Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

Katie
Summer is great. Summer is awesome, in fact. If seasons were movies, summer would be the huge, action-packed, explosion-filled Blockbuster that everyone talks a lot about and which does really well at the Box Office and is an undisputed success. Nobody hates summer - it's too easy to love.

And then comes fall. Fall has it harder, and not for its lack of charm - colorful trees, apple picking, and that beautiful crispness in the air are all just as, if not more, enchanting as beach days, barbecues, and warm summer nights. No, fall has an unfair disadvantage simply because it means the return of the one thing adolescents everywhere dread most: going back to school.

Now, I'm not saying that school is in and of itself unenjoyable for everyone (personally, I like it most of the time), but what it represents - the end of the great freedom that summer provides - can be almost unbearable. It used to be, back when getting an education was little more than nap time and fractions, that going back was an

exciting chance to show off your new backpack and see who was in your class. But now that we're older and wiser and grumpier, that first day has lost nearly all of its appeal and school, rather than being thrillingly novel, has deteriorated into forcing ourselves to get up six hours earlier than we're used to and go to a place where no one really cares about our shiny new pencil cases.

But seeing as this was my last year to have an official First Day of School, I've begun to get a bit nostalgic. I miss not being able to sleep the night before. I miss walking down to school with my dad, I miss being praised for reading books without pictures and I miss, above all, the innocence and simplicity of those days (as cheesy as it may sound.) So when I saw this recipe in my favorite Martha Stewart cookies book, I knew that they were the perfect way to bring back a taste (literally!) of those good ol' days. PB&J has always been a lunchtime staple of mine and as I took my first bite of one of these salty-sweet bars I was transported back to my earliest lunchroom, devouring the Wonderbread grandness my mom had packed for me in a brown paper bag. It was the perfect way to start my last year of school and forget, for a little while at least, that I'm not supposed to enjoy going back. After all, what's not to like about a place where you can have peanut butter and jelly every day?

Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

From Martha Stewart's Cookies Book

I got the following recipe from her website

Ingredients

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
• 3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pan
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 1/2 cups smooth peanut butter
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups strawberry jam, or other flavor
• 2/3 cup salted peanuts, roughly chopped

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-13-inch pan with butter, and line the bottom with parchment paper. Grease the parchment, and coat inside of pan with flour; set aside. Place butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes. On medium speed, add eggs and peanut butter; beat until combined, about 2 minutes.
2. Whisk together salt, baking powder, and flour. Add to bowl of mixer on low speed; combine. Add vanilla. Transfer two-thirds of mixture to prepared pan; spread evenly with offset spatula. Using offset spatula, spread jam on top of peanut-butter mixture. Dollop remaining third of peanut-butter mixture on top of jam. Sprinkle with peanuts.
3. Bake until golden, about 45 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool; cut into about thirty-six 1 1/2-by-2-inch pieces.

Snickerdoodles

Katie
As the first couple weeks of school wrap up, it's weird to see how much is different from last year. Even though I'm only a year older, a lot of things have happened between last September and now that are making this fall very different from the last.

First of all, I can drive! After turning sixteen in March, getting my learner's permit in April, and taking driver's ed in June I'm on the brink of getting my license in October. This is just weird. I've spent my whole life not being able to drive, and now I'm about to do it all by myself, whenever I want, wherever I want. That wasn't even conceivable a year ago! Now I'll have to go from worrying about bus fares to worrying about gas money, but I don't think I'll mind too much with all the new freedoms I'll have.

On top of the exciting new things I can do this fall, there are also some things that I'm sad I can't. Since I tore my ACL playing soccer during preseason, any sports-related activity has become out of the picture until about April. This, of course, means missing the whole soccer season this year and not playing indoor soccer come winter, but it also eliminates exercise as a whole for a while, and even walking won't be possible for the weeks after my coming surgery. Since I'm a generally active person and try to work out every day, this is a pretty drastic change of lifestyle. Whereas last fall I was sprinting up and down the soccer field every afternoon, this year I'm doing nightly physical therapy stretches on my bed before I go to sleep.

