Robb & I are just getting back from the 127 (aka “World’s Longest Garage Sale”).  We had a great time with lots of fun vintage finds!

Anytime we travel through Georgia in the summer, we always try to pick up some fresh peaches…which goes perfectly with the return of Payton’s Pastries post today.  Payton took a little break this summer from posting, but this tart recipe is a can’t-miss!

I’m also happy to join a  group of talented ladies sharing THEIR summer inspiration.  If you’re coming here from Tater Tots & Jello, welcome!  I know you enjoyed her creative twist on summer recipes!

So, without further ado, here’s Payton to tell you all about her dessert!

     Our summer has been pretty amazing so far. We’ve had countless pool days, lots of fun at the beach, and an amazing road trip out West. What would make any summer better, though, is this delicious peach tart that I experimented with.

It is absolutely one of my top fruit desserts that I have made!

It is basically just a spin off of the apple tart recipe I shared with you in the fall, but substituting peaches for apples. This dessert is perfect for any summer occasion, whether it’s a family get together or the finale to a barbecue.

​

The best part about this peach tart is that you can make it all year round using canned peaches, like we did, or use some fresh peaches if you make it in season. The canned peaches were just as tasty, and they spared us the trouble of having to peel, pit, and slice up fresh peaches.

If you are an overachiever like me, you might just want to go through the extra work to get that fresh peach flavor, but it really is up to you.

​

     My first suggestion if you are wanting to make this tart is to make sure you have a tart pan with a REMOVABLE BOTTOM. It is going to be crucial for getting that smooth looking edge out of the tart pan without cracking or crumbling. This will save you in the long run when making any kind of tart.

     The second tip that I would want to let you in on, especially if you are wanting it to look pretty as well as taste good, is to make sure that you spread the dough out evenly across the entire pan. That way when you go to press the crust up onto the edges of the pan, you don’t run out of dough in certain spots.

Here is the printable Recipe & Instructions:

     This recipe is the perfect summer dessert and delicious for all year round. I hope you enjoy this dessert and have fun making this.

One of the best things about baking is that it can bring joy not only to those that you bless with your developing skill in the kitchen, but it also provides joy for you. So enjoy yourself, experiment, and be creative!

Happy Baking,

Payton

Robyn here again.  I can say from personal experience:  This peach tart tastes amazing!  

Now I hope you’ll head on over to Annie with Most Lovely Things.  You’ll love her summer recipe!  Or, click on any of the links below.  They’re all amazing!

Easy and Tasty Summer Peach Tart // Robyn’s French Nest

Wild Maine Blueberry Pie // Finding Lovely

Bluberry Crumble Kit for Overnight/Weekend Stays // Most Lovely Things

Simple Summer Fruit Crostata With Lemon Cream Cheese Filling // Twelve On Main

Summer Peach Salad // Paint Me Pink

Peach Crisp with Fresh Peaches // Happy Happy Nester

Raspberry Strawberry Shortbread Cookies // My 100 Year Old Home

Fresh Strawberrry Cream Cheese Cake // Tatertots & Jello

Mini Tri Berry Trifle // Thistlewood Farms

Easy & Delicious Red Wine Sangria // Maison de Cinq

grilled stone fruit and cheese pairings // My Sweet Savannah

Easy Skillet Peach Crumble // Inspiration For Moms

I’d love for you to follow me on social media!  You can find my home decor inspiration on Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook!  

Blessings,

     With St. Patrick’s Day coming up soon, I wanted to do something that included flavor that celebrated this fun holiday. I decided to go with a classic: Mint chocolate chip. I absolutely love mint chocolate chip!

I also know that my little brother, Harrison, loves it too, so I decided to go with this delicious recipe from Shugary Sweets. I incorporated mint chocolate chip into a cute little truffle- so, I give you… mint chocolate chip white chocolate truffles! These were delicious! I enjoyed making these and I think you guys will like these, too.

     Truffles are delicious little balls of a creamy filling covered in chocolate. It is kind of like a cake pop, but instead of cake, it is cream. They are soooooo good and I’ve been looking for a way to make them for the blog, so I was excited to do these.

​

Truffles can look cute sitting in a little bowl or under a cloche, like we did! They are also fairly quick as far as making them, and you really only need one for dessert to satisfy your sweet tooth, so they last for a while.

​

I think that this recipe has enough green that it shows that its for St. Patrick’s Day, but you can still work them into a tablescape and eat them without coating your teeth in green, making them fun for parties and get togethers.

