Epic Chocolate Chip Cookies

I got this recipe courtesy of  Tender Crumb. I altered it slightly, by using only regular flour, and using less chocolate chips (didn't have a big enough bowl for 2lbs!). Amazingly good!

Prep time: 30 minutes
Makes: Approx. 3 dozen large, or 7-8 dozen small

Ingredients:
-1 tbsp vanilla
-1 tbsp salt
-1 lb butter
-6 cups and 1 tbsp flour
-4 eggs
-2 tsp baking powder
-2 tsp baking soda
-1 lb semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 3/4 cups of granulated sugar
-2 1/4 cups of light brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350°.

2. Combine the sugar, brown sugar, and butter well.

3. Mix in the eggs next until well blended. I didn't have a blender, so this took a looooong time. Hey, it's on the wishlist.

4. Mix in the vanilla, salt, baking powder and soda, flour, and chocolate chips until well blended.

5. Form dough into round balls (As a note: If you make them smaller, you will come out with about 8 dozen...just sayin.' I made larger ones and got 3 dozen out of the batch). Line a pan with parchment paper. Spread out rounded dough evenly on cookie sheet.

6. Bake for 20 minutes, until edges are golden brown.

Fruit Dip

This recipe is so easy, you'll be kicking yourself for not having thought of it sooner! Seriously, I would, but I am a hemo, and that is somewhat frowned upon.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Serves: 8

Ingredients:
-1 8 oz package cream cheese
-1 tsp vanilla
-3/4 cup brown sugar
-fruit of your choice, sliced (I went with gala apples)

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

2. Serve with apple slices (or a fruit of your choice).

Ta-da! :)

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

This is a new pumpkin muffin recipe that I found online. I opted to use fresh pumpkin instead of canned pumpkin.

Ingredients:
Filling:
-1 8oz pkg of cream cheese
-1 egg
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-3 tbsp brown sugar

Steusel topping:
-4 1/2 tbsp flour
-5 tbsp sugar
-3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
-3 tbsp butter
-3 tbsp chopped pecans

Muffins:
-2 1/2 cups of flour
-2 cups of sugar
-2 tsp baking powder
-2 tsp ground cinnamon
-2 eggs
-1 1/3 cups of olive oil
-2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. Filling:

• Beat cream cheese until soft
• Add egg, vanilla, and brown sugar
• Beat until smooth
• Set aside

3. Streusel topping:

• Mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, and pecans
• Add butter
• Cut with a for until crumbly
• Set aside

4. Muffins:

• Sift together flour, sugar, cinnamon, and baking powder
• Make a well in the center of the mixture
• Add eggs, pumpkin, olive oil, and vanilla
• Beat well until smooth

5. Place pumpkin mixture in muffin cups

6. Add 1 tbsp of the cream cheese filling

7. Sprinkle on streusel topping

8. Bake at 375 for 20-25 min

I'll add pics when blogger decides to cooperate with uploading pics...

Cranberry Apple Pie

This is a great holiday pie recipe, and it's unique! My aunt introduced this recipe to us one year at Thanksgiving, and I have been in love ever since. For those of you who are not too keen on cranberries, the bitterness of them is actually balanced well by the sweetness of the apples. I must warn you though, cooking apples that you slice up yourself are always best. If you use the apple pie filling in a can, your pie will be a little bit, shall we say, liquidatious. I know this from lots of experience! 

Prep time: 20 minutes
Serves: 8

Ingredients:
*Pie filling:
-9 inch pie crust
-1 egg
-3/4 cup packed brown sugar
-1/4 cup sugar
-1/3 cup flour (or more to thicken if liquidy, if you are using canned apples instead)
-1 tsp cinnamon
-2 tablespoons butter (softened, not melted)
-4 cups peeled and sliced cooking apples (Cortland and McIntosh are good ones) or 1 can of apple pie filling
-2 cups fresh cranberries
*Pie topping:
-1/2 cup quick cooking oats
-1/2 cup packed brown sugar
-1/4 cup softened butter

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Separate egg yolk from egg white. Throw the egg white away and keep the yolk.

3. Place pie crust in a pie tin. "Paint" the inside of the pie crust with the egg yolk, using a cooking brush.
Make sure to coat the entire pie crust to prevent cracking.

4. Place pie crust in oven and bake for 5 mins to seal egg yolk. Remove pie crust from oven and set aside.

5. Wash, peel, and slice apples into small chunks (I would say for me that translates to half the size of a golf ball) and put in large bowl, along with washed cranberries. Set aside.

6. Mix all ingredients (minus the fruit) well in a large mixing bowl. Butter may not mix as well if it is not softened, so break it up with a fork into small pieces.

7.Once mixed well, add in the apples and the cranberries slowly, and gently mix until all fruit is completely covered.

8. Put all ingredients into the pie crust and set aside. Now prepare pie topping.

9. Mix pie topping ingredients together in a mixing bowl. Again, butter may not mix well, so break up with fork into small pieces.

10. Once mixed well, sprinkle topping over entire pie until covered well. Bake for 40 minutes at 425 degrees.

Martha Stewart's Peanut Butter Cookies (feat. Brent and Aaron!)

