The baking last year got a little crazy. We had friends visiting the weekend of before they were due (they are always submitted first thing Monday morning), and I was making crusts and fillings and toppings in between hanging out with our guests. It was a little intense, I didn’t think I was going to win anything and was pretty surprised that I got any ribbons. (Obviously I got nothing for that very cracked Manchego Chess Pie (ugh)). And then the summer was so busy I never even posted about the fair pies (ugh, ugh).

Going into this year, I decided I would just do two pies. And this decision really paid off because I had family in town this past weekend and we ended up going out of town. Three pies would have been incredibly challenging!

The other thing I did differently this year was to enter a pie with a pressed crust instead of a traditional pie dough. I didn’t do this to have an easier crust to make, but that was a benefit.

2025 Submissions

This year, I decided to submit Passion Fruit Lime Pie with Graham Cracker Macadamia Nut Crust and Salted Honey Pie with an All Butter Crust.

I did a test run on the Passion Fruit Lime Pie a couple of weeks ago. I love this pie so much. My one concern with the graham cracker crust was that it was too crumbly. If you have ever made a graham cracker crust, you know it is hard to get it packed tightly. I am happy to report that I was able to pick up a slice of the test pie and eat it by hand without it falling apart. The sacrifices I make to ensure structural integrity of my pie.

Also, let me reiterate. You must add macadamia nuts to your graham crack crust. It is really, really, really good. Also, it really no extra work to drop some macadamia nuts into the food processor when you are whirling your graham crackers into crumbs.

I did a little piping and sprinkled some lime zest to finish off this pie.

Mistakes may have been made with the Salted Honey Pie. One mistake was definitely not doing a test run of this pie. The last time I made this was last Thanksgiving. Everyone loved it. My husband thinks it’s the best pie I’ve made. I took no pictures of the process or the finished pie. This pie is very delicious. The last time I made this I used a carrot honey. Since I couldn’t get my hands on that again, I used avocado honey, which I really like and has a distinct flavor. This is an easy custard filling and because it was pretty straightforward, I mixed it with a fork. The final result looks like the filling might have separated? I don’t know. I spent some time googling images of this pie (it’s pretty famous). TLDR; I don’t think it is supposed to look like this.

We are going to the fair on Wednesday, so I will report back on how I did!

But, then the question was what kind of pie to make. To keep the crust fresh, I didn’t want to bake to fruit pie and travel with it, so I decided to do a cold set pie. And, of course I went with an Erin McDowell pie.

Peaches and Cream pie seemed perfect for a summer evening dessert and it was really quick to put together and get in the refrigerator to set up. The filling was whipped cream, mascarpone cheese, sugar, peach jam, peaches, cinnamon and vanilla extract (I forgot to pack those last two items). I think having the last two items would have added a bit of complexity to the filling.

The peach jam I had was Peach Amaretto Pecan jam from Knott’s Berry Farm. I just whipped up all of the listed ingredients and put it in the crust. Right before I served it, I chopped up peaches and put them on top (along with some pecans, since they were in the jammy filling).

As always, there were a few things I would do differently if I made this pie again. First, I would put more jam in the filling. The recipe called for half a cup of jam. I scooped some out of the jar and was likely a bit short of half a cup. So, I would actually measure and make sure I got enough jam. I would also chop half a peach and put that in the filling (in addition to the peaches on top). I cut way back on the sugar in the filling, only putting a tablespoon in the filling and a sprinkle on the peaches (but of course how much to use depends on how sweet your peaches are). I also kept the skin on the peaches, which I prefer.

Overall, this was very good and very easy! Would recommend.

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As you can see, this was a sturdy pie. It easily lifted out of the pan.

The second pie I made this week was Passion Fruit Lime. This was actually a test run for the fair!

This was a mash-up of two recipes. The crust was from Sally’s Baking Addiction. This is the same one that I used for my recent key lime pie. It’s a graham cracker crust with macadamia nuts in it. The macadamia nut addition is genius. It just makes the crust so good.

The filling was passion fruit lime! This is from Tess Huff. It is a very simple filling with egg yolks, lime juice, passion fruit curd, and sweetened condensed milk. My one and only complaint is that it calls for 20 oz of sweetened condensed milk which a one and a partial can. But the result is pretty sublime, so I can let that complaint go.

This pie is just delicious — tangy, creamy, tart — all the right flavors and textures! The passion fruit elevated a standard-issue lime pie (and called for regular limes, so no need to track down key limes.) The passion fruit curd came from a Mexican market, which was much easier than finding, scooping and straining passion fruit.

Anyway, if you find pie intimidating, make this one. The crust is press-in (and you must make the recommended crust. Please don’t buy a premade graham cracker crust.) The filling (with or without the passion fruit bakes up so easily.) I haven’t done any piping recently, so I decided to do some piping. But, a pile of whipped cream is also beautiful.

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Also, it was so beautiful, I just had to share the trees from our last hike. This was in the ancient bristlecone forest, these are some of the oldest trees on earth! Happy Summer!

First up, I made an icebox cake for a family get-together. I needed a not-chocolate dessert for a gathering that included kids. I had been intrigued by icebox cakes. I was also crunched for time so something that could come together in 15 minutes was attractive to me.

If you are unfamiliar with icebox cakes, they are a layered dessert and instead of actual cake, you use cookies and layer it with other fillings and whipped cream. As it soaks up the whipped cream, the cookies become cake-like. After reading a lot of recipes, I went with a pretty simple berry icebox cake.

It was layered graham crackers, whipped cream, and I used blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries.

Honestly, this was a great summer dessert. It was refreshing and tasty. One of the children absolutely loved it and would have had thirds if allowed to. The other child told me my berries were sour (I think the blackberries were the culprit here), but she ate around them and seemed to like the rest of the cake. There are more in this genre of dessert that I would like to try!

A few nights later, we had friends over for dinner and I made the brown butter fruit crisp again. Except I changed a few things, based on preference or what was available:

1. I upped the crisp topping by about 10%.

2. I doubled the cinnamon in the crisp topping

3. I used blackberries instead of blueberries because that’s what was in my refrigerator

The final result was really good! Peach and blackberry are a great combo. The friend we had over texted me the next day to tell me she was still thinking about the crisp. So, a winner and much better than the plain blueberry one from Father’s Day.

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Finally, a friend stayed with us for the 4th of July weekend. I didn’t make any desserts, but I did make two galettes for lunch on Monday. I used Erin McDowell’s parmesan dough recipe, and the filling recipe was basically a guide for me. Sorry, I literally cannot just follow a recipe.

To start with the dough. I was pretty confused, to be honest, about whether or not she used this amount of crust for just one galette. It’s basically twice the amount of dough for a single crust pie. It seems like it would be a gigantic galette. I used it for two galettes and it was perfect. I also used a pastry cutter instead of a food processor.

I also modified her cheese filling slightly. Instead of using Boursin and cream cheese (which I’m sure would have been delicious!) I did just cream cheese and mixed in basil, scallions, garlic, salt and pepper. I spread it over the dough and then layered very thinly sliced tomatoes on one and zucchini on the other.

These baked up perfectly! Galettes are so easy and have a very easy trick to determine if they are done. Just grab the pan and give it a shake. If it doesn’t stick and slides around, it is done. These were so good! I also thought some lightly dressed lettuce or arugula would have been fab on top! Next time.

So, that was ten days of baking. And once again, my Savory Baking project is on hold while I make all the summer desserts. I am making a new-to-me pie this week, and also fair pie is coming up so I will be back soon!!

I hope you are enjoying summer produce and having some good baking (or cooking) adventures!

PS. This isn’t baking, but I made some watermelon puree for watermelon lemonade and I had to share because it is a beautiful color!

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I’m going to say up front that I was a little rushed in making this and I didn’t shop for it until the day before I had to make it. If I had planned in advance, I would have made the peach blueberry version of this, but the peaches at Sprout’s weren’t ripe enough, so I just went with blueberries.

My verdict on this was that the crisp topping was very good. The filling was decent, but I find blueberries a little one-note. My husband told me I was wrong and just blueberries was the way to go. And of course, we served this the only way you should - warm with vanilla ice cream.

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Of course, I forgot to take pictures of the finish product, so enjoy pictures of the process (sorry, I’m a bad food blogger).

Also, I wanted to share a couple of pieces of food culture I enjoyed this week:

First, this was a really delightful conversation! As I have mentioned before, I love galettes. They make me question why I deal with the hassle of pie. Give Hot Galette Summer a listen! It was a fun conversation.

Second, I didn’t know about Condiment Claire, and I really enjoyed learning about her. As someone who looooooves mustard, pickles, almost anything sour, as well as most other sauces, I am VERY intrigued by her book. She’s also encouraging us to make our own condiments, I may have to take her up on that!

It’s almost fair pie time, so I will be back next week with what I have decided to submit.

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I made a key lime pie for a little get-together we had last week. Sometimes I decide that I need to make a particular pie and no matter how much browsing other desserts I do, that particular pie sticks with me. That was key lime pie last week. I had decided to make it, and I looked at a few different recipes and ended up going with the one from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Two things that won me over were, 1) it had a whole cup of lime juice in the filling. Since I’m a firm believer in citrus desserts that are really citrusy, that was a plus. 2) The graham cracker crust had macadamia nuts in it, which was very intriguing me.

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This is the first crumb crust I’ve made in a while. The advantage of crumb crusts is that they are faster than pie dough, although I find getting them firmly pressed in to the pan to be a real hassle, but some practice would probably solve that problem. The graham cracker/macadamia nut combo was so good! Like, “stand in the kitchen and eat the leftovers out of a bowl” good.

Anyway, key lime pie is easy to make and delicious. Key limes are hit and miss in southern California. I see them occasionally, but you can’t count on finding them, so I used a combination of Persian limes and bottled key lime juice. You may want to judge me, but just know that Nellie and Joe’s Famous Key West Lime Juice is excellent, and in retrospect, I probably could have saved myself the trouble of squeezing a bunch of limes.

And then in the world’s silliest dilemma, I spent a couple of days debating whether I should pipe whipped cream on top or just scoop it on. Ultimately I decided to just scoop it on top. I think the big pile of whipped cream is pretty! Lastly, I just grated some lime zest on top.

While I did make Sally’s recipe pretty closely to as-written, I did a bit of tinkering.

When I told my husband I was making key lime pie, his response was that it wasn’t his favorite because he found it too sweet. In order to try to combat that, the first thing I did was cut back on the sugar in the crust. While the recipe only calls for two tablespoons of sugar, graham crackers are pretty sweet, so I just put one teaspoon in. As I said previously, the crust was delicious, no complaints, and I suspect that I would have found it too sweet if I had used as much sugar as the recipe had called for.

Second, in the filling, I did use two cans of sweetened condensed milk. but I didn’t make an effort to scrape the cans completely clean. I don’t know that this made a meaningful difference in the sweetness.

Lastly, I didn’t sweeten my whipped cream. Instead of plain whipped cream, I made Erin McDowell’s extra creamy whipped cream, which has some cream cheese in it. This has the added benefit of stabilizing the whipped cream so it will last longer. It also just tastes really good.

I thought this was a really well balanced pie - a little sweet, tart and creamy. I was very happy with the result!

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Corn Muffins

As written, the recipe for these is sweeter than I want my corn muffins. They call for a 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of honey. I don’t really consider corn muffins a sweet (but maybe I should??) so I did her variation that cuts back the sugar to just a 1/4 cup of brown sugar, omits the honey and adds a cube of cheese to the middle. I also included the suggested corn kernels. I used frozen and they worked out great!

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The result was a really good muffin that had a good corn flavor, but because the batter is a mix of AP flour and corn meal, it also had a very nice texture. I like the concept of the cheese cube, but I went with a colby jack mix which didn’t have a strong flavor, so while I would make these again, I would use cheddar.

Spinach Florentine Muffins

I have made these a few times so I knew what to expect. I really like these muffins. they have a little bit of corn meal in them, which gives them a really nice texture and flavor. I also swapped some AP flour for whole wheat. There is so much going on in this muffin, I didn’t notice the whole wheat. Whether that is good or bad may depend on personal preference, so take it as you will. For the florentine part of the muffin, I used frozen spinach this time and it worked great! Do not deal with large bags or boxes of fresh spinach if you do not want to. I even used dehydrated garlic, and honestly, I think these are just as good as with fresh spinach and garlic. It’s all cooked in butter and then thrown into a batter with cheese, so if there is any place to take a couple of shortcuts, this is it! I used Swiss cheese.

These are just really good muffins. The flavor is good and they are hearty! They are a perfect breakfast with coffee and some fruit or yogurt.

I ate two and a half muffins within an hour of them coming out of the oven, so I can say that both are worth making! The corn one is really quick and easy, the spinach florentine is also pretty quick but does involve cooking the spinach and grating cheese. Even so, I think I had them mixed and in the oven within 30 minutes.

My goal next week is to make the French Onion muffins, which sound excellent! I look forward to (virtually) sharing them with you!

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I made two auction pies, a peanut butter pie with a layer of chocolate ganache and a coconut cream pie. I have made both enough at this point that I’m pretty comfortable with the process, and the PB pie is soooooo easy. Honestly, if you made this with a cookie crust, you could put the pie together in 30 minutes (and then it needs an hour chill time). If you want to try it, this is the recipe I use for the peanut butter filling. The recipe I linked to tops the pie with a raspberry meringue. I just do whipped cream. Although I have never had a slice of this pie because I have only made it for other people, I always have extra filling, so I can vouch for the filling. This is what I mean by pie being impressive:

That flaky crust and swooping whipped cream: yum, yum.

My second auction pie was a coconut cream. It looked great. Since I have started making pie, I inspect pies when I am at a restaurant that has a pie case and one conclusion I have come to is that many of these places are too stingy with their coconut topping. This is the only acceptable topping:

A Galette

A friend of mine came over for a weeknight dinner last week, and I wanted to bake something for her, so I made a strawberry galette. I’ve gotten in the habit of making galettes using this dough. This time I swapped out a third of the AP flour for whole wheat, so that gave it a bit of a nuttiness. I thought this was really good! And it came together in about an hour. Very easy, very good. It was a little leaky, but too juicy strawberries seems like a good problem to have.

A very successful baking week!

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My Bonus No Bake Dessert

My dad and stepmom came over this afternoon to help us put together the BBQ they got us as a housewarming gift. They offered to help with assembly this morning and came over in the afternoon (with us having a commitment in between), so I didn’t have time to make a dessert. But I feel pretty strongly in serving dessert, so my super easy, stroke-of-genius-if-I-do-say-so-myself dessert:

If you need a quick dessert, highly recommend root beer floats!

Have a happy and restful Memorial Day weekend!

Now that I am mostly on the other side of the move (with more counter and storage space to show for it), I wanted to share the birthday cake and the first bake in my new kitchen.

Birthday Cake - Three Layer Funfetti Addition

I am not sure why I decided that I absolutely had to have a confetti cake for the March birthday celebration, but I did. I went and bought cake pans for it (the only sensible thing to do in the middle of packing).

I used Sally’s Baking Addiction recipe for the cake. I was drawn to it because it used oil and butter, instead of just butter.

Cake aside: When I was growing up, my mom made us boxed cakes for our birthdays. This has left me with a deep and abiding belief that cake mix cakes are better than homemade cakes. They are soft and fluffy in a way that I have yet to replicate with a homemade cake. The exception to this is chocolate cake, which seems to be easier to make light and fluffy.

Anyway. I was trying to bake a cake that achieved cake mix texture. While this cake was good, it didn’t succeed in that regard, which has left me thinking that maybe I should just make cake mix cakes if that if what I really want.

For the frosting, I decided to make Swiss Meringue Buttercream for this cake, instead of the American buttercream that Sally uses in the recipe.

Frosting Aside: I don’t feel the same way about store bought frosting. I generally prefer homemade because storebought is often sweeter than I like.

Last year I made Swiss Meringue Buttercream for the first time. You can tell that the texture wasn’t quite right in the first cake in the linked post, but, I didn’t know how to fix it. When, a couple days later, I wanted to use the leftover frosting and make it chocolate, I read Sally’s tutorial on how to fix broken Swiss Meringue Buttercream, and it worked great.

On the March cake, I knew what I had done wrong, did it correctly, and it worked great! I did a strawberry filling, which I barely remember, except that it didn’t work out quite the way I wanted it to. Oh well. The final product was cute and whimsical!

Lemon Snacking Cake

For Mother’s Day, I made a small lemon snacking cake from Jessie Sheehan Bakes. After weeks of packing, moving, unpacking, I wasn’t in the mood for anything more ambitious, but also, this was very good and lemony. In a small 8x8 cake, there were three tbsp of lemon zest and three tbsp of lemon juice, which is really what I want in a lemon dessert.

The cake had a simple lemon glaze and the end result was very moist. Also, the glaze gave it that little crunch on the edges, which I love. Definitely recommend!

Pie is Coming

I just had four pies bought at my church’s spring auction, so I have much pie in my future. Plus, it’s time to decide what to enter in the county fair!!

Politics PS

If you are upset by the new Republican murder budget, the absolutely wild corruption, the destruction of our public lands and the National Park Service - to name a few outrages - please remember you can call your member of Congress to complain about all of this, and more. The switchboard number is (202) 224-3121. Or Five Calls is a handy website and app that gives you scripts, if you want to use one, as well as numbers for your senators and representative. If you use the app on your phone, it will connect you directly. Also, plan to join a No Kings protest on June 14th!

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This was a pretty easy bake. It started with an easy batter and then folded in egg whites. If you haven’t done a folding technique before, it is a very delicate technique. Here is a video showing how to do it properly. After I popped the spoonbread in the oven, I read a note in the recipe that underfolding it can lead to separation. I was concerned that I had done that, but it didn’t separate, so that was a relief!

The instructions were to bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes. I ended up baking this for closer to an hour (not sure about the exact time because after 35 minutes, I did it in 2-7 minute increments).

I’m relieved that this went well! Hopefully my baking luck is turning around.

Politics Epilogue:

I was on an action call tonight that was hosted by the Working Families Party, MoveOn, Indivisible and more. More than 40,000 people signed up for this call. So, if you are despairing right now, please know that a lot of people are also upset about what’s going on and are trying to understand how they can fight back. If you do one thing this week, please call your senators and tell them to vote no on the confirmation of Russell Vought for OMB (also the author of Project 2025). Whether Republican or Democrat, whether or not you think your senator is moveable, call and tell them to vote no! 5 Calls makes it easy! Set your location and click on “Oppose Project 2025 Author Russell Vought for OMB Director” and you’ll get phone numbers and a script!

The first was a savory zucchini bread, with cheddar cheese. It had a lot of zucchini and cheese in it, with a topping of panko bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. When I pulled it out of the oven, it seemed done. The toothpick came out clean and it had all of the visual cues of a baked loaf: good color, pulling away from the sides of the pan, springing back into place when touched. But, it was gummy inside. Despite that, the freshly baked bread was delicious!

Other than the weird texture, it also wasn’t good at room temperature, but it did reheat well.

I also made an olive and feta loaf. Despite it sounding delicious, it was gummy and didn’t taste great, so I’m not going to dwell on it or ever make that one again.

So, I am moving on. I have more baking to do this weekend, so fingers crossed I can report some successes.

On the pie front, I haven’t baked any lately, but it’s about time to decide what I am going to enter in the county fair pie baking contest this year! More to come on that!

One non-baking item before I go: while I haven’t discussed non-baking items here, I do want to say that it has been an incredibly unsettling week. To try to freeze all federal loans and grants is a clearly illegal act on the president’s part, who is in the process of consolidating power. Foundational to our system of government, Congress, an equal branch of government, allocates how money is spent. Once those bills are signed into law, the president cannot, constitutionally, say we're not spending that money anymore. Here is a deeper dive into the ramifications: Click here to read about the spending freeze. While the courts have put a hold on the order, it is very unclear whether or not the administration is abiding by the court order. If you are concerned about this, please call your representative and senators and tell them so. The main number is (202) 224-3121. You can dial and ask for your senators’ or representative’s office. Here is a script from 5 Calls. You can also download the 5 Calls app and it will connect you with your senators and representatives.

In mid-December, I did two big baking projects in the same week! First, I made sourdough. It was a pretty cold day and it took a bit of work to proof it properly, but ultimately, it worked really well! I got a little concerned about overbaking it and pulled it a few minutes before I should have. It could have gotten some more color, but, it was pretty well baked and the flavor was really good!

Then, two days later, I made puff pastry from scratch. Of course, that was a warm day, which made it quite challenging. I didn’t take many pictures, because I was pretty stressed out throughout the process. But, in retrospect, I think the most important thing is the minute anything feels less than cold and firm to just throw it in the fridge and walk away for twenty minutes. It turned out really good! The sausage roll I made with it was tasty, but I did need to roll out the dough just a little more than I did. If you look closely, you can see that there is a layer that’s pretty thick and needed to be rolled out. But, for a first try, I was happy with it.

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And finally, for the new year, I have decided that I am going to bake through Erin McDowell’s Savory Bakes. First up is cornbread! This was a simple recipe, really delicious and moist. I made one of the alterative recipes a few months ago with all cornmeal and no flour. I didn’t really like the flavor or texture. This one has both flour and cornmeal. It also has a little bit of brown sugar. It doesn't really make it sweet, but it keeps it moist. I also think it makes for a little more complex flavor. I will be sharing my journey here as I bake through the book!

I hope everyone had successful holiday bakes!

Michelle

PS, check out the flakes on this pecan pie.

But first, the rhubarb drama. If you have ever bought fresh rhubarb, you know it has a fairly short season. I had known in April that I would be baking this pie, but it wouldn’t be delivered until June. I had been keeping an eye out for rhubarb when I went to the grocery store. Not everywhere carries it, but I did find it at the Smart & Final near me in May. And then it was gone. I looked and called stores that usually carried it, but no one had it. The pie was set to be delivered June 9th and in late May, no one had rhubarb. I was headed to Washington for a girl’s trip the first weekend on June, so I told my friends that we needed to go to some farmer’s markets to look for rhubarb. Apparently Washington grows a lot of rhubarb. So we hit up the farmer’s market in Leavenworth, WA and found beautiful rhubarb! So, I brought home a rhubarb haul to southern California.

Of course, since this was an auction pie, I didn't get to try it, but the dough scraps baked up great and were delicious. I was also told that the pie was very good! I was really happy with how it turned out.

How I Baked the Pie

Although I made a strawberry rhubarb pie last year, I've never baked a pure rhubarb pie. I read a few recipes and interestingly enough Erin McDowell didn't recommend cooking the filling in her Book on Pie, which surprised me. When I read Smitten Kitchen's recipe for strawberry rhubarb pie, she had mentioned that the rhubarb can make for a really wet filling and soggy bottom. Since my access to rhubarb was limited, I needed this to work out the first time! I did some research and found a blog that recommended both macerating and cooking the filling. So I macerated for 30 minutes and cooked the filling very quickly, just for about five minutes.

I decided not to egg wash and sprinkle with demerara sugar because while it can look really beautiful, the bake requires a lot more diligence to ensure the sugar doesn't burn. I think it still looked great! 😍😍

Major fails are very frustrating for me. Since I’m not a professional baker, I don’t have a ton of time to redo the things that don’t work out, but I did want to make the chocolate pie dough work, so after it spectacularly failed in January, I decided to come back to it in March, for a birthday pie I was making for me and my sister-in-law.

In January when I tried to make a flaky chocolate pie crust, it was a disaster. The recipe had no baking time and because the crust is already dark brown, it was hard to tell when it was done. One of the cues for blind baking is that it is browned a bit on the bottom and it has an all-over matte finish. Well, it never got the all-over matte finish so I kept adding another 2, 3, 4 minutes, until it was obviously burnt.

In March I made a black forest birthday pie. I did some research on how long it should bake and basically it came down to following the bake time on the recipe closely since it was hard to tell visually when it was done. But, my recipe didn’t have a bake time, so I ultimately followed Erin McDowell’s standard parbaking instructions and baked for 15 minutes with the baking weights and ten minutes with no baking weights. I trusted that it looked done and hoped for the best. I figured since I was just serving this to family that has had a lot of my pies, the stakes were low and just went with it. But I had to laugh because so much of baking is to treat bake times as a guide but know the other doneness cues, and success here was basically to forget all that and trust the bake time.

The pie turned out great and I used my new piping skills to be a bit fancy with the whipped cream!

The apple cake I made for Christmas was from Sally’s Baking Addiction and was everything I want my cakes to be. It was fluffy and moist with great flavor! So when I started looking for the birthday cake I was going to make for the Saturday party, I went straight to Sally. I made a lemon blueberry cake. Since it was a celebration cake, I did three 8-inch layers. I don’t have a lot of round cake pans, but at some point I bought a set a three disposable 8-inch cake pans. Finding those felt lucky. To bring out both flavors, my layers were a lemon curd and a blueberry compote. Sally’s recipe recommends cream cheese frosting, but I decided to try a Swiss meringue buttercream.

This whole process took me about four days in order for me to spread everything out and not have to do all of the work in one or two days.

The Fillings

I made the blueberry compote first, and it turned out pretty meh. It was too sweet and it was very thin. In the end, I decided to fold in unsweetened whipped cream to make it slightly less sweet and thicker so it wouldn’t just soak into the cake. While I wasn’t in love with the result, it served its purpose of adding some blueberry flavor.

I’ve made lemon curd a few times. I absolutely love lemon curd. This was a little stressful. I was using the whole eggs - yolks for the curd and whites for the buttercream. This seemed like a perfect system, but the execution was not great. I have separated eggs so many times with just my hands, and it has never gone this poorly. It’s very important that no fat (yolk) is in the buttercream in the initial stages, which led me to err on the side of letting some whites in the yolks if I was having trouble separating that last bit of yolk and white. A bit of egg white ended up scrambling in my lemon curd. Luckily a quick strain fixed that issue and the curd was smooth and very lemony.

The Frosting

The only frostings I have made is basic American buttercream and cream cheese frosting. Both are sweeter than I like, so I was looking for something different, and decided on Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Aside from wanting a less sweet frosting, I also used it as an opportunity to practice making meringue, which I had not previously done!

I read a few different recipes and they were quite similar, just slightly different quantities of sugar and eggs, so I decided to go with Sally’s version, with two small tweaks from Stella Parks’ recipe on Serious Eats. The two tweaks I took from Stella were: vanilla bean in addition to vanilla extract and toasted sugar instead of plain granulated sugar. (Toasted sugar is just granulated sugar that has been toasted in the oven. Stella recommends it as a way to tone down sweetness and add complexity to recipes that call for granulated sugar).

My biggest challenge was the egg whites and sugar never reached 160 degrees on the double boiler. Sally gives both the temperature and the cue of it being done when you can not feel individual granules of sugar. Since it wasn’t reaching the specified temperature but the sugar was fully dissolved, I moved on to the next stage.

Next up was beating the cooked sugar and egg whites. Mine beat up pretty quickly and I moved on to adding the butter. I will say that the end result was…fine. When I tried the frosting that night, I didn’t really like it, it still tasted pretty sweet to me and it didn’t have the complexity I was hoping it would from the toasted sugar and two formats of vanilla.

But, things got better and worse. Once the frosting had time to meld, I came to really like the flavor. I made the frosting on Thursday evening and pulled it out Saturday morning to come to room temperature. Sally’s instructions were to beat it to reconstitute it, which I did, but I don’t think I did it enough because it was a little it broken, although it still had good flavor and texture.

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The Cake

Sally’s Lemon Blueberry Cake recipe uses butter instead of oil and was definitely denser than her other cakes that I have made. But it was incredibly moist and had great flavor. I would definitely use this recipe again.

The Final Result

This all came together great! My husband told me it was the best thing he has had that I have baked. You can see in the pictures how the frosting separated, but it still tasted great!

Another Cake!!

Literally in the middle of working on the lemon blueberry cake, my aunt texted to make plans to celebrate my little cousin’s fifth birthday. I offered to make the cake for the party and was told she really liked chocolate. Luckily, I have the same cake preferences, so I made a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

I described this to a friend as “tasting like a cake mix, but better.” I grew up with cake mix cakes, so that’s what I want in the birthday cakes I make and this one hit the mark. The frosting was ridiculously good. I highly recommend both recipes. I used leftover Swiss Meringue Butter cream to decorate the cake. Sally has instructions on how to fix broken Swiss Meringue Buttercream (basically you melt it down and rewhip it) which worked like a dream! The texture was smooth. Overall I am super happy with how it turned out.

I’ll be back next week with a pie fail. Whomp whomp.

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Anyway, I have baked a lot of pies in the last two and half years and I’m always a little surprised at how finicky pastry crust is. I have really struggled with even rolling, which honestly, seems like not a huge deal, but leads to difficulty baking evenly. I have also struggled on and off with a lot of shrinking and butter leakage.

I have come around to deciding the letting the crust rest before and after it’s rolled out is extremely important. While in theory you can roll it out after 30ish minutes in the refrigerator, I think that the minimum should be two hours and overnight is best. I hate to say this because I want pie to be simpler and quicker than it is, but sometimes we want optimum results over simplicity, and those times I think require an overnight chill (or 6-8 hours). I also think that the chill after it is rolled is more important than it seems. I have started chilling for 20-30 minutes once it’s in the pie tin, and another 20-30 minutes after it is crimped.

One of the most common things I hear when it comes to baking is that your hands are your best tools. While I don’t entirely disagree, I have really come to embrace the pastry cutter in incorporating butter in my crusts! I think it has helped so much with butter leakage. I still start with my hands by flattening the butter pieces, but once all the butter is smooshed, I use the pastry cutter to incorporate the butter. I do think that this might sacrifice a bit of the flakiness, but I think the tradeoff of not pulling out a butter filled baking sheet 20% of the time is worth it.

Here is my latest pie! It’s a chocolate pudding pie, from Smitten Kitchen. So delicious, not to sweet! As you can see, I am working on my piping skills.

I also did some baking for another bake sale that my cat rescue hosted. I suffered an incredible sprinkles tragedy. I bought four bags of red and pink sprinkles and three of the bags were rancid. I was so upset and tried to fix the situation by doing the truly bananas thing of picking red, pink and white sprinkles from a multicolored pack. It took me way too long to realize that was not feasible before I gave in and made non-seasonally colored confetti cookies.

On the other hand, my cat brownie and blondies came out better than I had hoped! I cut the brownies frozen and the blondies refrigerated (the blondies had mix-ins that I think would have made it even harder to cut if frozen). I loved how they turned out! The blondies are chonky cats. :)

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When I last posted, I had just finished my first round of Christmas cookies.

I had a couple of bake sales that I needed to bake more cookies for. The first was a bake sale for the local cat rescue, so of course I did calico cat cookies. These were so fun to make and also every batch ended up a little different. The idea and recipe for these came from Kim Joy, who you may know from the Great British Bake Off in 2018.

Next up, we had a holiday party to go to that we needed a dessert for, and I decided to bring a Yule Log. I had never made one before, so I went with Smitten Kitchen’s Gingerbread Yule Log. It was very simple! I highly recommend this recipe as a first Yule Log/Swiss roll. The decor was also very simple, just some melted and rolled up white chocolate for the bark. The filling and frosting was heavy cream whipped with sour cream. She also has a video, which I found incredibly helpful with some of the steps around rolling and unrolling the cake.

For reasons that, in the cold light of late January, I cannot recall, on December 20th I decided I needed to bake more cookies. I made Smitten Kitchen’s Confetti Cookies. If you ever need cookies quick, I recommend these. They are so easy, so delicious, and are easily made festive with different color sprinkles.

And my last bake of the year was an apple cake. The recipe was from Sally’s Baking Recipes. This cake turned out great! It was very moist and had great apple flavor. The frosting was also from Sally’s Baking Recipes, but it was from her gingerbread cake recipe. Some sugared cranberries and rosemary made the cake very festive!

And with that, baking in 2023 came to an end, and I have to say that I was a little burned out.

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I came into 2024 with one planned bake and that was two pies for a party my dad and stepmom were throwing. I did a Coconut Cream pie and a Lemon Custard pie. I’m sure the Coconut Cream pie was good, but there were a couple of things I wasn’t happy with. I stuck with the Serious Eats recipe I have always used. The cream scorched a little bit. Ultimately, I don’t think this impacted the filling too much, as I left that behind in the pot, but it was annoying. Also, the whipped cream topping was a little overbeaten, a problem I have occasionally, because I am usually multitasking at this point in the process. The Lemon Custard was a new-to-me recipe, still from Erin McDowell. I did not do the meringue, just mascarpone whipped cream. I didn’t like how the whipped cream looked, but it tasted good.

This past weekend, I made the Coconut Cream pie again for an auction winner and a Peanut Butter pie.

I corrected everything I was unhappy with on the previous Coconut Cream pie. I solved the scorching problem by cooking the custard on a slightly lower heat and cleaned out the pot in between simmering the milks and cooking the custard. I’ve been doing both stages in the same pot, but I think not having the milk residue already in the pot when I poured the pastry cream in was helpful in making a smoother cream. For the whipped cream, I beat it for less time at a higher speed, and it came out looking much creamier.

I may have a new favorite pie! I don’t know how I have gone this long without making Peanut Butter pie, but I made it for a friend and now I need to make it for me, because the filling was ridiculously good, I could not stop eating the leftover.

This pie did involve a major fail. I tried to make the King Arthur’s chocolate pie crust and it did not work out. However, I did bake some strips from the scrap dough, and they were very good. It’s worth trying again, but I need to call the King Arthur Baking Hotline and see what they suggest to successfully blind bake the chocolate dough. Since that didn’t work out, I did a chocolate cookie dough press in crust. This is the recipe I used for the pie. I didn’t do the meringue topping, just whipped cream. My cocoa got away from me when I was garnishing, but overall I thought this turned out great!

For 2024, my goals are to get better at piping and also to try different techniques that I haven’t yet, including meringue. I also plan on entering the county fair pie contest again. I would love to enter a successful spiced plum pie.

Also, I must report that the pumpkin pie I baked for my auction winner did not crack.

Once again, I determined doneness by temperature and pulled it right at 175 degrees. I was skeptical because at this point, it seemed underbaked. I wasn’t sure about Southern Living’s advice, “It needs to jiggle like Jell-O, not wiggle like a wave.” But, I decided to trust what was pretty universal advice about taking it out when it looked underdone in the center. By the next morning, it had set up nicely. I think the next time I bake a pumpkin pie, the crust needs a couple more minutes of parbaking to account for the fact that it only took about 40 minutes to bake. But overall, this was a lesson in trusting that carryover cooking will do its thing.

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Cookies!

Almost all of the cookies I chose to bake this year are new to me. I was intrigued by some of Sarah Kieffer’s recipes, so I decided to try a couple. Right off the bat, I’ll say that her recipes are a little sweeter than I like my sweets, so I did cut back the sugar a bit, but not by much. If you’re not familiar with Sarah, she is famous for her pan-banging method. I made her Pan-Banging Ginger Molasses Cookies. I haven’t dipped them in the rum glaze yet, but I do intend to before I drop them off at an event, so I’ll report back on the final product. As for the undipped cookies, they were very good. Much bigger than I usually make cookies, but apparently, they need to be big to get the impact from the banging. I didn’t notice until I started scoping the cookies that the recipe only made 10 and I needed more molasses cookies than that, so I ended up also making a batch of Smitten Kitchen’s ginger molasses cookies. It’s from her latest cookbook, Smitten Kitchen Keepers. Almost everything I’ve made from that cookbook is A+ and these cookies are no exception. Also, they’re one bowl, you could do them in the stand mixer, but there is no need. They’re just incredibly easy and delicious. I did make them last year and they were a big hit! I baked a few off to give to our neighbor, and the rest of the dough is in the fridge to be baked later this week.

The other Sarah Kieffer recipe I made are panettone sugar cookies. I really loved these cookies! Once again, I baked a couple and the rest of the dough is in the freezer waiting to be baked. Between the citrus zest, the dried fruit and the orange flavor (I did a combination of Grand Marinier and orange juice), they just tasted festive. I did put a little bit of bread flour in them to get some extra chewiness. I really liked the result, but am a little worried to give them away, as I don’t know if this is a texture most people want/expect from a cookie. These also didn’t spread the way I hoped they would, but since I tinkered with the recipe by cutting back on sugar and adding bread flour, that could be on me.

Finally, I made Smitten Kitchen’s Walnut Brittle Chocolate Chip cookies, also from Keepers. I gave these a taste, of course, and when I got a bite with brittle and chocolate, they had a wonderful complexity, but in order for that to happen in every bite, I think they need more brittle. Also, they needed more salt. I know this is baking heresy, but I think I’m going to go back to baking with salted butter. I have yet to bake anything with salted butter that was too salty, but bake a lot with unsalted butter that tastes a little under salted. This is definitely a make again recipe, but maybe with 1.5x the brittle.

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Cookie Problems

I’ve had two main problems with my cookie baking. The first is that my doughs have really looked underhydrated. Some of them have been fine once I scooped them, like the panettone cookies. Others, like Smitten Kitchen’s ginger molasses cookies literally crumbled in my hands when I tried to roll them into balls. I added a couple of tablespoons of butter and it solved the problem, but I’m wondering if it’s just drier this year and my doughs aren’t hydrating as well?

