Vanilla Pear Fizz Cocktail
Hey everyone! It’s the weekend, and I’ve got the prettiest pear cocktail ready for you guys today using Black Box Spirits Vodka!
Pears are in season right now, so this recipe calls for fresh Anjou pears, cooked in a syrup with vanilla bean seeds, and blended to a smooth puree. Real talk, I don’t like pears normally. I know, I know, we’re all shocked.
But when you combine lightly cooked pears, a bit of lemon juice, and vanilla, the combo is refreshing and sweet and I LOVE it. The lemon juice brings a touch of bright, freshness to the cocktail, but it doesn’t make things taste lemony at all.
I’m delighted to be working with Black Box Spirits for this recipe, if you guys haven’t tried their products, today is the day. They come in boxes, with a tap right on there, and honestly it’s so perfect. It’s easy to store, the tap works beautifully, and you don’t have to deal with pulling down a heavy glass bottle from a high shelf.
Not to mention, uhm, the alcohol! I don’t normally drink liquor straight, but I wanted to try this vodka to see what I could expect when mixing it into a cocktail, and to decide how strong to make it. It’s really easy to drink, and the vodka blends well into this drink! Dangerous if you ask me. 🙂
So anyways, back to the cocktail mix. I used a whole vanilla bean in this recipe, plus a dash of vanilla extract because I REALLY love vanilla. If you’d like it to be a little lighter, just go for the vanilla bean. I love the little black flecks in this drink, it’s so pretty!
My vanilla bean was a little dried out, but it’s an easy fix. You can simply cut the vanilla bean width wise (not down the length like you would to scrape out the seeds) and put it in with the pears to cook away. This softens the bean right up, and then you pull it out, slice it down the middle, and scrape out the seeds like you normally would! Good as new.
So anyways, enjoy this one guys, it’s one of my new favs!
This post was sponsored in partnership with Black Box Spirits.Â
Vanilla Pear Fizz Cocktail
Ingredients
For the Pear Puree:
- 1 large Anjou pear, peeled and cored
- 3 tbs. sugar
- 2 tbs. lemon juice
- 1 vanilla bean pod
- 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
For the cocktails:
- 5 oz. pear puree
- 5 oz. Black Box Spirits Vodka
- 1/3 cup club soda
Instructions
For the Pear Puree:
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Chop your peeled and cored pear into small cubes. It does not have to be perfect. Slice your vanilla bean pod in half width-wise.
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In a small saucepan, stir together the chopped pear, sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla bean pod. Cook over medium-high heat for 5-10 minutes, or until the pears have softened.
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Remove from the heat, and pull out your vanilla pod halves. Slice them in half length-wise and scrape out the seeds with the back of your knife. Stir into the pear mixture, along with the vanilla extract.
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Transfer the mixture to a food processor or blender, and blend until completely smooth, about a minute. Transfer to a bowl and let cool.
For the cocktail:
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Add the pear puree and vodka to a shaker with ice. Gently shake 2-3 times. Divide evenly between two cocktail glasses with ice. Top with the club soda, using more or less as needed. Add a slice of a pear or lemon peel for garnish, and enjoy!
Blood Orange Cake
Hey everyone!! I hope you and the weekend had a long, good time, and that you’re making a Sunday cake like me today.
I’m about to go meet up with a friend and I just recently bought this adorable little 6 cup bundt tin, so I figured today is the right time to give it a go. If you don’t have an adorable half-size bundt pan, it’s okay! Bake up this cake in a loaf pan instead, or double the recipe and make it in a regular size bundt!
I know I’m making a lot of pound cakes lately guys! Here’s why- one, they are really simple recipes that come together quickly, and I’m still getting into the swing of full time work with a commute and a baby at home- life is crazy! But also, I think these cakes are incredibly satisfying and versatile. It’s the perfect gift cake, it’s the perfect coffee cake, and you can flavor pound cake any which way- now my blog is a case study to that fact!
Blood oranges are in season right now, and we all know how pretty they are. This icing is colored only by using blood orange juice and it turns it this pretty pink color that is total perfection. Hey fun fact- did you guys know I don’t like fruit? I’m a child haha. But I do love fruit flavors so it’s wonderful in cake. Ya know, when you’ve stripped out any nutritional value and covered it in sugar.
So, this is a classic pound cake recipe, and we’re replacing the milk in the recipe with blood orange juice. We’re also throwing in a ton of orange zest to bring out a little more of that citrus flavor to the whole thing.
And to top it off, a pretty pink blood orange glaze. It’s super easy to whip up- you just whisk orange zest, orange juice, and powdered sugar together until smooth. Drizzle it over your cooled cake and it brings a lovely brightness to the whole thing. To be honest though, you don’t even need the glaze. The pound cake is simple and lightly sweet on it’s own.
