on the power of chocolate chip cookies.

in case you haven’t heard, my chocolate chip cookies are kind of a big deal. i’m pretty sure they’re responsible for at least half of my friendships and could probably get me out of a speeding ticket. maybe i should keep them in my car and give them out with my (super sweet and awesomely new) business cards.

baking and messes go hand-in-hand when your kitchen is barely big enough for you to stand in it and take a picture. i am basically inside of my refrigerator and straddling the washer/dryer. note the computer perilously perched on the sink… and every kitchen appliance known to man. what you can’t see is the recycling bin full of wine bottles and beer. we’re basically a cribs episode — all alcohol and condiments.

when i get tired of my 8:30-5:30 job and can’t deal with living in the city, i’m going to move myself to a beach in new england and bake these cookies all day. and ina garten will come over and eat them with me out on my veranda, both of us wearing sunhats and drinking lemonade.

yes, these are my fantasies. don’t mock me. and you know that dripping, half-finished batter is sexy. don’t deny it.

but in all seriousness, these cookies are damn good. if you’re a single girl trying to snag that boy, leave these on his doorstep (major props if you’re the guy trying to get the girl and you send them in the mail. girls love mail.). if you need some extra pull with your boss, bring these babies into the office (and make sure he smells them). if you really want a dress that you don’t have the money to pay for, make these and give some to your mommy (it works, promise). and if you just want to bake and eat something to make you feel good, these’ll do the trick.

try it. make them. tell me what they did for you.

weakness-inducing chocolate chip cookies
makes 4 dozen

* 2 sticks unsalted butter
* 2 1/4 cups flour
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 cup sugar
* 1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed
* 1 egg
* 1 egg yolk
* 2 tablespoons milk
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (do not use milk chocolate)
* coarse-flaked sea salt (optional, but recommended)

melt the butter on the stovetop until it begins to brown. the deeper the color, the deeper the flavor. i usually take mine to a light tan. allow to cool.

mix the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.

combine the sugars and melted butter in a stand mixer and cream until smooth and light. add in the egg, yolk, milk, and vanilla. slowly add in the dry ingredients in stages (i use a measuring cup so i don’t make a mess). near the end, mix in the chocolate chips until combined.

chill the dough in the fridge for no more than 2 hours. if you let it in for more, let it come to room temperature before baking.

preheat the oven to 375 degrees. scoop roughly 1-2 tablespoons into little balls and place 12 per sheet. sprinkle with coarse-flaked sea salt. bake for 14 minutes, rotating halfway.

cool on wire rack, if you have self-control.

on cream puffs and chocolate: the daring bakers may 2010!

oh. em. gee. i’m so excited about this post.

i joined the daring bakers in april, and this is my first entry! i couldn’t work on last month’s because of finals and graduating and moving and all that jazz, but i was totally tackling may.

the may 2010 daring bakers’ challenge was hosted by cat of Little Miss Cupcake. cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from peter kump’s baking school in manhattan and nick malgieri.

i’ve always wanted to make pate a choux… something about beating eggs into a dough until they met submission was particularly appetizing to me. plus, i like using a piping bag.

my pastry creme wasn’t as gooey as those i’ve eaten (though i haven’t eaten a lot because i really don’t like custard inside of my baked goods), but i assume that has something to do with the fact that i used fat free lactaid instead of whole milk.

they looked like cute little ducks, all lined up, ready to be built into a mountain!

i wasn’t very ambitious with the height, but there are only 3 of us here to eat it and creme puffs do not keep (as my dad learned yesterday when he found the mold).

i was impressed with how well it looked AND tasted. thanks, cat, for picking something so unique! i would have never made this otherwise.

totally looking forward to next month’s challenge… i love june. maybe because it starts with my birthday and i then consider the entire month mine. yep. that’s why.

check out the rest of the blogroll and learn how to make your own from cat!

you can also see some other cream puffs and learn how to make them here:

on hitting the wall.

they always tell you, those people who run marathons, that the last half mile or so is always the toughest. you start shutting down, envisioning the glorious leap across the finish line, and start wondering where in the hell it is and why someone keeps moving it farther away from you.

i wouldn’t know about marathons. i can run for all of 15 minutes before i start to pass out. if there was an elliptical marathon, i’d win for sure, but i’d probably look ridiculous doing it.

