridge Cake. Maybe you have chili chocolate, or salted chocolate in your kitchen. That’s fine – use that instead! Or maybe pistachios aren’t your thing, but you’ve got pecans and walnuts. Perfect! And maybe you’re someone that just doesn’t like rum-soaked raisins (I can’t imagine why). Try whiskey-soaked dried cherries. This recipe …

Baklava

Baklava is one of those recipes where you think it must be super complex (there are so many layers!), but when you actually make it, you realize there aren’t that many ingredients, and the process is fairly simple. I wouldn’t have believed any of this, but Sandy, whose recipes have appeared on my blog in the past (Trout Farm Apple Pie, Mud Pie, Oh Henry Bars), gave me a pan and her recipe for Christmas. So obviously I had to give it a try. Now, to be honest, this was actually my second attempt at Baklava. When she first gave …

Classic Cherry Pie

This is Part 1 of 2 Thanksgiving pie posts coming at you in the next couple of weeks. Good news: they can just as easily be Christmas pies (if you don’t make the one true Christmas dessert: Chocolate Trifle), so keep these on hand as the holiday parties start piling up. Also, I’ve done a little bit of test kitchen work on these, trying out different pie crust recipes and combining some filling recipes to figure our what works well together. The results were pretty good, and have made for some tasty breakfasts in the Thanksgiving aftermath.

Chocolate Pistachio Cookies

Fact: baking with friends makes Saturday afternoons infinitely more fun. Shout out to the wonderful Laura Bakst for indulging me in my last minute plea for company while I was pretending not to have real responsibilities.

Pistachio Cookies

Summer has this really annoying way of seeming like it stretches on forever until all of a sudden the other end of it is almost here and you’re running out of time. Last weekend, my mom and I were casually browsing travel books while we planned our trip. Today we are in a position, two weeks from being in London,  where we should really have hotel accommodations booked.