A Waffles and Cookies Kinda Day

Even before I knew there would be [a small amount of] snow this weekend, I was ready for spending the long haul at home this weekend -- my car has been in the shop since Wednesday night.  I get cabin fever readily, thanks to working from home (both a blessing and a curse, especially when you enjoy participating in adult conversations from time to time) and spending the rest of my time with a toddler (ditto -- I'm kidding.  Really.).

Those of you who live near stores and shops and other convenient places to go on foot will probably never know just how stranded one can feel without a car or mass transit in a rural area, or when the winter weather is bad for weeks on end and driving somewhere for recreation doesn't seem like a sane thing to do.  This is when rural living can really start to wear on me.

So I had a [loose] plan to combat the cabin fever.  Bake and play in the snow and eat grilled cheese for lunch.  And it was a pretty good day, if I do say so myself -- even if it started with Nathan waking up two hours earlier than usual.  Homemade waffles in the waffle iron, the kind with the egg whites folded in at the last minute (recipe here; it's the best one of the three I've tried so far).  Two bouts of playing in the snow and pulling Nathan in the sled with homemade sugar cookie dough chilling in the fridge, awaiting our return for baking.

Recipe is from Betty Crocker here; I only made 1/3 of the recipe because I don't need 96 cookies in my house all at once, thank-you-very-much.

Tomorrow I hope to have the energy to bake some bread.  We'll see.  The snow will have lost its appeal (to me, anyway), but I'm sure I'll have to endure it again for the sake of my little one. 

I'm a little wary that I won't keep my sanity through Sunday and Monday... Just thinking about it is making me want to go somewhere.  Anywhere.  Today we had a hankering for juicy hamburgers for dinner, but we don't have a car that all three of us can pile into to go out to eat.  Oh, man, I still want that hamburger!  I'm starting to wonder if writing this post was a mistake.... wish me luck keeping the stir crazies at bay.

Oh, and happy weekending!

Togetherness is…Chocolate Chip Cookies

I’ve been on the lookout for ways to get Nathan involved in more of my daily activities and let him “help” me around the house with some meaningful tasks.  He’s been “helping” me sweep by holding the dustpan steady, using his own broom and stepping in and around my dust piles.  Okay, so I didn’t need help with that last one.  But I did need some help making chocolate chip cookies.

I mixed the wet ingredients in the stand mixer and Nathan combined and mixed the dry ingredients himself by hand.  I snapped some fun photos and learned a thing or two about making the best chocolate chip cookies ever.  Scroll down for my secrets to baking perfect, fluffy, tall, soft chocolate chip cookies -- the best ones you'll ever have!



After adding just his first ingredient he knew what we were doing here, and immediately reached for the other measuring cups I'd already prefilled.  He was on a mission!



I love how intent and focused he was.



We did a little tasting.

 

A nosy intruder joined us only to get grabbed at by a toddler.



See where the intruder is now?  (In the background, on the countertop!)



Uh oh.

 

Nathan knows something's not right here... See the little face peeking from the cabinet?

Ready for the goods?  Here are my secrets to baking perfect, fluffy, tall, soft chocolate chip cookies -- the best ones you'll ever have!   (I’m sorry to report that none of these involve a cute little boy with too-long-hair):

1. Start with this recipe from Better Homes & Gardens.  Or, at least choose a recipe that takes equal amounts of butter and vegetable shortening and uses more brown sugar than white sugar.

2. Refrigerate the dough for two to three hours before baking.  This gets you a nice, tall cookie that doesn’t spread out very much as it bakes.  (Better Homes & Gardens didn’t tell you that in the recipe, did they?  Who’s better now?)

3. Bake batches of cookies on one cookie sheet at a time, placing cookie sheet on the middle rack of your oven.  Put the dough back in the fridge until you’re ready to spoon out the next batch.  Make these cookies bigger than you think they should be – big, rounded teaspoonfuls (think almost ping-pong ball sized) are perfect for this recipe.

4. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper for easy cookie removal and even easier clean up. 

5. Let your cookies cool for one to two minutes before transferring them onto a cooling rack. This lets them set without overcooking them. 

6. These cookies don’t last more than a few days before going stale.  The good news is there are two ways to combat this, and one of them is not “eat them as fast as you can” – I’ve tried it, and although it works, I don’t necessarily recommend it! 

A)      You can freeze the cookies in batches with great results.

B)      You can bake about half of the dough and leave the other half of the dough covered in the fridge for no more than three days. Bake the rest when you’re good and ready—this got me two fresh batches of cookies in one week without all the extra time, energy and cleanup.  Needless to say, I like this solution the best!

They're best enjoyed with local, hormone-free milk.

The veggies are there because we were trying to be...healthy.  Yeah, that's right!

Enjoy!

For the Love of Chocolate

So, what do you make when you're dying for something chocolatey and the only form of chocolate in the house is cocoa powder?  (Did I mention that my car was towed to the shop tonight?  Yeah.)  Obviously, you make the best cocoa brownies.  Ever.

This is the first time I've baked something other than a potato in my new oven -- I can't believe I waited so long to bake!  And since I'll probably be home all weekend without the use of my car, maybe I'll finally make a cherry pie with all the cherries I picked on the farm a few weeks ago and was forced to freeze when the oven kicked it.

These really are the best brownies I've ever had, but if you make them, heed my warning:  Just eat one.  I greedily ate two (what was I thinking?!) and almost instantly regretted it.  All that richness... I just might have to spend all my free, car-less time exercising to work it off.