Baking recipes
Scroll through our posts below to try all sorts of delicious baking recipes from our instagram baking videos. New baking videos are posted the first week of each month on Instagram and Facebook.
To easily find one of our recipes type below:
Perfect Peanut Butter Cookies!
An oldie but a goodie! Peanut butter cookies are the perfect combination of sweet and salty! They combine that delicious nuttiness of peanut butter with the chewiness of a cookie and it’s pretty much perfection! These cookies are crispy with a soft, chewy centre, but if you like the crispier bake them for a minute or two longer, and if you like them chewier, pull them out a minute or two earlier.
soft and perfect!
Peanut Butter Cookies
Yield: 8-12 depending on how large you scoop them
Preheat your oven to 350*F
1/4 cup Butter, soft
1/4 cup Peanut Butter
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/4 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Vanilla (optional)
1 Egg
3/4 cup Flour
Granulated Sugar for sprinkling on top (optional)
In the bowl of your mixer, whip together the butter, peanut butter, brown sugar, vanilla, baking soda and salt until fluffy, about 3-5 minutes.
Add in your one egg, and continue whipping for about 1 minute, or until combined and fluffy.
Add your flour into the mixture and mix until combined, being sure to scrape down the sides of the mixing bowl to get any chunks of butter combined.
Scoop onto a parchment lined baking tray (or if you don’t have a liner, just spray with baking spray oil. I used a ice cream scoop but you can just use a spoon. Leave at least 2” between cookies so they don’t bake into each other.
Sprinkle the tops of your cookies with granulated sugar for a little extra crunch and sparkle!
Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 10-12 minutes, or until lightly golden.
Let cool and eat!
Zucchini Muffins!
For when life gives you a GINORMOUS zucchini! These delicious muffins are similar to a carrot cake, but instead of carrots, we use grated zucchini! The flavour is cinnamon sugar, which is always delicious, but feel free to add in other things like dried cranberries or chocolate chips! Yum!
mmmmmmmmuffins!
Zucchini Muffins
Yield: 12 muffins or 1 loaf
Preheat your oven to 350*F
2 cups of grated Zucchini
2 Eggs
1/3 cup Sour Cream
1/2 cup Butter, melted
1/2 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla (optional)
1 2/3 cup Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/4 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Cinnamon
Cinnamon Sugar for topping (about 1/4 cup sugar mixed with 1/2 teaspoon Cinnamon)
In a large bowl stir together your wet ingredients - zucchini, eggs, sour cream, butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla. Stir to combine.
Add your dry ingredients - flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir until just combined.
In a greased and lined muffin tin, evenly scoop your batter.
Top the muffins with a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar.
Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 25 minutes, or until lightly golden and the toothpick comes out clean when you stab it into the centre.
Time for eating!
Fruit and Nut Crisps! The PERFECT cracker for cheese!
Nothing is more perfectly paired than cheese and crackers, but sometimes you want to feel fancy so you get those delicious fruit crisp crackers from the store, but they are super expensive in terms of crackers pricing, so if you’re me, you only buy them when you are feeling fancy and having guests over. Instead of buying them, we can make them! These crisp crackers aren’t too tricky to make, but they do take a few hours because you need to let things cool and do a second bake. Feel free to switch up the flavours, you can use any nuts, dried fruit and spices you have on hand. You can even switch up the flour if you have some fun flours like whole wheat or rye flour, feel free to substitute 50% of the flour with that. Lots of fun flavours you can make!
Snazzy Crackers!
Fruit and Nut Crisps
Yield: about 50 crackers depending on how you slice them
Preheat oven to 350*F for the first bake, 250*F for the second bake
1 cup of Flour
1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 cup Oats
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1/2 teaspoon Pepper
2-3 teaspoons herbs and spices, I did 1/2 teaspoon each: cinnamon, dried rosemary, dried thyme, and paprika but do whatever your heart desires!
1/2 cup seeds/nuts (I used 1/2 cup sliced almonds)
1/2 dried fruit (I used 1/2 cup dried cranberries)
1 cup Milk
1/4 cup Sour Cream (you can also use yogurt, buttermilk, or even unsweetened apple sauce or pumpkin puree)
In a large bowl stir together your dry ingredients, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, oats, salt, pepper, and herbs/spices. Toss to combine.
Stir in your dried fruit and nuts.
Pour in your milk and sour cream, stir to combine.
Pour into a greased and lined loaf pan, I used an 8”x4” pan.
Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick stabbed into it comes out clean.
Let cool at room temperature, then freeze for 1-2 hours.
Once lightly frozen, slice your loaf as thinly as possible using a serrated knife.
Lay each slice in a single layer on lined baking trays.
Bake in a preheated 250*F oven for 35-50 minutes or until thoroughly dried out. We are not baking at this point so much as we are drying out the crackers.
