Slutty Brownies

A few weeks ago I stumbled up on the recipe for Slutty Brownies and with a name like that, I had to give them a try.  I am an Oreo lover, so the addition of whole Oreo's to brownie batter and cookie dough sounded like heaven!

I came across the recipe on the blog Whats Gaby Cooking and used that recipe exactly so will not be re-printing it here.  However I will include some helpful hints for when you decide to give it a try.

First, I just used the Tollhouse cookie dough recipe and just halved it so that I did not end up with a huge amount of extra dough.  I would also be sure that you use the correct size pan.  The recipe calls for a 9x9 pan and I did not have one so I went with my 8x8...not a good idea since I ended up having to bake it longer because the dough was thicker and would not cook in the middle.  It also got hard around the edges because of baking so long. 

I did like the combo of flavors, but these were a bit rich for me.  I definetly needed a large glass of milk to go with each brownie I ate!  In the end, a good treat to try, but probably not somthing that I would make again, unless it was requested by friends :)

Holiday Cookie Montage

It took some time for me to get this together, but here is a collage of the cookies that I made this year for the holidays.  Better late than never I guess!

French Macarons

While it feels like the spring is always a busy time... I forget how crazy things can be in the fall as well. That said I have been a total slacker with the blog and am now going to try and be better about posting, especially with the holidays coming up. And by holidays... I mean Halloween of course! I just got the cutest mini cookie cutters that are Halloween themed, must do something cool with them!

Fall craziness aside, I did take a week where I tried to master the French Macaron (this does not have coconut) and when I say "master" I mean try two batches before getting tired of spending all my money on sugar and egg whites. But really, I wanted to try this out because I wanted to be able to give a fabulous cookie to my friend who has a gluten allergy and these are gluten free cookies (they are made with almond flour, and no it is not available in the store, you have to grind them up yourself!). So while I am sharing pictures, just know that this is my first attempt, which actually went much better than my second (Martha's recipe was awful...gasp!).

I found the most success with the recipe from David Lebovitz's book The Sweet Life in Paris which is by the way an excellent read. The recipe was easy to follow, however I was only able to get one batch to come out of the oven successfully. I need to mess more with the temperature and the time. I did not follow the time exactly in the recipe, but I will post more about it when I can get it right. For now though, here are the pictures of my first attempt at Macrons. They truly are worth the effort. There is something about the crispy outside and the soft cream filling that is like no other cookie I have ever had!

David Lebovitz's French Chocolate Macaron Recipe

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Salted Caramel Sauce

One of my earliest memories of baking is making chocolate chip cookies with my dad. He was always the baker in our house growing up and he is still an expert cookie maker. I can remember standing at the counter watching him cream the butter and sugar together with a pastry cutter. To me it never seemed like a planned thing to make cookies. We would take the butter out and start, no waiting for it to come to room temperature. And, there were always chocolate chips in the pantry. I couldn't tell you where or when they were purchased, but they were just always there like a favorite stuffed animal. And maybe that is what chocolate chip cookies have become for me, a comfort food like no other, not only because of the salty, chewy, and sweet flavors, but because of the comfort of making them with family. Now as an adult, I always have chocolate chips in my pantry, just in case I need them.

It is my father's birthday today, so I have made chocolate chip cookies and will be dropping them off at his work this afternoon to surprise him. I used the recipe on the back of the Tollhouse chip bag. That is the one we always have used, and I follow it exactly. That recipe, hands down makes the best chocolate chip cookies. My only piece of advice is to bake them for the minimum amount of time listed on the package (usually 9 minutes).

As an aside, this recipe also always makes me think of the Friends episode when Phoebe tries to remember the recipe that her grandmother used to make chocolate chip cookies. Monica then makes about 100 batches of cookies to try and get it right, only to find that it was the recipe from the back of the Nestle chip bag that she used.

The other thing that I made was a Salted Caramel Sauce. My dad is a huge fan of ice cream, salt and caramel. I thought what would be better than a jar of homemade salted caramel to go over his ice cream. I used a recipe from Cara at Cara Lee Cupcakes and Cake. The recipe was super easy to follow and the sauce turned out delicious!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!