Posted by

Laura

Posted on

July 27, 2016

Posted under

baking, desserts, Food & Drink

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Two fresh fig recipes: fig blueberry crisp and fig cookie bars!

It finally happened… the figs on our monster fig tree started to ripen! I tried two new recipes this year with figs that both turned out fantastic.

Fig and Blueberry Crisp

I basically followed this Food Network recipe with some slight modifications:

I used 3 cups blueberries and 3 cups figs and added a bit of lemon zest to the fruit mixture
I did not add nutmeg or pecans
I did add some ground ginger, probably about 1/2 teaspoon

Fruit mixture and topping:

The final, delicious product:

Fig Cookie Bars

While the crisp was super easy to throw together, fig cookies bars (also called fig newtons) required more work, spread across two days for me. For the cookie part, I mostly followed this Fresh Fig Newtons recipe from Sugar Dish Me. For the jam in the middle, I looked around at a number of recipes and ended up using:

2 lbs fresh figs, chopped
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup honey
Juice from 1 lemon

Put all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. After the boil starts, reduce to a simmer and continue to stir / mash from time to time. After 45 min or so, the jam should be thickened.

Note: this jam did turn out quite sweet, so next time I’d reduce the sugar to 3/4 cup probably.

For the cookie part, I changed the Sugar Dish Me recipe by:

Reducing the butter – I used 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup applesauce
Omitting the orange zest – I didn’t have an orange and wasn’t sold on this anyhow.

The bars were a huge hit. If only they weren’t so much work!

Making jam:

Finished jam:

Finished cookie bar sheet:

Mmmm… delicious!

Posted by

Laura

Posted on

March 13, 2013

Posted under

baking, desserts, Food & Drink

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Our birthday dessert spread

Birthday desserts, ready to be eaten!

A few weeks ago, it was that time again. Time for the husband and I to jointly celebrate our birthdays by inviting people over and providing waaaaaayyyyy more desserts than the group could possibly consume. Last year’s selections were a hit and this year was no exception.

The menu:

Banana cream pie (this may have been the all-around favorite, and was definitely my favorite)
Chai cupcakes with cream cheese frosting (also on last year’s menu, with a different frosting)
Blueberry crumble cake (made like the fig crumble cake but with blueberries instead)
Fat free ginger cookies (delicious as always)
Vegan chocolate crazy cake (this was a cake my husband’s grandmother used to make, because it was easy, not because it was vegan)

We had left overs of everything. Luckily I hid some of the extra banana cream pie that wouldn’t fit in the pie pan, because that pie pan was clean by the end of the night!

Blueberry crumble cake (bottom left), banana cream pie (top), chocolate crazy cake (bottom right)

Chai cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Fat free ginger cookies

First time using this nice pie pan. Definitely need to make banana cream pie again.

Crumbled graham crackers, sugar and mashed bananas made up the crust.

Crust ingredients mixed together

Crust pressed into pan and baked. The small white crocks were for the left over crust. The recipe made way too much for my pie pan.

Cooking the cream filling.

First layer of cream filling and first layer of bananas.

Second layer of cream filling and the final layer of banana slices. The pie then just had to set for hours in the fridge, so make this early if you decide to make it!

Posted by

Laura

Posted on

February 14, 2013

Posted under

baking, Food & Drink

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Surprise sugar cookies

Can you guess the surprise ingredient?

Now that you see the cookies, can you guess the surprise? Actually, they’ve got two surprises. One is that they were made with beer and the second is that I tried a butter substitution to make them healthier. I know that applesauce can be substituted for butter in many baking recipes, but applesauce makes cookies have a more cake-like texture. After reading suggestions, I settled on using mashed avocado to replace half of the butter in the recipe. That’s right, those cookies have avocado! You can almost make out a very faint green tint in the picture. I even served these beauties at our superbowl party and no one caught on to the fact that they had avocado in them. They disappeared like hot cakes. The cookies were pleasingly soft and delicious. Avocado are fruits after all, so their sweetness is a nice addition to baked goods. Even if they add a green tint.