Enjoy it you guys, and I hope this takes you smiling into the week!
Blood Orange Cake
Ingredients
For the cake:
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 1/4 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. salt
- 3/4 cup softened butter
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- Zest of 2 blood oranges
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup blood orange juice (takes about 2 blood oranges)
For the glaze:
- 3 tbs. blood orange juice
- Zest from 1 blood orange
- 1 cup powdered sugar
Instructions
For the cake:
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Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and grease a 6 cup bundt pan or a loaf pan. Set aside.
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In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
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In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, and orange zest until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, beating the batter between each egg addition.
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Add in about half of the flour mixture and beat until smooth. Then add in the blood orange juice, and stir. Add in the remaining flour, and beat for several minutes until the batter is completely smooth.
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Pour into your prepared pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely before icing.
For the glaze:
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Whisk together the orange juice, zest, and powdered sugar until smooth. Add more powdered sugar if needed to reach your desired consistency. Drizzle generously over the cake.
Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Hey everyone! I’ve recently ventured into vegan baking for some chocolate chip cookies and guys, you wouldn’t even know the difference!
I don’t actually know any vegan eaters, but I do have a family friend who has some diet restrictions that, in baking, may as well be vegan. Plus, I find it really intriguing to bake vegan recipes- it kind of turns everything you know about baking upside-down, and it’s fun to experiment with egg and dairy replacements!
Add on top of all that the high-altitude factors, and we’ve got some science up in here this week. So, here’s what I’m swapping out:
- Egg= chia seeds soaked in water
- Butter= margarine
- Milk= almond milk
- Chocolate chips= non-dairy chocolate chips
I have to say, of anything, the chocolate chips are like. Entirely not noticeable as a substitute. So much so that it makes me wonder why we even need milk in chocolate to begin with- these taste EXACTLY the same as your normal semi-sweet chocolate chips. Also, they’re available in all my normal grocery stores!
And a note on the egg substitute- there are a lot of options for egg subs. Chia seeds just happened to already be in my pantry (instead of applesauce) but it’s really easy to find egg swap charts online!
These cookies are chewy, soft, and chocolatey. I actually really loved them, and I ate plenty on my own- they taste very indulgent, and while the flavors are just slightly different from your classic chocolate chip cookies, the different is minimal to be honest. Score!
So let’s call it a high-altitude-vegan-chocolate-chip-cookie kind of day, shall we? Enjoy!
High Altitude Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 tbs. chia seeds
- 3 tbs. water
- 1/2 cup room temperature dairy-free margarine (I used Earth Balance)
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup vanilla almond milk
- 2 1/4 cups flour
- 3/4 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 cups dairy-free mini chocolate chips (I used Enjoy Life)
Instructions
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In a small bowl, stir together the chia seeds and water, and set aside. It will thicken while you prepare the rest of the dough.
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In a large bowl, beat together the margarine, brown sugar, sugar, vanilla, and almond milk until smooth. Add in the soaked chia seed mixture, and stir until combined. Add in the flour, baking soda, and salt, and beat until completely incorporated. The dough will be fairly soft. Fold in the mini chocolate chips.
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Cover the bowl, and refrigerate for 30 minutes to 1 hour. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
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Scoop the batter in two-tablespoonfuls onto your baking sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the edges just start to become golden brown. Cool and enjoy!
Chai Spiced Pound Cake
Happy Sunday! I hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend and you’re ending it by winding down in the kitchen with some cake. Actually, I hope you wind down everyday that way, what a dream!
Today I’ve got something a little bit out of my typical recipe style, and it’s really, really effective. I nearly never go for anything other than the traditional creaming method of making cake batter. For the most part, I think it’s easiest, it works really well, and it’s very reliable across many types of recipes.
However, if you’ve seen the recipe I posted for Perfect Pound Cake, it’s a variation of the pound cake recipe in the CSU Fort Collins High Altitude Baking Book, and that’s where this method comes in. It was very interesting to me in the first place, but the results are absolutely too perfect to resist.
Basically, instead of beating together the butter and sugar, then eggs, and then dry ingredients, you start with the dry, including the sugar. Into the dry mix, you’ll beat butter and eggs. At this stage, you have to mix a bit more than you normally would as well- you want to reach a very smooth batter, even though it will be quite thick at this point. Finally, you add in the additional milk, and continue to beat until you have a very silky, ribbony batter that truly bakes up to perfection.
And anyways, I’m not adverse to change when it makes sense guys, and this cake really makes sense. What you end up with is the most reliable, close grained, dense, buttery pound cake you can make at high-altitude. It’s the exact pound cake you’ve always tried to make guys.
