Things to Make - Potato Chip Cookies

(Sorry, not the best photo, but at least you get the idea. Decadence pure and simple.)

We almost never have potato chips in the house. Not because I'm super healthy (ha!), but rather I can't resist them. Like a moth to a flame and all that. Seriously, I practically inhale them. But when I came across this recipe in The Chew: What's for Dinner?: 100 Easy Recipes for Every Night of the Week
(previously reviewed here), I figured that if we're going to bake cookies, we might as well go for serious decadence.

The cake batter alone is incredible. We. could. not. stop. eating.

Unfortunately, I used dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate to dip the cookies and the kids didn't like the taste of the finished product. So I had to eat them myself. See why I usually ban potato chips? Oh well, occasional indulgences are good for you, right?

POTATO CHIP COOKIES (slightly adapted from The Chew: What's for Dinner?: 100 Easy Recipes for Every Night of the Week)

Ingredients:
* 1 cup butter (yes, 1 WHOLE CUP), softened
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1 1/4 cup crushed potato chips
* 1 tablespoon vanilla
* 2 cups flour
* I cup milk chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream the butter and sugar with a mixer. Reduce speed to low and add 3/4 cup of potato chips. Mix. Add the vanilla and mix again. Add the flour until just combined - don't overmix.

3. Spoon small 1-inch balls of dough onto a lightly greased pan, spacing them 2 inches apart. Press flat.

4. Cook 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool.

5. Heat the chocolate chips in the microwave, stirring often. Dip each cookie into the melted chocolate, the roll the cookies in the remaining potato chips.

Things to Make - Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies

I'm not usually a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies, but the kids love them. You would think that I'd use this discrepancy as an opportunity to make my kids happy while eating less myself, but instead I've searched and searched for a wonderful chocolate chip cookie recipe so I can partake in yet another guilty pleasure. Turns out the answer is sea salt, which takes the ordinary cookie to a whole new level.

We found this recipe through Pinterest and it really is the best chocolate chip recipe ever. Amazing. Alice Currah deserves some sort of reward.

T and I like to make a batch every few weeks to "surprise" the girls when they come home from school. But, beware, they are quite addictive.

INGREDIENTS

2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 1/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

Preheat the oven to 360 degrees. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

Using a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar together on medium-high speed for 3 minutes, until nice and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla, and mix for 2 minutes. Reduce the mixer speed to medium-low and add the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. When the cookie dough has absorbed the dry ingredients, stir in the chocolate chips and mix until they are well distributed.

Drop 2 tablespoons of dough (or use a medium cookie scoop) onto the cookie sheet for each cookie, spacing them 2 inches apart. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the edges are nice and golden brown. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for 2 minutes [note from No Monsters - I also sprinkle the cookies with a little extra sea salt]. Then slide the parchment paper, with the cookies still on top, onto a wire rack to cool completely before serving.

(Recipe courtesy of The Daily Meal)

Things to Make - Christmas Cookies

The key is apparently mass quantities of butter.



One of these days I'll buy a rolling pin. Hopefully.


Do you Pinterest? On one hand, Pinterest may be the most addictive site ever. You can lose hours, if not days. In the world of Pinterest, all thoughts/ideas/recipes/wonder becomes reduced to a single picture, epitomizing the idea that the outside really matters (not only are we judging books by their covers, most of the time we're not even bothering to read the book). And some days the whole Pinterest ideology seems so daunting. It doesn't matter if you're the best cook in the world, if you can't style food then forget it. And when it comes to children Pinterest creates a world in which everyone's offspring spend their days smiling in mini-Boden while their mom makes sandwiches beautiful enough to hang in an art gallery as they play with aromatic homemade playdough. Don't get me wrong, I'm not mocking perfect parenting. At all. I aspire. Boy do I aspire (to what? I'm not sure, but that's a whole other post). I recently photographed homemade soap against a white background, I have no room to judge (and, yes, my photos were pinned!! yay me!!).

Anyways, I've written before about how I can't make cookies. And browsing through the perfect cookies on Pinterest only discouraged me more. So, while shopping at Trader Joes, I picked up a box of Christmas Cookie mix, packaged with sprinkles and frosting. We had so much fun that I've already purchased another - incredibly yummy - box. F might even have a future in baking. So I know this is a lame post. No family recipe. No new insights. Even the pics are just okay. Totally unpinterestable. But I'm okay with that. Because parenting isn't about perfection, it's about showing up. Even with a premade mix.

(And yes, if you're wondering, I borrowed that whole "parenting is showing up" line from Modern Family, my current source for words of wisdom, along with and Pinterest, of course.)



The girls work well together, despite the fact that F's so serious and P's so not.



T woke up in time to sprinkle. Trust me, they taste MUCH better than they look.

Things to Make - Grandma's Sorghum Cookies

It seems as if every family has a signature cookie recipe (or if not cookies, than cakes or pie or some sort of dessert). My mom's signature recipe is sorghum cookies. I grew up with these and just seeing the jar of sorghum (similar to molasses) on the counter brings back childhood memories. So yummy. I couldn't eat enough of them. Seriously divine.

The recipe, from Blue Creek Village Farmstead:

3/4 cup lard
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/4 cup sorghum (available here)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix all the ingredients and roll into balls. Bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes.