At some point during quarantine, I’m pretty sure all of us have been guilty of eating our feelings. Right?!
Baking has always been a comfort for me – the methodical process, the way it scents the kitchen, the sweet end product – and I’ve found myself leaning into it more during this time. We actually had to go on a sugar fast for a bit because I was baking something new multiple times a week!
Below are 6 recipes I’ve baked recently – some classic favorites of mine, some new hits, and a few misses. If you have a recipe you’ve tried recently and loved, please share!
Related: 10 Pinterest Recipes I’ve Made During Quarantine.
Snickerdoodles
Recipe via Cook’s Illustrated / Brown Eyed Baker
What I Thought
Hands down the best snickerdoodles I’ve ever tasted. Made these twice they were so good! However, we have now decided I must never make them again because we cannot help ourselves and ended up with stomach aches both times as we each ate like 6 in one sitting – a testament to how delicious they are!
Notes
Recipe actually from this cookbook which I highly recommend. I linked the recipe from the blog above because the Cook’s Illustrated site is a paid subscription. The linked recipe matches the cookbook exactly.
If you know Cook’s Illustrated, you know their recipes are usually very involved (read: complicated but worth it) but this one is very straightforward.
I was skeptical of the vegetable shortening and considered simply increasing the butter amount because the thought of Crisco made me wanna gag, but then I read about why it was necessary and got over it. In short, vegetable shortening doesn’t have the water content of butter so it gives the cookies a denser texture and keeps them from flattening too much.
Cinnamon Crunch Knots
Recipe via Half Baked Harvest
What I Thought
They were really good but I don’t know that I would make again.
It seems like everyone on my Instagram feed is obsessed with Half Baked Harvest, but I’ve now tried three or four of her recipes and I have been either underwhelmed or blown away by what she considers an “easy” recipe. She leaves out crucial notes in the steps (make sure you read her responses to comments – the needed notes are usually there!), says things take way less time than they do, calls for weird ingredients – she just isn’t it for a novice like me.
Notes
Now, if I were to make them again, I would prep them the night before and then let them rise on the counter overnight. Two reasons: 1) Even 30 minutes to an hour is too much time for me in the morning. I want breakfast ASAP and am surely not trying to wake up early to finish a recipe. 2) Mine came out much smaller and denser than hers appear in the photos which I think could be helped with a longer rise time even though she says it isn’t necessary.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe via Cook’s Illustrated / Brown Eyed Baker
What I Thought
There is a reason this has been my go-to recipe for YEARS – these cookies are perfection. They are crispy on the outsides, soft and slightly underdone on the inside, and have a more complex flavor than your standard overly sweet chocolate chip cookie thanks to the browned butter and the brown sugar to granulated sugar ratio. Like I said, perfection.
I like to call them “bakery style” cookies because they are much bigger than your normal cookies, more like what you’d see behind the counter at a bakery.
Notes
Recipe actually from this cookbook which I highly recommend. I linked the recipe from the blog above because the Cook’s Illustrated site is a paid subscription. The linked recipe matches the cookbook exactly.
As I mentioned above, Cook’s Illustrated recipes are usually very involved. This one is not an exception. However, it actually isn’t hard at all, you’ll just want to make sure you read the entire list of instructions before starting because there are a series of steps where you whisk for 30 seconds, then let sit for 3 minutes, and repeat a few times. After doing it so many times I assure you it is not as complicated as it might seem the first time.
These are my absolute favorite chocolate chips.
Lavender Vanilla Simple Syrup
Recipe created myself, shared HERE
What I Thought
As I mentioned in the blog post, this is such a simple recipe and makes a profound impact!
Notes
See full blog post for all my notes, the recipe, and the easy ways you can tweak it to your taste if lavender or vanilla aren’t your thing.
30 Minute Cinnamon Rolls
Recipe via Runway Chef
What I Thought
I clearly messed up somewhere along the way, more in “notes” below, but they still tasted wonderful. Not as cloyingly sweet as most cinnamon rolls which I sincerely appreciated.
While very tasty, these weren’t worth the effort for me. The recipe says “30 minute” but these easily took me an hour between all the prep and baking, plus I tried to plan ahead and make the dough the night before but that meant I had to wake up early to try to get it to room temp before assembling. See note above on how I feel about that.
Notes
Mine basically didn’t rise so they came out really small and not fluffy at all. I’m pretty sure I know where I went wrong. It had to have been one of these two things… 1) I legitimately could not find rapid rise yeast. Checked the only three stores in the small town I was in at the time and every single one was sold out due to the quarantine, so I had to use regular yeast. I thought I followed the steps for how to use regular yeast in place of rapid rise, but don’t think I did it right. 2) If it wasn’t that, then I think it was because I prepared the dough the night before and stored it in the fridge. I took it out of the fridge to get to room temperature, but within about an hour everyone was antsy for breakfast so I started making them even though the dough was still a bit chilled.
Cake Pop Cake
Recipe via Michelle’s Instagram Story, see below
Recipe
Ingredients:
1 box cake mix, any flavor of your choosing
1 can frosting, or 1 batch homemade (I swear by the cream cheese frosting recipe in this post)
Sprinkles or colored sugar
Steps:
- Bake cake according to package instructions.
- Prepare frosting if doing homemade.
- After cake has cooled slightly, mash it all up with a fork until completely crumbled.
- Pour about 1/3 of the frosting into the pan with the mashed up cake and mix it all around until it is mold-able.
- Mash it all together. You can do this in the original dish (though if you baked it in a 9×13 inch pan, it will likely no longer fit the dish as it shrinks in size as you mash it – so a square pan might be a better bet) or on a platter. I did it on a plate and formed it into a dome shape. In Michelle’s Instagram Story she did it on a platter in the shape of a heart.
- Carefully frost.
- Cover with sprinkles or colored sugar. *Since the cake is very crumbly, it likely won’t be very pretty when you frost it, so the sprinkles help cover that up 😉
What I Thought
Easy peasy and really tasty! If you are someone who prefers a dense cake to a fluffier one, this is the recipe for you!
Notes
I used funfetti cake mix but next time would do chocolate or red velvet because it was a little too sweet for me (to be expected with funfetti).
If you’re like me and hate the texture of sprinkles, colored sugar will do the job of camouflaging without the crunch.
