I love food. Clearly. However, I am nervous to call myself a “foodie” as these days it seems to have a bit of a snobby connotation. Food snob, I certainly am not.  I’ll eat ramen and boxed mac & cheese by choice. My favourite french fries are McDonald’s. I realize that those are not the best french fries I’ve ever had in terms of quality and flavour, but I love them. They remind me of my childhood.

Also, Taco Bell isn’t as bad as it seems. Most of the time.

But one rule I generally follow in my baking is if I know I can do better than a box, I do it. Cake mix as an ingredient in a greater crust? Sure. Cake mix to make cake? No, no.

Confession time..

I bought a couple jars of caramel sauce and put them in these bars.

But the jar said ”Fleur de Sel” on it. I mean, I own Fleur de Sel, I can and have made Fleur de Sel caramel sauce in the past… but knowing it’s all right there, ready to go with no stirring, no careful pot watching…

Also, instead of “Trader Joe’s” it said “Trader Jacques” on the jar and that made me giggle. That’s as good of a reason to buy a food product as any really.

I actually love most things that come in boxes and jars from Trader Joe’s. From little raviolis to chocolate covered cocoa nibs, something about their packaged food tastes a little less packaged.

This sauce did not disappoint.

It was kind of amazing. I had to stop myself from attempting to shove my whole face into the tiny jar just to consume every last available drop that didn’t make in into the bars.

Speaking of Trader Joe’s goodies, have you ever had Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter? There’s none of that in this recipe, but goodness gracious, it may be one of the best things I’ve ever consumed. Just as an FYI. You totally should try it. I dare you not eat large quantities of it in a single sitting.

This caramel is a total rule breaker, but I’m sure the bars would taste just as good, if not better, with homemade caramel.

You just get a spatula to lick instead of a jar.

P.S. Happy anniversary Trevor. I think you’re nifty. :)

Caramel Oatmeal Bars

Adapted from Bake or Break

Ingredients

• 2 cups old-fashioned oats
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 & 1/4 cups unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 2 10 oz. jars of Trader Joe’s Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce (or 2 1/2 cups of your favourite caramel sauce, lightly salted or not. Make sure it’s on the thicker side.)
• 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chunks

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Coat a 9″x 13″ baking pan with cooking spray. Line with parchment paper, leaving about a 2-inch overhang on the short ends.
2. In a large bowl, stir together oats, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt. Mix in butter, using a fork or your fingers, until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Press half of mixture onto the bottom of prepared pan. Store rest of mixture in the fridge until ready to use.
3. Bake until just set and starting to brown around the edges (about 20 minutes). Cool in pan on wire rack for 5 minutes.
4. Sprinkle partially baked crust with chocolate chunks. Drizzle caramel sauce over chips and crust. Top with remaining crumb mixture.
5. Bake 20-25 minutes, or until pale golden. Cool completely in pan before cutting into bars, otherwise caramel will ooze out of the bars.

This past weekend contained a significant day of celebration.

Well, yeah, there was Cinco de Mayo, but that’s not what I’m talking about.

This past Friday was May the fourth.

Star Wars Day.

I’ve warned you in the past that I’m a gigantic dork.

For those who are less nerdy than I, let me take a moment to explain. “May the fourth” is a pun on the popular Star Wars salutation “May the force be with you”. It became jokingly dubbed Star Wars Day by fans, but quickly became recognized by LucasArts themselves.

Told you… dork. Proud of my dorky nature, but still… big dork.

And I celebrate via the deliciousness of cookies.

This is not my first time with the Star Wars Cookie Cutters, but last time was a Darth Vader only show in a celebration of The Empire. Star Wars day needed the whole cookie cutter crew, but I didn’t want Yoda to be chocolate like the Vaders.

I wanted him to be green.

Dying chocolate cookies green doesn’t really work, so it was time for some standard sugar cookies. The chocolate cookie recipe for Vader was amazing, so I figured I might as well go back to Bake at 350 for a reliable, simple sugar cookie recipe.

