The real deal

Here are the real chocolate chip cookies that I have been wanting ever since the ice cream cookie dough experiment. This is my Aunt Georgia's recipe from one of her many small town church lady cookbooks. She made these cookies for me a couple months ago when I went down to visit her in Iowa. I was blown away with how tasty they were. I usually just go with the recipe on the bag of chocolate chips and they never turn out this good. She gave me the recipe, and after some explaining (do any of you know what oleo is?) I was excited to try them out.

They turn out to be the prettiest cookies I've made. And delicious.

Aunt Georgia's Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup butter (or  oleo I guess)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup chocolate chips
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I used Kosher because it is yummy)

Preheat oven to 375.

Mix butter, oil, and both sugars together until smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and beat again until smooth. Add the dry ingredients in two additions. Add the chocolate chips. Bake for 8-10 minutes*. Cool on wire cooling rack

*Note: They are probably done before you think they are. They firm up a lot on the wire rack. Bake until the edges are golden and they are firm enough to transfer from baking sheet to rack.

Under Pressure

I had an amazing weekend. On Saturday I ran a 5k with my husband at the zoo. It was so cool. The bears were sitting at the glass watching us run and the sheep all ran out of their little house as we went by. The were jumping and butting heads as if to join in the festivities (but more likely because they were freaked out). It was a great run.

On Sunday I ran/biked/walked Muddy Buddies with my closest/longest/bestest friend, her sister (who is also this girl) and my husband. It was an adventure. It was the most dificult thing I have ever done. It was worth it.

Except that yesterday I found out that I probably* have a stress fracture in my heel. Not being able to walk Sunday night was my first clue and hardly making it one block to my car yesterday after work was my second. I scored a walking boot for at least two weeks and I will take up some cross training. 30 days of biking here I come!

Tomorrow I will make myself sympathy cookies. Perhaps from ice cream.

*I say probably because they do not x-ray for such things, but all my symptoms align so the doc was confident that it is a stress fracture

HAD TO KNOW!

I love ice cream with a lot of "stuff" in it. The more the merrier. I often get cookie dough ice cream because in my mind cookie dough is better than actual cookies and combining it with ice cream is genius. The last time I was eating it I mentioned to my husband that I was curious if you took the cookie dough pieces out of the ice cream if they would bake up like cookies should. He told me that I must really need to know because I say the same thing every time I eat cookie dough ice cream. I had no idea.

I really did need to know. If they don't actually bake then they have no business calling it cookie dough ice cream because if it won't make cookies it isn't cookie dough! Right? Right!

Today was the day to find out. I bought the ice cream, dug out the dough, washed off the ice cream and set them to bake at 350. I figured that if it failed I could make some back up chocolate chip cookies to cheer me up (since I would no longer be able to purchase one of my favorite ice creams again on principle).

Thankfully it didn't come to that. Can you believe it? They baked! They turned out a little shiny, due to the ice cream coating I think, and the texture is a little off but other than that they are normal chocolate chip cookies.

I set 4 on the baking sheet as is and then combined some to make normal sized cookies. The little ones turned out crunchy but yummy. The bigger ones had more problems. They were crunchy on the outside but doughy on the inside. Still not terrible and still a cookie.

Now we can a sleep all little more peacefully.

Lazy Daisy

I have done very little that can be considered productive this week. I blame allergies and a new job. Today I decided that I had better do something or this blog will be boresville. I'm sticking with the theme of trying to use up what I have on hand. Right now I have cucumbers, which will be dealt with soon I hope, and strawberries. My friend gave me a huge container of strawberries that were left over from a party. Yesterday I brought them to another friend's house and we dipped them in chocolate ganache that I had leftover. We used up the chocolate but hardly made a dent in the berries. Today I decided to make my favorite scones to use up a few more. As a bonus, I had some left over marzipan too!

As usual, I don't have a scone recipe that I love so I made a hybrid of two that I like. I like my scones to be light, fluffy, flaky and not too sweet. This recipe pretty much met those criteria.

Strawberry Marzipan Scones
2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
3 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp kosher salt
6 tbsp chilled butter cut into small pieces
1/2 cup chopped strawberried
1/2 cup marzipan cut into smallish pieces
3/4 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 400.
Mix the first 5 ingredients together on low speed for about 3 minutes or until crumbly. Add the strawberries and marzipan and combine on low speed. Slowly add the cream and mix until combined. I like to kneed the dough a little bit here to make sure everything sticks together.
On a floured surface roll out the dough to 1/2 inch. I like to roll the dough into a vaguely circle-like shape and then cut the dough into wedges. You can also cut with a cookies cutter. You should get 10-12 scones.
Place on baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

If you like a sweeter scone you could bump up the sugar level a little. I consider this recipe a work in progress but it works for now. I plan on working on a savory scone next. Yum!

The Test Kitchen

I've already posted about my new obsession with message cookies. I did not talk about how frustrating it has been to find the perfect sugar cookie recipe to use them with. I tried three recipes over the course of a couple days to try to find perfection. It was not found.

