{Baking Tip 8}

If you use a food processor or an electric mixer, your ingredients may get over mixed or over beaten. This can change the outcome of what you want to bake (sometimes you may get something very dry or hard). Just mix until everything is combined.

{Baking Tip 7}

Always utilize light and shiny cookie sheets. Your cookies will not get overly brown at the bottom because these sheets reflect light. If you have dark cookie sheets, try to put aluminum foil on top of them.

A Recipe As Easy As {Key Lime} Pie

Sometimes, I get so excited about something that I find it hard to sleep at night. A trip to a new place... the release of a new book the next day... whenever I wait for something it can seem like forever. Last night, I found myself tossing and turning because I was so thrilled to make this pie. Before I went to sleep I was looking at different food blogs and came across the recipe for this pie. It was too late to make the pie at that time, so I would have to wait to make it the next day. I could imagine it already... sour and smooth, served cold with a scoop of ice cream...

Before trying my first ever slice of key lime pie, I always thought that key lime pies should be green. I found out that key lime pies are actually supposed to be yellow, and even though I have always thought that these pies were hard to make, I realize now that making them is a breeze. They are so delicious, and I thought that they contained a lot of different ingredients to give them their distinct flavor.


All of the pie recipes that I have found do not ask for a lot of ingredients, and are very easy to perform. If you have a ready made pie crust like I did, then all you need to do is make the filling, which consists of beating the condensed milk, lime rind, lime juice, and egg yolks. Then, just pour it in the crust and bake it!

Ingredients:
4 egg yolks
grated rind of 3 limes
400 mL of condensed milk
125 mL/4 fl oz. freshly squeezed lime juice
1 Graham Pie Crust (I used the Keebler Ready Crust)

1. Set oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (160 degrees Celsius).
2. Beat the condensed milk, lime rind, lime juice, and egg yolks until well combined.

3. Pour the mixture into the pie crust, and bake in the oven for 15 minutes, or until the sides are firm but the center is still shaky.

4. Let it cool on a wire rack, and then place it in the refrigerator for at least two hours.*

*Note: The recipe said to leave the pie for at least two hours in the refrigerator, but when I took it out it was really wet and runny. I put it back in the fridge, and after a few more hours it became firmer.

My pie was very plain here, but you can add different toppings on it, like whipped cream, powdered sugar, and lemon or lime slices.

I think that if I do fall asleep tonight, I will surely be dreaming about this pie.

{Baking Tip 6}

If your cookies get hard a few days after you bake them, add a slice of bread to the jar/container that the cookies are stored in. The bread absorbs moisture, which will keep your cookies from becoming stale.

{Baking Tip 5}

Always measure your ingredients carefully. If you have more or less of the required amount of something, your final result may turn out horrible. For example, if you add too much flour to cookie dough, your cookies will become cake-y instead of chewy.

{A Very Simple French Toast Recipe}

I remember one morning when my mother made french toast for my siblings and I during breakfast when we were younger, and I have always wanted to try and make them ever since. They are really easy to make, which is why you can make them anytime you want whenever you feel like it (since most of us usually have the ingredients from the recipe lying around in our kitchen).

A few years ago my family members and I started eating wheat bread instead of white bread. Wheat bread is better for you, and I actually like the taste of wheat bread more.

Ingredients:
2 to 4 pieces of bread (I used wheat bread, but you can use other types of bread, like white bread)
1 egg
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon butter
Cinnamon for sprinkling (optional)

1. Beat the egg in a bowl. Add the milk and vanilla extract and stir until well combined.



2. Dunk each piece of bread in the egg mixture, and make sure that both sides are covered.

(For this recipe, I toasted the pieces of bread before dunking them because the bread would become less soggy and would absorb more of the batter. This is why a lot of people make french toast when they have stale bread.)


3. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat. Cook the bread until both of the sides are light brown. This will take 3 to 5 minutes (while I was frying the bread, I sprinkled some cinnamon on top).


You can put a lot of different things on top of your bread, like cinnamon, powdered sugar, jelly/fruit, or maple syrup.