Hello ladies and gentleman! Today we are doing something a little bit differently, because frankly, change is good! We are doing a special blog in which we will feature one of our friends or family members and one of their very own recipes, and we are calling it a Food Feature Blog (FFB). You will see many more of these as we go along on our gastronomical journey. Today's FFB is starring two wonderful friends of ours, Brent and Aaron.

Brent and Aaron

A very special thank you to them for sharing these great next two recipes, and for also helping the creative process as well. Six hands are better than two, after all, especially when photography in the kitchen is involved!

Prep time: 10 minutes
Makes: 1 dozen

Ingredients:
-8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
-3/4 cup smooth/crunchy peanut butter (we used crunchy!)
-1/2 cup granulated sugar
-1/2 cup packed dark-brown sugar
-1 large egg
-1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
-1 cup all-purpose flour
-3/4 teaspoon baking soda
-Extra sugar for topping
-Hershey's kisses

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

2. In a bowl mix butter, peanut butter, and both sugars together until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla, and mix until well combined.

3. In another medium mixing bowl, mix flour and baking soda together. Add to the butter mixture, and beat until well mixed.

4. Scoop out 2 tablespoons of dough, shape into a ball, and place on one of the prepared baking sheets. Repeat with remaining dough.

5. Add some sugar to a separate bowl. Take a drinking glass and dip the bottom part of it into the sugar. Then press on one of the cookie balls to add a sugary topping. Repeat until all cookies are flattened and sugar-coated.

6. Transfer to the oven, and bake until golden brown, approx. 18-20 minutes.

7. Unwrap a Hershey's kiss, and press it into the middle of the cookie after it is out of the oven, and before the cookie cools.

Enjoy! These cookies are really delish, especially when accompanied by a nice tall, icy cold glass of milk (I am from the dairy state, what did you expect?) Mmmmm!

Victorian Lavender Cookies with Rose Water Icing

Hello there! Welcome back. So, I decided to try this recipe I found online from The Spice House. This was inspired by a cookie contest we had at work. I didn't want to bring one of forty varietites of chocolate chip or sugar cookies, so I searched online to find something truly unique. So, if you are brave enough to attempt this one, you are going to need some special ingredients, including dried lavender and rose water. I got these also from the Spice House's website, and their shipping is extremely quick. I highly recommend them. This recipe makes about 4 dozen. I made mine a little bigger, so I came out with about 3 dozen. You also will need 2 bowls: One for the cookie batter, and one for the frosting.

Prep time: 15 minutes
Makes: 4 dozen

Ingredients:
*Cookie mixture:
-1/2 cup of butter
-1 cup of sugar
-2 eggs
-1 tsp. of lavender, crushed
-1 1/2 cups of flour
-2 tsp. of baking powder
-1/4 tsp. salt
*Icing:
-2 cups of powdered sugar
-5 1/2 tsp. of water
-6 1/2 tsp. of rose water

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

2. Mix the butter and sugar together.

3. Crush the dried lavender with the back of a spoon.

4. Mix the eggs, lavender, flour, baking powder, and salt into the butter/sugar mixture.

5. Roll dough into round shape (a little bigger than teaspoon size).

6. Bake for 10 minutes.

7. While the cookies bake, prepare the icing by mixing the powdered sugar with water and rose water.

8. After the cookies have cooled for about 10 minutes, drizzle the icing over them.

This recipe is interesting, to say the least! It's sweet, but it has a very different, distinct taste. Josh was kind enough to be my guinea pig for the recipe, and he remarked, "It tastes like a doughy flower." I remember a girl in my World History class in high school making rose cookies, and they were delicious--they weren't like these. We had done a unit on Egypt, and rose water is a pretty common ingredient in Egyptian bakery. I think my next batch will be more rose-ish and less lavenderesque. I will have a go at my own recipe sometime, and let you know how it turns out!

Quick Cherry Pie

Here's a really great way to make a quick pie, that only takes about 12 minutes. This is also a great breakfast idea!

Prep time: 10 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients:
-1 pie crust (the doughy refrigerated kind, not the ready-made kind)
-1 can of fruit filling (cherry, apple, blueberry, etc)
-1/2 cup flour
-1 tablespoon cinnamon
-1 tablespoon sugar

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Sprinkle your workspace with flour. Roll the dough out on top of the flour.

3. Spread the fruit filling of your choice on half of the pie crust. Be sure to leave about an inch of space from the edge of the crust on this half, so that the filling isn't oozing out all over the place (I learned that the hard way so that you don't have to!)

4. Fold the pie crust over the fruit filling covered half and firmly pinch the edges together to seal in the filling.

5. Mix the cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle them over the top of the pie crust. (You may add more or less to taste). I used that whole shaker...just kidding!

6. With a fork, poke generous holes all over the top of the pie crust. You may wish to get a little bit fancy and use a mini shape cutter (My mom uses a heart or leaf one), but I didn't have any of those, so it was a "Make it Work" (MIW) moment for me.

7. Transfer pie to cookie sheet (I am not a huge fan of clean up, so I actually put parchment paper down on a cookie sheet--just don't burn it to a crisp which I may or may not have done...) and bake for 11-13 minutes, until edges of crust are golden brown.

8. Enjoy your masterpiece! Om nom nom!

Oh, and by the way, this is my cooking assistant, Kitty. She didn't actually help, because that would be slightly amazing, gross and unsanitary all at the same time, but she did intently watch me put this all together and kept my lap warm while I was waiting for the pie to bake.