A-Hidden-Gem

Mocha Blondies

To make these, start by combining flour, baking powder, and salt.

Then combine melted butter and espresso powder before mixing in brow sugar

Then add egg + additional egg yolk and vanilla

Then pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients, and fold together before folding in chocolate. I used some chocolate bars and chopped them up

Grease a 9 inch pan, and put dough in (I know it’s called batter in the recipe, but it has the consistency of dough).

After I finished baking this, I started on a maple glaze to top it. To do this, melt butter in a saucepan and once fully melted, pour in maple syrup and combine until melted

Take the saucepan off the heat, and add in powdered sugar and vanilla.

Drizzle it over the blondies and Voila! Mocha blondies!

This recipe was very interesting and fun to make. The blondies came out super moist and fudgey, and were delicious! The maple glaze had a subtle taste and didn’t overpower anything. There are parts of the recipes that you can choose from such as the espresso powder and powdered sugar.

For the blondies, you can use 3 tablespoons or 4 tablespoons of espresso powder, and in the notes it tells you the difference the extra tablespoon yields. 3 tablespoons = a milder coffee flavor while 4 tablespoons = a richer espresso taste. I personally used 3 so nothing would be overwhelming, but it’s up to you on what you like.

For the glaze, you can use up to 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar based on how thick you want it. I personally used 1 cup of powdered sugar and it worked well, but again, it’s up to you.

Overall I loved making this as it was a fun, delicious, and new experience! I give this recipe a 9.5/10 as the flavors sometimes competed, but was still great. Recipes are linked below, I hope you give them a try!

Strawberry Shortcakes

The recipe I made was meant to yield 10 shortcakes, so I halved the recipe. To make these, the main part is the shortcake itself. The shortcake is a biscuit, but has the sweetness of a cake.

To make it, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. After combining them, add in butter and integrate with a pastry blender.

Once it’s all combined, and has a course texture, pour in buttermilk and fold into the dough, and try not to overwork it. Once done, spread flour on a surface, and roll the dough into a 3/4 inch rectangle. Then, fold both sides into the center, turn it horizontally, and roll it again. Repeat this twice more before using a biscuit cutter to cut out 3 inch circles, and coat with buttermilk or heavy cream. Tip: if you don’t have a biscuit cutter, you can use a glass to cut out the circles

Next, bake them, and cut them in half

Now here’s something, I’m not huge on full strawberries, but I like strawberries incorporated into things. So while I made a few normal shortcakes, I also made a shortcake with strawberry whipped cream for me.

To make this, blend strawberries into a puree, and boil it on the stove. Cool this in the fridge. Then make the whipped cream by beating heavy cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla on high. Once done and the purée has cooled, fold the purée into the cream

For the regular shortcakes, make the whipped cream, and for the strawberries, let them sit in sugar to release their juices. You can put the whipped and strawberry cream a pipping bag if you’d like. Then stack in the following order:

Bottom half of shortcake, whipped cream, strawberries, top half, whipped cream, strawberries.

And for the strawberry whipped cream one:

Bottom half, strawberry cream, top half, regular whipped cream, dollop of strawberry cream (You can use the strawberry cream in place of the regular whipped cream in this if you want).

And voila! Strawberry shortcakes!

I really loved making these, they were so easy, and so much fun to make and assemble. I’ll admit, I didn’t expect to boil the purée, but it was worth it for the final taste! They tasted great! The texture was soft and smooth, and the strawberry cream was delicious! I give this recipe a 10/10!

I have the recipes linked below, and I highly recommend trying them as I think they’re the perfect summer dessert!

Hope you have good days, and happy summer!

Just Because Cupcakes

There’s 2 parts to making them, the cake and the buttercream

For the cake, I used a devil’s food cake cake mix, and just followed the instructions on the box. To get all the ingredients incorporated, I find that a whisk is best because it helps to mix in the eggs better than a spatula

From here, I lined 2 cupcake tins, and filled them with batter. Unfortunately I overestimated how many it would make, and wound up only filling a dozen, but it’s still good!