Which is not to say that this injury is all bad. It certainly is helpful, school work-wise. With the craziness of Junior year I really do appreciate the two extra hours daily in which to do homework (which means two more hours of sleep!) Plus, my knee is feeling better every day, and now it barely hurts unless I bend it too far. And luckily it was my left knee that went out, so driving is still a go!

Along with those two major changes, the usual little things have happened between last year and now: some new clothes, a Pottermore account (go Gryffindor!), a couple haircuts, an unforgettable summer, discovering - and fostering a deep love for - Doctor Who, a few pretty nice tan lines, joining the track team, and, best of all, baking a whole lot.

Just like I enjoy the small changes in life, I like to switch up the types of things I bake. So while my usual standby is something chocolate - brownies, cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, you name it - I decided to do something a little different. Granted, a snickerdoodle isn't totally outlandish or even difficult, but it was refreshing to give my cocoa powder and chocolate chips a break. And the results were delicious! Snickerdoodles are pretty much what I think sunlight must taste like, with just the right amount of crunch and cinnamon-y pop. Even my dad, a self-professed chocoholic, enjoyed them immensely.

So I say, give a new recipe (perhaps this one?) a try the next time you bake. Life is all about change, after all, and what was that they said about the spice of life? I think it was cinnamon.

Snickerdoodles
From Martha Stewart's Cookies Book,
I got the following recipe from her website

Ingredients

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup pure vegetable shortening
• 1 3/4 cups sugar, plus more if needed
• 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon, plus more if needed
• 2 large eggs

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, with one rack in top third and one rack in bottom third of oven. Line baking sheets with Silpat baking mats or parchment paper; set aside.
2. Sift together flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, combine butter, shortening, and 1 1/2 cups sugar. Beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Scrape down sides of bowl. Add eggs, and beat to combine. Add dry ingredients, and beat to combine.
3. In a small bowl, combine remaining 1/4 cup sugar and the ground cinnamon. Use a small (1 1/4-ounce) ice-cream scoop to form balls of the dough, and roll in cinnamon sugar. Place about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies are set in center and begin to crack (they will not brown), about 10 minutes, rotating the baking sheets after 5 minutes. Transfer the sheets to a wire rack to cool about 5 minutes before transferring the cookies to the rack. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

Cookies and Cream Cheesecake Cupcakes with Homemade Oreos

Katie
I wish for a lot of things.

I wish we could have snow days every day.

I wish Every Degrassi Ever marathons weren't just for weekends in the month of January, but happened every day. Every month. All year.

I wish Biology came naturally to me, and studying wasn't so necessary.

I wish I could pass level 3-30 on Angry Birds.

But most importantly, I wish I could eat one of these cupcakes anytime I wanted. A breakfast cheesecake - why not? And maybe when I'm feeling a little peckish later in the afternoon, too. Then of course there would be the pre- and post-dinner cupcakes and the midnight snack. Yum.

Making these was no easy feat, but maybe that's because I decided to do things the hard (lazy) way and instead of walking to the nearby gas station to buy a pack of Oreos, I made my own. Well, sort of. I didn't bother with the cream filling nonsense but it was still an adventure, making sure the cookies were just big enough to fit inside of a cupcake cup and estimating how much I'd need for chopping and adding to the batter later.

And because this was my first time making cheesecake, I was a little worried. But it turns out that cheesecake is both ridiculously simple to make and ridiculously delicious in cupcake form. Fact.

So whether you're wishing for something satisfying during the cold winter months, or a treat you want to wish you were eating all the time, try one of these. And then go play Angry Birds, because someone has to kill those little green pigs and it sure as heck isn't me.

Martha Stewart's Cookies and Cream Cheesecakes
Adapted from 52 Cupcakes
Makes 30
For the Batter:

• 42 cream-filled sandwich cookies, such as Oreos, 30 left whole, and 12 coarsely chopped
• 2 pounds cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 4 large eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten
• 1 cup sour cream
• Pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Place 1 whole cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.

