Muffins

Sigh.... I spend a bit of time last night baking some muffins in the hopes that Mr. Toss everything solid to eat on the floor might try them. This morning he just tossed it straight to the ground without even tasting it. Mind you that may not have been a bad thing. It turns out I forgot to add the sugar so they aren't exactly the tastiest things out there. I may try again tomorrow and see if they are better with the sugar.

Vanilla Chai Cupcakes

Awhile ago I tripped across a recipe for Vanilla Chai Cupcakes on a blog I follow called What Megan's Making.  This blog has many tasty looking recipes.  She has a bunch of pumpkin recipes on there that i need to try as well.  I've been wanting to make these cupcakes for awhile as I love chai, but hadn't gotten around to it.  Today we'll be celebrating Easter with my husband's family and I'm in charge of dessert.  So I thought these would be great.  They turned out pretty well as far as I'm concerned.  They are tasty and they don't look half bad (I'm not always so great on presentation).

My only issue with making these cupcakes was with the cloves.  All I have right now are whole cloves and silly me thought grinding them in a mortar and pestle was going to be easy.  Not so much.  It smelled great, but took forever.  I will be looking for some ground cloves for the next time I make these.

some of the million cupcakes I made

Adventures with Cookies

I've been experimenting with different cookie recipes in the past month.  Usually when I make cookies they are Chocolate Chip Cookies.  My old standby and super tasty.  But, I may not be able to have chocolate at the moment because I'm nursing.  I still haven't quite figured out if chocolate makes my little boy gassy or not.  I haven't quite done a real test yet.  So in the meantime I've been avoiding chocolate and so my forays into non chocolate cookies.  Last week I finally made shortbread for the first time ever.  I didn't realize quite how easy it is to make.  I would have made it a long time ago.

Tonight I wanted to make some cookies but realized I was out of white flour.  I do have lots of whole wheat so to the internet I went in search of a recipe.  And lookie what I found.....Whole Wheat Sugar Cookies.  So I tried making them and yup tasty.  I didn't put the grated orange peel in only because I currently don't have any oranges in the house.

This recipe will indeed be a make again.

My next try are going to be these:  Chinese Restaurant Almond Cookies.  My Mom made them when I was visiting last week and they were super super tasty.

Buttertarts

Well, my buttertarts from the other week turned out quite tasty and nifty, but didn't look so good because I forgot to grease the little tart tins. So I didn't take any pictures of them.

I also discovered I didn't have quite enough tart tins so I didn't get as many as I had hoped. Now I must keep an eye out for at least 8 more tart tins so I can at the very least make 2 dozen.

I'ts Buttertart Time

Today is the day I find out how the homemade pastry I put in the freezer a couple of months ago has done in the freezer. I will be attempting for the first time ever to make completely from scratch my Mom's buttertarts. I hope they end up tasty as I plan to give them to someone as a gifty.

I'll post some photos a little later on should they turn out.

Pasty Success

Our pastry making session was pretty much a success.  We ended up making far more pastry than we actually needed by accident.  But that's ok.  I now have enough pastry put away in the freezer for about 4 more pies.

We did have one accident with the pastry making.  We had several Deep Dish pie plates and a couple of shallow ones.  We had a cherry pie filing for one of the pies.  When we put it into one of the deep dish ones it kind of,  well, wasn't quite enough.  So the brilliant group of us decided to try a whole pastry transfer to a shallow plate.  Didn't work too well as you can see from the photo, but it was funny as all hell and we named our cherry pie "Victim Pie".

All in all it turned out fairly well.  I need to work on my pastry rolling skills.  I found it wasn't as thin as my Mom's usually is.  But that will come with time.  We may try the blind baking too so the crust doesn't get to soggy too.

All the pies together

The bats

The great pie transfer

The Victim Pie

Pastry

Today is the day I'm trying to make pastry for the first time.  Hopefully it will go well.  My Mom has given me the recipe for her never fail pastry dough and some of my friends are coming over to partake in the pastry madness.

Here's hoping it goes well.

We will be attempting, cherry pie, raspberry pie and chicken pot pie.