Master Baker And My New Baby

It took me a few tries, but I decided on what I wanted my Master Baker entry to be. No clue why I ever tried anything else, these are without a doubt my favourite ever. Getting ahead of myself, let me start with this morning when I found this beauty on my porch.

Other people’s preferences got me this sexy girl, not any people liked the colour so Kitchen Aid sold her on close out for half price! Ain’t she gorgeous? She’s the very first KA for me, D spoils me rotten and bought her for my B-Day.

      

There was no question about what I wanted to make first, and it happened to also be what I wanted to make for my Master Baker entry. Chocolate chip cookies! At least half of them were dark chocolate chips, the other half were full of Easter Candy!

  Reese’s Eggs! Who can resist a Reese’s Egg cookie? D sure couldn’t, and I love them so much. They were really easy to dice up, and stirred into the batter with no trouble at all.

Have you ever seen such perfectly mixed cookie dough? She can do no wrong, I’m in love.

         

The cookies aren’t as dark as this pic makes them, the lighting wasn’t great at 9:30 p.m. The Reese’s Eggs baked very nice in the cookies, they stayed warm and gooey like they should be. Master Baker, your Easter Candy challenge has been done!

  

The recipe is a modified Toll House Cookies recipe, ain’t found anything I like better yet. The changes I make is to the baking soda and salt measurements, trust me when I say it makes a really big difference. Oh yeah, the oven temperature is different too. They say 375 F, I prefer to bake them at 350 F for 11 minutes.

Easter Egg Cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
20 Reese’s Eggs, diced ( Used 9 Reese’s eggs for half the batch, used Ghiradelli’s Dark Chocolate Chips for the other half )

Directions:
PREHEAT oven to 350 F.

COMBINE flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract in large mixer bowl until creamy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Stir in Reese’s Eggs. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.

BAKE for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Things That Make You Go Ugh

The lovely and talented Nikki has declared this month’s Master Bakertheme to be Easter Candy. Y’all, this is painful to admit but I ain’t what one would call a professional baker. There’s a lot I don’t know about baking, and of of those things is what happens when you stick various things in cupcakes! Why not find out on a day I pretended to have nothing better to do?

No hating the cake mix, I knew that most of these cupcakes wouldn’t come out well and i didn’t want to waste the ingredients making it from scratch. A dollar for a box seemed like a good way to get this experiment going without crying over the cupcakes that didn’t work.

Ain’t the bunnies cute? Poor CB is cringing at this moment at the one that’s a torn off head. There are some various bits of candy in these, peanut butter eggs and mini cadbury cream eggs and Peeps and marshmallows and malt ball eggs and a pat of cream cheese (don’t ask).

Yeah. That’s what I said. The question is, are these as bad to eat as they look? Could they really be that awful?

These ain’t any better. One of them is a Peep on top of the cupcake after baking for a few, and the lumpy ones are an attempt to mix rice krispies and marshmallows in the dough. Don’t ever do that, ew.

Peeps are cute no matter what.

The peanut butter egg ended up like the other eggs, I pushed them too far in and they sank to the bottom. They were icky, a little hard disc of inedible candy.

To add insult to injury, the cupcakes got too big and the tops fell off. That was ok, since not a one was worth eating.

Y’all can thank me for educating you on what not to do for this month’s Master Baker. Y’all are all wonderfully sweet and understanding of my incompetence (except Nikki who’s laughing at me right now, hussy).

Master Baker And The Crumble, A Love Story

Last week, D came home from a doc’s visit and put some papers in front of me. The doctor had put him on a restricted fat and calorie diet, 2000 calories and 40 g of fat a day. Y’all will forgive me if I ain’t doing the happy dance, but there’s no sense in whining about what is and to be honest I could stand to lose a few pounds. Right, there’s baking to be done and I ain’t gonna let this stand in the way of tasty food! Master Baker has declared cinnamon is the thing to use, and I give you the Cinnamon Pear Crumble. Its really simple, the crumble recipe is from Ellie Krieger (which shouldn’t surprise anybody) and the chocolate and cinnamon is my addition. Y’all would not believe the difference the chocolate makes. It turned it from a regular crumble to something I’ve been eating non stop.

Pear Cinnamon Crumble With Dark Chocolate

The topping
1/4 c. oat flour or whole wheat flour
2/3 c. old fashioned rolled oats
1/2 c. firmly packed brown sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp. salt
1/4 c. canola oil
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate

For the filling
3 lbs. firm but ripe pears, peeled, cored, and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
1 tbls. fresh lemon juice
1 tbls. cinnamon
2 tbls. granulated sugar

Preheat the oven to 375 F.
Combine the topping ingredients is a medium bowl and work them together with a fork or your fingertips until uniformly moistened.
To make the filling, combine the pear slices, lemon juice, and cinnamon in a large bowl. Add the granulated sugar and toss to blend.
To assemble, coat an 8 inch square baking dish with cooking spray. Transfer the pear mixture to the dish. Sprinkle the topping evenly over the pears. Bake the crumble until the pears are fork tender and the topping is golden brown, about 40 minutes. Let cool while you melt the dark chocolate, and pour the chocolate into a small pastry bag or sandwich bag with a clipped tip. Pipe the chocolate over the crumble.