All posts tagged desserts

my entry for Bake My Cake 2013: an epic graduation cake.

by shannon on June 15, 2013 in desserts, general information and events with 25 Comments

entry for Movita's Bake My Cake 2013: her graduation cake.

(Setting: early Summer in the American Middle West. Shannon has been up for hours planning the day, doing some grocery shopping, and has just returned from the gym. A thought occurred to her while on the treadmill – a rare happening – and she can’t wait to tell the one person she knows will be excited about it.)

Shannon: (slams outside door and sets her things on the counter) Lottie? Lottie!

(silence)

Shannon: Lottie? Hello?

(more silence)

(A slight fear creeps in to Shannon’s heart as she wonders where her sheep is. She goes quickly to Lottie’s new home and rings the bell.) Continue reading →

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individual strawberry basil crisps.

by shannon on June 13, 2013 in desserts with 22 Comments

individual strawberry basil crisps.

There’s something very special about picking your own berries in the summer. It’s almost a sacred event to me, and I really geek out on it. You gain an entirely new respect for the thing you are harvesting, I think; I imagine this must be similar to what hunters feel (or at least I hope they feel this way) when killing animals for food. Even though berries don’t have feelings, I do feel like it gives you a new perspective on how amazing nature is and how much goes into putting those little plastic boxes of fruit on your grocery store shelves. Continue reading →

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good morning sunshine bars.

by shannon on June 8, 2013 in breakfast, desserts, snacks with 23 Comments

good morning sunshine bars.

Pre-bathing suit dieters: avert your eyes and avert them now. Go quickly to a health food blog, do an emergency keyword search for things like “quinoa” and “fennel,” and do your best to completely avoid what I have going on here. This is not the post for you. I’m swimming in the sea of early summer fruits as much as the rest of you, but I couldn’t get this out of my head, so here it is. Page one of the newest Baked offering, Baked Elements: The Good Morning Sunshine Bars, finagled by yours truly. And I did do a good amount of finagling here. Continue reading →

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angel cake.

by shannon on May 21, 2013 in desserts with 34 Comments

perfect angel cake.

File this under “posts where Shannon makes something you can easily purchase at the store and subsequently gets underwear-bunchy trying to figure out why you would ever want the store-bought version when the scratch version is so much better.” What; you don’t have a folder for that? You should. Let’s talk about angel cake. Why, as a human race, are we so willing to grab store-bought angel cake when the homemade variety is incredibly delicious? I blame our current relationship with egg whites. Continue reading →

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chocolate chip cupcakes + chocolate ganache.

by shannon on May 5, 2013 in desserts with 33 Comments

chocolate chip cupcakes + chocolate ganache.

Two very exciting things happened at the end of April this year.

This postcard:

my postcard from emma.

Emma from Of Agates and Madeleines hand-illustrated a postcard and sent it to me from the middle of the Maine woods, where she hangs out most days. This was part of a previous agreement we had made to send each other postcards from our various locations; my vacation site in Florida versus her work site at the tippy top of the States. I sent her two postcards (I couldn’t decide which exemplified my vacation destination more) but they were not hand-illustrated, attached to a little note, and cuddled into a hand-folded envelope, friends. Only Emma would do that, and this is why I love her. She’s my kind of absolutely nuts, and I like it. Thanks, Emma.

The other thing that happened? These cupcakes. Continue reading →

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dear library: day four (with honeybee cupcakes)

by shannon on April 18, 2013 in brunch, dear library, desserts with 14 Comments

honeybee cupcakes.

Dear Library,

So do you see now why I talk about you all the time? We’ve been through a lot together, and I’ll never leave you. When college ended, I threw myself back into recreational reading with full force. With your spiffy online ordering system, your entire catalog was mine, at quite literally the touch of a button. It’s fantastic: if a book I want is really popular, I can even place myself in a virtual line and you will not only alert me when it is available, you will deliver it to my closest branch for pickup.

By the way, your online search and request system is excellent; so much more streamlined than when it first began, Library. You haven’t just sat by and done the bare minimum, no; you’ve continually updated it to make the whole process easy for everyone. I use my online account so much that I’ve memorized my library card number. Continue reading →

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dear library: day three (I made you sugar cookies.)

by shannon on April 17, 2013 in desserts, general information and events with 23 Comments

piece of cake sugar cookies.

Dear Library,

I don’t love to admit this, but there was a time in my life that I didn’t think I needed you; I was wrong about that. After high school, and a few half-hearted attempts at college classes, I thought maybe living my life was way more important than learning things from books. I kept working full-time; no college for me, at least not at that point. I was burned out, needed a break, and if there was one thing I was sure of, it was that I had zero ideas about what I really wanted to do with my life.

Looking back, I don’t think that was a bad move on my part. I still don’t understand how most kids know at the wee age of 18 what they want to do with the whole rest of their time on the planet. Some do: I have a friend whom I’ve known since middle school who always wanted to be a veterinarian, and she is – you guessed it – a veterinarian now. But it seems like most kids have roughly the same idea of their future at 18 years old as they did at 8, when their hearts were set on being astronauts or race car drivers. Continue reading →

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monday bites: mini lemon tarts.

by shannon on February 11, 2013 in desserts with 20 Comments

mini lemon tarts.

So I spent the last 4 days on muscle relaxers. On accident. Here’s my story, and then we’ll bake something, I promise.

I had an appointment to discuss a resurgence of headaches with my doctor, and as luck would have it, I happened upon a sinus infection just before my scheduled visit. Went in Thursday, had to wait an hour and a half due to some sort of random emergency earlier in the day, and found out that my doctor’s office was having one of those comedic “everything is going wrong” sort of days.

Warning: this is not a good time to discuss multiple events with your doctor, because neither of you are 100% functional. I ended up finally seeing her during what was to be her lunch hour, and you know how people get when they haven’t eaten anything. Moving on. Continue reading →

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buttermilk raspberry swirl ice cream sandwiches (part two of two)

by shannon on January 31, 2013 in desserts with 25 Comments

buttermilk raspberry swirl ice cream sandwiches, featuring homemade graham crackers.

If you thought yesterday’s post about the brown sugar graham cracker part of this was exciting, well: have I got a treat for you. I hope you readied your ice cream makers as instructed, because it’s time to make what is quite possibly my favorite fruit-swirled ice cream ever: raspberry buttermilk.

Buttermilk ice cream is sublime, especially for those of us for whom there exists a fine line between “delightfully sweet” and “toothache.” It has its own unique sweet tartness; certainly not lemony-tart, but with a tangy finish so refreshing in a world filled with overly sweet ice cream offerings. It’s a little more sophisticated, I think, but not so much that a kid (or an adult with kid-friendly tastes) would stick up their nose at it. The raspberry swirl adds to the sweet/tart balancing act, and the result is an ice cream approved for year-round use. Continue reading →

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sparkle bark.

by shannon on December 31, 2012 in desserts with 12 Comments

Hey you, with the leftover sprinkles from birthdays, christmas, random events, who has zero idea what to do with them. In your flurry of cupcake-decorating and cookie-bedazzling, you suddenly realized you have more sparkly goods than you do actual food.

This bark is for you.

It’s also perfect for New Year’s Eve, because all it takes is a little chocolate, some nuts, and whatever sprinkles, sparkles, or edible glitter you have hiding out in your pantry. Continue reading →

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