Our Blog: Updated

Thank You so much for checking out our blog! We have been wanting to do some different things with our blog and have decided that it would be a good idea to move our blog to Traveling Twin Bakers! We would appreciate it if you would jump over there via the link to check out what we have been up to. We are so excited to be able to share our two greatest passions, baking and traveling, through our new blog! Sorry for any inconvenience! We hope you love our new blog just as much as we do. Can't wait to see you there! 

Chocolate Raspberry Tart

We found this recipe while looking through some cookbooks that we have around the house. It looked so delicious that we went to the store, bought the ingredients that we didn't already have (which wasn't much) and began baking!

The recipe calls for whole milk, we tried making it with almond milk instead so that Georgia could eat more of it (she doesn't eat much dairy), but it turned out pretty gross, it was kind of like snot. So, advice, use the whole milk! Also, it called for dark chocolate, but we decided to go with semi-sweet. This recipe looked delicious and it didn't disappoint! Not only is this good with raspberries, but we also think that it would be good with strawberries on top.

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting
1/4 cup cocoa powder
7 Tbsp. unsalted butter, chilled and diced
1/4 cup sugar
2 large egg yolks
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
For the filling:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch, sifted
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup whole milk
6 oz dark chocolate, chopped
14 oz raspberries
Directions:

1. Rub the flour, cocoa powder, and butter together until they resemble fine crumbs. Stir in 1/4 cup sugar. Beat the egg yolks with the vanilla and add it to the flour mixture, bringing it together to form a soft dough. Add a little cold water if the mixture seems too stiff. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour
2. Preheat the oven to 350F. Roll out the pastry to 1/8 in thickness.Use it to line a 9 in tart pan, leaving an overlapping edge to be removed later. Prick the base all over with a fork.
3. Line the pastry with parchment paper and add baking beans. Place on a baking sheet and for 20 min. Remove the beans and paper and return to the oven for 5 minutes more.trim excess pastry
4. For the middle, beat together the sugar, cornstarch, eggs, and vanilla. In a pan, bring the milk and 4 oz of the chocolate to a boil, whisking all the time. Take it off the heat just as it starts to bubble up. Pour the milk into the egg mixture, whisking all the time
5. Return to the cleaned out pan and bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking. When it thickens, reduce the heat to it low and cook for 2-3 minutes. Turn into a bowl, cover the surface with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming and leave to cool.
6. Melt the remaining chocolate and brush around the inside of the crust. Leave to set. Beat the cold creme for the middle with a wooden spoon and transfer into the crust. Arrange the raspberries over the top. Remove from the pan.

Note: This is best eaten the same day its made, but will store overnight in the refrigerator. 

Zucchini Bread

Now that we are in the apex of summer, we are able to enjoy the bounties of a wonderful garden. Deliciously red tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, corn, zucchini, and so many other delicious fruits and veggies. Now, we don't have a green thumb (at all), so we didn't grow these things, but our neighbor did, and he was kind enough to let us pick some. So, we made some zucchini bread!

This is a family recipe that our grandma used, and it's been passed down to us.

It's quite a simple recipe, and it's absolutely perfect warm, with butter on it. The recipe for this delicious bread is below. When we made the zucchini bread this time, we skipped the nuts because we didn't have any, but it's delicious both ways! Also, this bread freezes well, so you can make a lot and then freeze it for later!

Ingredients:

3 eggs

2 cups grated zucchini

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped nuts

3/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 tsp. orange extract

2 1/2 cups flour

1/4 tsp. ginger

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 tsp.  vanilla

3/4 tsp salt

1 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

Directions:

1. Beat eggs. Add oil & sugar, beat well.
2. Add flavorings & zucchini, beat well.
3. Mix dry ingredients together. Stir in to egg mixture and add nuts, mix well
4. Bake in small loaf pans at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 1 hour.

Brownies with Coconut Frosting

We are always searching for the perfect brownie recipe. We always try new brownie recipes, always. Brownies are one of our favorite desserts to make, because, well their delicious! Our favorite kinds of brownies are the fudgy ones, kind of like the ones you get from a box mix (but made from scratch!). So, on our quest to find the perfect brownie recipe, we tried a Sally's Baking Addiction recipe, which you can find here. These brownies are certainly one of our favorites now, because their delicious!

When we went to make these we found that we didn't have enough semi-sweet chocolate chips, so we had some unsweetened chocolate that we used to make up the difference. Instead of using plain unsweetened chocolate, we melted it and mixed in some honey to give it a little bit of sweetness. Also, we didn't add the extra chocolate chips at the end because we don't like chocolate chips in our brownies, but if you do like that, then go for it! These brownies are delicious while warm, but we like to keep them in the refrigerator because we think that it makes them even more delicious!

In Sally's blog post, she suggests putting chocolate frosting on the brownies, but we decided to mix it up and put a coconut frosting on, and boy was it the perfect combination! We can't stay out of them they were (we ate them all already!) delicious! To make the coconut frosting, you simply mix together melted Coconut oil and confectioners sugar until you get the consistency you desire. We did a 1 to 2 ratio, 1 Tablespoon coconut oil to 2 Tablespoons of powdered sugar. If you do decide to refrigerate your brownies like we did, then note that your frosting will become really hard, but it is still good and delicious!