Truffles are a good on-the-go dessert that you can take in the car, and they can be used for either something fancy or something casual- it all depends on how you decorate them.

There are a couple of personal edits that I made after I got the recipe from online.

First of all, go light on the peppermint extract. I put about twice the amount of extract that I am putting in the recipe for you guys, and it was MINTY.

It will taste like a breath mint encased in chocolate, and that is the last thing that you want to serve to anyone.

 Also, be sure to not use spearmint, because that would just taste like toothpaste. So basically, to sum up this tip, be careful with the peppermint because it can get tricky. I would recommend adding a little bit and tasting, a little more and tasting, until you reach the desired amount of mint taste.

​

 Also, I would figure out what your chocolate coating strategy is. The filling for these has to be basically frozen when you pour or dip them into chocolate, or else you end up with a creamy puddle inside a sphere of chocolate.

​

The point is, when I was dipping mine, I had trouble with the dipping, so I would probably try pouring it out or something instead of just rolling it in a bowl of chocolate. If you are doing the dipping strategy, BUY EXTRA CHOCOLATE.

You always always always want more chocolate to begin with because then you aren’t trying to get the last little morsel of chocolate to cover the last two balls of filling.

​

If you do want to try the pouring strategy, I would recommend making sure that you thoroughly coat the truffle so that you get chocolate on the whole thing.

This recipe is so good and I cannot wait for you guys to try it!  Here it is…

​

     I hope you guys love these desserts. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below. These are so delicious and cute and give a nice little mint flavor to your St. Patrick’s Day! Have fun creating and enjoying what you’ve made!

                                                                  Happy baking,

                                                                                   Payton

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*

     The month of February is always so crazy for us because of a lot of different things, and I love how Valentine’s Day makes our little family stop, pause, and reflect on how much we truly are loved and how much we love each other.

It is the same thing at school and church, and it’s nice to have a little reminder of all the love in our community. I really wanted to make something for valentine’s day that kind of shared that perspective of valentine’s day. So, for the month of February, I made the cutest little red velvet mini Bundt cakes.

For Christmas, my mom got me the Dash mini Bundt cake maker. This is absolutely the cutest thing in the entire world, and I had so much fun using it.

These little mini cakes are the perfect gift to give to your closest friends and family for Valentine’s Day. The recipe tastes delicious, and the cream cheese glaze on top gives it the perfect touch! I love these adorable desserts and will thoroughly enjoy making them in the future.

I recently had a birthday, and right on time, I received some cute pink, red, and white heart sprinkles as well as red, pink, and white mini pearl dots and I knew they would be the perfect thing to top this dessert off.   

After I drizzled the glaze onto the cakes, I sprinkled those on, and they were instantly my favorite thing ever! Red velvet has a special place in my heart, and I couldn’t wait to dive into that little cake.​

This is honestly an amazing tasting recipe. I got the recipe from the little instruction guide that came with the Bundt maker, and it even had the cream cheese glaze recipe to match! 

It also had a little guide to help you figure out which glaze would go with what cake flavor the best. I thought that instruction manual was very helpful, and I will be keeping those recipes for safe-keeping!

 The cooker came with a little removal tool that you set under the cake before you bake it, but it is only helpful if you are making them in a hurry or don’t exactly care how they look. If you do want them to look pretty, then I would suggest making sure that the batter is evenly distributed throughout the Bundt maker and NOT use the removal tool. For some reason, this makes it uneven, so if you cook it on a flat surface, it will much more likely not be crooked.

I hope you enjoy this recipe and I hope you have fun making it. I strongly suggest this Dash mini Bundt maker and any other products by them because I thoroughly enjoyed my product. I hope you find lots of love this Valentine’s Day and your tasters think the same of your baking skills!

Happy baking!

Lots of love,

Payton

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*

     For my first blog post of the new year, I wanted to do something kind of just for me but can also tie in with the passing holiday season and would make a great cake for your star-loving teenager. My favorite color is the light shade of blue that I put on the bottom, and I absolutely love an ombre effect, so I decided to go with this beautiful cake.

I got a little creative with my stars effect since we could not find any star sprinkles at the store, and I encourage you to do the same. I love when I can tweak something a little bit to make it my own, and that is exactly what I did for this recipe.