but i do know something about college, an epic 128-week marathon on studying, exams, classes, and work. and finally, finally, FINALLY, i’m closing in on the last 3 weeks — the bit where everyone starts cheering louder and jumping up and down and throwing “YOU CAN DO IT!”s around. except there really isn’t a cheering section in college. there’s just a lot of projects, papers, and final exams to cloud the view of that beautiful finish line banner (the banner i didn’t get chosen to carry at graduation, despite my near flawless academic record. boo).

my body jumped on board with the death-spin and threw in a monster migraine friday night, sending me into an unconscious state before 10:30. i spent all day saturday reading about revolutions and military take-overs and climate change and tornadoes (i’m taking some thriller classes this semester, boy). by sunday my “weekend” hadn’t felt so much like a weekend, except for the big-ass fishbowl margarita i drank on saturday night, which probably didn’t help the matter.

so when i hit the wall, i want baked goods. i want sugar and butter and sticky batter. i want the warm oven and the sweet smells. i don’t want anything difficult or confusion or with the possibility of not turning out right because when my face is smacked up against the bricks, failure is a source of a meltdown. i once balled my eyes out in the kitchen over mushy sweet potatoes that couldn’t possibly be turned into fries. i also scared my mother.

julie, of dinner with julie, unknowingly came to my rescue (it’s inspiring how many times people i’ve never met and have no idea who i am have saved me from college-related death). she posted a recipe for oatmeal lace cookies, and i scooped it up. they are so easy that there was no possibility of a teary meltdown (at least not one because of a baking catastrophe). my tweaks were few, and the result was a fabulously sweet, salty, nutty, buttery, crispy-chewy batch of goodness. i liken them to a bowl of granola, only one that’s swimming in butter, not milk. they were delicate and dainty in contrast to the messiness of school. i find them the perfect cure to the last-lap blues.

oatmeal walnut lace cookies
adapted from dinner with julie

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1 tsp amaretto
• 1 1/4 cups rolled oats
• 3-4 tablespoons of flour
• 1/4-1/2 cup chopped walnuts

in a small saucepan, heat the butter, sugar, and amaretto until fully melted and smooth. meanwhile, combine the oats and walnuts in a bowl. add the butter-sugar mixture and stir to combine. add in 3 to 4 tablespoons of flour until you can easily scoop the mixture and have it stay together (mine took 4).

drop by the tablespoon onto a prepared baking sheet (use parchment or silpat) and flatten with the spoon. make sure the cookies are at least 2 1/2 inches apart, as they will spread. also make sure that you get all of the “dough” out onto baking sheets before it cools, as the butter will start to congeal and you won’t be able to mold the oats into mounds anymore (if this does happen, heat it up in the microwave for a few seconds).

bake at 350* for 8-10 minutes, until bubbly and golden. allow to cool completely on the sheets before removing. store between layers of wax paper in an air-tight container.

on traditions, old and new.

i read a lot of food blogs, food magazines, and food websites. each holiday (be it thanksgiving, christmas, easter, the fourth of july… etc.) authors pull out all the stops, filling their pages and my head with dozens of fun, creative, and adventurous recipes to make to wow the family.

but my family doesn’t want to be wowed. we are creatures of habit and tradition, with ham, asparagus, potatoes, and carrots. this year, adam brought some of his ukrainian heritage to the table, literally, with some kielbasa (we don’t say no to sausage, even at breakfast) and a strangely sweet but oddly satisfying egg-cheese. don’t ask why it looked like a blob of cement and ignore that he had to ask “is this supposed to curdle like that?” when he was making it.i forgive him because he also had my mom by paska bread, of which i devoured half before 12pm.

i love traditions. i live for the familiarity of holidays and the predictability of my family. i like watching the 10 commandments and fighting over whether or not we should have a seder and if the last supper was full of matzoh (thanks, slate, for clearing that up), all the while yelling “MOOOOO-SESSSSSSS” from across the room. i also love the lamb-mold butter my mom always finds and puts on the table. apparently i used to eat butter when i was a kid, despite my parents telling me not to. defiant was my middle name.

c’mon… that doesn’t look like candy to a little kid?

the one part of the meal that we never really figured out a tradition for was dessert. every year i ASK for carrot cake, but we never make one. this time around, mumsie made a frozen key lime pie and a lemon yogurt cake, both from ina and both fabulous. given that it was something ridiculous like 80 degrees, the frozen pie was clutch. i plan on using the custard portion in my ice cream machine this summer.

i’d like that pie to become our new tradition.

