Tiramisu tea cup

By far one of the best recipes I've ever found is a tiramisu recipe from allrecipes.com People always ask for it. I made a small version just for my mom in silicone baking tea cups.

Simple Tartlets

My mom was having a blue themed dinner party so I was making some quick and simple desserts. Pre-made tart shells, filled with melted chocolate mix with a little heavy cream, blue dyed homemade whipped cream put through a fun pastry tip, topped with sprinkles and a blueberry. Enjoy the easiness and cuteness!

Gingerbread pudding cookies

Pudding mix in cookies?? Why yes! it makes for amazing cookies. Im not a fan of gingerbread cookies but this was a winner for me! The spice flavor is not to strong and the texture is amazing, almost like a muffin top! The recipe can be found here: Cookie Recipe

Happy Holidays! 

Great Pecan Pie

This turned out to be an amazing pecan pie, yum yum! I recommend Pioneers women's recipe. What I like most about baking a pie is the decorating you get to do. On this pie I did a braid on the edge. Get creative :)

Thanksgiving and a stuffing recipe

Ever wonder what families with different cultures do on American holidays.  Yes my Persian family still has a Thanksgiving! How I love the food obviously I baked all the desserts for this feast but I did make on savory dish, I know what a surprise. 

I had made a chestnut and turkey sausage stuffing! 

Not going to lie it was amazing, I almost forgot to eat all the other sides

You can find the original recipe on Food Network 

My Version:

• Celery, Carrots and Onion (I cheated on bought it all together, pre-chopped from Trader Joes since I used the whole container I used more veggies than the original recipe)
• 1/2 bunch fresh sage
• 1 1/2 pounds loose sweet Italian sausage
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 5 1/2 cups cubed sourdough bread (i left the half the crust on my bread, I bought two different loaves from two different grocery stores. This gave me two slightly different sourdough loves) 
• 1 pound roasted chestnuts (I purchased pre-roasted and peeled from Costco!!! this recipe would be so hard without this short cut)
• 1 cup low-sodium chicken stock
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 large egg

Try this stuffing at your next gathering! 

Peanut butter surprise.

I got a little inspiration from Pinterest, of course! to make a cookie with a surprise in it. These were a perfect fall treat. The cookie part it a sugar cookie with some added peanut butter and food coloring. I "glued" the cookies together with some melted chocolate. You could fill it with any candy you please, I used Reese's pieces.

Easy baking for a crowd

Parties are a great excuse to bake and create new goodies, and people will usually enjoy it being you taste testers. When I have a party there it is no exception I want to bake so many things. However baking from scratch becomes very time consuming so here are four desserts that are crowd pleasers and easy! 

Left to right: sugar cookies with white chocolate/milk chocolate kisses,  oreo slut bars, and peanut butter cupcakes

Smores cupcakes,  sugar cookies with white chocolate/milk chocolate kisses,  and oreo slut bars

Sugar cookies with white chocolate/milk chocolate kisses

• Take you favorite sugar cookie recipe or peanut butter cookie recipe add pink food coloring gel. Food coloring gels will give you the best colors! roll in pink sugar and then bake! let the cookies cool for a few minutes and press a kiss in the middle of each cookie. 

Oreo slut brownies

• This is an amazing recipe! It is a sugar overload. I used store bought sugar cookies dough, then out a layer of broken oreo cookies (about half a package), then pour funfetti cake mix over it (prepare batter however the box says) bake according to the cake mix. Top the cooled brownies with Oreo frosting: one stick of butter, 2-3 cups of powdered sugar,  2 tbsp. heavy cream,  2 tsp. vanilla extract, half of an oreo package crushed! Yum!  

Peanut butter cupcakes

• I prepared a chocolate cake mix according to the package cut up from peanut butter cups into the batter and baked. The frosting is one stick of butter, 1 cup of peanut butter,  2-3 cups of powdered sugar. 

Smores cupcakes

• Again I prepared a chocolate cake mix according to the package but before I poured the cake mis in my cupcake pan and out from crushed graham crackers at the bottom then poured in the batter. Frosted with just marshmallow fluff toasted with a kitchen torch 

Happy entertaining!! 

Pumpkin pie

This recipe is based off of Baking Bites perfect pumpkin pie recipe. It turned out so good! I made a graham cracker crust and cut out pieces with a cookie cutter perfect for entertaining. Topped with homemade cinnamon whipped cream.

My perfect pumpkin pie version: 

1 15-oz can pumpkin puree

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

3 large eggs, room temperature

2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup milk, whole

1 tbsp AP flour

Nutella stuffed cookies

So simple but so good take you favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. Take about a tablespoon of Nutella and wrap your dough around it.

Oreo cupcakes

I had bought Halloween Oreo just to have a reason to make something. I ended up being short in time so I used boxed cake mix but made my own buttercream frosting with Oreo cookies crushed in it.

M&M Cookie

Everyone must check out this blog Picky Palate, every recipe I have tried turns out delicious. 

The most recent one I tried was the M&M cookies. I did not make them XXL like she did I made them in a normal size and everything worked out well. 

Try the recipe you wont be disappointed 

Scooby!

This is your basic funfetti cake, went crazy with food coloring and sprinkles. The decoration in top is made with white chocolate.

Tips on making a Scooby: print out the image you want, place wax paper over it and draw with chocolate. Place in freezer and then peel off the wax paper. 