I popped it in the oven, and came out with these giant cupcakes

To make buttercream, I used an American buttercream recipe, which combines butter and salt, then powdered sugar, and finally heavy whipping cream and vanilla.

I scrapped the buttercream into a pipping bag with a circular tip, and started filling the cupcakes. To fill cupcakes, insert the tip of the pipping bag into the top of the cupcake, and squeeze to fill it with buttercream. If you done have a pipping bag, you can use a ziplock bag, fill it with buttercream, and cut a corner to act as a pipping bag. To fill it, cut out a hole in the center of the cupcakes with a knife, take out the cake you cut out, and fill the hole with buttercream

I then pipped buttercream on top, but unfortunately I began to run out on some of the cupcakes, causing a bunch of bald spots on the cupcakes. To fix this, I started spreading around the buttercream to get a different texture that covers everywhere.

I then topped with chocolate chips, popped it in the fridge to chill for a bit (this part’s optional) and viola! Just Because Cupcakes!

These cupcakes were delicious! The buttercream was sweet and rich, and the cake was perfectly moist! I give this recipe a 10/10!

I got the recipe from “Just Cupcakes” by Betty Crocker. I highly recommend it to anyone because the cupcakes are so creative, delicious, and easy to make! I highly recommend trying out the Just Because cupcakes, I had a great time making them!

Beignets

The recipe for this is time consuming but really simple. You just need to make the dough and then fry it.

To make the dough, combine lukewarm water, active dry yeast, and sugar. Whisk it and then set it aside until it dissolves or froths

Then, add milk and eggs, and whisk together

After you make the liquid mixture, use a stand mixer with a dough attachment and combine flour and salt. Then put in butter and pour in the mixture. Turn on the mixer, and let it all combine until all ingredients are incorporated.

Add oil or melted butter to a bowl and spread it around, put your dough in the bowl, seal it with plastic rap, and let it sit for 1-2 hours until it rises. I did 1:30 and it worked just fine.

After the dough has risen, roll it out into a long rectangle with a 3/4 inch thickness and cut it up.

Then you need to fry it. You can fry it in a sauce pan with oil, but I used a deep fryer.

I fried them for 1 minute on each side before flipping, and afterwards you need to transfer them to a bowl or plate lined with paper towels to drain the oil.

Dust with powdered sugar, and viola! You’ve got beignets!

Overall, I would give this recipe a 10/10, it took a bit to make but they made a great, fluffy dessert! I have the recipe linked below and just know, yeast takes a bit longer than 5-10 minutes to activate.

Hope you guys try this out, and have a great rest of your day!

Blueberry Buckle

There’s 2 parts to this recipe, the streusel and the cake

For the streusel, combine flour, brown sugar, salt, and cinnamon before adding in butter and mixing it with either forks or a pastry blender. Then add in crushed cornflakes

For the cake, combine flour, cornmeal, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Then in a separate bowl, combine sugar and lemon zest until it has the consistency of wet sand. Then beat in room temperature butter until it’s fluffy. Then beat in 2 eggs one at a time

Add in 1/3 of the dry ingredients, and beat until combined. Then add in 1/2 of the buttermilk and combine. Combine the rest of the dry ingredients, buttermilk, and vanilla in intervals, alternating between them all until everything is incorporated. Then add in your blueberries.

You can use fresh or frozen, but if you use frozen, remember to thaw them. Fold them into the batter with a rubber scraper

Once fully incorporated, get a 10 inch pan, and spread either butter or baking spray around the inside. Then add in the batter, making an even layer with no air pockets. Once this is done, add the streusel on top, even it out, and put it in the oven

The timing for baking depends on whether you used fresh or frozen blueberries, if fresh it takes less time, and if frozen it needs more. It took an hour and 35 minutes to bake for me, and I jade to let it cool down for a while before I could take it out. Voila! A blueberry buckle

What I loved about it was that it had the texture of a coffee cake and the flavor of a blueberry muffin! It tasted great and I had an amazing time making it! Overall, I give this recipe a 10/10!

I have the recipe below, it’s from Claire Saffitz’s cookbook “What’s for Dessert?” I love the book, it has amazing recipes, I highly recommend reading it!

I got this recipe from the book “What’s for Dessert” by Claire Saffitz. The book is amazing and the recipes are fantastic, definitely worth checking out!

The recipe pages are shown below, as for the whipped cream, you can use the one in the recipe, or you can use one online. Hope you guys try it out, I had a great time making it, and it tasted amazing! Enjoy!

Chocolate Coupes

This recipe includes pudding and whipped cream. For the pudding, make a separate mixture of corn starch, brown sugar, and cocoa powder. Then heat up milk with a bit of salt on the stove until it steams and gets ripples

After that, separate 4 egg yolks and 1 full egg in a bowl, then whisk the eggs and cocoa mixture together, and once fully combined, beat vigorously until lighter in color and increased in volume.

Then pour in 2/3 of the milk into the chocolate mixture, and once combined, pour it into the remaining 1/3 in the pot, put on medium heat, whisk for about 4-5 minutes, then whisk vigorously for 15 seconds to get a thick consistency, before pouring over a bowl with semisweet chocolate and butter in it.

You can chop up chocolate or you can get chocolate chips, it works the same. Don’t melt the butter, you don’t have to soften it, just pour over the hot chocolate mixture, and let it melt it for two minutes before stirring

After this, chill it for 4 hours with plastic wrap over it.

A tip for chilling pudding, you need to place the plastic wrap on top of the pudding, not the bowl. This way, it doesn’t get a film on top

Afterwards, make whipped cream. The recipe calls for it to only be heavy cream whipped, but I made a generic version with heavy cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract.

I’ll be honest, I eyeballed it with the powdered sugar and vanilla because all I had was the heavy cream measurements, but it turned out pretty good.

For arranging the coupes, use a glass (I used a cocktail glass, but you can use any type of glass you would like) and layer pudding, whipped cream, pudding, whipped cream, topping. The recipe calls for Oreos to be used as topping, but for Easter and Good Friday, I used mini chocolate eggs.

And voila, chocolate coupes! I would rate this a 10/10, I had a great time making this, and it tasted great. The texture was thick and smooth and it had a salted chocolate flavor to it. The whipped cream worked great a buffer for the richness of the chocolate, I recommend trying this out, and I would make this again!

I’m unfortunately at the limit for photos, so I’ll make a separate post for the recipe.

Key Lime Coconut Cream Pie!

This was originally meant to be posted on Pi day last week, but I was missing some ingredients so I had to hold off until I could get them.

This was a very easy recipe, just 2 parts to it!

The key lime and the coconut cream.

For the coconut cream, you need to beat heavy cream until it thickens and once it does, add in powdered sugar and coconut extract, and then beat until I gets stiff peaks.

Tip for thickening heavy cream, the top will get really foamy at the beginning, but it isn’t thick until the heavy cream under it feels less liquidy. And you’ll know when it becomes whipped cream when you take out the mixer and the spikes it makes stay like that, ie a stiff peak.

For the key lime beat cream cheese, condensed milk, and key lime juice.

The two will look like this (key lime on left and coconut cream on right)

For the pie, you need to fold in 2 cups of the coconut cream with the entirety of the key lime. It’ll look like this

For the crust, I got a pre made graham cracker one. The recipe called for a pecan short bread cookie crust, but I wanted to save me the trouble of blending cookies.

When it comes to the crust for these types of pies, a cracker crust (that’s what I call it) is typical, and you make it by crushing/processing cookies, mixing it with melted butter, and then shaping. You can use whatever cookie you want but shortbread and graham cracker are what I would go with, and are best for this pie.

I poured in the mixture, and I was worried that it wouldn’t all fit in the crust, but it did (with minor overflow) so I’m pleasantly surprised.

Chill the pie for 4 hours in the fridge, top with the remaining coconut cream, garnish with shredded coconut, and voila! A Key Lime Coconut Cream Pie!

I give this recipe a 10/10, it was super easy and fun to make, and it tasted fantastic! I love key lime pie, but it’s hard because of how strong the lime taste is, but this blend of key lime and coconut was perfect! Highly recommend if you get the chance!

Hope you all have a great weekend, happy spring, and happy late Pi day!

Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf

There are two parts to it, the cake and the glaze.

For the cake, I first combines the dry ingredients, flour, poppy seeds, and baking powder.

Next I combined the butter, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and milk, but this is where I messed up.

I didn’t beat together the sugar and butter first and then slowly add the ingredients together mixing in segments, and just threw everything together, which made a clumpy, liquidy mess. But I was able to fix it.

I strained the butter clumps out, and put some butter into the microwave for a few seconds to soften it, and then beat it with a little sugar.

Then I alternated between adding little bits of the liquid mixture, and the dry mixture until it looked like this, so problem avoided!

Then I sprayed a 4x10 pan with nonstick baking spray, but you can use either that or melted butter, but make sure to get the sides so little to nothing is lost when trying to take it out. I then poured it into the pan and baked it for an hour and it came out nicely!

For the glaze, I mixed powdered sugar, milk, vanilla, and a little bit of lemon juice. I added a bit more powdered sugar to get thicker consistency, but I had to strain out clumps. I finished by sprinkling some lavender sugar on top, and voila! You have a lemon poppy seed loaf!

Overall I would give this recipe a 10/10, as it was very fun to make, easy to fix given my mistakes, and tasty!

The recipes are linked below, I hope you’ll give them a try.

Happy Baking, and Happy Spring!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I know I’m a day late, but nevertheless, I wanted to share what I made for the holiday

Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies

This recipe is has 3 parts to it, the brownie, the cheesecake, and the ganache.

For the brownie, you want to combine sugar, melted butter, cocoa powder, red food dye, salt, vanilla, and vinegar, and should look like this

Add in whisked eggs, letting the batter get liquidy

Then fold in flour and pour in 8x8 brownie pan leaving 1/4 cup of the batter out to use as topping later.

For the cheesecake, beat cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and egg yolk.

There are 2 ways that I now of to separate the yolks from the whites

You can crack the egg, leaving the yolk in the shell, and tossing it between the split shell, letting the whites fall out

Or

You can crack the egg into your hands and toss the yolk between them letting the whites fall between your fingers.

For this, I used the second method as I’m more familiar with it, but you can do it either way.

Next you pour the cheesecake mix on top of the batter in the pan, smooth it out, and add dollops of batter from the 1/4 cup. Then you want to swirl it around with a knife or a toothpick, I used the first option.

Bake it for 30 minutes or until your toothpick test comes out clean. (To test if it’s done, stick a toothpick in it and if I comes out clean, it’s done)

For the ganache, heat up heavy cream either the in microwave or on the stove, I used the microwave because I didn’t want to dirty a pan when I could just use a measuring cup.

Chop up a semi sweet chocolate bar or use chocolate chips, and pour the hot heavy cream over it, and stir until smooth

Once the brownies are cool enough, dunk a corner of the brownie in the ganache. You can top it if you’d like, for this, I used strawberry cream flavored sugar

And voila! You have red velvet cheesecake brownies!

Personally, I would rate this a 9.5/10, it was super fun and simple to make, just a bit time consuming, but it’s worth it for this dessert!

Thank you, and Enjoy!

Tiramisu Cookies

There’s 2 parts to making these,

the cookie and the topping

Making the cookie is a pretty basic cookie recipe with a few deviations and additions.

When starting with the wet ingredients, it asks you to melt and chill the butter to room temperature. After taking it out of the fridge, the butter might separate, which is normal, so to fix this, just stir it around with a fork for a couple seconds. After combining the wet ingredients it should look like this

When moving on to the dry ingredients, to make it a tiramisu cookie, it includes the addition of espresso powder, making the dry ingredients look like this

When combining the two, the end result should give you a good, thick dough

The recipe called for it to sit on the pan for 3 minutes after baking because the cookies are soft when they come out of the oven, but I assure you that they are done. I decided that I wanted to make them flat on top so that the topping would be easier to pipe on, so I pressed it a bit with a spatula

Moving on to the topping, for this, it calls for a mascarpone cream. I couldn’t find any regular mascarpone, but I did find an espresso mascarpone, which I didn’t know existed. After I combined the ingredients, I found that the espresso gave the mascarpone a great flavor making it not too strong or subtle.

After I finished I piped the cream onto the cookies. I used a star tip for this to give it a nice rose texture, but you can use whichever one you like! After finishing piping, I sifted on some cocoa powder, and voila! The cookies are done and looking great!

I would give this recipe a 9.5/10, it was very easy to follow and gave me some great cookies! The only issue that I had was that half of the recipe was in imperial and the other have was in metric, so I used a conversion calculator to understand it. Highly recommend trying this recipe out, I really enjoyed making, and I hope you’ll consider! Recipe is linked below

For the cupcakes I used a red velvet cake box mix, and it made 15 cupcakes.

A tip for this is you’ll know it’s done by sticking a toothpick into the middle, and if it comes out clean or crumby, then it’s done.

For the icing, I used a standard frosting recipe, you can use whichever you’d like as any would work.

To make it into the semi circle, I used a silicone mold, piped the pink frosting into the mold, placed the cupcake on top upside down, and chilled it for a a little over a day in the freezer. They came out cleanly looking like this

I made a darker shade of pink for the details, and made a brain pattern on the domes.

I made a gray one to give it a little more life and make an abstract pattern that makes it look a little more like Halloween!

I would rate these a 9/10 as they were tasty and fun to make, it got a little runny at the end, but overall great!

Hope you enjoyed and…

Mini Oreo Cheesecake Bites

The recipe consists of two parts: the crust, and the filling

The crust is the easiest part: just a lot of crushed Oreos and melted butter combined. Afterwards you just take a 1 1/2 tablespoon and press them into whatever you’re making these in, I chose cupcake tins, you can choose whatever you want. Pop ‘em in the oven for 6 minutes and you’ve got an Oreo crust.

The filling takes a little longer, but it yields incredible results. Mix cream cheese, heavy cream, sour cream, vanilla, sugar, eggs, and more Oreos for the filling. You add it into the tins on top of the crust and bake it for 16 minutes. After it’s done you need to chill it, and that takes 3 hours.

For this I added my own whipped cream on top to make it pretty. For my whipped cream I beat heavy cream, powdered sugar, and vanilla extract until I got a stiff peak. I topped the cheesecakes with it via pipping bag, and they came out amazing!

They tasted sweet and rich at the same time, while still having a smooth texture!

They didn’t take long to make but the chilling process takes time, so be aware of that. I would rate this recipe a 10/10 would/will make again

I wanted to make peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips as it reminds me of peanut butter blossoms (one of my favorite cookies) but it reminded me of another type of peanut butter cookie I made that was also similar to peanut butter blossoms that tasted incredible!

2 years ago I made peanut butter cookies with mini Reece’s peanut butter cups in place of Hershey’s kisses and decorated them to look like spiders. They tasted amazing so I decided to combine the two in these cookies. What I did was I put in about a cup of chocolate chips and cut up 10 mini Reece’s peanut butter cups into fourths.