I made a batch of the Stormtroopers first… and came out disappointed.

I generally hate cut out sugar cookies because in order to keep their shape, they have a tendency to be hard. Flavourless. The Stormtrooper was not flavourless, but it was hard.

And it was totally my fault. I rolled them out too thin. When they were all already cut out and I was lifting them to put on the cookie sheet, I realized I went a little thin, but was too lazy to re-roll the cookies and hoped for the best.

I shouldn’t have been lazy.

The Yodas came next and I watched my rolling carefully to ensure they were thicker than the Troopers, but no thinner than a quarter-inch. They were perfect, tender in texture yet still maintaining the imprint of Yoda’s face.

To be honest, the chocolate cookies are still my favourites, but maybe that’s just my dark side coming out. Now I just need more Star Wars cookie cutters!

May the fourth be with you!

Star Wars Vanilla-Almond Sugar Cookies

Recipe from Bake at 350

If using food colouring to dye the cookies, make sure to use gel and not liquid food colouring, as the liquid food colouring can water down the dough.

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, cold & cut into chunks
• 1 egg
• 3/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon pure almond extract
• gel food colouring (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt, set aside. Cream together the sugar and butter. Add the egg and extracts and mix. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat just until combined, scraping down the bowl, especially the bottom.
3. The dough will be crumbly, so knead it together with your hands as you scoop it out of the bowl for rolling. (If adding food colouring, add a small amount to the dough just as it starts to come together, and continue kneading until the colour is distributed. Wrap and put in the fridge for 10-15 minutes to compensate for the heat from the extra kneading.)
4. Roll onto a floured surface, approx. a quarter-inch thick, and cut into shapes. Place on parchment lined baking sheets and freeze shaped cookies for 5 minutes.
5. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let sit a few minutes on the sheet, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Little tiny almond tea cakes make me feel fancy, as though they require delicate tea pairings, ones which must only be consumed with pinky fingers extended outwards in a simple “I am fancy” salute.

Especially when they have fancy french names.

“Financier”.

Faaaaahncyy financiiiieeeers… /fancyvoice

But when I eat them, I get to feeling a little less fancy. Stuffing an entire financier into your mouth and attempting to chew can do that to a person.

Or attempting to speak.

There’s a reason your mother always told you to never speak with your mouth full. It ain’t pretty.

Especially when you have blackberries stuck in your teeth.

But it’s okay, I personally believe that one should never really feel the need to be fancy or proper when it comes to dessert. Dessert is about indulgence, guilty pleasures and getting chocolate all over your face.

These have no chocolate in them. They may even seem down right healthy with their almonds, fruit and egg whites. But then again, their convenient size allows you to eat 4 within the span of 10 seconds.

Any fellow lovers of two-bite brownies out there knows the danger of this characteristic.

Your mouth ends up too fast for your stomach to process what’s going on and next thing you know, things have finally caught up and you’ve somehow eaten 8-18 bites of dessert too many. But it’s already in your tummy, so what do you do about it?

If you’re me, you lay on the couch in front of your TV, watching rerun episodes of Say Yes to the Dress with sticky blackberry tinted crumbs hiding in the creases of your shirt, feeling so full you just might regret everything.

But you actually regret nothing.

If you’re the fancy tea party type, these adorable little cakes are perfect for you.

If you’re the wrinkled t-shirt “ice cream makes an awesome breakfast food” type, I also suggest you eat some of these.

Because good dessert is good dessert, and it all belongs in my belly.

Blackberry Financiers

Recipe from Bon Appetit

“Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

With a simple expression, kids are taught to look inwards, to the content and character of something or someone before determining its worth.

As a small child I took it literally, carefully examining each book I picked out, even if the cover “looked stupid” because I thought that’s what it took to be a good little girl. I had a tendency to take most turns of phrase at face value as a child. It made for some confusing times. “Don’t drink and drive” had me berating my mother for reaching for her can of root beer while on the road. “Don’t run across the road” had me traversing a crosswalk at a snail’s pace, the whole way, even as a car waited patiently at a stop sign for me to cross.

