Oatmeal Macaroons

Hey guys! Happy August 1st! :)

I'm sorry I didn't take the time to post at all last month, I was going through some pretty personal issues and such... (that, and half the month it was too hot to bake. Haha). Anyways, the important thing is that I'm back, and ready to bake!

A few nights ago, I went over to some friends' house for a break fast (it's Ramadan time again!), and I decided to make them some cookies. After a flipping through a few recipe books, I settled on these. Word is, they were pretty good. ;)

Ingredients: (adapted from The Great Canadian Cookie Cookbook, which can be purchased here or here.)
- 1 cup butter, softened;
- 1 cup brown sugar (firmly packed);
- 2 eggs;
- 1/2 tsp almond extract;
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour;
- 1 tsp baking baking soda;
- 3 cups ground oats;
- 4 ounces (about 1 1/3 cups) shredded coconut.

Instructions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F.
2. Beat butter and brown sugar in a large bowl, until creamy.
3. Add eggs and almond extract; beat well.
4. Combine flour and baking soda, add to mixture, and beat well.
5. Add oats and coconut; mix well.
6. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls (*I find that this recipe works well with a little more batter, too!)
7. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, or until light and golden brown.
8. Cool two minutes on cookie sheets, then remove to wire racks. Cool completely.
9. Store in a tightly covered container.

Sorry for the bad quality, guys! This is the best I could do on short notice. :( I need a better camera!

This recipe makes: about 8 dozen cookies (*although the book says that it makes 4 dozen.. oops).

Anyways, that's all for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed Big Time Baking's latest recipe. Bite-sized oatmeal and coconut delights... Yum!

See you next time,
-Alexe ✿

Easy-Peasy Pancake Recipe!

Hehe, sorry for the play-on-words. I couldn't resist! ;)

So, it's been a week since I've updated this blog. And, boy, what a week it's been! From now on, I'm going to make it a point of posting at least two posts a week; a very detailed, more complicated, recipe on Mondays (so that I have the weekend to work on it), and a bit more of an easy recipe (probably with only one or two pictures) on Fridays, in preparation for an easy-flowing weekend. Does that sound like a good plan? I think so! Anyways, let's get down to business...

Seeing as how today was St-Jean Baptiste (Québec's 'national' holiday), I decided to have a lazy morning and make some delicious pancakes. Yay! I usually follow a family recipe that my mom has written down on a slip of paper somewhere, but I was feeling a little bit daring and wanted to try something a little different today. I remembered a recipe that I had seen online a few months ago that seemed pretty straightforward, so I decided to try it out. Much to my surprise, I found out that it only consists of seven ingredients!

Ingredients: (adapted from Good Old Fashioned Pancakes on allrecipes.ca Canada)
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour;
- 3 1/2 tsp baking powder*;
- 1 tsp salt**;
- 3 tbsp butter, melted**;
- 1 tbsp white sugar;
- 1 1/4 cup milk***;
- 1 egg****.

*Although these ingredients are pretty basic, I forgot to check if all of them were available before I started to make the pancakes this morning. I was at my boyfriend's last night, and he doesn't have as much of a large supply of ingredients as my house does. Also, unfortunately, all of the stores were closed this morning due to St-Jean... Oops! Anyways, after a quick online search, I found that you could replace baking powder with an equal amount of one part baking soda mixed with two parts cream of tartar. For example, since this recipe calls for 3 1/2 tsp of baking powder, I used approximately 1 1/6 tsp baking soda and 2 1/3 tsp cream of tartar. **Usually, when baking, I use unsalted butter. Today, since I didn't have access to unsalted butter, I decided to simply omit the salt. With time, you'll see that I tend to do this in a lot of my recipes. ***For the milk, since I'm lactose-intolerant, I usually opt for soya milk. By far, my favorite has to be the vanilla-flavoured Silk brand. ****Finally, to put an end to all of these stars (did you notice that I like to make changes to recipes, yet? :P)... Again, with the lack of available ingredients this morning, I had to improvise the use of eggs in my recipe as well. Thankfully, I came across a wonderful page from Eggless Cooking that explained how to substitute vinegar and baking soda instead of eggs. The trick is to add 1 tsp of apple cider vinegar (white distilled vinegar works too, but I preferred to use something a bit more tasteful and tart, to go with the maple syrup!) along with 1 tsp baking soda to replace each egg.

Instructions:
1. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
2. Make a well in the center of the dry mixture.

3. Pour in the milk, egg, and melted butter.

4. Mix until smooth.
5. Heat a non-stick pan (or you could add about half a teaspoon of butter to a regular frying pan before each pancake) over medium heat. (You could also use a hot plate if you have one. I find they're great if you're making more than one batch!)
6. Pour about 1/3 cup or 1/4 cup (I personally prefer making smaller pancakes, but larger ones are fun too!) of batter into the pan.
7. Flip pancakes once they start to bubble.

