SMiLes by Meg

Month: January 2016

Ciambelli

This week’s recipe was very much a learning experience. Some important lessons: Whole Foods doesn’t sell regular shortening. So I had to get some weird coconut and palm oil variety. Pro: it was yellow. You can melt shortening. As a former science teacher, this shouldn’t have been as surprising to me as it was. Orange zest has a tendency to stick to the attachment of your stand mixer like hair instead of incorporating into the batter. Even if you fully submerge and douse a cookie in powdered sugar, after it bakes it will still look like you did no such …

S’mores Bars

Last week, I told you all about my baking marathon. This weekend, I give you the second installment: s’mores bars. These showed up at Pickett Christmas (my mom’s side of the family Christmas Party) this year by way of my cousin Sharon, and I was addicted. They’re gooey. They’re chocolatey. They’re cookie-y. And if you eat them warm (difficult, but worth it), they capture everything you want out of a s’more.

Cookie Dough Bites

Friday night was a baking marathon. After a week of birthdays and J-term festivities, I really needed a night where I didn’t have to leave my apartment. Lucky for me, I have friends that felt the same, and were willing to trek to my apartment for a quieter night in.

Corn Muffins

J-term is Harvard’s gift to 1Ls after the insanity of final exams. After finishing last semester, I had been looking forward to a couple weeks at home to rest and recoup. But breaks usually aren’t actually all that much of a break when you think about it. You have to run all of the errands you ignored for the month you spent in the library. You have lots of family and friends to go see and spend time with. You realize that you haven’t thought about applying to jobs yet and that’s going to sneak up on you faster than …

Crispy Peanut Butter Bars

As much as I love baking, the real cooking accomplishment today was learning how to poach an egg. Since England last summer, where every breakfast seemed to include a poached egg and avocado, I’ve been meaning to learn. Then, when I was in Utah a couple weekends ago, my friend Jeremy made us poached eggs every morning. I was inspired, and finally took the time to learn this morning.