Chocolate Chip Cookies

The classic cookie. Chocolate chip.
My little brother prefers them with white chocolate chips, which I have to say is really tasty; and I want to try this recipe with m&m's one day. I found this recipe on some random website, via google, and they haven't failed me yet. A friend of mine tried to make them, but instead of putting 3/4 tsp salt she put about 3/4 a cup of salt and tried to get most of it out. Needless to say they didn't turn out that great, although they were completely gone by the end of the day.
This is a very easy, basic recipe. It says to use a whisk or spoon to mix it, which happens to be my preferred method anyways, but feel free to use an electrical mixer on the lowest setting. Make sure you do use a spoon, though, when you mix the chips in.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup soft butter
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 c ups flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 cups chocolate chips (any kind)

Directions:
Mix sugars, butter, vanilla and eggs with a wire whisk or wooden spoon until completely blended. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt. Dough will be stiff. Make sure all of the flour is mixed in. Stir in chips with a wooden spoon.
Drop dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet in teaspoonfuls about 2 inches apart. Bake 8-10 minutes at 375 degrees.
Let cool on pan for a few minutes before moving to a wire cooling rack.

Happy holidays everyone, and enjoy!

Chocolate & Coffee

Mocha cupcakes with coffee icing, and chocolate chip smiley faces =)

In my opinion, the cupcakes were more chocolate than coffee, so if you wanted to you could cut back a little on the cocoa powder and/or add maybe a teaspoon more coffee. Although if you're using coffee icing, I think it brings out enough of that coffee flavor without being overpowering.

MOCHA CUPCAKES

Ingredients:
2 cups ap flour
2 cups sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup vegitable oil
2 eggs
1 cup buttermilk
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbs instant coffee
1 cup hot water

Directions:
Measure flour, sugar, cocoa, oil, eggs, buttermilk, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Dissolve coffee into hot water, then add to bowl. Beat on medium for two minutes, until smooth. Batter will be very thin. Divide into cupcake tin, bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Cool completely before icing.

COFFEE ICING

Ingredients:
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 tsp instant coffee
5 cups confectioner sugar
6 tbs soft butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup milk (plus some extra)
handful of chocolate chips if desired

Directions:
In a mixing bowl beat butter until fluffy, gradually add 2 1/2 cups of sugar and cocoa powder, beat well. Slowly beat in milk and vanilla.
Add the remaining sugar, mix until smooth. Add extra milk to reach a spreadable consistency.
If the icing is too runny when you put it on the cupcakes, put the iced cupcakes in the refrigerator for about ten minutes to harden the icing, the chocolate chips will stay on after that.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
L

Recipe: Belated Halloween Edition

For Halloween I thought I'd go all out, I made Pumpkin Cupcakes as well as Sugar cookies cut into the shape of bats and pumpkins and cats. I think it was all rather a success, and I seem to enjoy spamming this blog with a lot of updates all at once, so here it goes.

SUGAR COOKIES

The sugar cookie recipe is from my Mom, we make them every year for Christmas, always have, and a few years ago we started making them occasionally for Valentines day or Halloween. It sounds silly, but these taste completely different than they do at Christmastime, although they're still just as tasty. It's a pretty easy recipe, I don't think you could mess it up too badly.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tbs vanilla
3 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Directions:
Mix flour, bakign soda, and salt in a bowl, set aside. In a large bowl cream butter, add sugar and beat until fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, mix together. Slowly add the flour mixture until thoroughly mixed in. Chill for 2 hours.
Roll the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, cut into shapes with cookie cutters and add sprinkles. Bake at 375 degrees for 5-8 minutes, cool on wire rack.

PUMPKIN CUPCAKES

Now, the pumpkin cupcakes seem a bit unusual, but they taste amazing. I iced them with this great Cream Cheese Icing recipe I have and decorated them just using a bag of colored icing.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup granulated sugar
2 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2 large eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk mixed with 1 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin

Directions:
Beat oil and sugars together in a large mixing bowl. In a seperate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Add the eggs to the sugar mixture, alternately add flour mix and buttermilk/vanilla, starting and ending with flour. Beat in the pumpkin until smooth.
Scoop batter into lined cupcake tins 3/4 of the way full. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Let cool completely before icing.

CREAM CHEESE ICING

Ingredients:
8 ounces cream cheese, soft
2 cups confectioners sugar
4 tbs butter, soft
1 tsp vannilla

Directions:
Beat together cream cheese and butter until smooth, add sugar and vanilla and continue to mix until it is a smooth, spreadable consistency.