8. Serve hot with your favourite toppings.

In honour of St-Jean today, I chose to make mine with raspberries and Québec's own maple syrup! (The only reason there's no maple syrup on this picture is because I thought it looked prettier without... Also, I don't want everyone to find out what my regular sugar intake is... :P)

This recipe makes: about 8-12 small or medium pancakes.

That's all for today, folks. I hope you enjoyed this week's instalment of Big Time Baking! Joyeuse St-Jean Baptiste!

See you next time,
-Alexe ✿

Apple Blossoms

Hey there! Welcome to Big Time Baking!

Short intro before we begin: My name's Alexe, I'm 19 years-old, and I live in Canada. For as long as I can remember, I've been baking all sorts of different desserts in the kitchen. Keeping this into consideration, I recently I applied for a Baking and Pastry Arts program. Amongst my friends and family, I'm known as The baker. If there's a birthday coming up, you can be sure that I'll be the first to jump onto the opportunity of baking another awesome cake. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so I apologize in advance for the lack of consistency in the quantity of my future posts (but, don't worry, what I'll be lacking in quantity, I'll definitely make up for in quality!). Also, I currently have a internship (sort of like a co-op student's placement program, without actually being one, or being in school) at a popular bakery nearby, and I'm constantly adding to my ever-growing knowledge of the baking industry. Anyways, enough about me. Let's get into what you're actually here for. ;)


A few months ago, in honor of my mother-in-law's birthday, I decided to bake her some of her favourite dessert; apple blossoms. Here's how it all went down:

Ingredients:
Apple Blossoms: (adapted from Best Recipes)
- 2 sheets puff pastry*;
- 1/2 to 1 tbsp ground cinnamon, to taste;
- 1 tsp mixed spices, or to taste (~1/2 tsp cinnamon, ~1/2 tsp nutmeg, and a dash of allspice);
- 2 tbsp brown sugar;
- 1 tbsp unsalted butter;
- ~2 or 3 tbsp milk.

Apple Filling*: (adapted from Skip to my Lou) (Ps- This recipe fills about 2 to 3 large glass jars. You might want to plan to make something else with the remainder of the apples, or at least store them for later. Honestly, I'm not quite sure what happened with mine, so I won't even bother suggesting the method I used. Originally though, I was planning on making apple pie!)
- 15 apples, pealed and cut into eights or twelfths (I used 10 Golden Delicious and 5 Green Apple)**;
- 2 1/2 cups sugar;
- 3/4 cup arrowroot***;
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon;
- 1 1/4 cups water;
- 2 1/2 cups apple juice;
- 6 tbsp lemon juice.

*Generally, I try to stay away from boxed mixes or store-bought pre-packaged things, but, since this was my first experience on my own with pastry dough, so I chose to use a President's Choice package. To compensate, instead of just getting a can of pre-tinned apples, I chose to make my own! **After a bit of reading, and a lot of asking around, I found that the apples that were best suited for baking were Cortland, Mutsu (Crispin), Golden Delicious, Granny Smith (when paired with others), Honeycrisp, Ida Red, Jonathan, Jonagold, and winesap apples; they're crips, not too juicy, and delicious. What more could you ask for? ***The original recipe called for Clear Jel (jelly powder (which, for this recipe, the regular version would be preferred over instant variety)), but, since I couldn't find any anywhere... I decided to go with the same amount of arrowroot, which pretty much doubles as a starch, according to my dairy-free cookbook. (I'm still waiting for my bakery theory classes to clear up that notion for me.. hehe.)

Instructions:
Apple Filling:
1. Combine sugar, arrowroot, cinnamon, water, and apple juice in a large pot. (Don't do like me, and accidentally put the lemon juice and apples in as well..! Everybody makes mistakes, right?)

As soon as I realized my mistake, I immediately removed, then drained, the apples from the mixture. Unfortunately, it was already too late to salvage the lemon juice... 

2. Stir and cook on medium high heat until the mixture thickens and begins to bubble.
3. Add lemon juice and boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.
4. Add drained apple slices to sauce.

Great! Now that the apples are done, it's time to make the actual pastries!

Apple Blossoms:
1. Preheat oven to 355°F.
2. Mix apples and spices, place in a pan, and add the sugar.
3. Add the butter. Do not crush the apples! (I did cut them in half, though.) Cook until heated through and a syrup has formed.
4. Stir and set aside to cool.

5. Cut each pastry sheet into 4 square pieces. Roll pastry squares lightly.

6. Place some apple mixture in the middle of each pastry square.

 7. Fold over corners, leaving a hole in the middle. (Don't worry about it if you don't get these on the first try. It takes quite a bit of practice. I didn't get the hang of it at first either. My friend had to come do most of them for me.. I admit it!)

On my 6th... or 10th... try, I think I finally got one! (Although, now that I look at it again.. hahaha!)

8. Brush with milk and bake until golden brown and the pastry is puffing at the sides.

9. Finally, serve hot with ice cream!

This recipe makes: 8 apple blossoms.

Anyways, that's all for today. I hope you've all enjoyed the first instalment of Big Time Baking! Enjoy your delicious apple blossoms!

See you next time,
-Alexe ✿