Whole wheat apple muffins

I love apples. Sweet-tart crunchy and low in fat , it’s the perfect snack to bring anywhere (but carefully, bruised apples are sad. Why do you want to get your bags hit anyway?) Baked to a tender juicy chunk nested in cinnamon scented batter, even better. These whole wheat apple muffins remind me of the fall I never experienced. They’re very moist, with a toothsome crumb from the whole wheat flour. You could up the proportion of whole wheat flour, apples and decrease the sugar (the muffins are moist enough) to make it a healthier treat.

Happy Lemon Squares

Happy Lemon Squares

Is there a better flavor than lemon? Today, the answer is no. Not when you’re holding a square of sunshiny yellow lemon bar. The filling is tart and sweet and the addition of an whole lemon, pith and all, lends an additional flavor depth. Each bite is a little burst of happy days and sunshiny countries and the wild vigor of youth. The lemon filling dissolves in seconds but the memory lingers on.

Matcha sables

The tiniest batch of matcha sables were sliced off and baked today (6, if you must know. I would want to.) and vanished within 5 minutes under a poor guise of quality control. Today the test group consisted of my curious little brother and I. Quality control says that it needs more matcha powder, and little brother agrees. About 5-10g more,  I’m lovable like that. Ishida’s recipe calls for pastry flour (8-10% protein) and more sugar in proportion to flour and butter compared to Greenspan’s which uses regular flour. Upcoming post on a test of each recipe, my inner baking geek wiggles in anticipation.

Second best cocoa brownies

Cocoa Brownies

Substituting margarine in the cocoa brownies was a bad thing to do. Bad. To save a few dollars? What was I thinking? Slap me with a pink spatula if I ever again threaten to think of such a thing. Little brown rectangles of regret. Understand this, it’s not that they’re not tasty. I just can’t forget how they taste with all butter. It’s like being on a date with with a perfectly nice guy but! There is someone you love and you can’t stop thinking about him.

Kicking off – Chocolate chip cookies, chewy oatmeal cookies, cocoa brownies, bran muffins, matcha sables

In a burst of ambitious just-starting-out enthusiasm, I completed 5 recipes in a day, clearing myself for the next 4 days and reducing Lisa and Marie to a state of constant catch-up with the washing up. What can I say? They are elves.

I quickly learnt that baking with 2 trays instead of one is a whole different crate of cats.
A recipe that previously yielded crisp buttery chocolate chip cookies (hide and eat ALL kind of awesome) now yielded damp oily mounds that remained quite so even after giving their soggy bottoms an additional 5 minutes toasting.

Oatmeal cookies that, when placed together in a plastic sandwich bag, fused into one big loving lump like the kind of couples who engage in an uncomfortable amount of public intimacy
that no amount of mental commands or eye averting can pry apart. Except it’s a 16-person orgy,