Peanutbutter cookies

Hi everyone. It’s been a long, long time. But life happened. More precisely: I got a job in the middle of June. It’s been hard trying to juggle everything. It’s my first real full time job, so I’m still trying to figure out how to divide my free time. It’s not that I haven’t been baking at all, but I haven’t been taking pictures and editing them so much.

I really want to get back in the swing of things and these really delicious peanut butter cookies are the first attempt to get back at it :) they’re easy to make and so yummy. You can find the recipe right here! I hope to be updating again soon, so keep an eye out for it!

Peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies

 

Sometimes what a person really needs is a cookie. Sometimes, after a tough job interview, what a person really, really needs is a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie. I got this recipe from a Sainsbury’s magazine with 20 quick cakes and cookies.  And yeah, not only were these really quick, but also super easy to make. And so good. 300 grams of Calvé peanut butter, and three different kinds of chocolate chips. Yeah, this one really hit the spot, I must say.

The original recipe (by Lorraine Pascale) didn’t have chocolate chips, but lightly toasted peanuts on top. I made one with peanuts on it for my mom (she’s a big nut lover). I think the combination of chocolate and peanut butter is a sacred one, though. So I decided that the only way these cookies could and would get any better was with chocolate!

Easter cupcakes

My mom came home with these marshmallow chicks a couple of weeks ago. She was completely over the moon over them. “You can use them to decorate some cupcakes,” she said, “When Easter comes around.” But how could she not love ’em? Look at them. They’re adorable. That’s probably one of my favorite things about Easter, baking things and making them look and feel all spring-y. All the colors and all the chocolate. Amazing!

I’m hoping to bake a couple of more things this week to celebrate Easter. We don’t really have a big family thing planned this year, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make the most of it! I’m thinking Easter Egg shaped (and decorated) cookies. Maybe a pie? I’ll keep you posted! But for now I hope you enjoy the pictures I took of these cupcakes!

Rhubarb crumble

 

When I found a bag of rhubarb in my freezer I felt like making that amazing buckle from two summer ago. There’s just something about rhubarb that makes me feel like spring. The weather’s been really nice here lately as well, warm and sunny. So I’m sure that had something to do with it as well. The crumble turned out really great. I swapped the cake recipe from the original post for a simple pound cake one. I made a little less – cause my family wasn’t up for eating a whole buckle. Instead I used my favorite round cake dish. It turned out really lovely and super yummy. Great for a cold night with some tea.

One dough – three cookies

I have such a weak spot for big, gooey cookies. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, seeing as my cookie tag contains 23 posts – a really big share of them being gooey chocolate chip cookies. There’s just something so comforting about biting into a big, soft chocolatey cookie. Now I’ve made M&M cookies before – an adaptation from my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe that uses brown butter, yum! – but when I saw this post down at the Pinch Of Yum blog I knew I had to try that recipe as well.

While I was making these cookies it soon became clear that I didn’t have enough M&Ms to make sure the dough had enough pieces of yumminess in it. I decided to go through my cupboards and see what else I could put in these cookies. It was all quite adventurous! I ended up going for, aside from one batch with M&Ms, a batch with Reese’s mini peanut butter cups (white and milk chocolate) and a batch with chopped up Geisha chocolate. These cookies suddenly got very international. I’d bought the M&Ms in Sweden, because the package was so cute, and I really like their logo and M&M mascots. The Geisha chocolate was a gift from a friend that she got in Finland. The Reese’s peanut butter cups I’d bought in the UK a while back.

All three kinds were extremely good, and I packed up a lot of them to take with me on my weekend trip to go see a friend who had her birthday the previous day. It was the perfect travel snack during my train ride, where I saw the landscape woosh by while I snacked on chocolate.

Chocolate layer cake

 

One of my brother’s friends is having a birthday party tonight. Every guest is supposed to make  something sweet; of course my brother took the easy route by asking me to bake something. He said I could make whatever I wanted. It can get a bit overwhelming, when you get complete free range like that, can’t it? There are so many things I want to bake, and sometimes it’s hard to decide. Especially when you’re not the one who will be doing the eating. What if my brother’s friends – and the birthday boy! – don’t like what I chose? In the end I decided to go with chocolate. Because, honestly, who doesn’t like chocolate? I’m very pleased with the end result and, to be honest, slightly bitter that I have to give this whole cake away without being able to have a taste!