A tip for this is to put the Reece’s into the freezer for about 30 minutes so they’re easier to cut but not so frozen that they’re rocks.

Peanut butter cookies are a timeless recipe that are simple but taste great. Adding in the chocolate chips really helps to up the taste by making it not just savory but sweet, but adding in the peanut butter cups really accelerated the flavor making it extra sweet and salty!

I would rate this a 10/10, they looked and tasted great, I wouldn’t change a thing. Just an FYI, remember to press it down with a fork before putting it in the oven. I didn’t do that as I thought that it wouldn’t be necessary with the additives and that it would flatten in the oven. It didn’t and I had to pull the trays out, flatten them, and put them back in.

The recipe is linked below, I hope you enjoyed and consider making these!

The pastry

When making the pastry, you start by adding milk, water, salt, and butter to a saucepan, and bringing it to a simmer. After that’s done, add in flour and stir it with a wooden spoon. This helps it to congeal into a dough ball. A tip for this is to make sure the flour is already measured out once the water, milk, salt and butter are in the saucepan because they heat up pretty fast so the flour adding comes sooner than expected.

After the dough is together, transfer it into a bowl and add in the eggs one at a time, fully incorporating the previous egg in before adding the next. Once it’s done it should look like this.

The dough needs to be soft but not runny, this is so it can be piped into the small dough balls. If you have trouble with piping it into a perfect ball, remember that it’s still dough so you can shape it. I personally have trouble with this so I used 2 spoons to shape it. After it’s done and you put it in the oven, it’s time to move on to the pastry cream.

The pastry cream

For this you need to heat milk and sugar in a saucepan, and combine sugar, eggs, and corn starch in another bowl. Once the milk is heated, pour a third into the egg mixture, and mix. After that’s done, pour the contents of the bowl into the saucepan, and once it boils, take it off the heat, add vanilla extract, and strain it. If the pastry cream is too thick, heat up some more milk and once simmering, add it to the pastry cream to loosen it. If it’s too runny, add some corn starch to thicken it. Once it’s done, it should look like this:

The Ganache

This is where I deviated from the recipe and found a fun ganache online. The original calls for a milk chocolate ganache, but what I did was I made a light white chocolate ganache with white chocolate chips, heavy cream, honey, and rose water.

Finding rose water was a bit difficult as it can be sold in some grocery stores but I couldn’t find any in mine, so I ordered it online.

The ganache called for it to be made in a saucepan but instead for this I just added the heavy cream, white chocolate chips, honey, and rose water to a bowl, and put it in the microwave. This got the same results as I would if I had used a saucepan. Once the ingredients were fully incorporated, I added the rest of the heavy cream, chilled it for 2 hours, and whipped it to get a light airy texture. I added in some red food coloring to make it pop, and it turned out pretty well.

Assembly

Once the pastry is done, poke a hole in the bottom to remove any liquid or air. Once cooled (both the pastry and the cream) pipe the cream into the pastry, a good rule of thumb for measuring it is to wait until the pastry cream is coming out of the hole you’re piping it into.

Once the pastry cream is in, take the profiteroles and dunk the tops into the ganache. They should come out looking like this

Overall, I would rate this recipe a 9.5/10 as the pastry, the pastry cream, and the ganache tasted great! I’ve made this recipe twice before, but the ganache deviation was new, and it came out fabulously! The rosewater gives it a little tang but isn’t overpowering, same thing with the rest of the ganache. The only thing I would change is adding in some powdered sugar to the ganache to make it a little sweeter so that the rose water can pair a little better. The recipes are linked and shown at the bottom, I highly recommend trying this! The recipe for the ganache is in the metric system so if you don’t have a food scale, the conversions are stated below. Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and have a great rest of your day!

- 2/3 cup of heavy cream

- 2/3 cup of white chocolate

- 2 tbsp of honey

- 1 tbsp of rose water

- 3/4 cup of heavy cream (don’t combine the two heavy creams, they’re separate)