Unlike the underhydrated dough, my cookies not spreading is a perpetual issue. I have read many articles on why cookies might not be spreading and none of the reasons seem plausible for me. I weigh my ingredients, my leavening agents are fresh, I think I’m creaming my butter well. I have made some cookies recently that used oil instead of butter, or a combo of the two, and those spread much better, so maybe need to start replacing a bit of butter with oil? If you have any thoughts on getting cookies to spread well, please share!

I have a couple more cookie recipes I’m planning to make this week, so I’ll report back on those.

Happy Baking!

Auction Apple Pie

This may have been the best pie I made. Obviously I didn’t eat it, so I can’t speak for the final product, but I did bake up some of the dough scraps and they may have some of the best pie crust I’ve made lately:

The crust was incredibly flaky and tender! I was so excited about these crusts that I did a little photo shoot of them for Instagram. Totally normal reaction to pie crust. For the filling, I did what Erin Jeanne McDowell describes in the Book on Pie as her favorite apple pie. It’s a lot of brown sugar, a little bit of cinnamon, lemon juice, granulated sugar and flour to thicken. I used honeycrisp apples, which, once cooked in the brown sugar, basically turned the sugar into apple cider caramel. Almost like if you made these and they didn’t quite set up. I can tell you what it tasted like because I ate everything that dripped out of the pie. I was so happy with how this pie turned out. I give it an A-.

Pumpkin Pie

For the pumpkin and pecan pies, I made traditional flaky crust and I premade the filling and kept them in the refrigerator overnight, which seemed to work well.

When I parbaked the crust, a lot of butter leaked out, which was really sad and made the crust a bit tough. For the filling, I used Erin Jeanne McDowell’s pumpkin pie recipe, with mascarpone. I thought it baked up okay, but it cracked terribly, which was really unfortunate. I used an instant read thermometer, and it wasn’t overbaked, so I don’t know what happened. It tasted good, but traditional pumpkin pie isn’t my favorite. Partially because of things that truly went wrong, partially because of my own feelings about pumpkin pie, I have to give this pie a C+.

Pecan Pie

The pecan pie crust was better than the pumpkin pie crust, but it still lost a fair amount of butter. For the filling I used the Karo recipe. I think I slightly overbaked the pecan pie, but, it’s so sweet and gooey, who could tell?? I give it a solid B.

I ended up not baking an apple pie for our Thanksgiving celebration and did a pumpkin chiffon pie. I really liked it, the pie was light and delicious, creamy and pumpkiny without being too much. It’s an old family recipe from my boss. It was also so easy to make, it was all made in the food processor! My one issue with it is that it included gelatin, so if I make it next year, I will find a truly vegetarian recipe.

For this and the pistachio cream pie, I did a brown butter press-in cookie crust. I don’t do press-in crusts often, but this one was easy and came together nicely. I give it a B+.

Pistachio Cream Pie

This pie was the hit of the evening! Everyone really loved it. Grinding up the pistachios burnt out my blender, but luckily I had finished the cream. My personal opinion is that I may have just slightly overcooked the filling. The texture just didn’t quite seem right to me. But the flavor was great and I think it’s worth trying again! Because of my issues with the texture, I give it a B-.

Overall, it was a lot of pie, but fun to work through it all! I have two more auction pies to do in the next couple of weeks and I have big Christmas cookie plans!

Here is a picture of my final pie spread - with pumpkin bread I didn’t make (ugh that crack in the pumpkin pie).

I hope you have fun Christmas baking plans!

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First, I decided to do a pumpkin chiffon pie instead of apple, so now we'll have a regular pumpkin, a pumpkin chiffon, a pecan and a pistachio cream. Second, I did an apple pie for an auction pie.

The pumpkin and pecan are baked, the pumpkin chiffon and pistachio cream are made. I'll make the whipped cream and assemble tomorrow morning.

For the cold set pies, I did brown butter press in cookie crust, which was pretty easy and also very delicious. Here are a bunch of pictures of the process and the components.

I'll share the final products this weekend! Happy cooking and baking. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day pies:

Pumpkin Pie

I’m not a huge fan of pumpkin, but I know it’s a classic, so I am doing a pretty traditional pumpkin pie. My very modest goal is to not crack my pumpkin pie this year.

Pecan Pie

A couple of years ago, I tried a pecan pie with maple syrup and last year I did a pecan pie with bourbon in it. I didn’t love the maple syrup, and this year I am sticking to the recipe on the back of the Karo bottle, which is what I’ve been making since I started helping my mom bake the Thanksgiving pies when I was little. If there are no leftovers of the Pecan Pie, I’ll have to make a second to bring to my dad over the weekend. It’s his favorite and it’s mandatory that I bring him some.

Apple Pie

I have considered a lot of potential variations on apple pie (adding caramel, cranberries, etc.), but I’ve decided to keep it pretty traditional. I’m putting some rye flour in the crust and the crumble, but that’s it.

Pistachio Cream

This is where I admit that I don’t really love any of the traditional Thanksgiving pies. I don’t hate them and I definitely eat all of them, but none of them are my favorite. So I take the opportunity to do something a little different when I can. Last year I did a cranberry pie. This year I am doing pistachio cream. Instead of the traditional all buttah crust I usually do, I’m thinking about doing a brown butter press in cookie crust (it’s this crust but with brown butter).

More Pie!

In addition to Thanksgiving pie, I’m doing a pie for delivery to the winner the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. TBD on what kind of pie, the winner is polling his family. Then I have another pumpkin pie to deliver the first weekend in December. That’s a lot of pie in two weeks!

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Plans and pictures to come!

No baking this week, so I’ll leave you with a cat picture.