peanut butter and jelly crumb muffins

A couple weeks ago I made peanut butter and jelly crumb muffins from How Sweet It Is.

They're great for breakfasts, snacks, and desserts. Basically any time of day is a good time of a day for a peanut butter and jelly crumb muffin.

The crumb topping turned out really crumbly. REALLY crumbly. It tastes good, but it's very messy. I won't make as much topping next time, and I won't make it so crumbly.

Also, Jessica suggests pressing the jelly in between the base muffin and crumbly topping. I'd like to try mixing the jelly into the muffin batter so that you get a more even peanut butter and jelly taste.

 Overall I'm happy with the first attempt and think that I could really nail it with a second attempt. If you love classic peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and are looking for a relatively easy versatile muffin recipe, give it a try. Again, the recipe is available at How Sweet It Is.

What have you been baking lately?

making (and photographing) cupcakes

Recently I made some new lights. This has been a long time coming, and I'm so glad that I'm finally making it happen. The original inspiration comes from this post, and I used this tutorial to make them. I'm still in the process of putting together a new set up for them and hope to post a lot more about them soon. For now I'm having a lot of fun doing some test runs, as 1) natural lighting stinks this time of year and 2) I'm not taking a lot of pictures outside this time of year. This past weekend I did a little shoot with some cupcakes that I made for a final holiday get together. The recipe is available over here. Enjoy.

What have you baked (or photographed) lately?

B is for By the Way...Happy Thanksgiving!

Are you ready for another round of Alphabe Thursday? Let's go!

To those of you celebrating the holiday today, Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you enjoy it, regardless of how you're celebrating. I'm sharing a few quick pictures of the pumpkin pie that I made last night for the family festivities this weekend. I wasn't in charge of cooking a whole meal this year, but of course I still volunteered to do some of the baking.

Check out what the other Alphabe Thursday participants posted today for the letter B right here!

the start of fall baking

I haven't shared any pictures of food that I've been making in quite a while because I just haven't been documenting food making lately. When it's 70 and sunny, I don't always feel like spending a lot of time in the kitchen with the camera. Of course as we get further into fall, the natural indoor lighting gets trickier, but I do what I can. Anyway, I got motivated to document some of my first fall baking this month.

Believe it or not, this is the first time that I've ever made zucchini bread. My in-laws grow it and gave us one of several baseball bat sized zucchinis that they had left at the end of the season. I only used a third of it in this bread. I shredded and froze the rest for future loaves this fall.

I saw this recipe on Instagram within days of picking a wealth of apples at Apple Holler, immediately clicked over to the blog post, couldn't believe that it was such an easy recipe (six ingredients and you don't mess up a bowl!), and made it within a week.

 As we have this wealth of apples, I also made apple pie. I refuse to use store bought pie crust and always forget that pie crust from scratch is so much work but so good. I'm hoping that I stay motivated to make a few more pies this fall.

I used the zucchini bread and apple pie recipes in How to Cook Everything. The apple tart recipe is from Jenny at Picky Palate and available online right here.

What have you been baking lately? Has anyone else been slacking on the food pictures in recent months?

life lately

 

 

What's been going on your way lately?

photo share: Benihana's

Most of the photos that I took during the week of my brother's wedding this fall were of the wedding or other wedding-related events (surprise, right?). One of the nice things about being in Chicago all week was that Jake and I had a little time to enjoy the city on our own. Among other things, we took an unscheduled night to go to Benihana's. I'm sharing pictures from that night here today. Enjoy.

Do you ever take pictures in restaurants?

photo share: Thanksgiving dinner

My brother and his now wife decided to have their rehearsal dinner on Thanksgiving (the day before the wedding) for all of the family that was in town. There were 30 people in attendance, and my parents, husband, and I made the entire dinner. This is undoubtedly one of the largest dinners any of us will prepare any time in the foreseeable future, but everything came together really nicely. Somehow I was able to get some pictures of it, too. Enjoy.