It can be hard to not judge food by its cover. Green plates of food scare off most children. Brown plates of food look somewhat dead. Baked goods not oozing with chocolate or studded with bright colours of fruit look… boring.

These cookies look boring.

Yet, I cannot stop eating them every time I make them.

It’s all about the levels of flavour this recipe manages to pack into a tiny brown disc. Brown butter, brown sugar, it’s all brown and all delicious.

They don’t look that much more appetizing while they’re being made, but they smell pretty amazing before they sneak away into the refrigerator. All sugar, fat and everything I like to put in my mouth. Sometimes the smell of a food could convince me to attempt to eat it as a kid, even if I thought it looked… questionable.

And similarly, I would try foods simply because I thought they were pretty. Sometimes this resulted in me completely hating them because they didn’t taste as “pretty” as I was expecting.

The first time I had grapefruit, I thought it looked like the most beautiful orange I had ever seen, all pink with large segments. In my brain, the pink meant that it must be a strawberry flavoured orange.

As I’m sure you know, it was not.

The utter sourness and complete opposite flavour to my expectations of that poor fruit has made me avoid them to this day. Childhood food trauma is serious business.

These cookies are the opposite. They set your expectations at dry, bland and grainy, with the only glimmer of hope shining forth from the crystals of sugar adorning its sides.

In actuality, they are flavourful, melt in your mouth, addictive little slices of wonderful.

Don’t judge a fruit by its pinkness.

Don’t judge a cookie by its plainness.

Brown Butter Brown Sugar Shorties

Recipe from Gourmet via Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar (preferably dark)
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• Demerara sugar (Sugar in the Raw) or sanding sugar for rolling (optional)

Directions

1. Cut butter into four or five pieces and cook butter in a small heavy saucepan over medium heat, stirring frequently, until it has a nutty fragrance and flecks on bottom of pan turn a light brown, anywhere from 4 to 7 minutes. It helps to frequently scrape the solids off the bottom of the pan in the last couple minutes to ensure even browning. Transfer butter to a bowl and chill until just firm, about 1 hour.
2. Beat together butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Beat in vanilla, then mix in flour and salt at low speed until just combined. Transfer dough to a sheet of wax paper or parchment and form into a 12-inch log, 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Chill, wrapped in wax paper, until firm, about 1 hour.
3. Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle. Unwrap dough and roll it in coarse sugar, if using, and press the granules in with the paper you’d be using to wrap it. Slice dough into 1/4-inch-thick rounds, rotating dough log a quarter turn after each slice to avoid flattening one side of the log. Arrange dough discs 1 1/2 inches apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake until surface is dry and edges are slightly darker, 10 to 12 minutes. Let sit on sheet for a minute before transferring to a rack to cool. (Cookies will quite fragile at first, but will firm up as they cool.)

Makes approx. 32 cookies.

Note: Dough keeps, chilled, up to 1 week, or in the freezer, up to one month. Cookies keep in an airtight container at room temperature 1 week.

On my team at work, we have a system where the person who most recently had a birthday is in charge of arranging some sort of celebration for the next birthday in line. That way everyone gets some birthday fun, but no single person gets burnt out on hunting down birthday cards and candles every few weeks.

But I’ve made it clear to the team that I can’t get burnt out on baking birthday cakes and they can always feel free to come to me for that sort of help. Birthday cakes are one of my favourite things to bake as I love finding all about a single person’s tastes and loves, and finding the perfect cake to make for them.

This week, the only information I had was sparse, but specific.

He loves beer and can’t eat dairy.

Hm. Not my typical list of requirements for cake, but no less exciting.

I had made a chocolate stout layer cake in the past, but dairy free, it was not. But it did teach me that dark beer and chocolate worked wonders together.

And I don’t even like beer.

The dark bitterness of a stout makes the flavours of chocolate deeper and richer. But could it make a bundt cake soft without milk? Moist without sour cream?

