SMiLes by Meg

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

There really isn’t a whole lot better than baking a pie with fresh ingredients from a farmer’s market. You’re supporting local businesses. Everything is super ripe and perfect. You get to buy the ingredients outdoors. Even someone who doesn’t like pies or fruit-based desserts (that would be me) can appreciate how good it feels to do this. So when we were walking through the farmer’s market at Harvard and a vendor had both strawberries and rhubarb, I couldn’t just not buy them. And, as luck would have it, strawberry rhubarb is Erik’s favorite pie!

Lemon Berry Stripe Cake

This weekend I decided to bake something exciting. I had the time. I had a book club (which meant it would disappear quickly). I hadn’t made a cake in far too long. Also, Cate made it a couple weeks ago and I got jealous. So I pulled out Ottolenghi’s Sweet cookbook and found the most colorful, interesting looking cake I could: Lemon Berry Stripe Cake.

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.

Simple Fruit Tart

I’m writing this post from my phone, sitting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I decided not to bring my laptop and the house decided not to have super consistent internet. Overall, this is a great feature, because it means I spend much more of my time hiking and biking and reading than looking at a screen. However, when it came time to blog, it did make it a little trickier. 

Coconut Lime Popsicles

In this week’s baking adventure, I learned two things: (1) A popsicle mold would be a really great investment for the summer. (2) Popsicles are a hard thing to take flattering pictures of. Fortunately, though this may not be my best food photography, the end product is still a refreshing summer treat.

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.

Blueberry Rum Pie

If I could have any kitchen appliance added to my collection, it would be a food processor. I talk a big game about wanting the Breville ice cream maker, but in terms of versatility, it’s no match for a Cuisinart food processor. I could make pie dough. And lots of other stuff that I can’t think of right now that always tells me I need a food processor.

Frozen Yogurt

This is big. Like, bigger than big. This is the first official post on smilesbymeg.com!  Huge, huge shout out to my brother, Pete, for such an awesome Christmas present. I now have my own domain, and a new look to go with it!