Cheesecake pops

Finally, my last post of the Thanksgiving treats that I made. These were an absolute delight and everyone loved them. Why? Well, as I figured.. everyone loves cheesecake, but no one wants to finish their own slice. So why not make them into individual bites and top it off with a stick? I mean, the best food are the ones on sticks. I then dipped the individual cheesecakes into melted chocolate and then whatever topping I desired. My batch consisted of toffee pieces, walnut bits, and a variety of sprinkles. How marvelous! I used the recipe from a Daring Baker's challenge a couple months ago:

Cheesecake Pops
Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor
makes 30–40 pops

5 8-oz pkgs cream cheese, room temperature
2 cups sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
5 large eggs
2 egg yolks
2 tsps pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup heavy cream

boiling water as needed
thirty-forty 8-inch lollipop sticks

1 lb chocolate, finely chopped
2 tbsp vegetable shortening
assorted decorations: chopped nuts, colored jimmies, crushed peppermints, mini chocolate chips, sanding sugars, dragees (optional)

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil. In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream. Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes. Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight. When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety. Alternately, you can microwave the same amount of chocolate coating pieces on high at 30 second intervals, stirring until smooth.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

I only made 3/5 of this recipe and ended up with like 60 pops and baked it in an 8x8 square pan. This recipe makes A LOT. I would recommend cutting it down by a half, if not more than that. This recipe was also quite time consuming, so you have to be patient and start these early if you are making them for an event.

Pumpkin Bars

Even with all this pumpkin baking, I still have about 3 cups left in my refrigerator. What is a girl to do with all this pumpkin?

This is my favorite pumpkin recipe that I've found so far, and it's even semi healthy! They are super moist with just the right amount of spice. They always come out perfectly from the oven and I've never had a problem baking them.

Pumpkin Bars
- 1 cup flour
- 2/3 cups granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 cup canned pumpkin
- 2 slightly beaten egg whites
- 1/4 cup cooking oil
- 1/4 cup water

Directions
Spray a medium-size baking pan with nonstick coating; set aside.
Combine flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, and cloves in a medium bowl. Stir in pumpkin, egg whites, oil, and water until thoroughly combined. Spread batter into prepared pan.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on a wire rack.
Cut into bars

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies. Everytime I say that, people respond with, ".... what? ..." Yes, I said it, whoopie pie. What are whoopie pies anyway? Well, it's a two-layer filled cake, a cake/cookie consisting of two layers with a moist filling sandwiched in between. In this case, its a pumpkin cake cookie with a maple cream cheese frosting. The cookie was okay, very cake-like. But the filling? A-MAZ-ING! The best cream cheese frosting that I've ever had. Actually, it was probably because of the authentic Canadian maple syrup that I used from the leaf shaped bottle with a red cap. Hooray for Canadian syrup!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone! (Trust me, I've baked a ridiculous amount of goods for Turkey day, so expect more posts to come)

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies with Maple Cream Cheese Filling

Pumpkin Whoopie Cookies

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 TBSP cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground fresh nutmeg
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup canola oil
3 cups chilled pumpkin puree
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare to baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and spices. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, whisk to sugars and oil together. Add the pumpkin puree and whisk to combine thoroughly. Add the eggs and vanilla and whisk until combined.
Sprinkle the flour mixture over the pumpkin mixture and whisk until completely combined.
Use a small ice cream scoop with a release mechanism to drop healing TBSP of the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, about 1 inch apart.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies are just starting to crack on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of a cookie comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool completely on the pan while you make the filling. They will look more like mini cakes then cookies, so don’t panic about that.

Maple Syrup Cream Cheese Filling

3 cups powdered sugar
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
3 TBSP maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter until smooth with no visible lumps. Add the cream cheese an beat until combined.
Add the powdered sugar, maple syrup and vanilla and beat until smooth. Be careful no to overbeat the filling, or it will lose structure.

To assemble:
Turn half the cooled cookies upside down. Pipe filling (about a TBSP) onto that half. Place another cookie, flat side down, on top of the filling. Press down slightly so that the filling spread to the edges of the cookie. Repeat until all the cookies are used. Put the whoppie pies in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to firm before serving.

Adapted from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Good ol' rice crispy treats

How can something with only 3 ingredients be so delicious? I've been eating these ever since I was five... whether a freshly made batch, wrapped up in bright blue tin foil from the supermarket, or in my cereal every morning. You can even spruce these up a bit by adding colored sugar on the top, sprinkles, or chocolate chips. Heck, cut them into shapes with cookie cutters if you want to go all out! The sky's the limit when it comes to decorating desserts.