More than I thought possible.

I wasn’t confident when I put it in the oven, I was nervous when I served it to my coworkers, and I had a big old chocolatey smile on my face when I tried it.

It was one of the most moist chocolate cakes I had ever had. I don’t even fully understand it myself. Not only is there no dairy in this cake, there are no eggs. Apparently Guinness is the moist maker of the cake world.

A thick, rich, chocolate Guinness frosting doesn’t hurt either.

As the frosting isn’t cooked in any way, the beer flavour is more prominent in it than in the cake but it’s still more of a chocolate frosting than a beer frosting. The beer flavour ensures the frosting is dark and rich instead of cloying, not to mention also thick, velvety, and wonderful.

Replacing milk with beer…

Sometimes being an adult is more fun than being a kid.

Double Chocolate Double Guinness Bundt (Dairy Free)

Recipe from Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body

If you use a vegan beer (Like Guinness Extra Stout*) this cake is also vegan!

Chocolate Guinness Bundt Cake

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups Guinness (or any stout beer)
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

 Chocolate Guinness Frosting

I’m what folks jokingly call a “Banana”.

My blood is Chinese, but growing up in Canada my entire life, I am Canadian through and through. My almond eyes say Asian, but my attitude says caucasian.

“Banana”, because I’m yellow on the outside and white on the inside. And it’s totally true. My first and only language was/is English. Pasta is my favourite type of noodle dish. The beaver is my idea of a regal animal.

But occasionally, I’ll run into something that reminds me that I’m only the first North American born generation of my family. Random things, often food related, that I never realized might be “odd” or “different” until I was much older.

Animal heads still attached to my food does not weird me out. Small thin packages of dried seaweed sheets is a delicious snack to give a child. Sweetened tea is one of the best dessert flavours out there.

Pictured below is a thai iced tea. Bright orange, spiced, sweet and whimsically clouded with dairy, it’s not something I consumed much as a child, and yet, as I recently discovered, it can bring forth waves of nostalgia.

When I was little, there was this quirky video shop my parents used to frequent to rent laser discs of Mandarin karaoke. Next door was a tiny Chinese grocery store my mom would take me to afterwards. The last aisle was well stocked with exciting Asian treats I would beg my mom for, such as Pocky, Koala Yummies and Yan Yan. The common thread among these was the cookie/chocolate combo. If it wasn’t chocolate, it wasn’t worth it.

With one exception.

There were these little coffee and tea candies in pretty caramel coloured matte packages. They looked much too classy for a little girl to care about, but I had a thing for coffee flavoured sweets and was intrigued by both. The tea candies became my favourite. The were small like any other hard candy but the were beautifully opaque like a cube of cloudy tea. They reminded me of the best fresh brewed sweet iced tea I had ever had, in a small convenient package.

Unfortunately, they stopped selling the tea flavour after some time. It was a traumatizing period of my childhood.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago when Trevor and I wandered into Molly Moon’s in Seattle. I was all ready to order my stand by, one scoop of Vivace Coffee in a waffle cone, but was thrown off my game when I noticed it had been revised to “Stumptown Coffee”. In hindsight, I love Stumptown almost as much as I love Vivace, and that ice cream was probably just as fabulous with this coffee bean switch, but it was enough of a hiccup for me to peruse the rest of the ice cream menu.

“Thai Tea Ice Cream”.

It drew me in. After a taste test confirming it wasn’t weirdly sweet or made from fakey powdered tea, I couldn’t not order it. After the first lick, Trevor asked how it was. “It tastes like my childhood.”

It transported me to the backseat of my parents’ Chevy Lumina, carefully peeling back the wrapper of a little gem of tea candy as we headed home. I’m not even 100% sure why or how as the candies weren’t based on thai tea. But it did. Trevor pulled me out of my reverie with a gentle reminder. “Enjoy it now, it’s only a seasonal flavour.”

I had to find my own recipe.

I had to have this ice cream all year round.

