Tuxedo Strawberries

I'm not going to lie...I'm a little embarrassed to post about these. I am SO out of practice! But I haven't posted in a few days, so I figured I might as well. On Saturday we are having Ad's mom up for Valentine's lunch, and she loves chocolate covered strawberries. I make them for her a few times a year, so I decided to make these tuxedo strawberries to garnish the dessert I'm making, and also make extra for her take home. The last time I made tuxedos was last Valentine's; I think I should make them a little more often to keep in practice! I just couldn't get my "v"'s consistent on all the strawberries, and the bows...forget about it! Maybe I can blame it on "background distractions?" I'm not a big chocolate covered strawberry person, but I ate a few to "hide" my mistakes...maybe there is something about the chocolate not being set up all the way that makes them taste better to me? I don't know, but they were awesome. I could of eaten the whole tray, but I have to keep remembering...beach in April!

Blondies

Blondies, like brownies, are one of those things that I've always struggled with. I've just never been able to find a recipe that I really liked...until today. I finally made it out last night and got some items to replenish the Pantry, and was originally planning on making some kind of biscotti. I ended up searching Allrecipes for top recipes that used chocolate chips, and came across one for blondies, and figured I'd give it a go. Of course, I had to mess with the original recipe (you'd think 400 people rating it 5 stars would tell me it's already perfect, right?....Uhhhh, no.) but I really liked the end result.

Blondies
2/3 c. melted butter
2 c. brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
a couple glugs of vanilla extract (around 1 tbsp.)
2 c. all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/2 c. shredded coconut (I put this through a small food processor to make it finer)
1 pkg. chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until light and on the fluffier side (you won't be able to get it super fluffy because the butter is melted, but it will increase some in volume.) Add in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and coconut until combined. Mix in chocolate chips.

Spread batter evenly in a prepared 9x13 pan (I actually will probably use either a 11x15 or a 1/2 sheet next time, as I like bar cookies to be on the thin and wide side.) Bake for approximately 30 minutes. They will be slightly gooey on the inside, but will set up when cooled.

I think the only thing I will do differently next time is use milk chocolate chips...the store I went to was out of them last night, and semi-sweet were only $1.24 a package...I'm just not a big fan of semi-sweet, though. Still, the blondies were still great, and I will be cutting them up in the morning and adding them to my shipment of other cookies to send to a solider in Iraq!

Operation Baking Gals R6

Saturday starts a new round of Operation Baking Gals, so I'm stocking the freezer with a few types of cookies so that I'm all ready to pack my box early in the shipping period. As I've said in other posts, I love versitile cookie doughs. My favorite chocolate chip cookie dough (other than one that I've already posted) is one that I can do so many things with. Today I chose to make Valentine Sugar Cookies and Andes Mint Chocolate Cookies out of the dough.

Cookie Dough
1 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. packed brown sugar
1/4 c. white sugar
1 pkg. instant pudding mix
2 eggs
1/2 tbsp. vanilla (I really just do a few glugs)
1/2 tbsp. butter flavoring (the pantry has been out of this, as well)
2 1/4 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together butter, brown sugar, and white sugar for a few minutes. Add pudding mix and extracts. Beat in eggs until mixture is really light and fluffy. Add flour and baking soda and mix until well combined.

For the sugar cookies, I used vanilla pudding mix. I rolled tbsp. full of dough in sugar/sprinkle mix (the dough is soft and sticky, so you have to put it in the sugar first and then roll it) and then baked on ungreased cookie sheets for about 10 or so minutes, or until the edges just started to get golden. You can check the bottoms, too; they should just be light brown.

For the Andes Cookies, I used chocolate pudding mix and added 1 bag of Andes baking chips after my flour was combined. Then I just dropped tbsp. full of dough on ungreased cookie sheets and baked for about 10 minutes. Be careful not to overbake, though...I let a few go a little long. These don't look the most beautiful; if I weren't shipping them off to Iraq and had to worry about the "melting" factor, I would of melted more Andes chips and striped them.

