SMiLes by Meg

Granola Bars

Sometimes, when I lost track of time, I realize two days before I’m going on vacation that I don’t have a recipe lined up for the weekend. Occasionally, I get lucky and already have something saved that I can post. But most of the time I have to scramble and see what I can find that is fast and doesn’t require a trip to the grocery store. This recipe hits both of those requirements: It takes less than 30 minutes to put together, and as long as you have some staples on hand, you can probably find some granola at

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.

Blackberry Brown Sugar Bars

When I’m baking in my mom’s kitchen, I usually take a break from my normal cookbooks and use one of hers that I like: The Farmhouse Cookbook.  What I found out this week is that as cute as the cookbook is, it doesn’t actually have that many dessert recipes. I was flipping through it, trying to decide on something, and thought lemon blueberry bread pudding sounded like a great dessert for the meal my mom was cooking. Almost 5 years into this blog, I decided it would be a good idea to check before starting it. Turned out I had

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.

Twix Cookies

This week, my recipe has a story! At my internship this summer, lunch meetings always have some kind of dessert. Usually it’s cookies and brownies, pretty standard. But one day this week, there were these little slices of chocolate cake with caramel, very much like a Twix, and I instantly decided I needed to make something similar. However, with a cake, you don’t get the same satisfying crunch that the cookie layer in a Twix bar provides.

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.

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.