As usual, the internet came to my rescue.

I’ve eaten half the tub since I churned the ice cream 2 days ago.

I’m going to have to start making ice cream more often.

(Side note: This is my 100th post on the blog! OMG! What the whaaaa? Thanks everyone for sticking around. Perhaps I will have to celebrate in the near future with a special post. :D)

Thai Tea Ice Cream

Adapted from Serious Eats

The original recipe suggests serving it with a drizzle of sweetened condensed milk, but I thought it was plenty sweet without it, even though I LOVE condensed milk. I prefer it simply in a waffle cone, but do what sounds delicious to you!

Ingredients

• 3 cups half and half
• 1/2 cup Thai tea (I buy mine from Amazon.com but it’s pretty easy to find in Asian grocery stores as well)
• 6 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• pinch kosher salt

Directions

1. In a large saucepan, bring half and half to a simmer. Stir in Thai tea, turn off heat, and steep for five minutes.
2. In a bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar together until yolks pale in color and thicken. Slowly ladle about one cup dairy mixture into yolks, whisking constantly, then transfer yolks to saucepan, whisking well to combine.
3. Turn heat on medium low and whisk frequently until a thin, syrupy custard forms. Add salt to taste. Custard should lightly coat back of a spoon and a swiped finger should leave a clean line. Do not cook custard until thick.
4. Pour through a fine mesh strainer (if you don’t want tiny tea leaves in your ice cream, use a cheese cloth. Personally, I like the way they look and I find the tiny ones don’t affect the texture too much) and chill overnight before churning according to manufacturer’s instructions. Chill ice cream in freezer for at least three hours before serving. Ice cream is best eaten the day it is made.

Makes approx. 3 cups.

Since getting married, Trevor and I have come to learn that marriage doesn’t mean the end of the peculiar dance that is a first date.

When you get married, you date other couples.

And apparently you also watch a lot of Game of Thrones and eat a lot of biscuits. But more on that in a minute.

I always thought it was just one of those jokes they wrote for sitcoms, drawing parallels between the dating of two single people and the double dating of two established couples.

But it’s real.

In both first date scenarios, you worry you’ll look stupid, that they won’t like you, or that it will just be plain awkward. Typical dating has the danger of looking foolish in front of a crush. Double dating has the danger of losing a friend.

A double date usually occurs after one party from each of the couples establish a friendship. This friendship is now on the line at this “first date” as the friends involve their ever important significant others, their opinion carrying enormous weight.

It can be especially hard for me as I have a tendency to get along better with men than women due to my geekier interests. If a guy friend’s girlfriend/wife does not like me, the gender difference becomes an obvious, awkward wall that makes them uncomfortable with me, which I never want to do to them.

Luckily, I’ve had more success than failure over the past few years, and have two particular couples that I can call out as folks Trevor and I “date”. (Even after writing out this whole post, phrasing it that way feels super weird, but accurate.)

One couple, Trevor and I have now known for years now and are comfy with. We are neighbours and we hang out on random week nights and lazy weekends, watching random things on Netflix, playing with their adorable kids, or (more recently) blowing through the entire first season of Game of Thrones. (It’s super dark and depressing, and totally worth it.) I wear puffy Yoshi slippers and pj pants when I wander over to their house.

The other couple is a more recent development; we’ve got a standing Saturday morning brunch date, often involving biscuits from Tom Douglas’s Serious Biscuit restaurant in Seattle. When I get ready to go, I still feel the need to change out of my stained Calvin and Hobbes tee I wore to bed the night before and make myself socially presentable.

See? Dating.

Brunch is such a glorious thing. Weekly brunch makes me fat. Fat and sassy. A most acceptable situation. The problem with a standing brunch date? The week one of you needs to miss, there is serious carb withdrawal.

This past Saturday was brunch free, so I knew what I had to do on Sunday.

Maple bacon biscuits, topped with a sweet maple glaze.

How could I not?

