Creamy & Dreamy Cashew Caramel Cheesecake

Cashew Caramel Cheesecake.

Yum.

This is probably the most delicious desert I've made yet. Creamy and fluffy, and the crust is just to die for; rich, buttery, and caramelized. Fairly easy too.

For the crust:
1/2 cup salted roasted cashews
1-1/2 tablespoons unsalted melted butter
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon packed brown sugar

Ground cashews in food processor until fine, mix in remaining ingredients and press into greased mini spring form pan. Bake at 325 for 12 minutes or until browned. Let cool.

Filling:
6 oz neufchatel cheese, room temperature
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 tbsp caramel sauce (like Smucker's)

Cream caramel sauce and cheese together until well combined. Add egg and vanilla just prior to baking and mix until just combined. Spoon into prebaked crust and bake at 325 for 27 minutes or until set, with a 1 inch center area still wobbly (like jello). If necessary turn oven off and let cheesecake continue to gently cook until completely set. Refrigerate for overnight prior to serving. Garnish with additional sauce or chocolate chips if desired. Enjoy!

Adapted from Small Batch Baking

Petite Peanut Butter Blossoms!

Petite Peanut Butter Blossoms.



I saw these at 17 and Baking and knew that I had to make these!!

I used the standard Chunky Peanut Butter Cookie batter (I was out of creamy PB) and then rolled 1/4 tsp scoops into balls, which where then rolled in sugar, and placed evenly placed on a sheet for 6-7 minutes. Then quickly and gently press chocolate chips into the mounds and remove from sheet and let cool.


These were delicious and a big hit. The best part is I solved Elissa's frustration at rolling and making the 15 dozen yield. Yikes! About half of my batch made 20 blossoms (I'm freezing the rest for another time) and took just a little bit of extra effort.

Try it for yourself! These are too cute to pass up!

Why Bake Bitty?

I get this question a lot from my parents and friends. And there's a lot of reasons why actually.

Low amount of ingredients=low risk/low waste. If you've ever been the unfortunate victim of a baking catastrophe (from self error or just a bad recipe), you can relate to the unfortunate leftovers that hover about and no one eats. It also means you won't have wasted more than a cup of flour if something doesn't turn out.

Pre-determined portion sizes. Sometimes if the opposite happens and something is REALLY really good. Its hard to resist the lure of "just one more". Lets face it, most good recipes are not low-cal and with bitty baking once its gone its gone, no temptation!

Less time and mess. Bitty baking means you'll never be stuck scooping out 3 dozen cookies or rotating 3 big cake pans, much less cleaning them!

Every last bite is fresh and it can be eaten before it goes bad easily.

Able to make new things everyday. No leftovers means plenty of space and reason to try out something new!

Get it?! ]
So good ahead make something delicious for yourself! Bake Bitty.

Petite Peanut Butter Cookies

Chunky Peanut Butter Cookies.

Peanut-y.

Hooray for the first cookie post. I apologize as the wait as been too long. Have I mentioned my love affair with cookies yet? Or peanut butter for that matter?

Speaking of peanut butter, I have to confess that I'm a chunky girl. No, not like that. (Although give me a couple of more weeks of constant baking and I may just need new pants). I love all nut butters, but that extra layer of texture that chunky provides just can't be beat!

It's only natural then, that I try out this cookie recipe first from "Small-Batch Baking". The ingredients are simple and the batter came together fast. Be wary though, as the dough has to chill for 30 minutes before baking, so don't plan these as a last minute thing.

Chunky Peanut Butter Cookies
Serving Size : 8 cookies

1/3 cup all-purpose flour -- plus
1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
pinch baking soda pinch salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter -- at room temperature
2 teaspoons egg -- well beaten egg, or egg substitute
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/3 cup peanut butter -- extra-chunky
Place flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and whisk to blend.

Place the sugar, brown sugar, butter, beaten egg, and vanilla in a medium-size mixing bowl, and beat with a hand-held electric mixer on low until blended, about 1 minute. Beat in the peanut butter until blended, about 20 seconds. Add the flour mixture and beat on low speed until the dough is blended, about 30 seconds. Transfer the dough to a piece of plastic wrap and press it out to form a thick disk. Wrap it well in the plastic wrap and refrigerate until it is pliable, about 30 minutes.
Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 325� F. Set aside an ungreased baking sheet.

