By this time next week, I will be married!
7 Days Left
March 20th, 2010White Chocolate Cherry Shortbread Cookies
February 20th, 2010Ever since I agreed to this no carbs after 3pm diet, the kitchen has been closed. What’s the fun of baking when you can’t enjoy your desserts?
Then I realized I missed baking even more than I missed eating, so today I pulled out the trusty cupcake apron and my newest Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and looked up a new recipe. As fate would have it, I wasn’t that excited about these cookies. However, Justin plowed through a good number of them, so apparently it’s a matter of taste.
RECIPE:
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup maraschino cherries, drained and finely chopped
- 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 cup cold butter
- 12 ounces white chocolate baking squares (with cocoa butter), finely chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
- 2 drops red food coloring
- sugar
- 2 teaspoons shortening
- white nonpareils and/or red edible glitter (optional)
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Spread cherries on paper towels to drain well.
2. In a large bowl stir together flour and the 1/2 cup sugar. Using a pastry blender (or if you’re like me and don’t know what a pastry blender is, a fork will do) cut in the butter until mixture resembles fine crumbs (or until your arm gets tired). Stir in drained cherries and 4 ounces (2/3 cup) of the chopped white chocolate. Stir in almond extract and food coloring. Form mixture into a ball (I swear, that dry crumby stuff does become a ball of dough eventually) and knead until smooth.
3. Shape dough into 3/4-inch balls. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Using the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in sugar, flatten balls to 1 1/2-inch rounds. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until centers are set. Let stand for 1 minute on cookie sheet. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool.
4. In a small saucepan heat and stir remaining 8 ounces white chocolate and the shortening over low heat until smooth. Dip half of each cookie into chocolate mixture, allowing excess to drip off. If desired, roll dipped edge in nonpareils and/or edible glitter. Place cookies on waxed paper. Let stand until set. (Putting them in the fridge helps them along.)
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I was happy that these cookies came out great the first time around, but I wish I had more prep space. I can’t wait until we find a new house . . . with a decent kitchen.
Also, does the concept of edible glitter freak anyone else out?
Justin’s Dessert Deliciousness Score: 7 or 8 out of 10
Recipe for Disaster
January 14th, 2010With the wedding only twelve weeks away, my best friend/personal trainer has put me on a diet.
A diet.
My sweet tooth is weeping already.
Size Matters
January 7th, 2010I’m just going to come right out and say it: My house is too small.
By “too small” I mean that I live in a tiny cottage. Less than 1000 square feet tiny. Postage stamp tiny. I have more desk area at work than I have counter space at home. My “laundry room” is a glorified utility closet, with a stacked washer/dryer and no room to turn around. We don’t have a basement or garage for storage, which sucks because we might have been able to claim the property has 1 1/2 bathrooms if only we weren’t using the outhouse as a tool shed.
Yes, we have an outhouse. My home is THAT quaint.
While I love our little house for many reasons (near the lake, not many rooms to clean, quiet and cozy), the size is a problem. I can’t have my family over for dinner because our kitchen accommodates only four people and, of course, we don’t have a dining room. We can’t host holidays or throw parties. And starting a family? I doubt our “tool shed” can double as a nursery. I guess I’d have to bunk the kid with the cats in their kitty tower. Which, incidentally, is smack in the middle of my living room. Unless I’ve shoved it off into a vital walkway somewhere so we can actually play Wii.
Being a woman of finite patience, after two years of living in our tiny home, I have begun demanding, nagging, suggesting to Justin that we look at larger houses and consider selling or renting the cottage.
Justin more or less said: Not now.
He made some flimsy arguments like “Can’t afford it,” “Focus on the wedding,” and “You’re insanely impulsive, woman.”
Impulsive? Probably. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
I guess I’ll have to think of ways to make some extra money. I haven’t come up with any good ideas yet. Anyone know if I can register for a house as a wedding gift?
Chunky Path Brownies
January 3rd, 2010Well, it was a bumpy road to get my Chunky Path Brownies just right, but hearing a coworker announce that they rank among the Top 5 Best Desserts of 2009 made it all worthwhile.
