Baking Archives - Page 5 of 9 - Nerds with Knives

Unbelievably Delicious Chocolate Babka

June 10, 2024March 25, 2016 by Matt

Chocolate babka: a sweet bread treat made with enriched dough and layered with chocolate – a weekend project you’ll be glad you made.

Greetings, Easter (and Passover***) bunnies!

***This babka is leavened and therefore not suitable for Passover, if your family, unlike ours, cares about such things. Read Matt’s full, sincere and amusing apology at the bottom of the post.

It may have slipped out in the course of this blog that one of us is Jewish, and the other of us is English. These are not, frankly, genres that strike awe into the hearts of home chefs (although Nigella Lawson does pretty well for herself) . When our best friends in town got married, they catered the reception with dishes from Italy (his family heritage), and soul food from New Orleans (hers). It was awesome. A Jewish-British catered wedding? Maybe not so much.

An Easter/(not)Passover*** dessert option, though? Now you’re talking.

Unbelievably Delicious Chocolate Babka — This Babka is filled with rich, dark chocolate with just a hint of cinnamon.

Coconut Key Lime Cupcakes

June 15, 2024March 5, 2016 by Emily

These coconut key lime cupcakes titillate your tastebuds with light, tropical flavors and look pretty dang party, too.

It’s hard for me to believe but it’s true; today is the 3-year anniversary of Nerds with Knives. I know we act immature, but we are, in fact, toddler-aged. *Throws a cupcake at your head and licks frosting off the floor*

Who would have thought that a blog whose scintillating early posts had titles like “My Kettle” and “In Case You’re Wondering If You Can Boil A Pre-Sliced Ham In Coca Cola. Answer; You Can’t,” would make it 3 whole years. We’re as shocked as you are but somehow we’ve managed to keep this sputtering, mildly out-of-control train on the tracks. Yeah, us!

But really all thanks go to you, our readers, who we love and adore. If it wasn’t for your positive feedback, I’m sure we would have given up ages ago and would most likely have picked up some other, less respectable hobby. Like knitting. Or taxidermy.

Easy Candied Pecans

June 10, 2024November 20, 2015 by Emily

We made these candied pecans to top our Bourbon-Pumpkin Mousse Pie but luckily I made double the recipe because they are delicious. They’d be great in a fall salad, or sprinkled over Butterscotch Pudding, or just as a snack. They’d be delicious served with blue cheese along with sliced apples and pears.

Bourbon Pumpkin-Mousse Pie with Candied Pecans

Bourbon Pumpkin Mousse Tart with Candied Pecans

June 10, 2024November 19, 2015 by Emily

A pumpkin tart covered in meringue cones

Light and airy pumpkin mousse, with a good splash of bourbon, in a rich chocolate cookie shell topped with whipped cream swirls and crunchy candied pecans. Yeah, you need to make this.

Wotcha! Very occasionally we at Nerd HQ rifle back through the posts of this blog and try to find ingredients which haven’t been well-represented. It being autumn, and almost Thanksgiving and all that, we thought – heck it, let’s do pumpkin. It’s been a while, right? And then we looked back through the archives and realized we’d actually never done anything bloggable with pumpkin. (I don’t mean “unbloggable” like we’d done weird, private things with pumpkins, you nutter. I just mean we hadn’t cooked anything and photographed it.)

Thanksgiving Recipes Round-Up!

February 17, 2021November 11, 2015 by Emily

Thanksgiving recipes: Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar — Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar

Cooking for a big holiday is hard enough without having to search for and keep track of a million recipes. It’s hard to organize all that stuff! Believe me, I struggle with that too (which is why I have a “Thanksgiving Timing Spreadsheet” that has events on it like, ‘dog probably needs to pee’ and ‘remind Matt that he loves you even though you get extremely stressed out before dinner parties’).

So whether you’re hosting a a feast for 30 or just making a single dish to bring along, you need recipes for Thanksgiving that are simple, look fantastic and are most of all, delicious. That’s why we’ve listed our all time favorites below. Here you’ll find ideas for tasty appetizers, fantastic sides and what we think is the best turkey gravy in the world (seriously, you have to try it).

Thanksgiving recipes: Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy with Calvados (Apple Brandy) — Make Ahead Turkey Gravy with Calvados (Apple Brandy)

And because you’re likely to have a house full of hungry people over the weekend, we’ve included a few next-day breakfast ideas and recipes that make the most of your Thanksgiving recipe leftovers.

Apple Tarts with Rosemary-Lime Sugar

June 10, 2024October 30, 2015 by Emily

These crisp and tasty apple tarts are a great way to use up your fall bounty; using frozen puff pastry makes the whole process a lot easier, and they’re finished with rosemary-lime sugar.

It happens every year in the Hudson Valley, where we live. As soon as the leaves on the maple trees turn a ridiculous shade of red, we, residents and tourists alike, don our coziest sweaters and follow the scent of hot cider doughnuts to the nearest orchard. Once there we wander the grounds, hopped up on cinnamon sugar and crisp autumn air, filling baskets and gunny sacks with more Empires, Cortlands and Jonagold apples than anyone who doesn’t work in a pie factory would ever need.

Only once when we’re home and realize we need to put an addition on the house in order to store our haul, do we admit that maybe we’ve bought just a few too many. And just when I thought we’d succeeded in using our bounty, one of Matt’s local clients sent him home with a massive box of Golden Delicious apples from the tree in her yard. Oh well, we’ll just have to start working on that Salted Caramel Apple Pie idea I’ve been thinking about. #HudsonValleyProblems #AppleHumbleBrag