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Me-oh-my, life is swimming in goodness these days. My weeks and weekends have been brimming with sunshine, family, hilarious & kindred friends, Scripture study, exercise (Zumba, olé!), and preparations for MY BROTHER’S QUCKLY APPROACHING NUPTIALS, next Sunday the 20th (more to come on that as the extravaganza unfolds).
As I write this, it is Mother’s Day night. As is typical, I quickly snatched up the opportunity to make something sweet for my family. I adore rhubarb and as it is in season and I have fond memories of it growing in our garden growing up, it was the natural source of inspiration for a Mother’s Day treat.
I went to Food52.com for some ideas and settled with enthusiasm on this rhubarb curd shortbread. It’s essentially a lemon bar, but with rhubarb instead of lemon. Voila:
In the spirit of honesty, I will admit, these were more laborious and time consuming to make than I anticipated with all the pressing of the rhubarb through a strainer, however the end result was worth it. Tart, delicious, the most beautiful shade of pink, and perfect for warm weather.
Happy Spring, y’all!
xo,
Meg
Recently I made my first venture into the world of puff pastry. It was a lovely journey that lasted into the wee hours of the evening, included more butter than I’d like to think about, and provided lots of quality time with my dear sous chef, Kelly.
Much like macarons, puff pastry intimidates me. Or shall I say, intimidatED me. Until I did some real research and dissected what all the fuss was about. Puff pastry is very simple to make. Essentially just layers of flour and butter folded over on themselves over and over with refrigeration in between (which is why it takes so long to make). There are many variations; variations for croissants, variations with more sugar, and simplified ‘rough’ variations like the version I decided to use for my first try. After some poking around on-line I settled on a ‘rough puff’ recipe I found on Martha Stewart’s site that included a corresponding instructional video. (Thank you, God, for the internet.) I then found a simple recipe for peach tarts (it’s Peach-O-Rama, y’all) and below is Ta Da!:
It was somewhat magical to watch these little guys puff up in the oven. They start to bubble up as the water in the dough begins to heat up and evaporate leaving beautiful layers. It’s amazing. This rough puff recipe provides a bit… well.. rougher pastry. It’s denser than traditional puff pastry and reminded me a lot of a really great pie crust. Delish!
Another great video is Ashley Rodriguez’ video from Not Without Salt. I actually recently saw Ashley at a documentary premier we were both at, and we talked briefly about this video (I know, I know, I’m a big deal). I plan on trying her method next, now that I have a little puff pastry experience under my belt.
xoxo,
M
I have a love/hate relationship with cake pops (or rather, cake truffles as they are called if not on a stick). I hate them because they are a total fad, there is nothing homemade about them as they are typically made with boxed cake and canned frosting… although I suppose you could make your own cake and frosting, however I don’t know if they would bind like they need to without all the partially hydrogenated oils.
But then I had one. And it was really really good. And so then I loved them. But only when I could suppress the feeling I was eating a ball of oil. When I forgot about that I loved them. ANYWAY. After realizing how easy they can be to make, I decided to give them a go for roommate, Dawn’s birthday bash. Dawn loves red velvet, so that’s what we did.
Step 1: make a box of red velvet cake:
Done.
{Lovely sous chef, Tulla, was REALLY excited to make the blog. I love her!}
Step 2: Crumble up the cake and mix it with a can of cream cheese frosting:
Step 3: roll mixture into balls:
Step 4 if you are me: melt white chocolate chips and add just a little blue food coloring:
Step 5 if you are me: fail cake truffles because you should have gotten pre-colored melting bark (white chocolate made for melting) like the recipe told you, because white chocolate doesn’t do the job and you should have frozen the balls before coating them in the chocolate because the cake broke off into little bits everywhere from the heat of the chocolate:
Step 6: Put balls in the freezer and go get pre-colored melting bark.
tep 7: take formed cake balls from freezer in batches and roll in melted bark, sprinkle with whatever you want!:
Step 8: Let them cool and gobble them up!
I must say, they were quite the hit at Dawn’s party and were totally fun to make once I really figured out what I was doing.
Many thanks to Tulla for all her hard work and for encouraging me to keep trying after the first failed attempt. Without her encouragement, I don’t think I would have finished. Three cheers for Tulla, she’s the greatest!!!
xo,
Meg
A couple of weeks ago I went to a beautiful baby shower for Mrs. Rachel Louws {pictured above}. The hosts of the shower had made homemade french macarons! I was so inspired. I always assumed these favorite treats of mine were way out of my baking-ability-league, however I was delighted to learn how easy they are to make. For some reason I always assumed they were 1 cookie, cut in half and filled, and with their delicate texture, I was sure they required technique or equipment I did not have.
After hearing from the hosts how easy they were to make, that they essentially 2 cookies sandwiched into 1, and required few ingredients, I was excited to give them a try. I wrangled in one of my very favorite people, Miss Rachel Burke, and with a free, sunny Saturday afternoon on our hands we went for it!