but perhaps the best, most hilarious easter tradition my family carries out each year is the hunt for the baskets. the easter bunny stopped hiding the eggs because it took val too long to find them, but the baskets are still fair game. yes, we are 27 and almost 22, and yes, she’s married and i’m graduating in a month. yes, we are still childish children in mumsie and popsicle’s eyes. and yes… val lost. again. even adam, who didn’t even try to look for his, beat her.

ah, someday my kids (who will have the winner genes) will fight for their baskets. for now, i will continue to rub it in v’s face that she still cannot find her own basket.

on just desserts.

this week’s i heart faces theme has nothing to do with faces, but with all the yummy things we stuff them with: dessert. i was excited because i have many more photos of dessert on my computer than i do of faces.

i have posted quite a few on here over the course of this thing, but i did leave off one sequence of some particular good cupcakes that i made for my 21st birthday party. i served shrimp tacos, gazpacho, chips and homemade salsa, guac, and big, ice cold pitchers of mojitos.

for dessert, we indulged in margarita cupcakes, a riff on the “vegan cupcakes take over the world” variety, but including eggs because, as i’ve mentioned before, i really enjoy putting eggs in my baked goods.

the glaze was easy but something special. i used powdered sugar, lime juice, and tequila. more tequila than lime juice. enough tequila for it to taste like tequila. tequila that i got to purchase all by myself. and then i sprinkled on pink sugar to look like salt. yum.

head on over to i heart faces and check out all of the other mouth-watering recipes!

on car bombs and cake.

the first beer i ever tried was a guinness, a stolen sip from my dad’s glass. i imagined it would taste like chocolate, coffee, and whipped cream… like an alcoholic mocha latte sans sugar. it didn’t. but it didn’t taste bad.

and it tastes even better when you throw (or drop, i suppose) baileys into the mix. car bombs are my shot of choice. there’s the exhilaration that you know you have to down it fast because it will curdle, so you get all excited holding it in your hand.  some magical, chemical reaction happens in that glass. the malty beer and the silky irish cream (and in some cases there’s some irish whiskey tossed in for fun) mix into this beautiful, smooth concoction that tastes like the best chocolate milk you’ve ever had.

doing irish car bombs after dinner isn’t socially acceptable outside of my family’s christmas dinner table (proof), but mixing these ingredients into a dessert should be welcomed by anyone.

you may recall the exploding guinness cupcakes of the fourth of july. i was pleased with them overall, but i wanted something more decadent, rich, and gooey tonight. it’s a blustery weekend here in PA, and we need something to stick to our bones (because surely the corned beef and cabbage that our neighbor is making for dinner wouldn’t cut it.. you know).

i turned to the queen of sensual cooking, miss nigella lawson, for this baby. she’s captivating and mesmerizing, the type of woman i’d like to be in a few years. if the way to a boy’s heart is through his stomach, i’ve decided here and now that this cake will be my new “you’re a boy. i’m a girl. let’s stop this waste of time chatter.” calling card.

can anything bad happen when you melt a stick of butter with a cup of guinness and add sugar and cocoa? didn’t think so.

i retooled her plain cream cheese frosting recipe with irish cream flavor. while other recipes claimed that straight irish cream buttercream was too sweet, i knew that nigella’s cream cheese would help cut the sweetness and add the tang of when the car bomb starts to go sour, like that little last drop you suck up before it gets nasty.

it turned out looking like the head of a frothy pint, so i added the guinness shamrock to complete the look, as per my dad’s suggestion.

the cake was much more gooey than the original cupcake recipe. it had the perfect deep, dark chocolate flavor with the hint of malty stout in the background. and the icing? to die for. i’d like to be smothered in it before i’m buried.

it’s a great exclamation point at the end of an irish feast. happy saint patrick’s day!

irish car bomb cake
adapted from nigella lawson’s feast
makes 1 9″ round cake

for the frosting:

• 1 cup Guinness stout
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
• 2 cups granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup plain greek yogurt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

for the frosting:

• 8 oz cream cheese, softened at room temperature
• 1 cup confectioner’s sugar
• 1/4 cup Bailey’s Irish Cream
• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

make the cake: preheat the oven to 350*. butter a 9″ spring form pan and line the bottom with parchment. butter the parchment and set aside.in a large saucepan, heat the Guinness and butter until butter is melted. remove from heat. in a small bowl, mix the sugar with the cocoa powder and stir into the saucepan. in a second bowl, beat the eggs, yogurt, and vanilla. add into the saucepan. in a third bowl, combine the flour and baking soda. whisk into the liquid mixture until no lumps remain. pour into the prepared pan and bake for 45-50 minutes, testing after 45 with a toothpick in the center.

cool in the pan on a wire rack.

make the frosting: beat the confectioner’s sugar and the cream cheese until smooth. beat in the 1/4 cup of Bailey’s until smooth. beat in the heavy cream until a spreadable consistency. pile into the center of the cake and spread outward with an off-set spatula.

