Chipits Toffee Crunch Blondies

With a bag of Skor Toffee bits in the pantry and a craving for something sweet, this week I decided to try the recipe on the Skor package.  Here is the simple, fast and delicious recipe for Chipits Toffee Crunch Blondies:

Hersey's Toffee Crunch Blondies

and here are my end result... although not as beautiful as the ones at their site:

Christmas Tea Scones Practice

Next Tuesday night our "Abide" (church ladies' group) Team  are hosting our first Christmas Tea, a wrap-up of the Fall session and preparation for the Advent Season.  What would a Christmas Tea be without scones though, right?  I found this recipe on allrecipes.com for World's Best Scones so I thought I'd give it a "practice run" before Tuesday's attempt to make batches for the Tea.

The recipe was easy enough, although I have to say I HATE the gooey dough stuck on the fingers part.  Thankfully I have a box of "surgical" gloves in my kitchen cupboard I use for baking.  They came in super handy while forming the dough into usable form.  The recipe made 12 medium sized scones and even though I forgot to brush them with the milk/sugar mixture on top and forgot to let them sit 10 minutes before popping them in the oven (thanks to trying to read the recipe on my iPhone I missed those steps), they turned out  nicely.  They were light and fluffy and quite delicious if I do say so myself.  All that was missing was the devonshire cream and jam ... and hot cup of my favorite tea.  Come Tuesday I'll make them a little smaller so to get more from the recipe and I'll remember the steps correctly!

For those of you ladies from the church reading this... I hope you'll join us Tuesday, Nov 30 @ 7:15pm at the church.  We'd love to have you there to celebrate with us.

They really were the World's Best Scones... 

or at least the best ones I've ever made

Dessert, Anyone?

I woke up this morning with the anticipation of one of my nephews coming to join us for dinner.  Thinking to myself, "Self... what would make him feel really special?" I remembered what he'd told me on one of his last few visits.  That visit I had wanted to surprise him with his favorite pie, only to realize that cherry is not only NOT his favorite, but one he doesn't like at all.  Oops!  So in light of that faux pas, today became "Favorite Pie ~ Take Two" and hopefully tonight it will be a big hit.

Now I realize that technically pie is not a cookie, cake or cupcake, but Oh My since it's my site I can bake and blog whatever I want. This recipe is super easy and fully "manufactured" thanks to the Crisco and Dr. Oetker products I used to make... Lemon Meringue Pie.  If you've never made a lemon meringue pie before, don't be intimated.  It's much easier than you might think.

I always make my own pastry which is where my favorite pie-making ingredient (besides Cake and Pastry flour) comes into play.  

My paternal Grandma was a fabulous piemaker and she swore by Crisco so that is what I've always used.  Tradition or habit?  Whose to know after all this time!  Making pastry is fairly easy with practice but I often find the most difficult part is putting it into the pie plate without it breaking apart.  Sometimes I'll lay the ball of pastry between two sheets of plastic wrap to roll out.  This makes transfer very simple, but today I just rolled out my pie shell on my handy Tupperware rolling mat.  Do you have one of these?  If not you really must.  I use it to roll and cut my cookies and  pie dough.  My Mom had one when I was growing up and it's one of the few Tupperware musts I own!  Here's what it looks like:

Once my pie shell was baked (following the directions on the Crisco box) I let it cool.  Hours later I followed directions on my box of Dr. Oetker's Shirriff Lemon Pie Filling before pouring it into the cooled shell.

Again, I let the pie cool on the counter before making the meringue with the leftover egg whites (the egg yolks are in the lemon pie filling) and sugar.  Once it nicely baked in the 350F oven it came out looking like this:

Dessert Anyone?