Welcome to She Likes to Bake! This blog is a project that's been in the making for a while now, and I've finally gotten it up and running with the help of my fiance, D. (He's to thank for my super-cute banner at the top of the page!)

Even though I'm all into both cooking and baking, this site will be a means for me to talk about All Things Baking. I'll include recipes (when I can. . .more on that later), how-to, and step-by-steps.

For my first entry here, unfortunately, I can't include the recipe. I'm a part of this online food community known as French Fridays with Dorie. We're cooking our way through Dorie Greenspan's "Around My French Table" (we should be finished in about 6 years!) and we blog about our experiences. One of the rules, though, is to not post the actual recipes, as to encourage people to go out and buy the book. (The book is awesome, by the way. I've got it from the library currently, but I will be buying it as soon as I have the means.)

This week's recipe involved putting things into the oven, so I'm going to count it as baking. I made Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts, and they turned out wonderfully, although more like a peanut brittle type thing than nuts you'd put in a bowl.

Here are the ingredients:


Sugar, salt, chili powder, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, egg white, and nuts. I went out and bought some peanuts to use and I also used some spare walnuts that were in the freezer.

Mix together your dry ingredients:


Then, mix together the egg whites and the nuts.


Then, add the spice mix into the fray.


And then mix everything together.



Now, here I have a confession to make: I didn't follow the directions exactly. Normally, when I do something out of this cookbook that doesn't make sense to me, I still follow the directions. But in this case, when I was instructed to pull each individual nut out of the bowl, one by one, and shake off excess egg yolk/spice mixture, I balked. Who has time for that? Not Sarah.

As such, I just kind of dumped it onto the baking sheet in one fell swoop.


Into the oven they went for 35 minutes. They smelled wonderful.

When I pulled them out, they looked like this:


They've got kind of a peanut brittle-like tendancy to them due, I'm sure, to the Not Seperating Thing.

They were amazing. It's just sweet enough, and there's enough of a bite to make you pay attention, but to not be uncomfortable about it.

I'm thinking that when I'm finally to the point where I can sell things through either a storefront or online, this recipe will definitely be an option.

Thanks for tuning in! Next up will be my cranberry-blueberry pie (with recipe!).