SMiLes by Meg

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.

Gluten Free Peppermint Whoopie Pies

The last of the Christmas cookies: candy cane whoopie pies. If you read my blog often, you know that for family events with my mom’s siblings, I try to make something gluten free. Usually, this means flourless cake or haystacks or something of that sort, which on their own don’t have flour, but this year I decided to try to use an ingredient I see pop up a lot in gluten free recipes: xantham gum. This stuff is supposed to help mimic a recipe that would otherwise call for flour, so if you want to make something recognizable as a

Hot Cocoa Cookies

Week three of Christmas cookies. After this, I’ve only got one more recipe to post. But you may have to wait for it – I’m beginning to really miss my weekly baking adventures, and think I’ll have to try something new this week. Not that I haven’t been baking. I made a couple loaves of sourdough bread this morning. I just haven’t made anything new in awhile. But this week’s recipe is fitting for the ridiculously cold weather we’ve been having the past couple of days. Because if you don’t already have a box of hot chocolate on hand, you

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

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.

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.

Chocolate Whoopie Pies with Orange Filling

I just got back from a camping trip and am due at a birthday dinner in under an hour, so I’ll be keeping this post short and sweet (pun intended). Last week I mentioned that I had so many baking events coming up – this is one of the recipes I made, with the help of Laura, Neha, and Alisa (their hands feature prominently in these pictures). Almost a month into the new school year, and the four of us had yet to be in the same room as one another, so we resorted to the best kind of girls