     As far as the actual cake, I used the basic recipe from Food 52 as well as the delicious custard filling recipe. This chocolatey cake is delicious and rich without being over the top sweet.  I think the buttercream that you put on the outside really brings the most sweetness and balances out that less sweet chocolate cake for anyone with a bit of a sweet tooth.

The buttercream recipe I got from one of my favorite baking and recipe books by Rose Atwater, as well as the basic ideas for the design of the cake, which I elaborated on.

There are a couple of key factors to this cake:

First and foremost, for me is get your colors DOWN. If you are not sure what shades of blue you are wanting to get, then figure it out BEFORE you color the buttercream.

If you are looking for a very dark blue to a very light blue, I suggest finding dark blue and mixing it with a little gray, to get that dark midnight blue that you are looking for. For the light blue, I would get a tiny amount of teal food coloring and mix it with a little bit of blue.

It always depends on what shade of blue you are looking for, but I just added a little bit of dark blue food coloring and mixed it in until I found the shade I was looking for.

​

The next important tip about this cake is it makes a lot of batter and a lot of custard filling. I could have easily done three thinner layers of cake in 8-inch pans and not have had to cut quite as much.

I overfilled my two 8-inch pans because that is what the instructions told me to do, and they did not quite finish baking at the top in the middle. Thankfully, though, when I leveled out the cakes later to stack them, the bottom in the middle had cooked and we were good to go!

​

The same with the custard; I could have used it for one more layer, so you will want to literally lay it on thick for all three layers to give the cake a little more height for the ombre and use up all of the custard.

This recipe is definitely delicious; however, I would recommend that you mix your dry ingredients before you ever start at the stove. That way, if you are a slow baker like me, you will not be running around to get the mixtures mixed together before you burn the chocolate

​

Ok, really quick before we get to the recipe, the chopped chocolate for the custard was… an adventure. I got bars of chocolate and took a paring knife and cut it at an angle starting at the end, and that worked fairly well, but it was time-consuming.

If you know of a better way to hop chocolate, please let me know!  I would love to figure out a better way to do this.

If you don’t want to take that route, you could try taking chocolate chips of the same kind and placing them in an onion chopper or something similar and mash away! It is all going to melt anyway, but if it is in small, thin pieces, it will be a little different and take less time. It will also combine better in that condition.

Also, the egg yolks I have talked about in a preceding blog post, but I would take two bowls and crack the eggs over one bowl and remove the whites and put the yolks in the other bowl. This way, you don’t accidentally get any egg whites with your yolks.

Now on to the recipe…..

This is kind of like my birthday cake for me. My birthday is coming up, but I have a crazy month planned with all sorts of fun activities, so we decided to make it a little early.

If your teenager is anything like me, then they will love this cake! Start out your new year making someone’s day with this cake. It will be a delicious pick-me-up for whoever has a bite! I hope your taste testers love this cake as much as mine did, and I hope you love the ending result of your hard work! Happy baking!

Lots of love,

Payton

     The most important ingredient to fall, above all of the apple cider, hay rides, cool weather, and changing leaves (we sadly don’t have that ☹) is pumpkin. If you have not eaten some kind of pumpkin food this fall, then you have been missing out.

This year, our family raided Trader Joe’s of all of the wonderful fall treats that they offer. My personal favorite has to be their pumpkin crème cookies. Those things are the most delicious store-bought cookies I have ever tasted!

But I have to admit that these cookies that I want to share with you might be my new favorite, and they would have to be some next level cookies to top those pumpkin cookies!

No one can argue that fall is not complete without one key pumpkin treat: The classic American pie. This delicious dessert can be found across the country at Thanksgiving tables fall festivals and parties, and just in everyday life to make your day that much better.

But I am a sucker for another classic American dessert: Sugar cookies. I could eat them all day! The amount of frosting is just right for me and I love that certain level of sweetness where it’s not just overpowering, but it’s just enough to get your taste buds working.

​I decided to pair up these two amazing desserts into one. I made…

Pumpkin pie cookies!

This festive treat (hopefully) has the likeness and taste of pumpkin pie, but the texture and form of a cookie. I am so excited to share this amazing dessert with you guys!

Just a warning in case you are like me and get the ingredients and get all set up to do it all in one day and then realize that you have to do something out of the ordinary or don’t have a certain tool:

YOU MUST MAKE THE COOKIE BATTER THE DAY BEFORE YOU ARE READY TO BAKE AND DECORATE!

You will want to make sure that you have some of the following tools:

• Stand Mixer

This one is completely optional, but it really does save you a lot of tie and effort if you are in a time crunch or need to double the recipe or something.

