Fall’s not over yet!!

Just because thanksgiving has come and gone doesn’t mean that fall is over. The first day if Winter is December 21st so until then pumpkin is welcome to stay! I had the weekend after thanksgiving off so what else was there to do but bake! And just because I’m still enjoying fall doesn’t mean I’m not super excited for Christmas, so to set the mood I put on a Christmas playlist on spotify!

I baked pumpkin bread and of course what goes better with pumpkin than chai!

Pumpkin Chai Bread

2 cups butter *softened
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground chai tea
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 15oz can pumpkin
3 cups flour
1 cup white whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp milk
7 oz chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and grind the chai tea in a coffee grinder.

In a large bowl beat the 2 cups of butter with an electric mixer on medium speed for 30 seconds

Add sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and the chai mixing until combined

Add the eggs and the vanilla until combined

Mix in the pumpkin

Slowly mix in the four 1/2 cup at a time, I also added 2 Tbsp of milk here as well

By hand mix in the walnuts

Divide the mix into two bread pans (I buttered and floured mine which helps the bread come right out of the pan) and sprinkle the top with a little bit of cinnamon and chai.

Bake for 1 – 1 1/2 hours checking every 10 minutes after the first hour. Let cool in the pans for 30 minutes before slicing

This pumpkin bread is so delicious!

As for my Christmas baking music, Michael Bublé is and will always be my favorite for anything, but I also enjoy She & Him and my most recent find……. Pentatonix version of my favorite Christmas song, little drummer boy!

If you didn’t notice my old school mixer, it’s as old, if not older, that I am and is on its way out. That’s why I’m asking for a nice new beautiful Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas! Kohls has a really good deal going on at least for the next day or two so I’m hoping to get it before Christmas. It sure would help with the Christmas cookie baking! Even with that, I’ll still be sad to see my mixer go, there’s a sentimental attachment that goes with it back to my moms baking 😥

What are you asking for for Christmas?

– K

Vermont Maple Bacon Scones!

I have been dying to use the Vermont maple syrup that I bought in Massachusetts, I hadn’t made scones in a while and maple scones sounded so yummy but I wanted to add something else to them. I decided to go with bacon to make Vermont maple bacon scones! They were so good and didn’t last very long!!

Vermont Maple Bacon Scones

2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached white flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
3/4 cup unsalted, butter *cut into chunks*
1 egg
1/4 cup Vermont maple syrup *the best kind there is!!!*
1 1/4 cup heavy cream
6-9 strips of bacon *I used apple wood smoked to balance the sweetness of the scones, you can always add more or less bacon*

Cook your bacon, cut it into tiny pieces and set aside. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Start by mixing the dry ingredients well in a large bowl before adding the cold butter cut into chunks. Use a pastry blender or your hands to mix the butter into the dry ingredients until it is mixed into coarse crumbs.

Beat the egg lightly and add it with the maple syrup and heavy cream, mixing thoroughly, do not whip!

Using a ice cream scoop, scoop out the dough onto two cookie sheets lined with parchment paper. Leave about 1 ½ inches between scones.

These scones were Maria approved! 😉

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, scones should be golden brown.

After baking you can drizzle maple syrup on top before serving for a nice presentation and little bit more maple syrup!

What’s your favorite thing to put maple syrup on?

– K

Spooky Things!

Halloween is my favorite Holliday! Maria and I got all settled into our new place just in time to throw a halloween party! Pinterest provided plenty of inspiration.

Growing up Halloween was always special at our house, my mom always went all out with decorations and for the first 5 or 6 years made my sister and I’s costumes! I found a lot of inspiration from Pinterest but there’s one thing I was always impressed with from my childhood. The witches cauldron!

Start with a medium (size varies by your table size, party size, and how much punch you might need) plastic witches cauldron, you can find these at party city.

Add dry ice to your cauldron. Be careful with the dry ice!!! It is dangerous and can cause severe burns! Use thick gloves or metal tongs to handle the ice. And place a plastic punch bowl inside.

When ready, create your punch and add to the punch bowl, then pour hot water into the cauldron around your punch bowl where the dry ice is. This will cause the dry ice to start fogging up and look really cool! Add hot water as needed when the fog dies down, it will cause it to fog back up.

I also made halloween cookies!

Sugar Cookies

1 cup Sugar
1 cup Butter, softened
3 oz. Cream cheese
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Almond extract
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
1 egg Yolk
2 cups All Purpose Flour

In a large bowl blend together sugar, butter, cream cheese, salt, almond extract, vanilla, and egg yolk with mixer.

Mix in flour, a little at a time, until well blended.

Roll dough onto plastics wrap or parchment paper and refrigerate dough for two hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees then start to roll out dough, one third at a time, on a lightly floured surface. Using a cookie cutter dipped in flour, cut out cookies as close together as possible.

Place cookies on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until bottoms of cookies are a light golden brown. I find the cookies are best a little under baked. Cool completely before moving or icing the cookies.

I used a simple royal icing to decorate my cookies for the Halloween party.

Royal Icing

3 Tbsp Meringue Powder
4 cups Confectioners’ Sugar
6 Tbsp Warm Water

Add all ingredients to a bowl and mix until smooth. Separate into individual bowls and add food coloring if desired.

