Baking Edition: Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last week's baking edition was Double Chocolate Chip Cookies, inspired by Beantown Baker. I often use her recipes as they feel very "home-y" and quite simple. I pretty much used her recipe, found here, with just minor changes based on my personal liking.

 Yummy...

This recipe is supposed to make big cookies but I personally like smaller cookies. You don't feel as guilty eating them lol. Also, they're good for portion control, and just light snacking when you're between meals.

What treats do you like eating?

♥B

Baking Edition: Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake

Happy Sunday Mel and everyone!

I bought a new toy this weekend...

They're mini springform pans :D! These babies are about 4" in diameter making it perfect for smaller sized cakes. I have regular cake pans but find that between Hubs and I, we struggle to finish an entire cake before it goes bad. Thus, I came across these smaller sized pans that I just had to get. For anyone watching their waistline but not willing to give up sweets, this is a great way to portion out your dessert servings too  ;)

For my weekly baking, I chose a chocolate swirl cheesecake to make. Cheesecake is my absolute favourite type of cake because of how creamy and dense they are. This recipe was my own creation but used the swirl technique from Zoe Bakes - she's a great blogger and always has good recipes to offer! I did make a minor *noob* mistake that caused my crust to not be as crispy but the flavours were there at least.

Preparing the crust!

WARNING:
The following pictures might make you hungry...

Okay, I'll admit I'm a little lazy to post the whole recipe here.

But if you would like the recipe, please feel free to email me at belleplusmel@gmail.com and I'll happily share it.

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!

♥B

Baking Edition: Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf

I've been having quite a rough time recently, and have pushed my weekly baking aside. Today sort of pushed me over the edge so I just set time aside for myself for some baking therapy hehe. I won't go into detail or even a smidgen of what's been happening because then I feel like I'd just be spreading the negativity. Instead... why don't I just show you my baked goods? =D

Today, I delved into a classic...

Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf!

Hubs loves this bread and he bought the necessary ingredients for me on our last grocery trip. How sweet! This turned out soooooo good. The loaf itself is buttery, but with the glaze on top, it just made it sweeter and even more lemony lol. I figured I wouldn't post the recipe in this post since I got it directly here off of JoyofBaking. I seriously love this woman for trying baked goods. She has a bible of recipes on her website showcasing over 100 different things that you can try. I tend to modify recipes to my liking but this Lemon Poppy Seed Loaf did not need any modification.

 Top of the loaf, with lemon sugar glaze :)

Look at the beautiful flecks of black and yellow from the poppy seed and lemon zest

YUMMMM.

As always, I hope you guys will try this recipe one day. The baking process may not cheer you up a much as it did for me, but eating it sure will. Have a great weekend!

Just one more picture... hehe.

♥B

Baking Edition: Choco Muffs

Saturday evenings are usually my dedicated baking days since hubs is at work and baby is asleep by then. It's something I try to do every weekend to fill my house with goodies. I love to bake because I know what goes into what treats I'm eating and I can control the amount of ingredients that goes in each baked good. Plus, it's ridiculously therapeutic!

Today's treat is Chocolate Chip Muffins. Just like chocolate chip cookies, there are probably about a million recipes out there that claim themselves to be the best choco muff out there. But you never know until you try. This recipe was adapted from a coworker but I did make some changes to suit my taste. Also, they didn't brown on top as much as I would've liked them to mainly because I forgot to adjust my oven rack so please make sure your oven rack is in the middle rather than the bottom!

Classic Chocolate Chip Muffin

2 cups AP flour

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

3 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 cup whole milk

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup unsweetened chocolate chips

1. Preheat your oven to 400F. Line a muffin tray with paper liners or lightly oil them.

2. In one bowl, add the flour, both sugars, baking powder and salt. Mix well.

3. In another bowl, whisk together egg, oil, milk and vanilla.

4. Add the whole bowl of dry ingredients to the wet bowl and mix with spatula. Make sure that it's mixed just enough to incorporate the wet and dry ingredients. It's important that you DO NOT OVERMIX a muffin batter because it overdevelops the gluten in the batter and comes out very tough. You want your muffins light, airy and fluffy.

5. Now take it to your muffin tray and fill, fill, fill! Typically it's recommended that you fill each muffin cup just up to half or a teensy bit over. However, I like my muffins with a nice poofy crust, so I filled it to the top. It's totally up to you!

6. Bake for 20-25 minutes and then let it cool in the tray for about 5 minutes before you indulge.

This makes about 12 medium-sized muffins.

However, if you only fill your cups halfway, I'd say this makes about 18 medium-sized muffins.

Yuuuuuummmmy.

♥B

On the Grind

Today was an extremely hectic day at work. I couldn't wait to get home, play with my daughter, and get some grub in my tub. Mel's meals are making me ridiculously hungry all the time so I decided to treat myself to some comfort food since I've been relatively light on my meals lately.

Entree Pan Fried Meatloaf in Bell Peppers (adapted from Sunny Anderson's recipe)

1 bell pepper (any colour), sliced in 1-inch rings

Stick these in the oven at 350F for about 15 minutes while you prepare your meatloaf.

1 lb ground beef

1/2 onion, finely diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 egg

2 slices of bread, torn into little pieces

Herb du Provence, salt and pepper to your taste

In a mixing bowl, put all the ingredients together and mix well. Take out the bell peppers from the oven and heat up a pan with a nub of butter or oil. Simply stuff the meatloaf into the bell peppers and saute them for about 5-7 minutes on each side until done. Garnish with parsley!

On the side Onion Potato Gratin

4 potatoes, thinly sliced

1 onion, sliced in rings

2 garlic cloves

2 cups cheese (preferably gruyere or parmagiano reggiano)

1-2 cups milk

3 tbsp butter

1 tbsp rosemary

1 tbsp thyme

1 bay leaf

Preheat your oven to 350F and prepare your baking pan by rubbing butter on it to prevent sticking. Thinly slice your potatoes - I used a mandoline. Meanwhile, saute your onions and garlic in 1 tbsp of butter until they have softened. In a separate pot, melt 1 tbsp of butter and add your milk, rosemary, thyme and bay leaf. Let that boil for about 5 minutes. Now layer the potatoes, onions and 2/3 of the cheese. This is what I did:

One layer potatoes... add a bit of salt and pepper

One layer onions

One layer potatoes... add a bit of salt and pepper

One layer cheese

And I kept doing that until I finished using the potatoes. Pour the boiling milk mixture into the potatoes and top off with remaining butter. Bake in the oven for 45 minutes. Then pull it out, and put the remainder of the cheese and finish in the oven for 15 minutes.

Ta-da! Okay, this does take a bit of work, but boy was it well worth the wait and effort.

Just like Mel, I completely demolished it. Teee heee. Now excuse me while I delve into a new episode of Criminal Minds and unwind :)

♥B

♪ These are a few of my favourite things..

So it seems I haven't exactly snapped out of my "seafood diet" ..whenever I see food I eat it. But literally, this is my baked seafood w/ white sauce rice. Such a great comfort food. I've been carbo-loading for the past few days.. I can't help it! I need to get on a treadmill...

This is one of my favourite knit sweaters with faux leather elbow patches (H&M). Nothing beats an ever so comfortable oversized sweater. I couldn't live without it. I often break the rules of wearing the same thing twice in a row.. and by often I actually mean ALL the time.

♥M