I recently got the fabulous book “More From Magnolia:Recipes from the World-Famous Bakery and Allysa Torey’s Home Kitchen.” It is the second Magnolia’s Bakery cookbook,and so far I am loving it. My first impression of the book was that the recipes looked very simple,but like many others have noted,the book severely lacks in photos! So I am going to post everything I bake from the book,along with photos,to give you an idea of what the end result will look like. For example,with the name “Shelly’s Cherry Squares”,you might think it is a recipe for bars with a thick layer of cherry on top…but it is in fact more like a square shaped sugar cookie with a dollop of cherry filling in the center.
Here is what I did:After setting the oven to 325 degrees (I have a confection oven,but you should use 350 degrees if you use a regular oven) and buttering up a 9 x 13 pan,I mixed together 1 stick of butter and 1.5 cups of sugar. After all of the sugar is incorporated,add 4 eggs,mixing after each one. Mix in 1 tsp vanilla and 2 cups of flour. You should now have a pretty golden color dough. Put this dough into the well greased 9 x 13 pan and score the dough to create 24 equal squares (roughly 2″x 2″). Use a teaspoon to scoop out one cherry and some extra filling from a can of cherry pie filling. It should look approximately like this:
Magnolia's Cherry Squares Before Baked
I was a little concerned that the cherry filling was so close to the scoring lines,but as you will see,the batter rises a lot to enclose the cherry filling centers. After baking for about 35 minutes,use a toothpick or cake tester to be sure the center is completely cooked.
- Magnolia’s Cherry Squares Right Out of the Oven
Allow the cherry squares to cool completely,and then sprinkle the top with powdered sugar. After sitting for a while,the sugar will melt into the cherry pie filling centers.
Magnolia's Cherry Squares Dusted with Powdered Sugar
I brought these,along with some other goodies,to my good friend’s home on Thanksgiving. The flavor was good and my friend’s mother,who is particularly finnicky,loved them. I personally did not love them,but then again,I do not care much for cherry pie. They look beautiful from a presentation perspective and really complemented my tray of other baked goods (I will show photos of the trays a bit later). I think next time around I might add a bit of almond flavor to the dough.
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