For the party Henry was Eyore and I was a witch!

Here are all of our decorations and some pictures from the party! It was a lot of fun and the cookies were a big hit!

What’s your favorite holiday?

– K

Team Swirl Girl

Today is Lesline’s birthday!! Happy Birthday Lesline!

Earlier this week Lesline asked me if I could bake her something for her birthday! Of course I said yes and when I asked if she had anything particular in mind she just told me she liked buttercream icing. That still left me with many options and I wanted to make something I knew she’d like so it took some thinking but then it came to me!!

Jamie and Lesline are a really cute couple and anytime Lesline post a picture of them on Instagram she always puts #teamswirl so I decided to make chocolate and vanilla swirled cupcakes with swirled icing!

For these cupcakes I used two completely different cake recipes (for the vanilla and the chocolate) but you’ll see why later. There’s a method to the madness! Get ready this one is a doozy!

I made the Vanilla cake mix first.

Vanilla Cake:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter *room temp*
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup whole milk

In a medium bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

In a large bowl, use a mixer to cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing after each addition.

Then add the vanilla and mix until well incorporated. With the mixer set to the lowest speed, add the dry ingredients a little at a time, alternating with the milk. Scrape down the mixing bowl after every edition, mix until all is smooth.

Set the vanilla batter to the side, it’s time to make the chocolate!

Chocolate Cake:

2 cups sugar
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup Hershey’s cocoa powder *unsweetened*
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 cup boiling water

In a large bowl combine the dry ingredients.

Slowly add in the eggs, milk, oil, and vanilla. Mix on medium speed until well incorporated.

Stir in the boiling water. This with thin out the batter but don’t worry, it’s a good thing! This will help with the swirling of the batters.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line your cupcake pan with liners and grab your two cake batters.

Start by scooping the vanilla batter into the first pan, you don’t want to fill it all the way just yet, just enough to cover the bottom of the cupcake pan (I did each cupcake pan individually but I guess you can do them all at once layer by layer).

Next, drizzle just a little bit of the chocolate batter on top of the vanilla.

After you have the chocolate drizzled on top, take a stirrer of sorts and stir the chocolate into the vanilla, be careful not to mix them complete. The goal is to have a marble effect.

After you do this, add another layer of vanilla on top and repeat so it fills the cups.

Bake at 350 for 20 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

For the icing, you can use what ever chocolate and vanilla you like but I used Rich’s Bettercream, as is for vanilla and for the chocolate I added Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder. The chocolate ended up tasting like a Wendy’s frosty, just not frozen. It was delicious!

I put the icing side by side into a piping bag with a 1M star tip to ice the cupcakes. They ended up looking like chocolate and vanilla soft serve ice cream on top!

They turned out great! They were a big hit!

Have people ever inspired your baking?

– K

Love of all Things Chai!

Lately I have been drinking oatmeal breakfast smoothies which had me think about oatmeal raisin cookies, which I love! Thinking about oatmeal raisin cookies, I realized they have cinnamon in them, and cinnamon is one of the spices in chai tea. Chai is my favourite tea! I thought what if I use chai tea as a spice instead of just cinnamon! I love finding new ways to incorporate tea into my cooking and baking! And that is exactly what I did! My room mate doesn’t like oatmeal raisin so she suggested using chocolate chips instead of the raisins, but I love the raisins here, we settled by adding both! Which was perfect because I had just enough chocolate chips left in the pantry to throw them in. Picture to come:

To start these cookies you need to brown the butter and give it enough time to cool back to a solid/consistency of softened butter (without using the fridge * this is crucial!). To brown the butter, in a sauce pan, over medium/low heat (depending on your stove, I have a gas stove so I used low), combine:

1 cup of unsalted butter
4 tbsp of your favourite loose leaf chai tea

Let the butter melt and and simmer for about 5 minutes or until butter becomes a beautiful hazelnut colour (be careful not to burn it!). Once browned remove the butter from the heat and add the chai tea, allow to steep for about 5 minutes. Strain the chai from your butter (if you aren’t using a steeper) using fine mesh strainer or coffee filter. Let your chai infused butter sit until it becomes solid again.

1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 chocolate chips

While the butter is cooling, mix together the dry ingredients in medium bowl.

Once the butter has become solid again, whip the butter and sugars together until light and creamy, followed by the eggs and vanilla. Add your dry ingredients a little at a time and mix until well combined. By hand, stir in raisins and chocolate chips.

Preheat your oven to 375° F I usually don’t preheat my oven until I’m done mixing all ingredients, and right before I plop the cookies onto the cookie sheet, use your judgement by how long it takes to preheat your oven. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, sometimes I use butter to keep my cookies from sticking, but parchment is cleaner. Scoop out your cookies and bake for 12 minutes. * If you want grind a couple of table spoons of chai tea in a spice grinder and sprinkle on top of the cookies before baking, for a little bit more chia, I can never get enough!* Take them out of the oven, and let them sit for six minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

These cookies came out of the oven perfect for me, soft in the middle with a little crunch on the edges! They were sooooo yummy! I think the chocolate chips over powered the raisins so next time I think I’ll add more raisins and a little less chocolate chips.

What’s your favourite cookie? Let me know and maybe I’ll be inspired with another tea baked goodie!

– K