*bonus recipe: the irish car bomb

fill a pint glass half full with Guinness (from the can. it is better than the bottle. something about the widget in the bottom. just trust me on this). fill a shot glass 3/4 of the way full with Bailey’s irish cream. top off the shot glass with irish whiskey (jameson, to be authentic). assume the car bomb stance: hold the glass in your right hand, the shot glass in your left. lean forward slightly. drop the shot glass into the pint and QUICKLY chug. just chug.

then wipe your mustache. =)

on muffin tops.

no. not THOSE muffin tops that stick out of your jeans and make you feel a lot less sexy than you planned. not the ones that make you take off your jeans, put on sweatpants, reneg on your plans to go out, and spend the evening with adam brody and benjamin mckenzie.

oh.. you don’t do that? damn.

the positive-connotation muffin tops i’d like to discuss are the kind that come out of the oven. the fluffy, sometimes crunchy, sometimes sugary crown peeking out of the muffin tins, sometimes a little too high when you’re heavy-handed with the batter. i’m always heavy-handed with my batter.

baking muffin tops generally requires one to also bake muffin bottoms, but today i happily diverted the situation (in italics because i read that The Jersey Shore is trademarking their names… ridiculous? but i don’t want to be sued by some guido jacked up on hairspray and jello shots).

we had some brown bananas in the fruit bowl, which to me means an excuse to make goodies like smoothies and dessert. i did a quick google and found pages and pages of banana bread and muffin recipes, but the cookies caught my eye. i love, love, love oatmeal cookies… probably as a direct result of eating an oatmeal crème pie every day for lunch in grade school (and i probably split one with my now ex-boyfriend who never ever packed his own lunch and mooched off of the one my mom begrudgingly lovingly made me every morning of high school).

i had way more banana than the recipes called for, and the lack of fat in the recipe kicked in my cooking-knowledge that crispy cookies would not come out. what did come of the oven were warm, fluffy, chewy, slightly spicy muffin tops!

the original recipe was vegan (from one of my favorite sources, the fat free vegan kitchen), but since i do not believe in egg-replacer or chia seeds, i put in a real chicken egg. and twice the number of bananas. and some crystallized ginger that i hoarded from economy candy during my trip to nyc this weekend (this stuff is way better than what they sell in grocery stores. i also bought dried cantaloupe, which was heavenly!).

it was incredibly easy, which i qualify as i can do it in my pajamas and without lifting the kitchen aid mixer. i was also able to do all of the dishes while the cookies baked. this is my favorite part of baking: the competitive race between me, the sink, and the clock to see if i can successfully get everything washed, dried, and put away before the timer goes off. victory was mine today. it’s a sickness. i should get that checked.

so here’s the recipe. if you’re feeling vegan, substitute your egg. or leave it out. i don’t quite understand the science of eggs. perhaps you do.

banana-oatmeal muffin tops
makes 24

• 1 cup quick-cooking oats (i think mine were even 1-minute)
• 1 ¼ cup flour (could use just 1 cup if you have less banana/no egg)
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• ¼ cup chopped crystallized ginger
• ¼ cup raisins
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 egg
• ½ cup maple syrup (i used ¼ cup of maple and ¼ cup of agave so as not to use up all of either)

combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. combine the wet ingredients in another bowl. add the ginger and raisins to the wet ingredients. make a well in the dry, add in the wet, and stir to combine. drop by the tablespoon-ish onto silpat-lined (high-end – i’m at my parents’ house… usually would use parchment) cookie sheets and bake for 10-12 minutes. i used a little cookie scoop and fit 12 on each large sheet.  cool on a wire rack.

the best part about muffin tops is that you can eat at least 3 to equal a whole muffin. and there’s no weird muffin bottom to worry about. and these are actually pretty healthy, so you might even avoid the less desirable version of the muffin top (or muffin bottom…), too!

