SMiLes by Meg

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Snowball Cookies

In Part Two of my 2017 Christmas Cookie Extravaganza, I’ve got a recipe that is seasonal for the entire winter, not just Christmas, and, under other names, can be made all year long: Snowball Cookies! I’m posting this one today for two reasons. One, it seemed particularly fitting to post about snowballs when I’ve spent the past couple of days in Wyoming doing snow-related activities (largely cross country skiing). Two, as I hit “post”, I’m hanging out with my best friend from college, Cate, who was the first person to make me a variation of these back in college, though …

White Chocolate Ginger Cookies

It has been a baking marathon at my parents’ house this week. I have made four separate, brand new, types of cookies AND have the components of a trifle in the works right now. Doing the math, I actually won’t have to bake again until the end of January. And you’ll get new cookie recipes for a month! Which, really, is better than making all four types of cookies at the same time. Because my family is getting dangerously close to kicking me out from what I can tell, since everyone’s main food group has now been cookies for 3 …

Peppermint Meringues

Christmas is a week away and I still haven’t made my cookie tins! Looks like I know what I’ll be doing in my five days post-finals (other than all of the shopping I’ve been neglecting). You can count on the fact that I’ll be making these again for my tins. They were surprisingly easy, and seem to hold up really well when rattling around in a tupperware all day, which means they are perfect cookie tin cookies. Bonus: they look super impressive.

Chocolate Pecan Bars

Sometimes, when you’ve got an 8 hour final coming up, you just need to spend the day before doing fun things. Like baking. And climbing. And Christmas shopping. And just trust that you really weren’t going to learn any more copyright law today anyways.

Premium Chocolate Mousse

Last week, I told you I’d be doing two weeks of pie posts from Thanksgiving. But then, on Tuesday, I made a recipe that changed everything: Chocolate Mousse out of my Science of Good Cooking Cookbook. You can wait on pumpkin pie – this recipe is an immediate need-to-know. In fact, I think The Science of Good Cooking may be making its way into my regular rotation of cookbooks.

Classic Cherry Pie

This is Part 1 of 2 Thanksgiving pie posts coming at you in the next couple of weeks. Good news: they can just as easily be Christmas pies (if you don’t make the one true Christmas dessert: Chocolate Trifle), so keep these on hand as the holiday parties start piling up. Also, I’ve done a little bit of test kitchen work on these, trying out different pie crust recipes and combining some filling recipes to figure our what works well together. The results were pretty good, and have made for some tasty breakfasts in the Thanksgiving aftermath.

Pumpkin Turkey Cookies

Putting aside final exams and cramming, I love the period from Thanksgiving through New Years. So many fun holidays. So much time with family and friends. A general feeling of magic happiness with good food, buying presents for people, and snow. Also, unending opportunities to bake. 

Buttermilk Pancakes

I’m getting really into this big Sunday morning breakfasts thing. I made waffles a couple weeks ago, and I think this needs to be a new part of my weekly routine. There really is no better way to spend a cold weekend morning than making pancakes and eating enough of them to not have to think about another meal until 8pm.

Nutella Rice Krispie Treats

Good thing it’s Daylight Savings Time, or I wouldn’t have gotten this blog post up in time! I was really torn about whether to bake this week, because I made some chocolate cupcakes with butterscotch filling last week, and had been kind of planning on using those. But then I decided that since the base chocolate cupcakes were the same as ones I have made in the past, I couldn’t use a slight variation on them. Instead, at around 6pm today, I asked my roommate for some ideas on desserts I could make quickly, and she recommended Rice Krispie Treats. …

Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made some really really really good cookies this week. Like, I’m staring at the last one in a Tupperware next to me at the table right now seriously struggling with whether to eat it. I’ve already had 2 today. And maybe 3 yesterday. And every day before that since Monday. It didn’t help that the batch made about 60 cookies. So even though my students did some good work on the huge container I brought to their conferences this week, I still had too many left over.