SMiLes by Meg

Small Batch Boxed Mix Brownies

In my former life as a teacher, I used to bake for my students as a treat every so often. I’d make some really big batch of a recipe (usually cookies) so I had enough for all of my classes and anyone else that stopped by. Want to know what their absolute favorite thing I ever made was? Boxed mix brownies. Just plain old Duncan Hines brownies. As a baking blogger who thinks that she makes brownies much better than what a box can do, I was pretty offended. But there really is something about a boxed mix brownie that’s

Peanut Butter Brownies

When I first started this blog, I think I envisioned myself making a lot more brownies than I actually do. In creating categories for my recipes, I apparently didn’t think “Bar Cookies” was specific enough, and made a whole separate category for “Brownies.” But now I have 23 recipes under Bars and only 11 under Brownies. Let this recipe be a first attempt at remedying this situation.

Tahini Halvah Brownies

It’s Spring Break! And Spring Break means fun baking. This week I tackled another Ottolenghi recipe: Tahini Halvah Brownies. Ottolenghi uses tahini a lot, and I am yet to meet a recipe of his where I wish he didn’t. For example, I rarely eat banana bread without some tahini, salt, and honey these days. And his hummus is very tahini forward, which I firmly believe is for the best. So when I saw these brownies, with their swirls of tahini across the top, I knew they’d be one of the first recipes in his baking book that I tackled.

Raspberry Dark Chocolate Brownies

I think this is the first time I’ve been home in Duxbury without a deadline in a very long time. I’ve got two weeks until my summer internship starts, and literally nothing required of me between now and then. I plan on reading, playing through all of my TSwift piano books, and, of course, baking delicious things in my mom’s nice big kitchen.

Kahlua Brownies

When your first stop picking up ingredients for baking is the liquor store, you know it’s going to be a good week. And when the recipe calls for a pound of butter (that’s an entire 4 stick box), you know it’s going to be that much better.

Nutella Brownies

This is not an I-had-too-much-work-to-do late post. This is an I-had-lots-of-fun-things-to-do late post. So really the better kind of late post. It was one of those awesome weekends where I spent lots of times with friends, lots of time in the kitchen, and lots of time not reading law cases.

Brownie Pops

There are days when I fully buy into the whole personality-based-on-your-astrological-sign business. Today is one of those days. The rational, scientific side of me knows that of course they aren’t true. But, you see, my mom and I are Geminis. And, together, we bring a whole new meaning to the word “indecisive”.

Bakery Brownies

I was a little bit miffed with my students this week. They were waxing nostalgic about some brownies I had made for them once, asking when I would make them again. Now, I know that they meant well. They were saying that my brownies were the best brownies they had ever had. And normally, that would make me very happy. But the brownies they were talking about? I made them from a mix.

Cookie Dough Brownies

In college, my absolute favorite on campus job was managing the Calhoun Buttery. This mostly entailed making various different vehicles for hot sauce (buffalo chicken wraps, quesadillas, nachos…) for anyone that found themselves in the basement of our dorm between 10pm and 1am on weeknights, playing lots of 90s throwback music and TSwift, and getting paid to hang out with my friends.