This is Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and I love throwing themed parties. This year I went all out baking. Who doesn't get lazy when they have to bake large amounts, so some things got sloppy. In the end I still able to pull of some cute goodies for my party. 

This one of my favorite cookie recipes, PB Swirl Cookie. Even if you don't chill the PB mixture and just blend it in this cookie turns out delicious. Pretty easy. Spiders are made of peanut butter cups, mini m&m eyes, and black licorice eyes. It was all glued on with melted chocolate.

 

What is this? My first attempt at some sugar work. It was decoration for my red velvet cupcakes to look like broken glass with some "blood". Anyways shortly after the broken glass on the cupcakes they became soft and lost its shape.  FAIL!

My Halloween Tables:

Blood Table: Red Velvet cupcakes, Oreo Devil food cake, Red jello shots and red vodka

The Witches Table: Dark color sodas, orange and black chips, and dip

Pumpkin Table: Orange sodas, spice cupcakes, PB swirl cookies, and candy.

Teddy Grahams and Goldfish go to the Beach

Can you guess what I made? 

CAKE POPS !!!

For those who have been left out of the craze, the basic recipe is one baked cake crumbled and mixed with frosting formed into balls and dipped into chocolate. I have been trying to perfect the Cake Pop, the dipping process is hard! I can never dip them right, so I heard the putting vegetable shortening helps and let me tell you it did!

These were for a work party and since we work in a beach city beach themed cake pops were created! and yes each teddy graham got a hot bikini. The "sand" is just some poor teddy grahams in a food processor with a teaspoon of pumpkin pie seasoning.

PB swirl cookies

This has to be one of the best cookie recipe i have ever made!

See the dark spots that's the PB swirl!! 

Okay some notes about the recipe, i was measuring the peanut butter for the recipe and realized it needed the whole jar and i didnt have to measure it. It was really hard to get the peanut butter swirl because the pb mixture would get soft to quickly. i just had to break it into larger chunks then intended and just gently stir it in being really careful to not get rid of the lovely swirl.
p.s. the Peanut butter truffle mixture is so yummy! maybe it would work on other treats
Original recipe: CC and PBTruffle Swirled Cookies 

Nutella cookies?

Want to eat it right of the jar? ya me too

An adjustment i made to this recipe was that i added about 4 tbsp. of flour the dough was to sticky to handle and i chilled the dough before handling it.   When you break these cookies in half you see the lovely nutella, yummy warm but until they cool down you wont see the nutella. Here is the low down chocolate-y cookie with nutella on the inside. Next time i will put nutella in the cookie dough. How did i get the nutella in the middle? I used a regular ice cream scoop then flattened the cookie out like a pancake put the nutella in the middle and rolled it up.

Original Recipe: Nutella Lava Cookies 

yum yum

More Tres Leche Cake

I did not center well on the plate. Frosted with homemade whipped cream and smooth out with heated tools.

This is such a popular recipe for me, I get asked to make it all the time. This post has information about where to find the recipe. This cake was made a a pink themed dinner party. It was the first time I did not soak the cake over night, I soaked it the morning of the party. I almost used the whole mixture of condensed and evaporated milk. The cake was just a moist it was almost like a gusher though, you would bite into the cake and then get the milk mixture in your mouth. 

What is tres leches? 3 milks :) it is a great cake recipe once put together. The recipe for the cake it self is not sweet but once you pour on the condensed and evaporate milk layer it with homemade whipped cream and fresh berries it is very sweet. Many people like it because it does make you feel weighed down. 

Now my favorite thing is homemade WHIPPED CREAM!! you will never love any other cream the same way. The only reason I used the canned stuff because if come in low fat variations but when i bake for other heavy whipping cream, 1 cup of sugar and vanillla!!! Try messing around with other extracts as well :) Keep the adventure going. 

See all of the milky-ness 

Strawberry Bread

Very Yummy!

I was in a strawberry pickle...we had too many strawberries left over! so I was on a mission to find a recipe that used a lot of strawberries, not just a few slices. Strawberry Bread Recipe was my answer. A few modifications I added almost 3 cups of strawberries and if really does need as many as you can put in it. I did not add any nuts, I added a teaspoon of vanilla, and I was light on the addition of cinnamon.  Also I added a brown sugar, flour, butter on top before baking, that really make this a keeper!! 

It took me 50minutes to bake

Great as breakfast or dessert. It is a very moist cake, not very light.

Rose Water, Pound Cake, Whipped Cream, Pudding Filling

What is this you may ask? layers of goodness! I made a rich pound cake in my baking class, I cut it up into little pieces. Made Jello instant pudding following the pie filling instructions which is just 1 cup less of milk. Then made homemade whipped cream with from heavy whipping cream, sugar and ROSE WATER. 

The dish is layered as so pound cake, pudding, sliced strawberries, whipped cream....repeat. 

Decorate with dried roses, pistachios, and chocolate hearts i made

The crazy inside, very good. Rich with a refreshing rose after taste

Tres Leches Cake, again

Well, this recipe is was a hit from my previous post so i made it again in the same color but i decide to make it THREE layers. Very scary but it held up well. 

The process

Not perfect but decorated with melted chocolate that i then made fun shapes with and gold candy pieces

THREE layers, whipped cream filling strawberries and blackberries 

Fail

Another tres leches cake, very disappointed i will have to take on a flag cake again. How did this happen, too much liquid food coloring ruined my whipped cream, so lessoned learned. Everyone stick to the gel stuf