Pinspiration: Desserts

I joined Pinterest mainly for photography inspiration. But I kept seeing people post amazing food/cooking/baking and reluctantly began pinning those too. I don’t really cook, but in the past few years I’ve enjoyed doing some baking and trying out tasty new desserts. (Dessert is the best food group, don’t you think?) I know that sweets aren’t the healthiest thing, but it’s got to be better to have real ingredients from your own kitchen instead of processed, store-bought stuff. Right? That’s what I tell myself anyway. Of course we have plenty of goodies from a store too, but it’s fun to make our own sometimes. Just because.

-#1

A couple months ago I was in need of something chocolatey and decided that it couldn’t hurt to try out one of the mug brownie recipes floating around out there. It’s super quick, uses a very small amount of ingredients, and way easy. So if it didn’t work, no skin off my flour jar, so to speak.

Here’s the mug brownie pin, and the original recipe source:

It sure was easy, and it was almost tasty. I think I nuked it for 90 seconds, and it tasted  burned. But I could tell that there was yumminess close by! So I think next time, if I try one minute it will be better. Probably depends on your microwave. That just means you need to have several trials–oh darn!

-#2

Last week or thereabouts, I saw a pin for No Bake Peanut Butter Bars.

Original recipe source:

Oh snap! Anything PB/chocolate is food of the gods as far as I’m concerned. I was in a baking mood last week and had to pick up a few ingredients (boxed graham cracker crumbs) at the store in order to make them.

It was pretty easy to put everything together. I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten everything to the right consistency–the peanut butter layer especially was not smooth. And I probably should have melted the chocolate topping a bit more.

However, the final product looked just like the original picture, so it all worked out.

Delicious. DEE-LICIOUS. So delicious it was all I could do to *only* eat two (generously-cut) pieces at a time. This would be a great dessert to bring to a get-together so that other people eat some of it. 🙂

– #3

Summer is a great time of year for baking, with all the fresh produce (especially here in the PNW where so much is local). We got a big box of peaches at Trader Joe’s and I figured that we may not be able to eat all of them before they went bad, so that meant I would have to make a peach dessert. Oh shucks. I scrolled through my pins and found this: Peach Pie Muffins with Brown Butter Glaze

Original recipe source:

Wow! That sounded amazing. I have a great muffin recipe from a friend, but I figure it’s always good to find more. These promised to be high and fluffy, and looked extra delicious.

Well. I think I did something wrong.

This was my first time browning butter…and obviously I did it wrong. The glaze is indeed brown, but in the pictures from the recipe, it looks light-colored or clear. Oh well. Clearly I’m still a baking beginner! I also think they didn’t bake long enough–they were almost too moist, like a little uncooked. Not as fluffy and light as the recipe looked. This is one of the recipes where you’re not supposed to overmix–and I probably did. Oops again.

But they were still fairly tasty. Hey, a fresh peach muffin is always a good thing, right?

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