All of this might be a bit belated, but you can always have pumpkin cupcakes during Thanksgiving, and I've yet to find someone who doesn't like sugar cookies.

<3

Recipe: Scrumptious

I've wanted to try this for awhile [the blogging style, not the recipe], and this recipe turned out really well so I thought I might as well share it. I got the recipe off of foodnetwork.com. It's originally from Claire Robinson, and when I found the recipe I somehow could only access the video of it; which you'd think would be more thorough than it actually is. But in any case it turned out really tasty. I'm not a big fan of the name Millionaires Shortbread [the original name], so my sister substituted it with Scrumptious.
It's a very easy recipe, kind of time consuming with the caramel layer but I think it's definitely worth it.

Ingredients:
Shortbread -
2 cups flour
2/3 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup cold butter, cut up

Caramel layer -
2 14 oz cans sweetened condensed milk
2 tbs butter

Chocolate layer - 4 cups chocolate chips [or other melt able chocolate], semisweet
1 tbs shortening, to help the chocolate harden
1/2 cup chopped pecans [optional]

Step 1: Combine flour, sugar, cold cut up butter, and salt in a food processor, pulse until crumbly. Press into the bottom of two greased and floured 9x9 pans or one 9x11 pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Let cool.
Step 2: Melt together 2 tbs butter and canned milk. Make sure it doesn't scorch and keep a close eye on it, stirring constantly. This is the most tedious part of the recipe, it may take up to around 40 minutes. It will be ready when it's a light caramel color and quite thick, you should be between the consistency of cake batter and cookie dough. Pour and spread evenly over shortbread crust. It might be a little difficult to spread, but if you use a plastic spatula it should work better.
Step 3: Melt chocolate in a double boiler or in a non-stick sauce pan on low, until smooth. Make sure you stir as it melts. Spread chocolate evenly over caramel layer, it will be easier to spread than the caramel. Sprinkle chopped pecans on top if desired.
Let it set up for a little while before you dig into it. The longer it sits the better it seems to cut. It's also easier to manage if you cut it into bars.

I don't have any pictures of the bars cut individually, by the time I thought of that they were nearly gone. I hope you like these Scrumptious cookie bars.

Best Wishes,
L

Thursday

WRITERS BLOCK

I have been in this block for months. It's driving me, quite literally, crazy. I can't write effective poems, stories, commentaries, even my journal entries are lacking. I've tried reading novels for inspiration, other peoples work for inspiration. Looking at different types of art, and listening to music for inspiration. I sit down with my pen and my notebook, knowing exactly what I want to write, and I can't get more than a few sentences out. It's not that I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with ideas, or theories upon which to expand. It seems to be more about not being able to translate effectively the...emotion that is hidden somewhere in these things.
It's like losing your appetite; you have food in front of you, you know what you might want to eat, but when you finally bring yourself to put it in your mouth, it tastes like sand and you're no longer hungry in the slightest. It's nearly unexplainable. A person might think that it's just not having the will enough to write, or being "unsatisfied" with your own work. It's honestly not that simple. I'm sure other people would agree that the things I force out of myself while in this block of unwritten, are truly not good. Not that I've worked up the nerve to show them.
It was better, three or so years ago, when I would write something, I could go for hours, listening to any music really loudly, blocking out everything else and the words just spilling out of me. Someone would need my attention, and I would jump a few inches up in the air because I honestly did not see them standing at my shoulder. When I was finally done with those pages, I would read it over, revise, check grammar and spelling, look things up if necessary, and ask my Mom or my brother to come read it, and give me feedback. For the most part it was positive, nothing too drastic, it seemed, needed revision.
Nowadays, not only am I more self-conscious of my writing, but I take things said about it more personally. I also think that the quality, while maybe it didn't go down, certainly didn't go up a significant amount. I don't want to be at the same level of writing that I was two years ago. The majority of my English teachers loved me, because my writing was good. But I was made to write the short story, and the two essays; and I'm the type of person who wants to do their best whenever possible in that type of situation.
I tend to go into that kind of trance I mentioned earlier when I'm ranting to my friends. Through instant messaging mostly, I just zone out until I'm done making my point, or until I run out of steam. Maybe I need to work on channeling the energy in those rants toward something more creative.

We'll see how that works out, shall we?

Setting Up

So, I decided to start another blog. Because I'm bored and because it might be a nice, possibly successful[?] way to start writing things that don't suck.

Let's begin.