Giant Chocolate Toffee Cookies

I normally don't even like chocolate cookies, but I'll take one of these any day. The only problem I had with this cookie was that it wouldn't stay together because it was so chewy/fragile, almost brownie or fudge like. It was probably because I didn't chill them long enough. I never have patience when it comes to chilling the dough. I mean.. really? Wait 45 minutes? Why can't I just throw them into the oven already? I'm not very patient at all, actually, when it comes to baking. Hence the reason that I hate dealing with yeast dough and rarely deal with it.

Anyways, who knew that walnuts, toffee, and chocolate go so well together? I loved that this recipe used actual chocolate instead of cocoa powder to make the cookie (that's probably why this recipe is a winner for me).

From epicurious:

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 pound (2 cups) semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

• 1 3/4 cups (packed) brown sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 5 1.4-ounce chocolate-covered English toffee bars (such as Heath), coarsely chopped (I used about 3/4 a bag of Heath's toffee bits)
  
• 1 cup walnuts, toasted, chopped

Combine flour, baking powder and salt in small bowl; whisk to blend. Stir chocolate and butter in top of double boiler set over simmering water until melted and smooth. Remove from over water. Cool mixture to lukewarm.

Using electric mixer, beat sugar and eggs in bowl until thick, about 5 minutes. Beat in chocolate mixture and vanilla. Stir in flour mixture, then toffee and nuts. Chill batter until firm, about 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment or waxed paper. Drop batter by 1/4 cupfuls onto sheets, spacing 2 1/2 inches apart. Bake just until tops are dry and cracked but cookies are still soft to touch, about 15 minutes. Cool on sheets. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.)

Apple Turnover Pinwheel

Mmm.. I just can't seem to get enough of the apples/cinnamon combination. It's just so simple.. you basically peel & core an apple, chop it into little pieces, sprinkle the pieces with sugar and cinnamon, and stuff it into whatever you want. In this case, I used puff pasty. To make them into a pinwheel, start off with flat squares. Then, make a slit from each corner to the middle of the square (but don't slit it all the way, you want to have enough room in the middle of the square to put your stuffing!). Pile the middle with whatever stuffing/mix you like, and then fold one piece from each corner toward the middle. Make sure you are folding the same side of all of them... For example, if you are folding inward the left one, then fold the left ones from ALL corners.

You'll end up with one side folded in and one side laying flat from each corner. Ta-da! Hope that made sense!

Reeses Pieces Peanut Butter Cookies

As usual, I had the need to bake. This time, I was at my boyfriend's house so I was limited on ingredients. I kinda just winged it with whatever I found in his pantry. Reeses Pieces it was! The only downside? No brown sugar! And I use brown sugar for all my cookies since they keep them soft and chewy. :( So these cookies turned out a bit harder than I like, but it wasn't so bad...

I made a small batch so it only made a dozen cookies. When you bake these, substitute the white sugar for brown sugar (I adapted it in the recipe already) and these cookies would come out blissfully.

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
6 Tbsp (3/4 sticks) softened unsalted butter
3/4 c brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cups Reeses Pieces
2 tablespoons peanut butter

Mix wet ingredients. Add dry ingredients. Mix well. Bake at 325 degrees for approximately 17 minutes.

Note to self: Never bake cookies without brown sugar again.

Samoas

Mmm my favorite. So I'm going to another one of my bf's sister's baby shower and was trying to figure out what kind of cookie to bake to bring with me. When I went grocery shopping yesterday, there were girl scouts in front of Pavillions. I got really excited in hopes that they were selling girl scout cookies, but thought to myself... girl scout cookie season only happens once a year! One of the girls standing in front of the door from the troop happened to be one of the kids that went to the Boys & Girls Club, so I knew her (Hah, it's hard to go anywhere in my town without knowing one of the kids now after working at the BGC for 5 years). I asked her what they were selling and she responded with, "Gifts.. for teachers." Interesting. They should sell girl scout cookies year round, I'm sure they'd make more money that way.

Anyways, since I saw the girl scouts, I decided to make girl scout cookies because they surely weren't selling any. Homemade Samoas it is!

Apple Crostata

Ok so the top view of the crostata makes it look like a meat pie, but I swear it's not! It's a crumb topping (cause you know how I feel about crumb toppings :). I've been craving an apple/cinnamon dessert for about a week now, and I came home to 4 ripened apples, ready to be baked. How perfect! Apple crostata is kind of like apple pie, but smaller and with no top crust layer. I was never really good with pies, so crostatas are perfect for me! The smell of this baking in your oven will bring your neighbors over. Seriously, it's just that good.

Recipe from Ina Garten the "Barefoot Contessa"
1½ hours 1 hour prep

Pastry
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar or superfine sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 lb very cold unsalted butter, diced
2 tablespoons ice water

Filling
1 1/2 lbs macintosh apples or macoun apples or empire apples (3 large) (I used Fuji)
1/4 teaspoon grated orange zest

Topping
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar or superfine sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced.

