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:

Cookie Recipes Deidre Lotecki Cookie Recipes Deidre Lotecki

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!

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)

  1. 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.

  2. Add in your one egg, and continue whipping for about 1 minute, or until combined and fluffy.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. Sprinkle the tops of your cookies with granulated sugar for a little extra crunch and sparkle!

  6. Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 10-12 minutes, or until lightly golden.

  7. Let cool and eat!

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Bread Recipes Deidre Lotecki Bread Recipes Deidre Lotecki

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!

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)

  1. In a large bowl stir together your dry ingredients, flour, brown sugar, baking soda, oats, salt, pepper, and herbs/spices. Toss to combine.

  2. Stir in your dried fruit and nuts.

  3. Pour in your milk and sour cream, stir to combine.

  4. Pour into a greased and lined loaf pan, I used an 8”x4” pan.

  5. Bake in a preheated 350*F oven for about 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick stabbed into it comes out clean.

  6. Let cool at room temperature, then freeze for 1-2 hours.

  7. Once lightly frozen, slice your loaf as thinly as possible using a serrated knife.

  8. Lay each slice in a single layer on lined baking trays.

  9. 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.

  10. Let cool and eat! These babies can be stored in a sealed container at room temperature.

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Bar Recipes, Dessert Recipes Deidre Lotecki Bar Recipes, Dessert Recipes Deidre Lotecki

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!

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

  1. In a large bowl combine your flour, salt and sugar for the dough.

  2. 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!

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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!

  6. If you run out of dough, just lightly press the scraps together and continue cutting out the rounds.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. Pop your muffin tin into the freezer to firm up, at least 20 minutes.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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.

  13. 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!)

  14. 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.

  15. Let cool and devour!

The epitome of Canadian desserts! These little tarts have a delicious buttery brown sugar filling with rum soaked raisins! Yum!

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