• Rolling Pin

I had to borrow one, but you definitely need to get one of these for cookie decorating. I know I will be looking into buying one!

• Candy Corn Cookie Cutter

You are probably thinking “Why not get a pumpkin pie cookie cutter?” I personally think that this cookie cutter is the best shape or what you want to be doing.

• Pastry Blender

Once again, this could be an optional one, but when it comes to cutting in butter, this tool makes your life a lot easier!

Ingredients:

For the Pumpkin Pie Cookie Dough

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup powdered pumpkin (Hint: This is another term for pumpkin flour. You can order it on Amazon. Although it might alter the taste, you could substitute flour for that if needed)
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 cup unsalted butter (softened)
• 1 large egg
• 3 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the Pumpkin Pie Royal Icing

• 3 tablespoons meringue powder
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 6 tablespoons water
• 1 tablespoon corn syrup
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• Pumpkin gel food color
• Warm brown gel food color
• Ivory gel food color

Instructions:

Pumpkin Pie Cookie Dough

1. Place flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice into a large mixing bowl. Whisk together briefly. Cut in butter using a pastry blender.

2.   Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a minimum of four hours. If not using the same day, the dough can stay in the refrigerator overnight, or you can securely wrap it, place in a Ziploc bag and store in the freezer for up to two weeks. Thaw overnight in refrigerator.

(Hint: I just made it the night before, then took it out of the refrigerator the next morning. Then I made the cookies when I got home from school the next day.

3. When ready to make cookies, heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, roll out to 3/8 inch thick. Using a candy corn cookie cutter, cut out and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

4.  Bake for 5-8 minutes (or 9-12 minutes on an Airbake cookie sheet or until just barely golden brown around the edges. Cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to cooking rack and cool completely before icing.

Pumpkin Pie Royal Icing

1. Make sure the bowl and whip from your stand mixer is completely clean and grease-free. If necessary, wipe down with a paper towel and lemon juice.
2. Combine meringue powder, powdered sugar and water in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on low speed until incorporated, add in corn syrup, then beat on medium high for 5 minutes.

​

3. Once royal icing is whipped to desired consistency, separate it into three separate bowls. About 2/3 of the icing will be tinted pumpkin. Add water a teaspoon at a time, until desired flood or 20-second icing consistency. Add pumpkin spice and combine.

Hint: 20-second icing consistency means that if you take a spatula and run it through the middle of the bowl of icing, that it would take 20 seconds to reach normalcy again.​

4. For the pie crust color, mix a small amount of warm brown with ivory to get desired color. Add a small amount of water to the pie crust color, so you have an easy flowing, but still stiffer consistency icing. The smallest amount of icing remains white.

5. Place pumpkin icing into piping bags. (You can use tipless or a #2 piping tip. Place the pie crust icing into a piping bag fitted with a #104 petal tip. Place the white icing in a piping bag fitted with a #16 or #18 piping tip. Cover the open tips with a wet paper towel while piping the pumpkin.

6. Outline and flood the entire cookie with pumpkin icing. Let dry completely pipe the pie crust, with the small side facing out. Pipe a small rosette of white icing for whipped cream. Let dry completely and enjoy!

These cookies are so good and they look really pretty and very festive for the season. I am so glad that I found this recipe from Love and Confections, a great website for any baking recipes that you might want to look at.

I hope that these cookies are as much fun to make as they were for me. I also hope that your taste testers enjoy them as much as mine did!

Just don’t let them see the decorating process before it is done, or you might get a response like I got from my little brother: “Is that a quesadilla?”.  Hopefully they can identify that these cookies are not, in fact, quesadillas, but little pumpkin pie slices!

Happy Baking,

                                                                                      Payton

     One of my favorite desserts is this apple tart that I am going to share with you this month. This particular recipe is literally one of the best things I have ever tasted.

This dessert also has a lot of meaning for me because it is probably the first thing that I made for people out of my immediate family that wasn’t out of a box of brownies!  I consider this the start of my “baking career”. I made this amazing apple tart for Thanksgiving at my grandparents’ house. My cousins who were down here for college were over, and they snarfed it down!

I recently made it again for a girls’ Bible study, and it was a huge hit. It got put in the teachers’ lounge the next day, and I got even more compliments on it!  To sum up my past with this recipe, I haven’t heard anything but good about this dessert.