For Pastry:

1. Place the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor fitted with a steel blade.
2. Pulse a few times to combine.
3. Add the butter and pulse 12-15 times, or until the butter is the size of peas.
4. With the motor running, add the ice water all-at-once through the feed tube.
5. Keep hitting the pulse button to combine, but stop the machine just before the dough becomes a solid mass.
6. Turn the dough onto a well floured board and form into a disc.
7. Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least one hour.
8. Meanwhile-- preheat over to 450 degrees and make filling.
9. After the dough has been in frig for one hour-- Roll pastry into an 11-inch circle and transfer to baking sheet.

For Filling:

10. Peel, core and cut apples into 8ths.
11. Cut each wedge into 3 chunks.
12. Toss with orange zest.
13. Cover tart dough with the apples leaving a 1 1/2 inch border.
14. Make topping: Combine flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon and allspice in bowl of food processor fitted with a steel blade.
15. Add the butter and pulse until mixture is crumbly.
16. Pour into a bowl and rub it with your fingers until it starts holding together.
17. Sprinkle evenly over apples.
18. Gently fold the border over the apples to enclose the apples, pleating it to make a circle.
19. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the crust is golden and the apples are tender.
20. Allow to cool.
21. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Everything Cookies

I came home early today and surprise, surprise.. I was in a baking mood. I decided to make my dad's favorite cookies for him when he comes home from work. This is an old family recipe handed down to me from my aunt. When I say that they are "everything" cookies, they really are everything cookies! They have coconut, nuts, corn flakes, & oatmeal. I normally don't like nut or coconut cookies, but these are an exception. I think these are more of a "sophisticated" cookie.. meaning that these are aimed to please the adults rather than kids. All the parents on my cul-da-sac LOVE these! But the kids.. not so much.

P.S. My one year blog anniversary was yesterday! Too bad I didn't bake then.

Cream cheese swirl brownie cake.

Well that was a mouthful. I wanted to make cream cheese swirl brownies, but couldn't find an 8x8 or 9x9 pan handy. So instead, I used a springform pan and turned it into more of a cake. I need to work on my swirling technique, though. People make it look so easy! I thought I put it in for too long, but the inside was still moist as ever. The one thing I would have done differently is make the cream cheese mixture sweeter by adding more sugar. That would've made it perfect!

I rushed to take pictures of this before the sun set since I hate taking pictures with flash. I really need/want to buy of those Lowel Ego Lights. If only I could scrounge up a hundred bucks. :(

Bakerella's Cupcake Pops

But wait... what's inside these precious little cupcakes?

...Red velvet cake, of course! Bite sized desserts are the best because they're always the perfect amount. You can get more if you want more, or just a tiny bit if you only wanted something small. Bakerella's (link under my favorite blog) cupcake pops have basically exploded over the flood blog world and I thought I'd give them a try because they're so cute! It took a bit of practice before I got them looking just right. They're so simple to make and appealing to the eye. They were a hit at my boyfriend's sister's baby shower! The shell is made out of molded chocolate; The bottom half is created using a candy mold and the top is simply dipped into a colored vanilla flavored chocolate. I'll definitely be making these again to bring to other parties.

Chunky Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know, I know.. I just baked chocolate chip cookies a couple weeks ago, but let me tell you my story: So first off, my favorite school bag breaks and I have to tie the strings together in order to keep it from falling apart and make it last for the rest of the day. Bust! Then, I didn't get to eat anything the entire day besides breakfast (keep in mind that I'm in class ALL day long), and I decided to get a chocolate chip cookie from a vending machine. Turns out one cookie from the vending machine is $1.50. What a rip! But, seeing how I was already hungry as it is, I sucked it up and paid the buck fifty. I even used one of my crispest dollars (cause those were all I had.. and anyone who knows me knows how I am with crisp money haha)! Right after I put the money in, the handle turns and my cookie gets stuck! Bummer! No cookie for me.

So with all this frustration, the first thing I do when I get home is bake chocolate chip cookies... 2 dozen of them. I was able to bake my bad day away and get my cookie in the end! Thank goodness for baking. :]

A cake... sort of.

My boyfriend's sister's baby shower is this weekend and I was so overwhelmed with what to get her. There are just so many adorable baby clothes/shoes/toys that I could buy! I also had to keep in mind that I was going to be going to two different baby showers for her, so I needed two gifts. Being the poor student that I am, I went all out on one gift and homemade the other (this is the homemade one).

I wanted to bake her a cake, but I found out that there was already going to be one.. so what do I do? Make a diaper cake! I came up with a 5 layer tiered cake, made out of about 90 pampers diapers (completely usable!). Instead of using dowels to hold the cake together, I used baby bottles, instead. Clever, right? I made my own "cake board" by cutting a piece of cardboard and wrapping it with tissue paper. Decorate the cake and voila! It's all ready to "eat." :]

The first two pictures are of it all wrapped up, the last one is the cake by itself.