Recipe: Beer Sugar Cookies

Adapted from Bella Online

Ingredients:

2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup mashed avocado
1 ½ cups white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 bottle malty, fruity style of beer
Parchment paper
Some sugar and cinnamon mixture to sprinkle on top

Method:

Reduce beer of your choice by simmering on the stove top until consistency resembles syrup. This can take a while. Be careful not to let it boil over (from experience).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

Cream together sugar, butter, and mashed avocado until smooth and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla.

In another bowl, combine dry ingredients and mix together. Gradually mix in dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.

After all ingredients are combined, add beer syrup and stir it in by hand, the batter will look marbled.

Drop tablespoon sized scoops of cookie dough onto the baking sheets. Flatten down a bit (they don’t flatten out on their own much) and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture. Bake for 10 minutes, or until a bit golden and set in the middle. Place on racks to cool.

I used Winter Solstice Seasonal Ale from Anderson Valley Brewing, a winter warmer style.

Reducing the beer to syrup.

Getting ready to beat the butter, sugar, and avocado.

Wet ingredients all mixed up. Notice the slightly green batter.

After mixing in the dry ingredients.

Adding the beer syrup.

Marbled batter after mixing in the beer syrup.

Mmmm… the final, slightly healthier cookie.

Posted by

Laura

Posted on

December 27, 2011

Posted under

baking, Food & Drink

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1 Comment

Caramel apple oatmeal cookies… a perpetual hit!

If you ever want to make cookies that are guaranteed to get raves, try these caramel apple oatmeal cookies. They take a bit of work to make but the result is delicious. The trickiest part is cooking them long enough. Either my oven isn’t hot enough or the time quoted on the recipe is way too short. To get them fully cooked, I ended up baking them for at least 16 – 18 minutes.

Assembling the ingredients:

Chop up the oatmeal in the food processor. I really like this step because I’m not a huge fan of oatmeal cookies, but if you chop it, the texture is much nicer.

Chop up the apples into little bits:

Mix the wet and dry ingredients:

After mixing in the apples and caramel bits, the dough is chilled for an hour or more and then formed into round balls and placed on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Extra caramel bits are added to the top of the dough for presentation.

After baking, they are ready to eat! This particular batch was actually under cooked. You need to make sure that the tops are a golden brown. Even under baked, they are quite delicious.

These cookies are quite soft and get softer by the day because of the moisture in the apples. I found it best to store them in the fridge.

Posted by

Laura

Posted on

January 25, 2011

Posted under

baking, Food & Drink

Trying to replicate fat free ginger cookies

The Whole Foods near us makes these absolutely amazing fat free ginger cookies. The fat free-ness of the cookies is not the draw for me, but rather their wonderful texture – a bit firm around the edges and perfectly chewy on the inside. These cookies are not anything like ginger snaps. In fact, the cookies are so good that when I decide I want one and the store doesn’t have them I get kind of upset. Just ask my husband.

Before Christmas I decided to try to find a recipe for to make these cookies at home. Of course the internet delivered because others apparently have the same fetish for these cookies. They’re that good. Here’s the recipe from David Lebovitz that I used.

I’ve now made these cookies twice. If you read that recipe, I haven’t tried cooking down the applesauce, but I intend to next time. I also have not used the candied ginger. Instead, I just use a bit more ground ginger and cinnamon. I figure you can’t get enough of those delicious spices.

The first time I made them was when we were at my Mom’s house in Ohio for Christmas. They came out pretty well, although they were a bit softer than I wanted them to be after baked.

The second time was just this past weekend. This time, the dough wasn’t as sticky after being mixed up. I think it needed to be stickier. My guess is that the egg whites I used here were smaller than the ones I used at Mom’s (I think they were different sized eggs). Then I refrigerated the dough for more than a day so that probably made it even less sticky.

Once the cookies were done baking, they hadn’t spread out this time like they were supposed to. I had to take a cup and smash them so they were somewhat flat. Despite that, the texture of these cookies was better than my first attempt with the outside being firmer and the inside chewy. Because the cookies didn’t spread they are pretty small looking. Next time I will roll them into larger balls to start. I’ll probably also try adding a third egg white because we use smaller eggs at our house.

The dough after being mixed: