I’m going to be honest here and admit that these lemon bars were made months ago for Max’s baptism! I know, I know, I have been Miss Lagger McGee over here with my posts. What happened to Linda’s Love in the past two months? I’ve been very busy and stressed out with leaving my old job, graduating school, looking for a new job, and now leaving my new job. I won’t speak about it for two reasons: 1) Those of you who know me are probably sick of hearing abotu it, and 2) I’d like to leave painful memories behing I’m kidding. Half kidding I usually do bake more when I’m stressed, but it also can get pricey, so I’ve been laying low in that department. I’ve been baking actually, but haven’t had teh time to blog about it. I’ve also been making a lot of repeats like the S’mores cookies, since they are so easy and always such a hit.
But about these lemon bars! With summer approaching (when I was baking these) and now that it’s fully here, all I want to bake are citrusy desserts. I combined a few basic lemon bar recipes and made these. They tasted great, although I over baked them. Also, I repeated one of my first mistakes, which was to skimp on materials. Since I still don’t have a food processor, I made the shortbread part from hand. I’m not sure what exactly went wrong, but I think I didn’t incorporate the butter into my dough well enough. After I added the lemon filling and baked it, the lemon part didn’t stick very well to the bread part. So even though it tasted yummy, the lemon filling and bread separated almost every time. Who wants to donate to “Linda needs a awesome-tastic food processor” fund? Any takers? Why is it so quoet out there???
I know. It’s been a minute since I’ve posted anything. Who knew being out of school would be busier than finishing up? I’ve actually been baking, just not documenting. I’m not so good about snapping shots of my goodies. But in the past few weeks, I’ve made cake pops three times, one of which was for my first actual order! Although it ended up working out, I won’t even go into the madness that ordeal was. I made super gooey, chewy chocolate chip peanut butter cookies – which were bomb. I think there was something else too, but I forget.
For Max’s baptism, I made lemon bars (see next post) and S’mores cookies again, since they were just a hit. This time, I almost quadrupled the graham cracker crumb amount, and used actual crumbs from the box, instead of crushing actual crackers. It was simple and tasted so good. I baked them a minute longer before adding the chocolate chunks and marshmallows, but I think next time I’ll even leave them in a bit longer. They were chewy, gooey, and flipping tasty. I think I also decreased the amount of salt by a smidgen too, with all the extra graham cracker crumbs.
I can’t wait to make these suckers again. They were a big hit, and seem to be the only thing I’ve baked so far that pretty much everyone likes. One of my sister’s friends even said this was the best cookie he’s ever eaten. Hi! My name is Linda and my head is getting bigger by the second! Almost all the cookies went, which is great for me since my booty would hate me if they were laying around just waiting (and not for long) to be inhaled.
These aren’t anything special or cool. It was a Wednesday night and with no school to stress about, I couldn’t very well just sit there could I? I dug into my pantry and found some oatmeal, orange flavored cranberries from Trader’s, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and the usual dough business. Threw them all in a bowl and scooped them into the oven. No one tried these either. I gave the batch to my mom who took them to work.
Over all, they were decent. The recipe I adapted from Kacey’s Kitchen called for rolled oats, but being that I don’t eat oatmeal and was also too much of a FF (Duonger lingo) to go to the store, I used whole grain instant oatmeal. I ate about 5 cookies. Hey, I had to test them out at each stage: just out of the oven, five minutes out of the oven, cooled completely, on a napkin, on my bare hands… you get the point. Not a bad batch, but after the unnecessary sugar intake, I did manage to haul myself to the gym. Max liked them I think…
Cherry! Coke! Cherry Coke! And sugar free Cherry Coke? Shut the front door, this cannot be. Thanks to Kayte, I just discovered this guilt free drink (nope, harmful, artificial sweetners don’t scare me). Not bad. And it reminded me of a recipe I recently saw around the blogs – Cherry Coke cupcakes. I mean, mind as well be chocolate dipped Redvines coated in sugar plum clouds and cotton candy rainbows… I had to try it.
To be honest, the recipe from Annie’s Eats just looks like some science experiment. It doesn’t particularly make sense to me, but then again, not many things in my life do. I love it. The ingredients are:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
3 tbsp. cocoa powder
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
¾ cup sugar
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 large egg
½ cup buttermilk
¾ cup Coca-Cola
¼ tsp. maraschino cherry juice
2 tsp. vanilla extract
Maraschino cherries, stemless
There was also a Cherry Coke “glaze” deal that is basically powdered sugar and coke. Definitely interesting, but not really something I can’t live without. Then for the topping, I just made what the recipe called for, whipped cream.
As you can see, the cupcakes came out adorably! Cherry Coke taste, not so much, which I was not surprised about. I wonder why the recipe didn’t call for Cherry Coke itself, instead of regular Coke. Annie? Anyhow, the whipped cream was super yummy. I know it’s a basic thing to make, but it was my first time and I burn toast. So go ahead Lin, brush your shoulders off They tasted pretty good, although not Cherry Coke-y at all. Interestingly, they taste like gingerbread and have this quaint holiday feeling to them.
Who knows, you all tell me. I like them, but I feel like it’s a misnomer to refer to them as Cherry Coke cupcakes. What about Cupcake Sundae? Gingerbready-But-Not Cupcakes? I hear crickets… Any ideas people?
Yeah baby!
- The cupcake itself is moist and has that interesting “I can’t put my finger on it” quality.
- Whipped Cream came out perfectly. I started with one tablespoon of confectioner’s sugar and slowly kept adding more while whisking it until I came to a taste and consistency that I liked.
- Piping frostings instead of spooning them is so much easier. I did wish I were one of those freaks that can do it with a spoon and make it look effortlessly rustic.
- These things, good or not, are freaking cute!
Mmmm, not so much…
- Not enough Coke flavor. Maybe that’s a good thing. I mean, who wants to eat Coke in dough form?
- Maybe using fresh cherries would taste better, and instead of using the Maraschino juice, grenadine might produce a more pronounced punch. Or!… What if I cut up a bunch of fresh cherries into small pieces and added them to the batter? That could be insane!
- I was debating during mixing the ingredients whether I should add more cocoa powder. Having a chocolatey taste would have made it more tasty. (How come “tasty” doesn’t have an “e” in it? Weird.) Next time I’ll try to follow my instincts more.
Since I have finals next week (yeah! I’m done with school!), I can’t spend much time baking anything this weekend. So I decided to do a mid-week session, and as I haven’t yet ventured into cookies, that sounded like a natural choice. I’ve made cookies before, mostly chocolate chip and peanut butter (I actually made some awesome Tagalongs last month), so I wanted to do something different, but the kicker was that it had to be something The Matador would eat. Anything with cream cheese and banana are out. It would have to be chocolate. And loads of it.
After perusing some cookbooks and surfing the blogs for a few hours (while I should have been working, or studying, or you know, being productive), I couldn’t find anything fun. And then, it popped into my head. S’mores! Who doesn’t like s’mores??? They have graham crackers, which you can eat with basically anything; chocolate, which needs no justification at all, and MARSHMALLOWS – the funnest food ever – except for maybe cotton candy or kettle corn. (Yes, I know ‘funnest’ isn’t technically a word, but I like it so get used to it!)
I looked around and found a couple of recipes that had some variations, but generally had the same gist. The trick was the marshmallows. To get them to stay somewhat in tact but get a little gooey, you can’t just incorporate them into the dough. Then with the chocolate, you have to have Hershey’s chocolate, or it won’t be authentic.
I crushed and incorporated the graham crackers into my cookie dough, added chocolate chips (just about a cup, not as much as I would for chocolate chip cookies), then put them in the oven. Halfway through baking, I pulled them out and at the speed of lighting (or maybe more like “run, Forrest, run!) and added mini marshmallow and chunks of broken up Hershey’s. Then I put them back into the oven for the second half.
The cookies came out pretty tasty, but didn’t have enough graham cracker taste. So with the second and third batches, I added more. I’d even do a whole box next time. The marshmallows and chocolate were gooey. They did that pizza cheese stringy thing when pulled away from your mouth. Yum. I would have liked a toasty taste that you get from the burnt marshmallows, but not sure how to do that one. Anyone have any ideas?
Hooray!
- I’ve learned to combine the dry ingredients separately from the wet, which I think makes for a better cookie texture.
- Adding the marshmallows and Hershey’s chocolate on top of the cookie halfway through gives it a more authentic touch.
Boo!
- I think the dough was a little too salty. Especially with the graham cracker crumbs, it was a tad bit apparent.
- More graham crackers! And what might be fun too is to do both graham cracker crumbs and bigger chunks in the dough.
- I don’t think the cookies look very pretty. They just look like confused blobs. But not sure how to make it more aesthetically appealing. What do you think?
« Older posts
|
no comments