win.

on dinner parties (sort of).

last week, 408 threw down a pretty baller dinner party for some of the akpsi THON dancers and moralers (if that means nothing to you, i’m too tired from thursday night decisions to explain).

we made a lot of food, and because lyss is vegetarian, i was charged with supplying the protein. since we were having eggplant parm and baked ziti, i decided to make chicken parm… for the first time ever.

normal people wouldn’t recommend trying out a recipe for the first time on 20 people, but i like a challenge. luckily for me, chicken parm is pretty easy and fool-proof. and i had mark bittman on my side.

but really, it’s hard to mess up this:

dredge chicken in flour and dust off. dip in egg and let drip. coat in bread crumbs. pan-fry in olive oil and butter until crispy on both sides. drain on a paper towel. repeat with all the chicken breasts you are planning on making (i made 12.. hey-o!). cover the bottom of a big baking pan with tomato sauce. arrange chicken in pan in one layer. cover with mozzarella slices, more sauce, shredded parm, more bread crumbs, and parsley. bake in the oven at 375* until cheese is melted, crumbs are crispy, and chicken is entirely cooked through.

DONE.

and in other news… i’m really sick of winter. incredibly over it. i’ve been annoyed with it since january 2nd, and now it’s just out of control. STOP. SNOWING. but, if you squint, this first picture kind of looks like the beach, and not the view from the top floor of the business building overlooking the mountains and arboretum.

but this (and the memories of walking home last night in ballet flats and a fleece zip-up that not even soco and absolut could insulate) confirms that it is snow. a lot of snow. and wind. and cold.

and that is why i’m in my bed, where i plan to be all day tomorrow until the bar tour commences and i assume my role as “ginny o’tonic.” yep. get excited. i am =).

on existentialism.

just wait. this isn’t going to be deep. well, not that deep. about as deep as val and i can get at 10:00pm while watching the same tv show 3.5 hours apart.

val: “where are the nuts in honey nut cheerios?”
me: “that is a seriously important question.”
val: “we are having an existential crisis.”

truth be told, i have never thought about where the “nut” in honey nut came from. same with the frosted shredded wheat. there are quite a lot of things i witness on a daily basis that i never think that deeply about. kind of like how i never put 2 and 2 together that salem in sabrina the teenage witch was named that because of the witch trials. i mean, i know what the witch trials are, i just never really thought about it long enough.

there was also a similar incident with “pep boys” one day, but i cannot remember in any way what “aha!” moment conclusion i came to. all i know is that one day it all made sense.

luckily, i’m a problem solver. and existentialism was always my favorite genre in school. i tackled this problem head-on.

way down in the list of honey nut cheerios ingredients, down there after Vitamin D, is “natural almond flavor.”

zing. there are nuts in your honey nuts. one less thing to baffle us. thanks, cheerios =).

on mimicry.

on a weekend that my parents came to visit (not that weekend, you know, the one where i discovered the downside to being able to buy drinks at bars), val, adam, and i took them to a great restaurant in arlington, va.

val and adam had been there just for drinks, but loved it so much that they wanted to take us back for dinner. the liberty tavern has that power. oh yes, yes it does. and oh yes, yes i will be living right by it very soon. happiness.

i ordered some sort of fabulous pasta as my main dish, but the salad i got has stuck in my memory. it was a simple combination of spicy mixed greens, goat cheese rounds, and mushrooms. and on top sat a deep. fried. egg. obviously why i ordered it, this intrigued and excited me. the egg was whole and looked like it was hard-boiled, but was covered lightly in little crispy truffle chips and walnuts. and then when i stuck my fork into the center, the runny yolk oozed all over the lettuce, mixed in with those truffle bits, and carried them across the plate.

oh yeah, and they have fabulous home-baked bread.

and last night, after spending an entire day shivering and sneezing my way through class and around campus, i had a craving for the ooey, unctuous egg yolk.

while i couldn’t deep fry my own egg (that would be a disaster), i can poach a damn good egg. i’ve resorted to buying dried mushrooms because they last significantly longer than a pack of fresh ones in the fridge. so my salad was baby spinach and arugula, topped with feta and reconstituted mushrooms, some toasted chopped walnuts, and a poached egg, coated in paprika, salt, and pepper.

it wasn’t the tavern, but it brought a little bit of sunny yellow into my evening. it furthers my argument that whoever i marry will have to know how to poach eggs. so start practicing. =)