The first recipe, the one that came with the cookie cutters, I found to be too crunchy. They turned out more like sweet crackers. I think they did this so that the letters would keep their shape. The text did look fantastic but I was not a huge fan of the cookies (sorry muddy buddies). Fail.

Next I tried a recipe from my favorite baking book. It is kind of fancy and everything I have ever made from it has been fantastic so I was expecting the best. These cookies tasted great and kept their form well but I thought they were a little dry. Almost like shortbread, which I love, but it just wasn't what I was looking for in a sugar cookie. Tasty Fail.

The last recipe was from one of those cookbooks that has a little of everything and it all turns out pretty good. It is an old standby. These cookies were more like a typical sugar cookie. They were pretty sweet and slightly puffy. I found them hard to roll out because the dough got a little crumbly. The puffiness meant the letters didn't turnout as sharp. I was not a fan of the level of sweetness either. I think sugar cookies are often too sweet, almost to the point of being grainy with sugar, yuck. These weren't that bad but still too sweet for me. Sugar Fail.

The only solution was to combine the best elements into a new recipe. I think they are perfect, not too dry, not too puffy, not too sweet.

Sugar Cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
2 cups flour
1 tsp kosher salt

Beat the sugar butter, shortening and vanilla together on medium speed for about 3 minutes. Add the egg and beat for another minute or until well combined. Add the flour and salt slowly, beating well after each addition.
Divide the dough in half, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick, cut out shapes.
Bake cookies for 12-18 minutes, rotating baking sheet once halfway through. Cool on wire cooling rack.

 I made Thank You cookies to go in the freezer and Wine Party cookies for a party we were going to. I added a little frosting to the wine party cookies just to make them a little cuter. It is just a combination of red wine (for a wine party after all) and powdered sugar. I just played with the ingredients until I got the consistency I wanted.

I love the way these cookies taste and I really love the way they roll out. Try it out and let me know what you think!

Over in the garden

Purple Peppers!

Eggplant Flowers

Crazy Cucumbers

We have a garden that is looking beautiful. Some smart friends and I decided that we could get a greater variety of summer produce if we each planted different things and shared. We are so smart. It is going well but the cucumbers are growing out of control. I can't even keep up with just my share. With two cucumbers in the fridge threatening to go bad and eight thousand more on the vine, I decide I had better take action. I made pickles.

Anyone who knows me probably knows that I hate pickles. If you go out to eat with me you will find my pickle on your plate. Actually I don't usually like anything pickled. There are only two circumstances under which I like pickles. One is if they are bread and butter pickles.

Lucky for me Alton Brown had a quick bread and butter refrigerator pickle recipe. I put it all together in the morning and by afternoon they were delicious. Even better the next day on burgers. Now everyone I know will be getting a jar of pickles.

But I don't really want to turn all my cucumbers into pickles (I have thought that word every time I typed it and it is just occurring way too much in this entry. PICKLES, PICKLES, PICKLES). We have done salads and spring rolls with them but what else? What else can I do with all these cucumbers?

***I'm not kidding. I just picked 14 cucumbers. I need help.

And jelly

Yesterday I was scouring the kitchen for a snack and all I could find was unsalted peanuts. So unsatisfying. Peanut butter is very satisfying but did we have that? Nope. I was recently reading about how much food people, but especially Americans throw away each year. The article urged readers to look through their fridge and try to make dinner with the things they have instead of running to the store. I applied these general principles and made peanut butter! I know the peanuts weren't going to go bad anytime soon but why waste the time and gas to go buy peanut butter when it is basically sitting there in your cupboard?

After a quick Google search I found out that all you need are peanuts, salt, honey, peanut oil and a food processor. Throw 15 oz of peanuts in with 1 tsp salt and 1 1/2 tsp honey and blend for about a minute. Then slowly add 1 1/2tsp of peanut oil while you blend until it is smooth. Voila! Peanut butter. I used kosher salt in mine and locally sourced honey from Ames Farms. I also used slightly more of these ingredients because I love them. Kosher salt especially makes everything better.

Toast with homemade peanut butter and homemade strawberry freezer jam that I made last month is the perfect snack! Now comes my favorite part. What else can I put in peanut butter? How can I make it better? What baked goods should I make with homemade peanut butter?

Sadly, these experiments will need to wait for another day. I am out of peanuts.

Lesson Learned

Netipot water temperature is important.

Watch It!

So far, everyone I know has been really supportive of my decision to try something new. I have gotten lots of comments, mostly variations on two specific comments.
#1. You are going to be very popular now.
Rebuttal - Um, I already am.

#2. Aren't you worried about gaining weight? Variations: You better be careful, I hope you don't lose your figure, you better keep going to yoga, be careful with how much tasting you do, I've never seen a skinny baker.
Rebuttal - I found a skinny baker here (co-author of my favorite bread book).

