Baking With Anna Olson
Some people are not as fortunate as others and are gluten-intolerant or even allergic. What made me grasp how much gluten is present is that whenever I bring baked goods to work, which is pretty often, a friend of mine who is gluten-intolerant can never eat anything I make. I told her I would make her a dessert that she could actually enjoy one day, so these chewy gluten-free brownies are for her.
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My dad is generally not a huge fan of desserts, but one thing he adores during the holiday season is fruitcake. He always receives the store-bought fruitcakes as a gift (the ones with the red and green cherries). I thought that this year I would make him a big fruitcake that he could enjoy endlessly. I am not an avid eater of fruitcake myself, but according to him this fruitcake is delicious and very tasty.
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The third and last dessert I made this past weekend were the scrumptious-looking chocolate cranberry buns. As always, I was craving chocolate when I was baking, thus my primary motivation for making these pull-apart sticky buns. Unfortunately, however, what I obtained was not so scrumptious-looking and definitely not pull-apart gooeyness.
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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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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 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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Bread pudding. This is a concept I never really grasped. Why would you want to purposely wet bread and eat it so? In my mind the result would be a soggy and unpleasant mixture. This recipe, however, yielded a dessert that was none of that. Admittedly, I think that I slightly undercooked the bread pudding and as a result it was a bit “wet” still, but I could tell that perfectly cooked it would have tasted even better.
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As is often the case, lately I have been craving chocolate. Fortunately, I can always count on Anna to have a wonderful chocolate-containing recipe in her cookbook. This time I opted for d’Artagnan bars, a dessert with which I was not familiar with but later learned is similar in taste to the chocolate bar 3 musketeers. Like the peanut butter nanaimo bars, these chocolate bars are composed of three layers: the chocolate cookie crumb base, the fluffy chocolatey filling and the top chocolate glaze. So much chocolate!
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I realized very recently that I hadn’t baked cupcakes for a long time. I took advantage of a friend’s birthday this weekend to make these cute red velvet cupcakes. They were moist, tasty and the frosting was exquisite.
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Valerie 