Baking, Baking, Baking

Our kitchen has been filled with amazing smells over the last few days because I've baked more since Wednesday than I have in m-o-n-t-h-s. This is, in part, thanks to a friend of mine who won a free cooking class after entering a pie-off. He was kind enough to share the delicious recipes with me, plus his top secret award-winning pie recipe! So sit back, relax, maybe grab a napkin for your inevitable drool, and enjoy these photos of delicious, delicious nomz.


I present to you my first real quiche: Butternut Squash and Caramelized Mushrooms with Garlic & Herb Goat Cheese. This was incredible! I've made mini quiche a few years ago for a Super Bowl but that doesn't really count. If you'd like the recipe, I'll make a PDF, just let me know in the comments :) Click here for the recipe!


Next up is the apple pie I made for Thanksgiving with Andrew's family. There is so much butter in this thing, it was essentially deep fried. So, so good. I used the same pie crust recipe as my last pie post, and I still totally recommend it.


Apple pie cookies were destined to be a staple in this apartment, I mean, that's just obvious. I've made several small batches and I still can't get over how cute and tasty they are. These were made with the same Smitten Kitchen recipe as last time, substituting maple syrup for sugar and adding plenty of walnut pieces. Absolutely wonderful. Look at how flaky the crust is in that last photo; a perfect example of how important it is to NOT overwork your dough!


For no apparent reason, I woke up with a serious craving for french toast Sunday morning. Cornflake crusted french toast was clearly the answer because we actually had cornflakes. I used this super simple recipe and blended the rest of my leftover apple pie cookie filling as a topping. I'd say compote just to make myself feel fancy, but it was basically apple sauce. It didn't even need syrup, it was so good! I couldn't bear to cut out circles in all of our bread though, so I did enough for one fabulous photo. Oh, the sacrifices I make for this blog...