Maple Bacon Biscuits

Recipe from A Cozy Kitchen

Biscuits

• 5-6 slices of bacon
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 sticks of very cold butter (or 6 ounces), cubed
• 1/2 cup cold and shaken buttermilk
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1 egg, beaten with a tablespoon of milk or water (egg wash)

Maple Glaze

• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Biscuits: Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. Cook bacon using your favourite method. Chop it up into about 1/2-inch pieces, let cool and set aside.(I bake it they way A Cozy Kitchen does: “To bake, preheat the oven to 400F, line a baking sheet with parchment. Next, place the bacon side-by-side and stick it in the oven for 15-20 minutes, or until crispy. Drain the bacon on paper towels to expel excess grease.”)
3. In a large bowl, mix together the all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Working quickly, add the cubed butter and break it up with your hands until all of the butter is broken into bits and resembles small peas.
4. Gently stir in cooled bacon. Form a well in the center of the mixture.
5. In a measuring cup, whisk together the buttermilk and egg. Add the buttermilk mixture and maple syrup into the well of the flour mixture. Mix until barely combined.
6. Lightly dust your kitchen counter with flour and dump the dough onto it. Knead a few times (maybe 4 or 5) until the dough comes together. Press or gently roll the dough into a 1-inch thickness. Cut out biscuits using a 2.5-inch cutter and place on lined baking sheet. Re-roll dough scraps to get a few more biscuits. Brush the tops of the biscuits with egg wash and bake in oven for 15-20 minutes, or until tall and golden brown.
7. Glaze: Add all of the ingredients to a small bowl and whisk until completely combined.
8. Serve biscuits warm with glaze poured atop.

Makes approx. a dozen biscuits.

I made pies!

Baby pies!

I actually made these pies a long time ago, but I avoided posting them because they require specialized equipment. I generally try to share recipes that are pretty easy to put together both in terms of steps and required tools.

But these are so cute that I just couldn’t help myself any longer.

This is the Breville Pie Maker! I don’t normally buy particularly specialized gadgets like this (I don’t even own a waffle maker, which I’m starting to realize is a silly mistake..) due to the lack of space in my tiny kitchen. I say “no” to about a million things I want every time I enter any kitchen supply store, for fear that I will drown both me and my husband in my baking obsession.

This gadget was no different. But that’s because I didn’t actually buy it myself.

My kind and generous co-workers from my old team bought it for me as a thank you for bringing in baked goods every week!

I was pretty nervous to use it. I like to think I’m a pretty good baker, but I’m at most an average cook. All that direct heat frightens me and causes me to… burn things. I can make perfectly gooey, rich, slightly underdone in that fabulous way brownies, but ask me to saute some garlic and I will give you weird, dark brown nuggets of burny garlic goodness.

That’s probably the bigger reason I don’t own a waffle iron. I’m afraid of burning things. The pie marker is more akin to a searing hot cast iron skillet than a warm, cozy oven. So with my fear of the pie maker fully in place, I wasn’t about to mess around. I went straight for the recipe book that came with the pie maker.

There were more traditional berry pie recipes listed within, but one recipe was a little more unique.

I had never even heard of a pear lime pie before. It also perked Trevor’s interest with his love for citrus and things of the more tangy variety. It sounded light and refreshing, which was a good thing when I was to have 8 pies on my hands when things were all said and done, and two mouths to consume them including my own.

There’s something you can learn from my mistakes when it comes to pear lime pie. When you go to buy canned pears, if you’re an experienced baker/cook, something in you is going to tell you to buy the pears that come in juice instead of syrup. The syrup is cloying, your baker instincts will say. Pears in juice feel fresher and then you can control the sugar level yourself.

It will hurt to do so, but ignore that instinct.

The amount of lime juice in this pie (which is GREAT for the strong lime flavour it lends) needs that strong sugary syrup. I had to put in ridiculous amounts of sugar just to make it so that my mouth didn’t pucker so hard that it tried to suck into itself. And even after all that sugar, I think the pies were still too tart for my liking. But I do believe that pears in syrup would have been a balance to all the lime juice.