Let cool and eat! These babies can be stored in a sealed container at room temperature.
Butter Tarts! Classic Canadian!
What’s the most Canadian dessert? I would say it’s a tie between butter tarts and Nanaimo bars, but butter tarts are definitely MY favourite! These little tarts are basically a buttery vanilla sugar pie, I love butter, I love sugar, what more do you need…RAISINS! Ok some people hate raisins in their butter tarts, I believe they are crucial, but do what you love, that’s the fun of baking, you can make them exactly how you want! The way I make my butter tarts is by adding the raisins before the filling, instead of mixing them together, so you can even make some with raisins and some without and then judge how you prefer them. So many options!
Look at those gooey edges!
Butter Tarts
Yield: 12 tarts (made in a muffin tin)
Preheat your oven to 375*F
Pie Dough:
Alternatively, you can skip the pie dough step and buy the frozen tart shells from your grocery store, just fill and bake them straight from the freezer, no thawing required!
2 cups Flour
1/2 cup COLD butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 cup shortening (you can replace this with butter if you prefer, I just like the texture it brings)
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Sugar
1/4-1/2 cup COLD water
Filling:
1/2 cup Raisins (optional)
1 teaspoon Dark Rum (optional)
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Corn Syrup
1/4 cup Butter, melted
1 Egg
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
1/4 teaspoon Salt
In a large bowl combine your flour, salt and sugar for the dough.
Toss in your cold butter and shortening and using your fingers pinch and rub the butter into the flour until it looks crumbly like sand, but still has some large pea sized chunks of butter - this is going to make things flaky!
Add your cold water, start with about 1/4 cup, and see how it feels, depending on your flour and how the butter has been incorporated, you might not need the full amount, You want the dough to stay together when pressed in your hand, I used about 1/3 cup in my dough.
Your bowl should still have some drier bits at the bottom, that is perfect, then dump the bowl of pastry out onto your counter and give it a few kneads until it comes into a nice ball, then press into a flat disk or rectangle and wrap in saran wrap. Chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
Once your dough is chilled, roll it out on a flat surface to about 1/8-1/4” thickness and cut into about 4” diameter circles, you want a circle that will fit into the cavity of a muffin tin, so see what fits best in yours. Or maybe you have actual tart tins, you can definitely use those too!
If you run out of dough, just lightly press the scraps together and continue cutting out the rounds.
Take each circle and press it into each cavity of your muffin tin, making sure to press in the corners so they are filled with dough.
Once all your muffin cavities are lined with dough, poke the bases a few times with a fork, this is called “docking” and helps any trapped air release during baking.
Pop your muffin tin into the freezer to firm up, at least 20 minutes.
Now for the filling, you can skip this step but it makes things more decadent, take your raisins and cover them with boiling water to soak. Just enough water to cover them, the amount doesn’t matter as we will be draining it all off. Soak 10+ minutes.
Once your raisins have soaked, drain them off, and squeeze out any excess moisture. Then toss with the 1 teaspoon of Rum! Set to the side.
In a large bowl combine all the rest of the ingredients for the filling - brown sugar, corn syrup, melted butter, egg, salt and vanilla. Stir to combine.
Now to put everything together! In your chilled tart shells, evenly distribute the raisins into the bottom of each tart (or however many you want raisins in!)
Scoop your filling mixture on top of the raisins in each tart shell, then pop into a preheated 375*F oven for about 15-25 minutes until gold and bubbly! The longer you bake them, the thicker your filling, if you like them gooier, bake them a little less.
Let cool and devour!
Pitas! The envelope of the bread world!
Pitas are a delicious flatbread that puffs up when it bakes, creating a lovely little pocket inside that you can stuff full of yummy things like falafel, meats, salad, really whatever you like! You can also just rip apart the pita and use it as a receptacle for large scoops of dip! Yum! These are little tricker of a bread to make, but even if they don’t turn out perfectly, they will still be super delicious!
Pitas are perfect for dipping!
Pitas
Yield: 8-10 pitas, depending on the size you want
2 1/2 cups Flour
1 Tablespoon Sugar
1 teaspoon Salt
1 1/2 teaspoons Instant Yeast
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 cup Water, warm
In the bowl of a mixer, stir together your flour, sugar, salt and yeast.
Add the olive oil and water and knead with the dough hook for about 6 minutes, until the dough forms a nice smooth ball that isn’t sticking to the sides of the bowl.
Place dough ball into a greased bowl with a lid and let sit at room temperature until doubled (about 1 hour).
Remove dough from bowl and using a knife, divide into 8 (or 10) even pieces.
Cup each dough ball in your hand and roll it in a circle on the counter until the dough forms a nice little ball. Place on a lined or floured baking tray and cover with a tea towel, then repeat with the remaining dough balls until they are all nice and round. Let rest at room temperature at least 20 minutes to relax the dough.