What's your favorite brownie recipe? Let us know and we will try it (you can let us know in the comments, on twitter or on instagram @twinbakers96)

Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies

We stumbled upon this recipe on snapchat. Yes, snapchat! It was on the Food Network Snapchat.

This is an Anne Burrell recipe. We have never tried any of her recipes before, but it was on Snapchat because Taylor Swift had made them and said that the were delicious...

What? Taylor Swift liked them?! That meant that we had to make them! (while listening to Taylor Swift, of course) We didn't have large flake sea salt for garnishing as the recipe called for, but we did use just regular sea salt and they were still delicious. We agree with Taylor, these cookies are good!

You can find the recipe here

Give these cookies a try and let us know what you think!

Graduation Party Cake and Cookies

It's that time of year again, graduation! This year, we got to participate, we graduated high school! Yup, finally!!! So, we thought we would share with you what we had for dessert at our party:

We had cookies, lots and lots of cookies! We made brown sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and no bake cookies. Since we made cookies, we were able to make them ahead of time and freeze them. This allowed us to be able to worry about other things the day of and the day before the party. Our party was on a Saturday, so we took the cookies out of the freezer on Friday, in the morning, and then put them on the trays Friday afternoon. The great thing about freezing cookies, is that you can't tell that they were frozen! They still taste the same as if they were fresh.

We didn't freeze the no bake cookies, because they don't freeze as well as the other cookies, but they are so simple to make, that we easily whipped up a couple of batches Friday morning. We also made some gluten free no bakes (don't worry, we put them on a separate tray). These cookies are extremely easy to make gluten free because all you have to do is use gluten free certified oats!

Now, in addition to the cookies we made, we also had cake. Now, we didn't make our own cake, we ordered it. Again, we did this because we didn't have enough time to make our own cake (and be happy with the result). 

We certainly did like the cake, we thought that it was cute and delicious!

We had a little picture station at our party, and we thought you guys would like to see this silly picture of us:

Now, one last thing, Georgia was the Valedictorian of our class (so, obviously she thinks she's the smartest twin). So, we thought we would share a picture of her giving her speech.

Treacle Tart- from Harry Potter

Fun Fact: Harry Potter is our favorite book series. We can't tell you how many times we have read and re-read it. Our favorite characters are Fred and George (The part where Fred died, almost nearly killed us too!). Growing up with the books and movies was the greatest! No matter how old we grow, Harry Potter will always have a special part in our hearts (It's our goal in life to visit the Harry Potter Wizarding World in Florida & Harry Potter Museum in London). P.S. we know we're nerds :)

So, if you've read Harry Potter, than you know that Treacle Tart is Harry's favorite dessert. If you haven't read it (you should!), than you might not have ever heard of Treacle Tart before. Either way, it is a classical English dessert.

The ingredients, when you first read them, do sound odd and a little unorthodox for a dessert, but don't knock it till you try it, right?

The tart crust for this is absolutely delicious! When we were making it, we couldn't stay out of it. After we made the tart, we had some left over, so we made mini tarts in creme brulee dishes. We made strawberry jam, grape jelly, and chocolate ones. When we made this recipe, we failed to remember to buy lemon juice, so the first time we made it, we didn't put it in there at all (not a good choice). Then, we had some lime juice, so we used that. It definitely wasn't as good as it would have been if we had used lemon juice, but it was still definitely far from horrible. Lesson learned: use lemon juice! 

The recipe we used was from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, which we got from the library, or you can buy it here if you would like.

Ingredients:

Tart Crust

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks cold butter, cut into chunks
• 2 cold large egg yolks
• 1/3 cup cold heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• Filling
• 1 cup golden syrup or light molasses or corn syrup
• 2 1/4 cups fresh bread crumbs
• Grated zest and juice of 1 lemon
• 1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon of water, for brushing the crust

Directions:

1. For the crust, place the flour, confectioners' sugar, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine. Scatter the pieces of butter over the mixture. Pulse until the mixture resembles a coarse yellow meal without any white powdery bits remaining, about 20 pulses. Transfer the mixture to a large mixing bowl. Beat the egg yolks with cream and vanilla and pour them into the flour-butter mixture. Toss with a spatula until the dough clumps together. If the dough is too dry, add 1 more tablespoon of heavy cream (better too wet than too dry). Divide the dough in half, form into disks, wrap in plastic wrap, and chill for at least 2 hours or up to 3 days.
2. Just before you are ready to roll out the dough, prepare the filling. Warm the golden syrup in a saucepan until it is runny, or microwave it for 1 minute. Combine the golden syrup, breadcrumbs, lemon zest, and lemon juice in a mixing bowl and mix well.
3. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. On a floured surface, roll out the larger disk into an 11-inch circle. Fold it into quarters, brush off excess flour with a pastry brush after each fold, then unfold it into a 9-inch tart pan, easing the sides gently into the pan and pressing the dough down into the fluted edges. Trim the dough even with the rim. Roll out the second disk 1/8-inch thick. Cut the dough into long strips for the lattice topping.
4. Scrape the filling into the prepared crust and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Lay half the strips of dough over the filling in one direction and the other half in the opposite direction to form a lattice. Trim the overhang. Gently brush the beaten egg over the lattice.
5. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 375°F and bake for another 25 minutes until the crust is browned and the filling puffs up in the center. Serve warm with custard or whipped cream.