December 11, 2009 • 11:09 pm
Has it been nearly a year since Amanda and I have updated? But I’ve baked so much! There were some amazing brownies from the King Arthur Flour recipe, a pumpkin cheesecake for a Thanksgiving party with my co-workers, a ridiculous toffee-marshmallow-chocolate shortbread tart over the summer. And what about our birthday cake? It was incredible, people. A Guinness chocolate cake, a layer of Bailey’s ice cream, all covered in a dark chocolate ganache. Absolutely the best thing I’ve ever made!
Well, this unexpected hiatus is over. Expect some recipes soon as Amanda and I begin holiday cookie baking. There may even be an encore of that birthday cake. It was that good.
Filed under: Mary
February 17, 2009 • 7:44 am
So two weeks ago I had this brilliant idea to bake chocolate cupcakes with raspberry frosting for Rebecca’s small group. They just looked so adorable! So I did bake them, and they were adorable, only it turns out I honestly just don’t like raspberry. (Which I guess isn’t really a problem, considering they were for Rebecca and her girls, not me.) What was a problem was all the leftover raspberry frosting in my refrigerator.
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Filed under: Mary , cookies, martha stewart
February 12, 2009 • 9:32 am
I promise I bake things other than muffins. Really. I might even bake cookies this weekend! (My friend’s birthday is on Valentine’s Day.) First I have to address these muffins, though. Just look how delightful!
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Filed under: Amanda , muffin, whole-wheat
February 8, 2009 • 4:38 am
It seems that nearly every person in the food-blogosphere is, or was at some point, on the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Me, I’m not so concerned about the holy grail of chocolate chip cookies. Cheesecake, maybe I could get into that (if I had the time… and, let’s be honest, the money– cream cheese is expensive!). But you’d be hard-pressed to find a cookie I didn’t like, so the idea of putting in all the effort to find my perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe holds little appeal. There are so many other wonderful cookies I could be baking!
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Filed under: Mary , cookies
February 2, 2009 • 4:25 am
Honestly, the only way to motivate myself into doing schoolwork is to bake. I’ve been reasonably productive over the weekend, but I really need to do some honest-to-goodness studying this afternoon. The only thing keeping me from baking prolific amounts of muffins, cookies, and cupcakes right now is the fact that I have plans to bake tomorrow for Rebecca’s small group as well. So I decided to keep it quick (I do have studying to do, you know!) and simple.
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Filed under: Mary , martha stewart, whole-wheat
January 30, 2009 • 1:05 am
Although you wouldn’t know it based on the recent chronicles of my baking ventures, I am a cupcake person. Indeed I am. Leave Amanda to her healthy bran muffins; I want a cupcake filled– and frosted!– with sugary goodness.
So when I realized this morning that my remaining two bananas were wonderfully brown, I knew what I wanted to bake: banana cupcakes. Amanda and I made these, oh, probably two or three years ago from Martha Stewart’s recipe, so I decided to use it again (although, I admit, I don’t particularly remember how our earlier attempt turned out). Martha calls for 1 and 1/2 cups of mashed bananas, which she translates to about 4 bananas. As I only had two, I simply halved the recipe. (Incidentally, I ended up with seven cupcakes instead of six, as one would expect. Not that I mind.)
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Filed under: Mary , cupcake, martha stewart
January 27, 2009 • 8:30 am
I don’t care too much for Sandra Lee (her tablescapes really intimidate me, I’m not kidding), but I have to admit: it’s how the average person cooks. I can’t always make everything from scratch; I have neither the time nor the ambition. Today especially, time has been a commodity I just don’t have. By the time I got home from class and discipleship this afternoon, I needed something quick and easy to bake for Rebecca’s small group (their second meeting of the semester). Fortunately I had the forethought… or maybe the lack of will-power… last week to buy brownie mix (it was on sale buy one get one free at Publix!). But me being me, I couldn’t just follow the directions on the back of the box and send along any ol’ brownies. Oh no, no, no.
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Filed under: Mary , cookies
January 25, 2009 • 12:18 am
I have an 8am class this semester. Really, I am a morning a person, but that’s a little early even for me. Needless to say, I don’t have time to sit down for breakfast on my weekdays anymore. So sad! Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day (mainly because it’s an excuse for coffee and carbs). What’s a girl to do? Bake muffins, of course!
In an attempt to make a muffin that would be healthy and satisfying, I made Pumpkin Bran Muffins from a recipe that I found on recipezaar. It had great reviews, but honestly I wasn’t very impressed. I mean, it was good, but not that good. I won’t be making it again. Ah well, there’s a long semester ahead of me and plenty more muffin recipes to be tried…
Filed under: Amanda , muffin, whole-wheat
January 21, 2009 • 8:42 am
Due to my determined procrastination on schoolwork over the holiday weekend, I had heaps of reading and translating to do once I got off work this afternoon. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like things that need to be done to make me want to bake instead. (It’s stress relief! or I need a break from studying!) But I was (fairly) studious this afternoon and accomplished most of the reading and the Latin translation for classes tomorrow.
What to do to celebrate such a productive day? Bake, of course! I actually made some muffins on Sunday (slightly modified from Joy the Baker’s recipe again– I used dried cranberries instead of blueberries). My mornings are usually pretty rushed, and I figured muffins would be an easy and healthy thing to grab for breakfast on my way out the door. I should have realized that between my roommate and me, these muffins would not last until the end of the week. Breakfast? Snack? Dessert? Those muffins have been all of those things for the past three days.
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Filed under: Mary , muffin, whole-wheat
January 13, 2009 • 6:53 am
So in addition to being a full-time student and part-time employee, I am also the honorary “mother” of my roommate’s freshmen ministry small group. I don’t quite remember how I earned this position, but sometime last semester I decided to send cupcakes with Rebecca to her small group… and the next week I sent cookies… and every week after that I sent her with some baked good or another. (Incidentally, all the girls made me the most adorable thank-you notes towards the end of the semester. You know, with big bubble letters and hearts and everything. It was awesome.)
When I got home from classes around 4:00 this afternoon, I realized that today is the first small group meeting of the semester! Time to throw something together fast. Last week I devised some elaborate plan to make mini-trifles based on my amazing almond-chocolate pudding that I mentioned in passing a few posts ago, but that brilliant plan will have to wait for some other week since I don’t have the necessary ingredients hanging out in the pantry.
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Filed under: Mary , cookies
