Quest For the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie: 2

My Quest For the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Every once in while I'll bake some cookies and share my results here.

 I burn my food so you don't have to!

Today's recipe was featured on myfridgefood.com 

(a great site for when you have a full pantry but no idea what to cook!)

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love love LOVE oatmeal raisin cookies, but I had no raisins. I figured this recipe looked simple enough that I couldn't mess it up.

I like how optimistic I was...

Ease of Recipe: 5/5- way way way EASY throw it all in  bowl, mix and plop on a pan. No prep work required at all.

Cooking Time: 4/5 I went the recommended 10 minutes at 350, they were crispy enough after 8 minutes though.

Taste: 3/5 the texture was too crumbly, but still sweet enough to curb my cravings for an oatmeal cookie!

Overall Review: 

I should have read the recipe carefully- DO NOT USE quick cook oats. It turned into this:

a delicious crispy chocolate granola mix that Chucky Sue inhaled at snack time. I left the second batch on the pan until this morning and they stayed in cookie form, but only just barely. It was super crumbly. But you can't go wrong with all that butter and sugar!

31 Days of Halloween: Day Twenty Nine and Thirty!

here's another double post so I can say after tomorrow that I have 31 posts for October 2011!

Our ward's trunk or treat was last night. If you've never been to one, it's where everyone parks their cars with trunks facing each other and hands out candy from their trunk to the kids. It's safer and quicker than a townwide trick-or-treat and great for groups like a church :) 

We decorated our car like a monster, with posterboard teeth all around the edges and the kids had to grab candy out of the mouth without getting chomped.

if I had had more time, I planned to stuff one of Chucky-Sue's old pants and make it look like the monster had claimed a victim. 

I also whipped up a poorly done poem for the side of my car, with a one eyed monster warning the kiddos to be careful around my monster car.

The trunk or treat was a blast, the kids just do laps until the candy is gone, the trunk next to ours even started handing out decorations after his loot was finished!

Part Two:

The women were in charge of dessert for the dinner portion of the night, and instead of just bringing a store bought bag of cookies, I brought a chocolate coated store bought bag of cookies. I dipped oreos in white chocolate and covered them in black and orange sprinkles. I had planned to make them into lollipops, but I bought regular stuffed oreos and the sticks were too thick! the half dipped presentation wasn't bad though. I then used the leftover chocolate and sticks to make messy lollipops by pouring melted chocolate over the sticks on wax paper , for just us at home.

well, our 31 post journey is coming to an end tomorrow- I hope you all enjoyed it and I'll resume regular sporadic blogging in November :)

31 Days of Halloween: Day Twenty Six

I've mentioned it before but my mom has a blog- it's at lambertslive.blogspot.com and it's extremely well written. She always has funny stories about the kids she watches or recipes she's been trying out. She's just a quirky lady and I love her for it :) This is completely stolen from her 2009 post.

(picture from google)

Dinner in a Pumpkin!

31 Days of Halloween: Day Twenty Five

This week just skyrocketed from not-so-busy to RED ALERT SUPER BUSY! in a matter of a few days. I have seen too many cute halloween crafts and recipes that I won't have time to do myself- but I still wanted to share them with you!

First up, these adorable cracker packages made to look like candies. Not happening  in this house yet, maybe for christmas with oreos?

This one may happen for our ward's trunk or treat- Glowing Lanterns I think I want to use them to light up our trunk!

a candy corn cheesecake recipe was printed out and put in my halloween folder for next year.

poppiesatplay.blogspot.com (one of my new favorite blogs) has these adorable witch hat and ding dong halloween snacks

I saw these paper pumpkins online and thought how easy they'd be to make with orange and yellow paint chips from home depot!

31 Days of Halloween: Day Twenty and Twenty One

So life knocked me down yesterday and I didn't make time to post- I apologize! I'm combining two posts into one for today!

Here is a cute spooky skirt I made for Chucky-Sue! I used a black fabric pen to draw on a spider and the triangles along the bottom. It is really simple to do too- I took a long rectangle, hemmed both sides, strung elastic through one side and sewed the unfinished sides together. 

and here link to a whole bunch of 

homemade chocolate bars for your own fancy pants parties.

and yes, I'll be making many many batches of those homemade Twix once I go grocery shopping this week.