I did realize they could potentially be a little finicky, so went to the internet to search for tips. I found a great blog post with some really helpful tips on how to nail macarons on the first try. Majorly helpful. This post is based off a Martha Stewart recipe.
We decided to go for 3 variations; original (pale pink), vanilla (dark pink), and chocolate (brown). All 3 were incredible. We went for a basic raspberry jam filling to simplify our first try. You can do much more complicated fillings (ganache, buttercreams, etc…) if you’re feeling more adventurous.
Hopefully you too will feel inspired! Go for it!
Love always,
xo,
Meg
Last Sunday Kelly and I went to Ballard bakery Honore’ for an after church catch-up. It was my first time going, and I was super excited as I had heard from several people that it was incredible and had some great backyard seating to boot. You guys, it was so good. And it’s right next to Delancey, so needless to say, I was a happy camper.
Kelly got a ginger scone and something else I can’t remember. I had a Kouign Amann (kind of like a compact, intense croissant… salty-sweet and amazing), and my first ever macaron (not to be confused with a macaroon). Why had I never tried a macaron before?! It was amazing! Mine was toasted coconut and salted caramel. Goodness gracious it was good. Plus pretty incredible coffee. Whew!
Check it out if you are in the neighborhood!
…and Happy 4th! Hope you have a great weekend planned. I’m heading out of the city for some fresh air, family, and friends (fish and fireworks will probably also be involved… but that’s far to many Fs). Sorry for the alliteration.
xo,
Meg
Last Wednesday was maybe one of my favorite days ever. Rachel came down from Bellingham, we went to happy hour after I got off work, and then we were off to our CAKE CLASS with Ashley Rodriguez from Not Without Salt. Here are some highlights:
{pudding-filled chocolate cupcake w/ salted caramel buttercream- WOAH}
{Genoise cake w/vanilla bean buttercream}
{Molton chocolate truffel cake}
{Two happy friends}
This was such a fun class! I highly recommend taking a class through Not Without Salt if you are ever able to. We learned so many little tricks that make such a big difference in your baking. For example- creating a crumb layer of frosting on your cake- to catch the crumbs, putting it in the fridge to harden, and THEN frosting the cake. Or heating your egg whites and sugar over a burner while you whip to melt the sugar into the egg whites. Or just exactly how long you are suppose to cream the butter and sugar before you add the dry ingredients (it’s a LOT longer than I thought!)?
You can find out more about the classes Not Without Salt is offering this summer on the blog site, here.
Happy Friday,
xo,
M
…will you eat some?! Seriously. I’ve been dreaming about making this cake for weeks and have no upcoming occasions to make it for, so might just make it anyway. It’s an orange chocolate chunk cake featured on Smitten Kitchen a while back and I can’t stop thinking about it!
If you are local, don’t be alarmed if you find a few pieces on your doorstep.
xo,
Meg
In case you don’t know, my job at SPU happens to include managing 6 of the most incredible student workers you could ever find. I am constantly floored at how fortunate I am to have such an incredible staff of students and am ridiculously blessed by their presence in my life, every single day. Ok, enough mushy stuff.
Last Saturday I had the girls over for a baking day! How fun is that, right?! On the menu were peanut butter surprise cookies, minty/melty chocolate cookies (unofficial name that I made up), sugar cookies, and APPLE PIE (my first ever pie from scratch)! Thanks to a few Martha recipes, it was a fabulous day.
{prep work}
{Rachel and Marie making the pie dough}
{leaves & hearts}
{before}
{after}
{Christine unwrapping the ‘surprises’}
{Madeline mixing the dry ingredients}
{Ta Da!}
{Minty Melty Awesome-ness}
{Sugar cookie madness!}
Ah, Fall… thank you for your many blessings, including baking days like these.
xo,
M
Fall is obviously here and as the weather has finally changed here in Seattle, I have been keeping busy with lots of indoor activities:
{Macaroons for Dad’s birthday present (Happy Birthday, Dad! Love you!)}
{Yellow cupcakes with milk chocolate frosting (Dad’s fave- also for the birthday celebration).}
{Finished my first ever crocheted blanket and sent it off to Nat and Jules as a housewarming gift.}
{And finally hung this lantern in my room that I bought several months ago.}
Productive or what? And it’s only October! So many more project ideas…
I hope you are enjoying fall as much as I am!
xo,
Meg
It happened:
As of last Monday, I am the proud owner of a Kitchen Aid mixer. I feel like this is the beginning of a new chapter in my life or something?! It’s pretty hilarious how excited I am and how excited other people in my life are for me… people have been congratulating me! The night I brought it home was quite celebratory… as you may be able to tell from the pictures.
Maybe I should name it? Any suggestions? Gladys comes to mind… let me know what you think.
Whatever the name, I am confident that my Kitchen Aid and I will be spending a lot of time together, and with our powers combined tasty treats will flourish from my kitchen for years to come.
Ok, that was cheesy. But seriously, I’m excited. 
{inaugural treats were chocolate chip cookies from Cooking Light. This is actually my favorite CC cookie recipe, cooking light or not}
xoxo,
M