I took this Devil’s Food cake recipe from this post; I decided to go with a vanilla butter cream instead of the meringue frosting they used. I got some inspiration for the decoration from this lovely post but ended up using (store bought) meringue to top off the cake instead of piping even more butter cream on top of the ganache. I was afraid it’d be a bit of a butter cream overkill!

Moelleux au chocolat (lava cake)

If you’re still looking for a Valentine’s Day recipe to please your girl/boy/person, a friend, the members of your family – or yourself: look no further! This chocolate cake with a gooey center is the perfect thing. It’s very easy to make and it’s chocolate. Pretty much a guaranteed success!

Brownie and choc-chip roll out cookies

 

 

What’s that age that children start being able to recognizing and see the difference between animals? Whatever it is – I bet it’s before you’ve reached 24. ‘Cause you see, this was supposed to be a post about two different kinds of kitty-shaped cookies. That’s what it was supposed to be. Up until the moment I sent my friend Jess a text with a picture of my two brand new cookie cutters and I get a reply saying. “Oh! A kitty and an owl!” I was just holding the cookie cutter in question, ready to start punching out my first cookie, when – huh, she’s right. That’s an owl. In my defense, Jess agrees that the owl does have a very cat-like head.

But I digress. This isn’t a post about my inability to tell the difference between an owl and a cat (a bird and a freaking feline, for crying out loud) this is a post celebrating the awesomeness that is Amy! Amy is a friend I met online at the beginning of last year, through a mutual friend. We soon bonded over a mutual interest in hockey (go, Blackhawks!) and then later through a whole series of unfortunate (unpleasantly soul-sucking) fandoms. The cookie cutters were part of a Christmas (slash birthday) present Amy sent all the way from the USA. (So, further in my defence, maybe the excitement of package! Christmas! Birthday! Presents! Amy! is also part of the reason why I immediately decided cookie cutter #2 was a cat just like #1)

Earl Grey Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

 

 

I love tea. I think there’s not a single other hot drink that can come even close to giving the joy and comfort that a good cup of tea can offer. Not coffee, not hot chocolate – they don’t come close. Or for me, at least – weirdly enough I have a lot of friends that don’t feel the same way. Huh. My tea collection is ridiculously extensive, up to a point where I’m a bit worried that I’m never going to be able to make it through to the other end of it, at least not for another couple of years. Even though I love trying new brands and flavors, there’s a couple of teas – classics – that’ll always be on the top of my list. A good, simple Darjeeling with lemon is my personal favorite. I’m also very partial to Lipton’s Vanilla Green tea – there’s just something about that one. And then there’s Earl Grey. You just can’t go wrong with Earl Grey. When I saw the recipe for these Earl Grey Chocolate Chip Cookies on the Hummingbird High blog, I knew I had to try them.

I made them for a friend’s birthday and they were a pretty big success – I personally loved them to pieces, at least. Which I count as a big success!

Merry Christmas

Hello everyone! I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who liked my posts this past year, and a heartfelt you’re awesome, thanks so much to everyone who decided to follow my blog. I’m very excited to see that people like what I have to post – and I hope I can post lots more in 2014 :) I hope that you’re all spending Christmas with people you love, doing things that you love. I’d also like to wish you all that your heart desires for 2014! Make it a really great year.

I baked these cupcakes for my brother. He’s spending the evening with his friends, having a Christmas dinner party. I like how they turned out – so very festive! I also made them tiramisu, which ended up being so very very yummy. I drenched the finger biscuits in a coffee amaretto syrup, and the mascarpone cream was made with an Italian meringue and a pâte-à-bombe. So good :) but not the point of this post! This a post about cupcakes!

My cupcake recipe can be found here; and I found the buttercream recipe in my copy of The Great British Book of Baking! (Bring 85 grams of sugar and 4 table spoons to 110°C – poor in a thin stream onto 2 lightly whisked egg yolks while mixing with a hand mix. Keep mixing until the mixture is cold. (It’ll be thick and light.) Continue mixing and gradually add 150 grams of very soft butter. Add flavoring if you’d like – I added sweetened cocoa powder for hot cocoa (yum) to make the chocolate buttercream.)