31 Days of Halloween: Day Fourteen

I picked up a cheap off-white square plate at Target last week, just $1.25. It was screaming to me as we walked around the store "Decorate me Tracy! Make me into something more!"

Some plates just have egos like that I guess.

I modge-podged some black and white scrapbook paper on the edges, trimmed it with some ric-rac and voila! a non-dishwasher safe, completely unwaterproof, not so good for messy foods, holiday plate! I'm using it to hold these yummy mud pie cookie bars we made.  I'm sure there is so product out there you could coat it with it make it water resistant so you could rinse it off once in a while but using a lightly damp paper towel VERY carefully has been working well for me thus far!

                         Mud Pie Cookie Bars

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter or margarine

2 cups powdered sugar- "crushed stones"

1-1/2 cups Chocolate Graham Cracker Crumbs- "top soil"

1 cup Creamy Peanut Butter- "clay"

1 cup pkg melted chocolate- "mud"

Optional: gummy worms, gum paste flies/spiders, general gross stuff that kids just love.

Preparation:

LINE 13x9-inch pan with foil, with ends of foil extending over sides of pan.

MELT butter in large microwaveable bowl on HIGH 45 sec. Add next 3 ingredients; mix well. Spread into prepared pan; cover with chocolate.

CUT partially through dessert to mark 48 squares. Refrigerate 1 hour or until firm. Use foil handles to remove dessert from pan; cut into squares.

(I halved the recipe which is why my cookies are thinner and crumblier.)

31 Days of Halloween: Day Ten

Kroger had halloween cookie cutters on sale for a $1 each and I managed to sneak in a bat and a pumpkin on the cashier's belt before Jake noticed. I used them on my homemade honey graham cracker recipes from here.

Recipe notes: roll this out THIN if you want it to be similar to what you buy in the store, mine were too thick and were more like a cookie. The recipe site also recommended this for a pie crust too!

I love adding just a touch of halloween in things I'm going to do or make anyway- like these crackers.

Easiest Cookies Ever

I love to bake, but I am by no means GOOD at baking. So I often google "Simple *insert dessert* recipes".

Today, I was craving peanut butter, and there's only so many sandwiches a girl can handle. I went to google and found a simple three (three and a half, tops) ingredient recipe for these delicious, soft, fluffy peanut butter cookies. And who knows? Maybe this is a very common world wide recipe and I was slow to catch on.

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of crunchy peanut butter
1 large egg
optional: 1 tsp vanilla

mix it all together, bake at 325 for 8-10 minutes (I ended up with 10-12  for larger cookies) and then cool.

I like my peanut butter cookies chewy and soft, not crunchy or hard like others and these are PERFECT. yum yum yum yum!

Parents :)

Mom and Pop came down and visited with me and Jake this weekend. we showed them the apartment, let them see that we're not living in squalor and that we're both healthy and happy.
We went to Big City for my and Jake's year anniversary (of our first kiss, yes we're goofy and have silly anniversaries.) we saw Untraceable, and it was creepy/scary/good. It was pretty graphic (burning a guy to death, killing someone with battery acid, bleeding someone out with papercuts) but it was really cool seeing the cyber-cops catch the bad guys.

Mom also got us some food (the fancy stuff we can't afford) and my freezer is chock-full!

I made a really yummy potato soup too! I'm going to share the recipe so you guys can enjoy it. It's really good and fairly cheap/easy to make.

1 diced onion
2 tbls butter
4 diced potatoes
1/4 tsp celery seed
1 cup chicken broth
2 cups of milk + 2 tsp of flour
salt and pepper

1. cook butter and onion in a 2 quart pot until onions are soft
2. add potatoes, celery seed and chicken broth
3. simmer for 15 minutes
4. slowly stir in milk and flour mixture
5. simmer for 5 minutes
6. put 1/2 of the soup into the blender and puree.
7. return puree back to pot. it's serves 4 people

I added a 1/3 cup of instant mashed potatoes to make the soup thicker, but that's just a personal preference.