Category: Baking

Back to Basics

Sadie2 Comments

Let’s talk cookies. Chocolate chip to be precise. While this may seem basic, it’s something I rarely make. I’ve tried various versions and none of them have really resonated with me as being good enough to add to my standard repertoire. Enter this recipe.

I have a friend at work who bakes from time to time and shares her goodies in the office. I really admire her because she’s such a stud in the office, and seems to be quite the baker as well. Anywho, she makes amazing chocolate chip cookies, so I begged her for the recipe. She forwarded me a link the recipe she uses, and said she thinks the key is recipe that has about twice as much brown sugar as white sugar. Very interesting. I’m always curious about how adjusting some of the baseline ingredients (flour, sugar, eggs, butter), will affect the texture and taste of the final product.

I was looking for an occasion to bake some cookies and lo and behold, it was another coworker’s birthday, and she happens to love cookies. Bingo!

So I made these, and they definitely lived up to the hype. I think I might have kept them in the oven a minute or two too long, so they were a little crispier than I remember, but still quite good. If you need some good old fashioned chocolate chip cookies, give this recipe a try for sure! To add a little extra “je ne said quois” I also made some oatmeal cookies and homemade marshmallows!

The birthday platter

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

from Savory Sweet Life, yields about 4 dozen

Ingredients

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, room temp
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 1½ cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs, room temp
  • 2 tsp. vanilla extract
  • 2¾ cups (12 oz) AP flour
  • ¾ tsp. medium coarse sea salt
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1½ tsp. baking powder
  • 2¼ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (about a standard bag and a half)

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 360.
  2. Cream together butter and sugars until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix another couple minutes until well incorporated.
  3. Add the dry ingredients and mix until relatively uniform (try not to over mix). Fold in the chocolate chips last.Batter up
  4. Use a medium ice cream scoop to portion out the dough onto parchment lined baking sheets. Bake at 360 for 12-14 minutes or until light golden brown.ready for the oven
  5. Allow to cool and enjoy!out of the oven

party platter

Mini Meatloaf Cupcakes

CarrieLeave a comment

For our most recent potluck dinner at church, I decided to make a twist on the traditional cupcake.  Since it is always easy to make small portions for people to take a little bit of everything, I turned meatloaf and mashed potatoes into cupcakes.  Simply take you favorite meatloaf recipe and put it into a mini muffin pan.

IMG_0408Bake until the meatloaf muffins are browned.  Then make your favorite mashed potatoes and pipe them on top of the meatloaf muffins using a pastry bag and a star tip.

IMG_0409As a final step, I sprinkled the top with paprika and embellished them with piece of green pepper.  The final result is adorable.  It’s a great way for kids to have fun in the kitchen as well!

IMG_0411

 

 

Banana Surplus

Sadie3 Comments

Here’s what my banana situation looked like last week:

Bananas

I knew I had to do something about it, because I couldn’t eat all those ripe bananas before they just turned to mush.

So I debated my options.

First, I thought I could make the banana peanut butter chocolate chip cookies I made in the fall because they’re delicious, and maybe bring them to work. But I’m actually on the verge of baking a few batches of cookies for a co-worker’s birthday next week, so more cookies just seemed excessive (did you notice that leaf that turned over in that sentence that I just wrote).  Then, I thought to myself, I could make banana bread and mail it to my grandparents (otherwise I would eat the whole loaf myself in one day). But I just sent them Valentines chocolate, so I don’t want them to get used to a care package every week. That’s a hard pace to keep up.

But then I remembered a post I saw either on Pinterest or a link from another blog about two ingredient cookies, just bananas and oats. It caught my eye, and I was curious to try it out. I love bananas, I love oats, what could go wrong? (By the way, even though I said I wasn’t going to make more cookies, these hardly count as full blown cookies.)

not the most photogenic

So anyway, I ran to the store to pick up some oats, and a couple mix-ins: walnuts, mini chocolate chips, and almond butter. I figured I needed to punch up the recipe a little because just bananas and oats could be a little bland.

The recipe is the easiest thing ever, and the results were solid but nothing revolutionary I must say. The cookies remind me of banana bread batter. Not bad, but not crave-worthy. None the less, a good, healthy snack to have on hand, and a nice use for those ripe bananas!

Here’s my adaptation of the recipe (I doubled it and added stuff):

Two Ingredient Cookies (sort of)

Adapted from: Foodlets, yields about 2 dozen small cookies (give or take, depending on how much batter you eat)

Ingredients

  • 4 ripe bananas
  • 2 scant cups of oats
  • 1/4 cup almond butter
  • 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
  • 1/4 cup mini chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Mash up the bananas with a fork. Add the almond butter and combine. Add oats and other mix-ins and stir until combined.

3. Make one and a half inch balls of dough and place on a parchment lined cookie sheet. Press the balls down with a fork like you would with peanut butter cookies. They will not expand in the oven.

ready for the oven4. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes. Allow to cool completely. And enjoy!

out of the oven!