​

     This apple tart is the perfect dessert for any kind of fall gathering. The recipe is from Delish, a great website that I have gotten so many great recipes from.

I did find that there wasn’t quite enough dough, so I am tweaking the recipe so that you guys will have enough when you make it.

You can also add different kinds of preserves to the top to give it a little gloss that looks really pretty.

Apple Tart Recipe

For the Filling

• 5 apples, peeled, cored, and sliced
• 1/3 cups packed brown sugar
• Juice of ½ lemon
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

For the Crust

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 15 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 1/2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons butter, cut into small cubes
• Melted apricot preserves

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, toss apples, brown sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt together.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Add melted butter and stir until dough forms. Press mixture into a 10” or 11” tart pan with a removable bottom, pressing until dough is smooth.

3. Arrange apples over crust, sprinkle with granulated sugar ad dot top with butter. Bake until crust is golden and apples are tender, about one hour.

4.  Brush with melted apricot preserves and let cool slightly before slicing and serving.

There are a few things that you might want to get before doing this dessert. One very helpful tool is a lemon juicer. It makes juicing those lemons a lot easier. I love using mine for all of my desserts that require lemon juice.

Also be sure you use tart pans that have removable bottoms. It makes trying to get the tart out of the pan a lot easier!

This tart is one of the best fall desserts ever! I hope that you guys enjoy this as much as I do. This will wow all of your guests and leave them with some amazing fall notes in their mouth.

Have fun making this dessert, and I hope that your taste-testers enjoy this apple tart as much as mine did!

Happy Baking,

Payton

This month, we (sadly!) went back to school. As I’m writing this, I actually just finished my first full week of 8th grade! I am not going to lie, it got pretty overwhelming at times, so I decided that it would be nice to come home to a nice warm kickoff-of-fall cupcake like these delicious apple cinnamon cupcakes!

​

​

It still tastes delicious, but if you wanted to go all out, you could try this apple pie filling recipe from Crazy for Crust that I found.

All of these components can be used with different recipes that you might have, or you could pull out certain components and use them in your favorite desserts. I’m so excited to share these, so here you go!

Vanilla Cinnamon Sugar Cupcakes

​

     Ingredients:

• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 3/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 cup salted butter, room temperature
• 3 egg whites
• 2 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup milk

Cinnamon Sugar Mixture

• 2 tbsp cinnamon
• 1/3 cup sugar

Vanilla Cinnamon Sugar Frosting

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 4 cups powdered sugar
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp milk

Instructions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Mix together flour, cinnamon, sugar, baking soda, and baking powder in mixing bowl.
• Add butter (room temperature), egg whites, sour cream, vanilla, and milk- Mix until smooth (no lumps).

 Tip: I always panicked when a recipe says “egg whites” or “egg yolks” because I didn’t know how to separate eggs. It is actually super easy. You just crack the egg, then let the egg whites run out of the crack. After as much egg white that will come out is in the bowl, break the shell open and carefully move the yolk from half to half until the rest if the whites come out.

• Add cupcake liners to cupcake pan.
• Combine cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
• Place 1 tbsp of batter into each cupcake liner.
• Sprinkle ¼ tsp of cinnamon sugar mixture on top of cupcake batter.
• Repeat steps until liners are halfway full.

• Sprinkle a little more cinnamon sugar mixture on top of half-filled liners.
• Bake for 16-18 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out with minimal crumbs.
• Allow to cool for a few minutes.
• Remove cupcakes and continue cooling on wire rack.

For the Frosting

• Mix room temperature butter and shortening until smooth.
• Add 1 tsp of vanilla, mix until well blended
• Add powdered sugar one cup at a time and mix until well blended.
• Mix in cinnamon until well blended.
• Add in milk 1 tbsp at a time. Add until right consistency.

​

Candy Clay

• 1 bag white candy melts
• 1/3 cup corn syrup

Apple Filling Recipe

Ingredients

• 4 cups apples peeled, cored, and diced
• Juice of ½ a lemon
• 3 cups water
• 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Apple Filling Instructions

• Place apples in a large bowl and toss with lemon juice.
• Place water, sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, salt, and nutmeg in a medium saucepan. Stir to combine then bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Once the mixture boils, boil it for two minutes. Add the apples, turn to a simmer and cover. Cook, stirring often, until the apples soften, about 5-8 minutes.
• Pour into jars to cool to room temperature then cover and refrigerate. The mixture will thicken more as it cools.

Happy Baking,

                                                                                      Payton