Grab one dough ball at a time and roll into a thin flat circle about 6-7” in diameter and about 1/8” thick. If your dough is just not rolling out thinly, roll it as much as you can, then place back onto a parchment lined baking tray with a tea towel on top, and let it rest for about 10 minutes (I just waited until I had rolled out all the dough balls), then come back to it and roll it out a little more until it is the thickness you want. By this time the dough will have relaxed a bit and it will allow you to roll it thinner.
Cover all your rolled out pitas with a tea towel and layer in between pieces of parchment paper so they aren’t overlapping.
You can bake these in a 450*F preheated oven for about 4-8 minutes until puffed and lightly golden, or you can bake them on the stove in a pan which I did.
To bake on the stove in a pan, heat your pan to medium-high heat, I found my stove worked best at medium heat, but see what works best for you. Make sure your pan is nice and hot before you add a pita.
Place one pita down flat into the hot pan, as soon as it starts to bubble (about 15 seconds), flip it over, then once it starts expanding flip it again, then your pita might be fully expanded, or your might need to flip it again, depends on the pita. If you are like me, my pitas weren’t all the exact same thickness, so some of them needed an extra flip or two, but use your judgement, if it’s starting to burn, flip it. They only take a minute or two to bake.
Don’t worry if you burn some, they are still delicious, and baking them off is definitely a learning curve! Regardless these pitas are WAY more delicious than anything you will buy in the store.
Enjoy the labour of love and remember, practice makes perfect!
Chocolate Marshmallow Puff Cookies!
I’m not going to name names, but there is a boxed cookie that I loved as a child. It’s a graham cracker with jam and marshmallow that is covered in chocolate! It was pretty much the fanciest boxed cookie I had, and you know how to make a boxed cookie even better? Make your own version from scratch! It’s quarantine so you shouldn’t really be in the grocery store anyways, plus there is SO many hours in the day to use up, and what better way than making cookies! This recipe starts with one batch of the graham crackers we made yesterday (scroll down for that recipe). Then we are going to make some homemade marshmallows! Marshmallows are great on their own, you can definitely just make the marshmallow recipe then press it into a grease and lined, and greased AGAIN 8”x8” baking pan. Then cut it into squares with a greased knife and toss in icing sugar, so delicious!
SOOOOOOO FUN!
Chocolate Marshmallow Puff Cookies
Yield: 12-18 (depending on how many graham crackers you have)
Bases:
1 batch of home made graham crackers cut into circles and baked (I had 18) - You could also use packaged graham crackers, it’s just going to be a bit tricker since they are square
about 1/2 cup of jam (raspberry and strawberry are really good with the chocolate)
Marshmallows:
2 packages Gelatine
1/3 cup Cold water
1 cup Sugar
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup Honey
1/3 cup Corn Syrup
pinch of Salt
1 teaspoon Vanilla (optional)
Topping:
2 cups Chocolate
1 Tablespoon Oil
sprinkles! (optional)
Place your graham crackers onto a parchment lined baking tray in a single layer. Scoop about 1 teaspoon of jam into the centre of each graham cracker, then set the tray to the side.
in the bowl of your mixer, pour 1/3 cup of cold water, then mix in your gelatine, set this to the side to rest, it is going to absorb the water and firm up.
In a small pot, place your sugar, 1/3 cup water, honey, corn syrup and salt. Heat over high heat until it reaches 240*F. Then remove from heat.
Place your bowl with the gelatine onto the mixer with the whisk attachment.
Turn the mixer onto the lowest speed, and while it’s mixing, slowly pour in the hot syrup until the whole pot is mixed in and the gelatine is all melted.BE CAREFUL THIS IS SUPER HOT!
Turn up the speed to high, and whisk for 8-10 minutes or until the marshmallow looks super white and fluffy and the bowl does not feel hot to the touch.
Add your vanilla extract and mix for another minute or until combined.
Scoop your marshmallow into a piping bag, or a ziplock bag with the end chopped off, and pipe the marshmallow in a circle around the jam on your cookie, then continue piping over top of the jam until you have a nice mound of marshmallow and you can’t see any jam peeking through. It will look similar to the swirl on a cupcake or soft serve ice cream cone. Do this for all of your graham crackers.
Once all the marshmallow is piped, let your cookies sit at room temperature for about 2 hours until they firm up.
In a microwave or double boiler, melt your chocolate and oil until smooth and melted.
Dunk each of your marshmallow cookies into the chocolate, toss until covered and then shake them off a little so there isn’t too much excess chocolate on them, then place back onto the parchment lined tray. You can add sprinkles now if you love sprinkles as much as me, or just leave them off.
Place your tray into the fridge for about 20 minutes to set the chocolate up and then enjoy!