So finally, after all that time, here are my little pies. If you don’t have a pie maker to share in the joy of these with me, I apologize for flaunting mine. Maybe you too can find some kind souls to shower baked goods upon, until one day they buy you a pie maker.

If there’s anything I miss about my old job, it’s the people.

My new team, if any of you are reading this, I love you guys too. But you didn’t buy me a tiny pie maker. :)

Pear Lime Mini Pies

Recipe from the Breville Pie Maker

Ingredients

• 1 15 oz. can pears, drained, syrup reserved
• ½ cup reserved pear syrup
• ½ cup fresh lime juice
• 0-2 tablespoons sugar
• 4 teaspoons cornstarch
• 4 teaspoons water
• Powdered sugar and cream for serving

Preparation:

1. Chop pears into small pieces. Combine in a saucepan with pear syrup and lime juice. Taste the juice and add sugar if desired. (Depending on the tartness of your limes, it may be perfect at this point, or need a touch more sugar.)
2. Blend cornstarch with water, add to pears and stir until mixture boils and
3. thickens. Allow to cool.
4. Preheat the pie maker until the ‘Ready’ light illuminates.
5. Prepare pastry bases and tops according to manufacturer’s directions. Use 1/3 cup of filling per pie.
6. Cook for 8-12 minutes or until pastry is golden brown.
7. Remove the pies with a plastic heatproof spatula and cool slightly.
8. Serve warm or cold, sprinkle with powdered sugar and a dollop of cream.

“Creme” looks like a typo/mispelling of “Cream”, but it’s not.

It’s how the fine folks at Hershey spell the name of their Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar, 6 oz. of which is melted directly into the batter of this cake.

It makes the cake a texture somewhere between a blondie and chocolate chip cookie dough.

Mmm… indeeeed.

The recipe I found was called “White Chocolate Oreo Cake”, but it had no Oreo in it (I know, I know, “Oreo” basically means cookies’n'cream, but let me be weird and particular about this one thing..) and the white chocolate came from the bar, so I thought it appropriate to rename the recipe after its main ingredient.

I actually used to hate Cookies ‘n’ Creme bars as a kid due to a general distaste for white chocolate. It was a siginificant disappointment considering I loved similar sounding things such as Oreos and cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream.

I didn’t trust the weird spelling of “Creme”. It seemed fancy but it also denoted the lies kept within, how there was no actual cream, just that chalky, evil white chocolate, with its complete lack of dark, chocolatey flavour. The first time I had white chocolate I thought it would be like Crystal Pepsi. In my head, it would taste exactly like normal chocolate but just a different colour.

That’s probably the real reason I didn’t like white chocolate. Like when you get distracted and reach for your drink, expecting juice, but it’s actually milk. Milk is delicious, but if you’re expecting something else, it can be preeetty off-putting.

I don’t hate white chocolate anymore. I don’t buy it just to gnaw on like I do with all other chocolates, but I am happy to incorporate it into many a baked good.

And I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t eat the entire leftover half-slab of Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar while baking.

Maybe I let Trevor eat a couple squares too.

But just because he’s pretty.

Cookies ‘n’ Creme Cake

Adapted from Made Famous By

Ingredients

• 6oz (1 1/2 large bars) Hershey’s Cookies ‘n’ Creme Chocolate Candy Bar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup unsalted butter
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 7oz. sweetened condensed milk
• 3/4 cup semisweet mini chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch springform pan.
2. Melt the Cookies ‘n’ Creme bar, sugar and butter over low heat until melted.  Once melted take off the heat. (Mine “melted” into a weird buttery paste, but it all mixed together nicely once added to the rest of the wet ingredients.)
3. Lightly beat together two eggs and vanilla.
   Temper the eggs by slowly adding in a 1/4 cup of the melted butter mixture into the eggs while whisking constantly.  Once thoroughly mixed,  add the entire egg mixture into the butter mixture and whisk until well combined.
4. In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Add to egg mixture and mix until thoroughly combined.
5. Pour batter into repared pan. Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes or until surface of cake starts to become golden in colour.
6. Remove from oven and immediately pour sweetened condensed milk over top of cake. Sprinkle evenly with semisweet mini chocolate chips and let cool on a wire rack.