2. With an electric mixer on medium high speed, beat cream cheese until smooth, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Gradually add sugar, and beat until combined. Beat in vanilla.

3. Drizzle in eggs, a bit at a time, beating to combine and scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Beat in sour cream and salt. Stir in chopped cookies by hand.

4. Divide batter evenly among cookie-lined cups, filling each almost to the top. Bake, rotating pan halfway through, until filling is set, about 22 minutes. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Refrigerate at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). Remove from tins just before serving.


Homemade Oreo Cookies
Adapted from Cupcake Project, which got it from multiple other sources.

• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
  
• 1 large egg
  

1. In a medium-sized bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar.
2. Beat in the butter and the egg. Continue mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately 2 inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. (I found that while the dough wasn't sticky enough to roll, I could press it flat with my hands like the recipe said and then use cookie cutters to cut perfect circles. If you just care about the taste, then there is no need for the cookie cutters. Also, remember this is a chance to get creative and use all kinds of cookie cutters.)
4. Bake for 9 minutes at 375 F. Set on a rack to cool.

The Ultimate Ginger Cookie

This post is dedicated to Katie, the one who introduced me to this blog, let me be part of it, and gave me the cutest baking supplies known to man as a holiday present! If you're wondering how baking supplies can be cute, picture a spatula with an orange, plastic, bendable little person on the end of it. Okay, that doesn't sound cute.... but I promise they are. So thank you, Katie! Her present reminded me of these ginger cookies I had made a couple weeks ago for a fundraising holiday bake sale, and since this blog has been sadly inactive for a while, I thought I'd give a little gift back to Katie- in the form of a blog post.

Although it's a little late to make them for Christmas, that's what New Year's Eve is for! These sweets are everything you could want from a ginger cookie. They are crunchy, sugary, very gingery, and overall just delicious. I had a few issues with expansion of the cookies- some of them stretched out so much they joined edges, resulting in a square cookie- but that is easily remedied by forming smaller cookies before baking. My friend also made these cookies, and hers turned out much smaller and differently colored. But who cares? The flavor is the same and if you are the type of baker who obsesses over aesthetics, practice makes perfect or, in this case, uniform.

The two things that you notice first when you take a bite of this cookie are, first, the pronounced ginger flavor. Folks, if you don't like ginger, don't make these. Although who doesn't like ginger when it's in the form of dessert? Anyway, the second big flavor in the cookies is sugar. The extra sugar that the cookies are rolled in before baking creates that crinkly top and sweet crunch that elevates a simple cookie to a memorable experience.

I'll stop talking now. Go make these cookies; eat a few tomorrow night to keep you awake until midnight, and usher in the New Year with a much-deserved treat!

Yummy Ginger Cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/4 all-purpose flour

2 tsps ground ginger

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup butter, softened

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tbsp water

1/4 cup molasses

2 tbsps white sugar

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and 1 cup sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg and the mix in the molasses and water. Stir the sifted dry ingredients gradually into the wet ingredients.

3. Shape dough into walnut sized balls and roll them in 2 tablespoons of sugar. Place them 2 inches apart (make sure there is enough space inbetween!) on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten very slightly.

4. Bake for 10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool completely before removing them from the baking sheet.

Simple Cake with Raspberries

During the hot summer months, my cravings are never directed toward cakes of the bubbling molten chocolate sort. In winter, we all need something rich and satisfying to get us through. But as the temperatures and humidity levels rise, something lighter is in store.

This cake is full of the flavors of summer; juicy raspberries spread moistness throughout the cake, and an extra sprinkle of sugar crystallizes on the top. The recipe calls for buttermilk, but as this was not an everyday ingredient in at least my kitchen, I tried a substitute of Greek yogurt. Perfect! Just add a splash of milk with the yogurt to thin it a bit and make it more of the consistency of buttermilk.