And so today I’m adding in the flavors of Chai tea. It creates this warm, spicy cake that brings you all the feels. It’s simple, you don’t need to ice it or top it with crumbs or creams, but instead it’s the perfect breakfast cake, or cake for guests, or cake to simply snack on.
The addition of the Chai tea comes in several forms. First, we’re steeping Chai tea bags into hot milk to really infuse the full traditional flavors. But to make sure the flavors really hit home, we’re also adding additional cinnamon, allspice, and black pepper to the batter directly.
I hope you guys enjoy this one- pound cake has caused me a lot of heartache at high-altitude, so finding recipes that really work here is a wonderful gift! Happy baking!
Chai Spiced Pound Cake
Ingredients
- 3 cups cake flour
- 1 3/4 cup sugar
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 1/2 tsp. salt
- 2 tsp. cinnamon
- 1 tsp. allspice
- 1/2 tsp. black pepper
- 4 eggs (plus extra milk, see instructions)
- 3/4 cup softened butter
- 3/4 cup whole milk
- 4 bags Chai tea
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
Instructions
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Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and generously grease a 10-cup bundt pan. Set aside.
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In a large bowl, sift your cake flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, allspice, and black pepper. Set aside.
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In a measuring cup, crack your 4 eggs, and add enough whole milk to make 1 cup total liquid in the cup. Add the egg mixture and the softened butter to the sifted dry ingredients. Beat with an electric mixer for several minutes. The batter should be thick, but very smooth at this point, which may take several minutes.
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Heat the remaining milk in the microwave until very hot. Steep the 4 Chai tea bags in the hot milk for 5-10 minutes, or until the milk has changed in color and has a strong scent of the tea. Let the milk cool until just warm.
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Slowly add the milk into the batter and beat for several minutes. The batter should be very silky and should ribbon off the beater when you lift it.
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Pour the batter into your prepared cake pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool for 15-20 minutes before inverting the cake onto a wire rack to cool. Enjoy!
Chocolate Dipped Toffee Shortbread
Hey guys! Do you have the after-Christmas-blues a little bit? I definitely do. But I’m trying to push through that with more cookies because listen, it’s still winter, and we’re still wearing leggings and big sweaters so it’s all good tbh.
And anyways, I was in the grocery store the other day, and they still had a big display of holiday baking items, and so I was browsing that, and saw all kinds of interesting chip-type-things. So like instead of just chocolate chips, there was a bad of s’mores chips with mini marshmallows and graham cracker pieces too (I bought those). And then also there was a weird mix of cookies & cream stuff, and I don’t know exactly what it is yet, but I bought those too. PLUS though, some little toffee chips, further seen below.
So here we are- I feel like this is a deconstructed candy bar cookie of some kind. And I know if you watch cooking competition shows, you’re probs saying “DUDE, don’t use the term ‘deconstructed,’ you know better!” But listen, I’m at home, and it is what it is.
And more importantly, these cookies are good man.
So basically I made some shortbread dough, and tossed in a bunch of these little crunchy toffee bits. They get all exploded in the oven, and make craggy edges, and it’s very charming and sweet. Oh as a sidenote, if you can’t find these little bits, I’m of the opinion that it’d be kind of awesome to just like chop up a toffee candy bar and go for it that way.
So anyways, I dipped these ones in chocolate to add that well, chocolate factor. I went at an angle, and I think they would be super yummy if you even just drizzled chocolate all over the entire cookie too, idk guys, do you.
I’m feeling weird today, and this post sounds weird as I read it, but I’m keeping it as is just as a reminder of this weird after-holiday vibe I’m feeling strongly this year. The point is, cookies will bring us all joy no matter what time of the year it is. JOY IT UP GUYS.
Chocolate Dipped Toffee Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups cold butter
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 3 1/4 cups flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 cup toffee bits
- 1 cup chocolate chips, melted
Instructions
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Preheat your oven to 325 degrees and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
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In a large bowl, beat together the cold butter and powdered sugar until combined. Since the butter is cold, you might need a few more minutes than you are used to for mixing time. Beat in the vanilla extract.
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Add in the flour and salt slowly, beating until the dough forms. It will be slightly crumbly, but should completely combine. Beat in the toffee bits until combined.
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Roll the dough on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the dough into whatever shapes you like- I did rectangles- and poke holes over the top with a fork. Transfer dough to your prepared cookie sheets.
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Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the edges just start to become lightly golden. Cool on the cookie sheets completely. Dip into the chocolate or drizzle chocolate on top of cookies. Place the cookies on parchment or wax paper to let the chocolate set. Enjoy!