I still remember the first time I ate a roasted marshmallow off of a stick.

There was a nip in the air.. the fire offering a different, deeper kind of comfort than any heating vent could. The flickering turned our shadows into dancing creatures across the flat side of our tent.

Oh wait… not that last part.

I was in the middle of the suburbs, in my friend’s backyard, and the fire was coming out of some fancy clay urn, specifically designed for having fires on a clean, non-rustic patio.

I’ve never been camping.

Random tangent, I totally found the cutest marshmallow shaped marshmallows (as opposed to animal shaped marshmallows) ever at Whole Foods! They were winking at me the whole time I was sending their friends into the burning oven front lines. True story.

But back to marshmallows and camping.

I have never been camping. My idea of an open flame generally comes from a pumpkin spice candle or a kitchen torch. As a result my experience with s’mores came later in life than it ever should have.

My first “s’more” was on my honeymoon. I put “s’more” in quotations for a couple reasons.

When Trevor found out of my lack of experience with the gooey treat, he demanded we rectify the situation, asap. We were staying in an adorable B&B with our own private suite, including a huge balcony over looking a cove, equipped with a small BBQ.

He decided we would walk into town and buy s’mores components and roast the marshmallows over the BBQ.

Problem 1: Due to a desire for our honeymoon to be extremely relaxed, low key and snuggly, we picked a B&B in the middle of nowhere, meaning that “walking into town” was really walking down to the main road where there were no stop lights and one “general store” the size of a gas station. They did not sell graham crackers. Not one to give up, Trevor bought the next best thing he could find, digestive biscuits. Although disappointed to not be getting the “real deal”, I had loved those cookies since childhood and had no complaints.

Problem 2: Arriving back at the B&B, spoils in hand, we excitedly checked out the BBQ… to discover that it was an electric barbecue. We tried to see what would happen if we roasted the marshmallows over the BBQ anyway. Answer? Nothing. Nothing happened.

So in the end, Trevor put a digestive biscuit on a plate, covered it in a couple pieces of chocolate, topped it with a marshmallow, and put the whole thing in the microwave.

Was it truly a s’more? No, not really, but the chocolate was melty, the marshmallows were gooey and Trevor made it just for me. It wasn’t a s’more, but I remember it more fondly than any s’more.

These also are not s’mores, they’re what would happen if you took a chocolate chip cookie and a s’more and smooshed them together without making a huge crumbly mess.

In other words, they are amazing.

Now where did I put my McVities…

S’mores Cookie Bars

Adapted from Always With Butter

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 11 oz. dark chocolate chunks
• 1 1/4 cup mini marshmallows, divided
• 3 regular (or 2 large) sized Hershey bars, broken into pieces
• 2 sleeves (boxes usually come with 3) graham crackers, broken into squares

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars with an electric mixer until fluffy, about 2-3 minutes.
4. Incorporate vanilla then add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Fold in dark chocolate chunks and 1 cup of marshmallows.
6. Lay out graham crackers on a large rimmed baking sheet leaving no gaps between them. Using an ice cream scoop, place balls of cookie dough on the graham crackers. Press out the dough to spread it out, but don’t worry about gaps as the dough will spread and fill the gaps in the oven.
7. Bake for 5 minutes then press Hershey pieces and 1/4 cup marshmallows on top. Bake for 5-7 more minutes.
8. Cool bars in pan. Cut through the cookie layer into squares, making sure to cut where the graham crackers meet. Store at room temperature in an air-tight container.

Makes approx. 30 bars. Cookie dough can be made a day ahead of time and refrigerated, but should be taken out of the fridge 1-2 hours before adding to graham crackers to ensure the dough will spread during baking.