I have done so many things with this recipe; added butterscotch chips and chopped honey roasted peanuts...coconut and white chocolate chips...there are SO many different things you can do, especially when you factor in the many types of pudding mix that are out there!

These cookies are INCREDIBLY good, but I have recently realized that if I go "cheap" and use margarine instead of butter, they are too soft and will stick to each other when stored.

Baking Gals Thank You

I just received a letter today from SFC Alex Herrera, who is stationed in Iraq, thanking Baking Gals for the shipment of cookies that we sent. It was really great of Alex to send a letter, along with a picture. I'm glad that they enjoyed them!

PB&J Bars

Paige's Pantry is empty. I don't mean a little empty. I mean like really empty. In the "old days'" (bc the crappy economy) I was always making sure that I had "back stock" of everything you could imagine for any baking emergency that may arise. I guess an empty pantry forces one to be a little creative, hence the creation of these PB&J Bars. Most recipes that I found called for peanut butter chips...pb chips?! I don't even have any chocolate chips! And the jelly part...I had 6 jars of different types of jellies and jams that were almost empty (apple, black cherry, raspberry, marmalade, apricot, and tart cherry) so I figured I might as well clean out a shelf in the fridge while I'm at it and mix the jams/jellies all together. Since I couldn't find an exact recipe for bars that I wanted to try, I decided to concoct one out of a cookie recipe. I thought they turned out pretty yummy, but definitely needed strawberry jam for a true "pb & j" flavor.

PB&J Bars
1/2 c. butter
1/2 c. peanut butter
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. quick cooking oats
1 c. strawberry jam (more or less to your liking)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together butter, peanut butter and sugars until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla and beat for a few minutes to really get it nice and light. Add flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and oats and mix until combined.

Spray a 9x13 pan with cooking spray. Pat 2/3 of the dough mixture into the pan. The dough will be sticky, so use wet hands to pat it down. Bake for approximately 15 minutes. Cool until the puffiness goes away.

Spread jam onto the baked layer (if you have not waited for the puffiness to go down, the jam will not spread, but will sink...and yes, I found this out when I was too impatient to wait for it to cool.) Take remaining 1/3 of dough, break it up into small pieces and place it evenly on top of the jam layer. Using wet hands, pat it down.

Bake for about 30 more minutes, until top is browned and doesn't jiggle. Cool slightly before cutting; refrigerate to set up.

EZ Bake Oven Fun

The girls got an EZ Bake Oven for Christmas this year, and mean mommy has only let them use it once! The mix that came with it was DISGUSTING, and the end result was a bunch of "ewwww!"s and me having to clean up the mess. So today, with nothing else to do on a snowy Sunday, I decided to look up recipes that they could use, instead of "cheating" and using a mix. We used a scaled down chocolate chip cookie recipe, and used mini M&M's since the pantry was out of chocolate chips. Except for being a little crusty, they didn't turn out too bad. They also made another batch, left out the M&M's, and rolled the dough in colored sugar and Valentine's heart sprinkles. Em ate a little bit of one of the M&M cookies, and said they were good but "too hard." In the end, all four cookies ended up in the garbage...but they had fun, and that is what counts.

Boredom Baking

I have a feeling there will be more posts titled "Boredom Baking" in the upcoming weeks, as this is the last week that I will be working at the cafe. It stinks, but that is the way the economy goes, I guess. If anyone needs a pastry chef, let me know. =(
I have such a hard time with boredom baking...I think maybe I need to find a hobby. I get bored, get antsy, so I start reading one of my million baking books. Then I get antsy to bake something. And that means baking something that has no actual purpose...no place to go. I don't actually want to eat it, Ad and the girls want to eat too much of it.
On Friday, I finished my "to do" list at work really early, so when I got home I made some short dough...for no actual purpose, just because I thought I might use it sometime in the near future for something. So last night I decided to make a few cut outs using the dough, and the end result was these cookies. Normally I would decorate them with royal icing, but I decided to use regular buttercream. The girls thought they were cute, especially the ones that I made that had their names. Em also informed me that they tasted much better than normal because they were "nice and soft...not so hard." LOL; I guess she isn't into the royal icing so much. =)