Most of these comments came from people I don't know very well and will probably never see again. Why do they care? I really hadn't thought about gaining weight until it was all I heard about. Then I stopped thinking about it because I thought it was dumb. Now I am thinking about it again because I am blogging about it. I firmly believe that you can be a pastry chef and be healthy. I firmly believe that you can be in love with dessert and be healthy. I believe in moderation. I believe in staying active. I believe in maintaining whatever weight makes you happy. I will never be Hollywood thin because I would rather eat half a chocolate bar when I get home from work, preferably followed by a glass of wine and then maybe pizza. I am fine with that.

I also believe that you can indulge without really indulging. There are fantastic things to be done with fresh fruit. With egg whites and sugar you can perform miracles (called meringues). I performed one such miracle yesterday by making my first angel food cake. The most tedious part of making angel food cake it beating the egg whites. If you have a stand mixer you will be fine, if not you will get your work out for the day.

Everything went according to plan because I actually remembered to read the directions first. I used a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks and went with the chocolate version of the cake. My favorite part was letting it cool upside down on a bottle. I was nervous about it at first but it did not tip over or fall out so now I think it was fun.

In the end I decided that it should have a little extra something. I am always looking for reasons to use Creme de Violette so I melted some white chocolate and mixed in a shot of the liqueur. As the finishing touch I added whipped cream and blackberries and I was happy. It isn't the prettiest cake I've ever made but it is probably the healthiest and it even tasted great.

Decadence without guilt can be had.





*But just in case, I signed up for a 10k.

ABC's of Baking

I recently received the best gift ever. As a going away gift at my previous school a couple of the families got me some great bake ware and these ingenious cook cutters. Nothing makes me happier than baking treats for friends but I don't often have an occasion to. Now anything can be an appropriate occasion.

Example! My husband and a couple friends and I decided to sign up for Columbia Muddy Buddies. I am not a runner, or a biker really, so this has required a lot of training. Especially because the people I signed up with are regular runners. And even more especially because I recently got tortured trying to handle Warrior Dash. Don't get me wrong, Warrior Dash was so much fun that I would have signed up for another race the next day. I even considered driving 6 hours to another city to try again. However, I didn't not have an admirable time and I slowed down my friends who were gracious enough to keep me company while I yelled about how much I hated them (I love you Jen, Zeb and Micah)! All this to say that I suck at running.

That has been slowly changing with the invention of Muddy Buddy bootcamp. Friends and I go running 3-4 times a week with some biking mixed in. What better occasion for cookies! I made us some Muddy Buddy cookies complete with mud icing splashes. Awesome.

Next: Pinewood Derby. I missed out on pinewood derby in my youth because I am a girl. Stupid rules. Girls like racing cars too. I feel incredibly lucky to have met and befriended a creative and talented couple who bring derby back every year as a birthday celebration. Another fantastic occasion for cookies. They disappeared quickly. My car, however, was slower than molasses. Or a dinosaur. Because it was a dinosaur.

I can't think of an inappropriate occasion for cookies. You are only limited by the small area for text, only two lines. I can see the possibilities now: Eat Me Santa! Go Away Rain! It Is Monday!
See! Anything!

So this is happening

To be honest I haven't been a huge fan of blogs in the past. I've had two but I don't think I was ever really committed or figured out why I was blogging. I've followed blogs off and on and I have enjoyed reading them but then I just fell out of the habit when I stopped blogging. Now, recently, I've had some major life changes with more coming down the road. I feel like I might actually have interesting things happen to me! Also my friends have all started blogs and I want to copy them. Just kidding. Not really. Sort of.

So back to the life changes. I have been teaching preschool for the past 7 years and most days I love it. The families are amazing and their children are hilarious and inspiring. And I think I am good at teaching. The problem is that a big part of me feels unchallenged in that profession and a little unfulfilled. It seems weird because teaching is challenging and fulfilling for most people. It was for me in the beginning and in many ways still is to this day. Just not in the right ways. I have no idea how to explain it. I just know that for the past few years I have struggled with the question of "what else"? What else can I do? What am I missing? Why do I feel unsatisfied?

Cupcakes made for a play my brother was in

I decided it was time to answer these questions. I did a little soul searching and discover that what I do for fun and for stress relief is bake. I read cookbooks for fun. I buy fancy extracts just for the challenge of figuring out something delicious to create with them. I make elaborate cupcake murals. It fills a creative need in me that I don't get anywhere else. So why not try to delve in a little deeper? I took a leap (a very careful, well thought out leap) and quit my job. I enrolled in culinary school for baking and patisserie. I start next month. I still love teaching though so I got a part time job teaching preschool that fits in well with my culinary schedule.

Pastry sampling in Hanoi, Vietnam

So I figured that documenting this new journey will help me see areas that I have grown and where I need to grow. And I'm hoping you will come with me. I promise to reward you with questionable recipes of my own creation and pictures of food you can't eat, at least until we figure out how to do this whole emailing food thing. What do you say? Deal?

Deep breath, here we go.