You can really use any juicy summer fruit for this cake, but something about the tangy yet sweet juice of raspberries sets it off perfectly. Also, my mother being the healthy cook she is, we happened to have almond flour in the cupboard. On a surprise stroke of inspiration, she replaced 1/4 cup of regular flour with 1/4 cup of almond flour. I was skeptical at first but the very faint nuttiness of the flour contrasts with the raspberries in a satisfying way. If you want to take the almond-raspberry duo further, add a bit of almond extract to the batter. I didn't- who knows how it might turn out- but experimenting is really half the fun in baking.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour (substitute 1/4 cup almond flour for 1/4 cup regular if desired)

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 stick unsalted, softened butter

2/3 cup sugar plus 1 1/2 tbsp sugar for sprinkling

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1/2 cup yogurt)

1 cup (5 oz.) raspberries

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Beat butter and 2/3 cup sugar until pale and fluffy. You may use an electric mixer at medium-high speed, or just cut in the butter and then whisk it. Beat in the vanilla and then the egg.

At low speed, mix in 1/3 of flour mixture. Alternate with buttermilk (yogurt) and repeat, ending with flour. Mix until just combined.

Smooth batter into 9-inch cake pan. Spread raspberries evenly on top and sprinkle with remaining sugar.

Bake until cake is golden; 25-30 minutes. Cool the cake until only warm before serving with whipped cream.

Heyy bloggirls! I can't wait to bake great food and share it with you!!

Banana Muffins with Cinnamon Frosting

Katie
Life can stink sometimes. Those times when you smile at that Cute Boy in the hallway and he looks right through you, or when you think you aced a really hard math test and get it back only to find you somehow didn't see three questions, or when you actually make your bed to impress your parents and your cat pees all over your comforter. Yep. Life sure can stink.

But then there are those times that follow the stinky parts that make everything better, at least for a while. Like when the Cute Boy talks to you in class the next day or you get an A+ on the following math test or you still manage to impress your parents, only this time by doing a whole load of cat pee soaked laundry. I guess it's true - life gives you lemons and we all had better learn how to make lemonade.

And sometimes life gives you bananas. The other day, for example. There were three really, really, really old bananas sitting on my butcher block so pathetically that I had to do something. Bananas this ripe are like those teachers that stay at school until they are 80 years old and borderline senile.

They aren't good at their job anymore but obviously still want to serve a purpose to humanity, so the only thing they can really do is retire and become a substitute. These bananas didn't want to be thrown away, but no one was ever going to eat them. So I gave them one last chance at life and made them muffins.

A good muffin (which these are, of course,) is three things: moist, flavorful, and humble. It should not be dry and tasteless like so many store-bought ones are, and above all it should not try to be a cupcake. Cupcakes are allowed to have sprinkles and colored frosting and cute little shapes.

Muffins, on the other hand, are supposed to be quiet and unassuming and boring and therefore so much better when they're delicious. Retired teachers are not also pop stars, and that is perfectly fine.

So life stunk for these bananas. They were lonely and no good at their job, which was to be eaten. But then life (or I guess I did) gave them a happy ending, and the rest is history.

P.S. I've heard rumors that Cute Boys like muffins.

Banana Muffins with Cinnamon Frosting
Adapted From Parragon's Muffins and Bakes Book

For the Batter:

• generous 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• generous 3/4 cup superfine sugar
• 6 tbsp milk
• 5 1/2 oz/150 g butter, melted
• 2 small bananas, mashed

For the Frosting:

• scant 1/4 cup cream cheese
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• scant 1 cup confectioner's sugar

1. Place 12 large paper cases in a deep muffin pan. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together into a mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar.
2. Whisk the milk, eggs, and butter together in a separate bowl until combined. Slowly stir into the flour misture without beating. Fold in the mashed bananas.
3. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and bake in a preheated oven, 400°F for 20 minutes until risen and golden. Turn out onto a wire rack and let cool.
4. To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese and butter together in a bowl, then beat in the cinnamon and confectioners' sugar until smooth and creamy. Chill the frosting in the refrigerator for about 15 minutes to firm up, then top each muffin with a spoonful.