Shape the dough, by tablespoonfuls, into mounds on the baking sheet, spacing the mounds about 1 inch apart. Using a fork, flatten each one to form a 1/3-inch-thick round, making grooves in the surface with the tines of the fork. Press the fork lightly in the opposite direction to make a crisscross pattern in the tops of the Cookies. (Sprinkle extra sugar on top if you wish) Bake the cookies until they are golden, about 13 minutes.

Remove the baking sheet from the oven and place it on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Then use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the wire rack, and let them cool completely.

Serves 3 or 4

Adapted from "Small Batch Baking"

Delicious.

Verdict:
Scroll back up for a moment and notice that teaspoon is in bold. A fact that I misread and ended up putting a tablespoon in. Oops. Even though, the cookies turned out delicious! Everything a good peanut butter cookie should be, nutty, sugary, and slightly crumbly. My mistake may have made them the teeniest bit dry/floury but with a glass of milk these beauties were GREAT! I ended up with 9 good sized cookies, a perfect amount.

Takes the Cake

Pretty.

Today was my second attempt at the chocolate birthday cake from Small Batch Baking.

Half Fail.

Cakes are probably one of the hardest things to make from scratch. It is really a work of major chemistry that turns out the right texture and taste.

So here's my problem. I overcooked the cake, since I under baked it last time. Argh. It did smell delicious while baking, however, so maybe one more try is in order.

I did do a superb job of decorating it and sent it off into the fridge to hopefully soften a little. People care more about looks than taste with these things right? I'm hoping so, and based on what I hear about the Ace of Cake's cake (bland and dry) it sure seems that way.

Oops.

Size picture. So cute. But probably not tasty. *Sigh*

Bitty Baking Supplies

Half the fun of tiny baking is the fact that everything is just so darn cute. Its like playing dollhouse!

Here's a rundown of some of my favorite thing to have on hand for bitty baking:

• Mixing bowls; small and medium size (I have metal and glass)
• Mini loaf pan (great for small loaves of bread)
  
• Ultra mini loaf pans
• Mini cake tins (for cakes and pies)
  
• Mini spring-form pan (for cheesecakes and tarts)
• Mini whisk
  
• Mini rolling pin
• Mini pot (for melting chocolate, cooking fillings, etc)
  
• Small rubber spatula (every drop counts in small batch baking!)

The Stash.

Also nice:

• Egg white separator (handy since a large egg is usually to big for a small batch)
• Small dry ingredients measuring cups (1/2, 1/3, 1/4 cup)
• Small liquid ingredients measuring cup (yes, there is a difference!)
  
• Teaspoon/tablespoon "kit" (the kind with all on one ring)
• 6 count muffin pan
  
• Other cute and mini pans, casserole dishes, etc.

These things can be a little trickier to find than your average bakeware, but often craft stores like Michael's, or even discount stores like Ross or Marshall's carries them. I even stole my mini rolling pin from a play-doh kit, so it helps to be resourceful! I bet you could steal some easy bake oven ware as well (just check and make sure its "real" oven-safe). And you can always hit up ebay or amazon. If all else fails, clean cans can be re-purposed as cake tins and, yes, big baking sheets will still cook just as well as small ones.

Another benefit of small baking is the fact that it requires less cleanup. Thirty seconds is all it takes to scrub out a mini cake pan!

Blueberry Bonanza!

The blueberry love continues (thanks to a 5 lb. frozen bag from BJs) with....

Whole Wheat Blueberry Granola Muffins.

Say that five times fast.

They might be a mouthful but, boy, were they delicious! They were also super filling. These babies sit like a rock til lunchtime, which is great for busy and errand filled days. This is another recipe courtesy of "Small-Batch Baking", and made 4 big muffins, such a perfect amount!

Is your mouth watering yet?

As you can see, I had a little trouble with the frozen blueberries "bleeding" in the batter. I think the trick to prevent this would have been to toss the berries in flour before adding them. It didn't affect the taste however! I love that these have some whole grains in them, as well as antioxidant packed wild blueberries. That said, each still has around 250 calories, so still try and limit yourself to just one!


Recipe available here.