RECIPE:
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup water
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 eggs
- 1/2 cup buttermilk
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
- 3 cups mini marshmallows
- Chocolate Topper
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 15×10x1-inch baking pan with foil, extending the foil up over the edges of the pan. Grease foil; set aside. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine butter, the water, and cocoa powder. Bring mixture just to boiling, stirring constantly. Remove pan from heat. Add the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture; beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until combined. Add eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Beat for 1 minute more (batter will be thin). Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake in the preheated oven about 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
4. Sprinkle marshmallows over hot brownies. Top with Chocolate Topper. Cool in pan on a wire rack.
5. To serve, remove brownies from pan by lifting foil. Place on cutting board; cut into bars. Makes 48 brownies.
Chocolate Topper: In a medium saucepan, combine one 12-ounce package semisweet chocolate pieces, 1/2 cup whipping cream, and 1/4 cup butter. Cook and stir over medium-low heat until melted. Drizzle over brownies.
TO STORE: Place brownies in a single layer in an airtight container; cover. Store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.
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You know what’s extremely frustrating to perfectionists? Recipes very rarely come out perfect the first time you try them. You pretty much have to screw some stuff up to discover how never to screw it up again. Or maybe that’s just me. Either way, learn from my mistakes:
Lesson #1: There is such a thing as a baking pan made specifically for bar cookies, shallow cakes, and, incidentally, Chunky Path Brownies. If you attempt to use your usual 13×9-inch cake pan because, seriously, does it really make THAT much of a difference? you will wind up with the thickest brownies you’ve ever seen. And they will take longer to bake. And you won’t be able to eat them fresh out of the oven because they’ll crumble all over the place. Oops.
Lesson #2: Buttermilk is a big pain for two reasons. First, it will cause your brownies to spoil quickly. Bummer, right? Second, if you purchase it in powder form, it’s a good idea to read the label carefully before beginning to mix ingredients. When the label says you just add water, what it goes on to explain is that you mix the powder with the dry ingredients and then add the water later when the recipe actually calls for buttermilk. It’s good if you read that far down BEFORE you’ve already mixed the wet and dry ingredients.
Lesson #3: If for some reason your grocery store is out of mini marshmallows, go to another store. Don’t buy jumbo marshmallows and chop them into mini marshmallow-sized pieces. You can’t even imagine the stickiness. You will spend hours trying to shake marshmallow pieces off your fingers and your knife.
Lesson #4: You will find out whether or not your stove is level very quickly. (Ours was not.)
Frustrations aside, these brownies are fantastic! They were a big hit at the office.
Justin’s Dessert Deliciousness Score: 12 out of 10
85 Days Left
January 1st, 2010Where does the time go?
Uh . . . I guess I’d better finish the invitations seeing as how I should be mailing them in the next couple weeks. Oops.
Christmas Cookies Save the Day
December 27th, 2009What do you do when your fiancé informs you that a bunch of his out-of-town friends will be descending upon your home in two hours?
Well, first you clean the house like a madwoman yelling things such as: “Women judge you based on the cleanliness of your bathroom!” while you frantically scrub floors on your hands and knees.
Second, (after a good scrub yourself), you make up a dessert tray of leftover homemade Christmas goodies.
The bathroom floor went unnoticed. The dessert tray did not.
My First
December 26th, 2009It all began with Amazon.
Amazon.com is one of my favorite websites out there. Why? Because you can find just about anything on Amazon. This is especially awesome when, like me, you loathe shopping. No mall. No crowds. No jaded teenage sales associates. I can make all my holiday purchases from my couch, in my pajamas, AND the site offers product reviews. Yay, Internet! Ah, I feel warm and fuzzy just thinking about it.
So some gift-giving occasion came around that had me browsing Amazon one afternoon, when a little voice in the dark recesses of my brain reminded me that I had been asking my grandma to make me an apron for-freaken-ever and said apron was never going to materialize. I immediately entered the term in the search box. And there it was -
The cuteness had to be mine.
Since that day, whenever I’m in the Tiny Kitchen baking, I’m wearing my cupcake apron. Others have come after it (now that I finally bought myself an apron, I got three for Christmas this year), but the cupcake apron remains my favorite.
You’ll see a lot of it around here.