{Baking Tip 4}

When you bake, you should not change the temperature of your oven. During one of the first times when I tried baking cookies, I preheated my oven, but as I was putting the cookie sheet into the oven, I thought that the oven was too hot. I changed the temperature of the oven, and the cookies came out really under baked.


Also, try not to open your oven door numerous times so that you can look at what you are baking. This is because cold air from the outside might quickly go inside your oven. If you do this while you are baking a dessert like a cake, your cake will sink.

{Baking Tip 3}

When you use an electric mixer, stop the mixer from beating the batter a few times so that you can scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. This way all of your ingredients can combine with each other better.

{Baking Tip 2}

Baking Times

Bake your cookies for 2 to 3 minutes less than the recommended cooking time from your recipe.
Cookies that are not so cooked are softer and not as dry as over baked ones. Take the cookies out of the oven when the centers do not look that cooked yet, because once you take the cookies out of the oven the cookie sheets will continue to bake them.

{Baking Tip 1}

Always have your ingredients at room temperature - especially the butter and the eggs. Your ingredients will incorporate better. Try to avoid melting butter in the microwave, because the butter usually gets exceedingly soft and wet, and this will give you a different result when you bake. You can try cutting the butter into pieces so that it may reach room temperature faster.

{Baking Tips}

From the time I forgot to buy butter for a recipe (which gave me a disastrous result!) to the time when I baked cookies that were so big that they stuck to each other, I always learn something new whenever I am in the kitchen. Every few days I will post a tip to help me remember what I have learned from baking, and I hope that you will be able to learn from and remember these tips so that your baking will become more successful. I learned most of these tips the hard way (I guess you can describe these tips as trial and error), but I am glad that I have learned these things to help me whenever I am in the kitchen.

{A Different Kind of Chocolate Chips}

The cookies that I bake usually consist of semisweet chocolate chips. While I was in the grocery the other day, I decided to try using dark chocolate chips instead of my regular semisweet chocolate chips (I have been wanting to try using dark chocolate chips for a while).




To see the recipe that I used, click here. Just substitute the semisweet chocolate chips with dark chocolate chips.

The first thing I noticed when I bit into one of these cookies was that they were not as sweet as the cookies that I make with semisweet chocolate chips. For me, dark chocolate is always delicious, whether it is eaten by itself or with other food and desserts, like chopped up with bananas or drizzled on cake.




Usually we try to limit the amount of chocolate that we eat all the time, but here's some good news: dark chocolate can actually be healthy for you (sorry, but milk chocolate and white chocolate do not apply to this). It has health benefits such as lowering high blood pressure, and containing numerous antioxidants (even more than some fruit). Keep in mind that although dark chocolate is healthier than other kinds of chocolate, we should not eat more chocolate than the recommended amount.

If you would like to try a cookie that is not as sweet as your regular chocolate chip cookie, try using dark chocolate chips!

{Halfway Through Summer and a Small Update}

I was able to take some pictures while we were at the beach recently. I really loved being able to just lie on the beach and soak in some vitamin D by basking in the sunlight. It was really tranquil - the waves lazily chased each other, and I could feel embraced by a gentle breeze from time to time. The weather was just the way I like it - not too sunny, with a slight drizzle as nighttime approached.

It got very cloudy near the afternoon.

Nothing like cooling off with a delicious, sweet, ice-cold chocolate shake!

A necklace that I purchased recently.

Some cute gold leaf earrings that I wore to the beach.

To celebrate the start of July, my family and I went to relax at the beach. I still can not believe that half of my summer vacation is over!

I also just want to thank you all for reading my blog. I hope that you have enjoyed it so far, and that you have made a few of the recipes that were posted here. I would just like to inform you about a few things that I have fixed onto my blog. At the top right, you can see three buttons. They are labeled Home, About, and Archives. I have added links to the About and Archives buttons, so now you are able to view a list of all the treats that I have made.


I will be making some fruity treats soon, such as banana ice cream (which uses just one ingredient!) and key lime pie (which uses just four ingredients!). I hope that you have all had a great summer so far!