Baking With Anna Olson
A couple of weeks ago when I thought my replacement oven was working fine, but I was severely mistaken. However, this time is the real deal. I now have an actually new, functioning oven that does not overheat and burn my food. Yay!! To celebrate I spent a whole day in the kitchen just baking away, such fun! First up I made these chocolate shortbread cookies. This recipe makes a lot and they can serve as perfect little late-night snacks.
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The cold is now upon us and I am a big fan of cozying up to a delicious mug of hot chocolate. Since nothing goes better with hot chocolate than marshmallow, I decided to make these chocolate and marshmallow cookies. I don’t know if it is my new oven that I am not used to or perhaps I didn’t put in enough butter, but the cookies came out pretty dry and crumbly.
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Third and last dessert of the Thanksgiving weekend: the classic pumpkin pie! I say classic because it seems to be the dessert that everyone makes this time of year, but actually neither I nor any member of my family have ever eaten and much less made a pumpkin pie. Hence, this was my first time making and eating a pumpkin pie. The recipe is pretty straightforward and yields a pie that is colourful, velvety looking and slices perfectly.
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This is the second dessert of the Thanksgiving weekend. I made this mostly for my sisters, who adore apple crumble. This dessert is very easy to do, which is a big plus. It is also one of those desserts that tastes way better than it looks. When the crumble came out of the oven I was quite surprised as I found that it wasn’t very appetizing.
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This past weekend was Thanksgiving weekend! I love this time of the year simply for all the wonderful moments spent with the family with good food and the beautiful fall weather. As was inevitable, I made one (or three! recipes to come) dessert to bring along to my parents house. This dessert was an easy pick because I had too many apples that I needed to pass and more importantly, it looked delicious!
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Like many other desserts from Anna’s cookbook, I had never made “sticky buns” or, as we called it in French, brioches. With anything else that I had never done before, I thought that sticky buns were very complicated to do. It is not so! This recipe was so well-explained that even a novice like me was able to do it.
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Brownies are probably one of the most universally loved desserts. Understandably. They mostly consist of chocolate, butter and, often, nuts. The simplicity of this type of dessert is what makes it so well loved. The twist in Anna’s recipe includes whole wheat (to make us feel a little less guilty of eating these delicious brownies), coffee and a cream cheese frosting. I really enjoyed making and eating these brownies.
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I guess August is the month of the ginger! After the gingerbread cream pie, I followed with this recipe for cookies with a double dose of ginger: fresh and candied! The result was quite satisfying. The cookies were soft and chewy and had a very pronounced ginger taste. If you do not like ginger, these are not the cookies for you. However, if you happen to like ginger, these little treat are marvellous.
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It had been some time since I had made a pie, so I decided to try this recipe for a gingerbread cream pie, mostly because it sounded so scrumptious! I did not have any problems make the dough or the filling and everything seemed to be going as planned. I left the filling to set overnight and prepared the topping only the following day. The filling was delicious and the topping was just as tasty.
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I had pecans. I had chocolate. The only logical thing to do was to make the delicious-looking maple pecan chocolate squares seen in Anna’s cookbook. They looked rich and buttery, and they were exactly that! Uncomplicated to make, rich, chocolatey, buttery and crunchy (due to the pecans, of course!), these bars make the perfect dessert when in need of a little boost of energy. The addition of maple syrup provides the much desired sweetness and distinct flavour.
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Valerie 