Apple Pastry Pockets & Pinwheels

Berry Burst Flower Cookies

I had a picture in my mind of cute, playful, flower shaped sugar cookies. But I didn’t want those rock hard sugar cookies with a million types of sprinkles, that lacked taste but had frosting carefully piped upon them. I wanted some delicious soft whimsical summer cookies. In my quest to find a basic sugar cookie to build upon, I first went to my favorite cooking site bon appetite. I was scrolling through recipes and wasn’t finding what I wanted. It wasn’t the recipes that were the problem; it was the absence of a story that went along with the cookies. I missed feeling the excitement and love from other blogger about the creations they had made. So I stumbled across a recipe from Sally’s Baking Addiction and went with it. I made a few altercations to it and ended up with a delicious, easy, and fun sugar cookie.

Berry Pavlova!

I can’t believe it is already August! I haven’t posted in a while, because I’ve been so busy. Sara and I just got back from Lollapalooza in Chicago and we pretty much had the best time of our lives. (Side note if you’re reading this go look up the song Bone Digger by Bear Hands—it has been on repeat for the past 72 hours.)  Anyway I baked for the first time in a while last night, and the result was a berry pavlova. I’ve never made a pavlova before, let alone ate one, but goodness me this probably is one of my favorite desserts. (It might have to do with my abnormal obsession over whipped cream, I don’t know.) But you should try it! This dessert is so easy and so delicious. I say use all the summer berries you can while they are still in season!

Berry Pavlova!

Recipe adapted from Summer Berry Layered Pavlova by Donal Skehan

Lemon Poppy Seed Cupcakes

My friend Shannon doesn’t like cupcakes. She thinks they are too sweet, too icing-y, and too hyped up. Really though, I bet you have at least one bakery where you live dedicated to selling only cupcakes--cupcakes, where the frosting is taller than the cake itself. And although I do love baked goods, I kind of agree that the cupcake obsession that is taking over TV shows and bakeries is a little much. Cupcakes are great, but there are so many other baked goods to be obsessed about. Anyway, just as I am sitting here bashing cupcakes, Sara came to my house the other day and said that all she was craving was a fluffy delicious cupcake. That got me thinking, and seeing as all of Sara’s cravings/food ideas inspire me, I had to make the perfect cupcake, to my standards. This meant a fluffy moist cake, with just enough frosting to make it slightly sweeter than it should be. As far as flavors, this cake was my initial inspiration for these cupcakes because it looks simple but elegant.

Lemon Macarons

HOORAY HOORAY HOORAY!!! Can we please all jump up and down for joy?! I am getting closer and closer to mastering the French Macaron. We are jumping for joy because tonight, in this very batch of lemon macarons, I figured out the exact time I need to bake these pesky little treats in my oven! Since day one, under-baking my macarons has been a SERIOUS PROBLEM. They always came out with the bottoms slightly stuck to the parchment. On my second tray, however, (I like to bake each tray one at a time)  I stopped my macs between the 20 and 21 minute mark and they were perfect! No opening the oven, and no checking on them until then, and woohoo they turned out great. My tip for mac makers out there would be to not hesitate to bake them for longer than the recipe calls for if they keep coming out under-baked. My recipe said they would take 18 minutes tops, but that time never worked for me. It will take a few batches to learn the habits of your oven, but I have faith in you, you will figure out how to make the perfect macarons!!

One more tidbit…the second tray ended up being a lot more beautiful because the macarons rested for longer…I would say at least 40 minutes…definitely doing that for next time!!

For these macarons, I used the basic french macaron recipe that I used for the Macarons with Blueberry Mascarpone Filling . I just added 1 Tablespoon of lemon zest and a small bit of yellow gel food coloring to the meringue before mixing in the powdered sugar/almond flour mixture.

I filled them with my 5 Yolk Lemon Curd , and yum yum yum, were these beauties delicious.

Peach Crumble Pie

Summer = pie season. Enough said. I know fall season is associated with pies, and no one can argue with a tasty pumpkin pie, but equally important are the tart cherry and peach pies that are at their finest in the heat of summer. A few weeks ago we made a small cherry pie (different from the one that Sara posted), but because it was so small we had leftover crust that I froze. Next on the list of summer pies was peach pie, so using the leftover crust I made a peach crumble pie. This is a great recipe if you have leftover pie crust, and don’t have enough for the top crust!

Macarons with Blueberry Mascarpone Filling

Hey everyone, guess what.

I did it.

I made really yummy macarons!!!!!!!

So the story starts back when I went to NYC a few weeks ago and had some macarons from Ladurée.

Cherry Bomb Pie

The short cherry season is passing and I just got the tail end of it. Last Saturday I went to the farmers market in search of fresh tart cherries to turn into a scrumptious pie. I found one vendor with only a few cartons left, so I snatched them up! One of my good friend's mother passed from cancer recently and what better thing to cheer her up than a homemade pie made just for her?  I got the recipe from the cover of the June Bon Appetit magazine. The crust is one of my favorite and easiest crusts I have ever tried. It stayed together very nicely but still had the flakey texture to it. 

5 Yolk Lemon Curd

I am taking on the task of making macarons. If I ever become happy with how they turn out, I will post the recipe and many many pictures. Because I have used 10 egg whites already throughout my endeavors, I had to find ways to use the yolks. I decided to make Sara's favorite: lemon curd. She already posted a wonderful recipe for lemon curd when she made her Rosemary Lemon Cake filling, but I decided to post this recipe because it only uses yolks.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble Tartlets

Left over pie crust + fresh rhubarb from the garden = Strawberry Rhubarb Tartlets!

All Delicious Apple Pie

Who does not love apple pie? Yes that's right, literally no one. Especially apple pie à la Mode. You can't get better than that. The other night my sister and I were craving just that, so we decided to whip one up. This recipe happened to produce probably one of the best apple pies I've had in my life. The crust was wonderfully flaky and the consistency of the filling was marvelous…2o minutes out of the oven and it still held its shape when the hot pie was cut. 

The recipe below is slightly adapted from the recipe in the wonderful book Baking by Dorie Greenspan. 

Rosemary Lemon Cake with Mascarpone Honey Frosting

I stumbled across a picture on Pinterest of a gorgeous baked alaska decorated with sunflowers and thought “ Wow I have to make that.” After reading the recipe, however, there were a lot of flaws to my plan.

Blueberry Almond Tart

The other day, Sara and I went down to Nashville to see The 1975 in concert. Before the show we stopped in a used bookstore and I found The French Chef Cookbook by Julia Child, published in 1968! Honestly, Julia Child is one of my cooking idols and I was just so excited to find this book.

A few days later, I took a free afternoon and decided to make a creation that I had been thinking about for months. I turned to my new Julia Child cookbook and one of my old favorites Baking At Home by the Culinary Institute of America for some basic recipes.