on Aug. 27
These No-Bake Cookies Are Better Than Yours.
04:01 am ~ Cookbook
Really. Here you go:Ingredients:
* 2 cups sugar
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1/2 cup Hershey's Special Dark cocoa* or other dutch-processed cocoa
* pinch salt
* 1/2 cup butter
* 1 vanilla bean**
* 1 cup creamy peanut butter
* 3 cups Quaker quick-cooking oatmeal
Preparation: In large saucepan, combine sugar, milk, cocoa, salt, and butter and mix well. Slit bean and scrape out seeds and pulp; add both pod and guts to the mixture. Bring to a boil and cover saucepan for 30 seconds to allow steam to wash sugar crystals down sides of pan. Stir mixture and bring it to a boil that can't be stirred down for 1 minute -- no less, or the sugar will be grainy. Then remove from heat; remove the vanilla beans, then stir in peanut butter until smooth. Add oatmeal and mix well. Do not use regular or instant oatmeal; quick-cooking oatmeal is essential to the success of this recipe.
Let the mixture stand for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to let the oatmeal absorb some of the liquid.
Drop mixture by spoonfuls onto waxed paper or parchment lined baking sheets or Silpat sheets. Let cool until you can touch the mixture; then, if desired, reshape the cookies to make them more a ball shape. Let cool completely; store at room temperature. _____
- "I don't like dark chocolate," you might say. Well, as it happens, powdered cocoa by definition doesn't have cocoa butter in it; that means all powdered cocoa is "dark" cocoa. This variety just tastes a little better in this recipe.
** Now that you can get excellent quality vanilla beans for a low, low price off eBay (right now you can get a quarter-pound for $4.99 plus $3 shipping), you have no excuse. Buy a bag and sell the extras to your friends.
on Jan. 20
These Chocolate Chip Cookies Are Better Than Yours.
09:26 pm ~ Cookbook
Really. 2,231 batches of cookies later and I think I've got them close to perfect. Close... but still working on it.
INGREDIENTS
- 2/3 cup real butter
- 1/3 cup butter-flavored Crisco
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup honey, heated
- 2 eggs
- 3 TABLEspoons vanilla extract (Madagascar, if available)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 teaspoons hot water
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 cups Ghirardelli 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips (see below)
- 1 cup milk chocolate chips
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Place butter in a microwave-safe bowl. If the brown sugar is clumping at all, place it in another bowl. Microwave both at 30% power. Watch closely; you want the butter to melt completely, but not go a second longer. Crisco should be room temperature.
- Use an electric mixer to cream together the butter, Crisco and water, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth.
- Heat honey until thin; add and mix well.
- Beat in the eggs one at a time. Mix thoroughly, meaning high speed for a long time. This should be smoooooth.
- Change mixer to low speed and add the vanilla; mix thoroughly. Combine baking soda and hot water together (baking soda doesn't dissolve, so mix well), then add to batter along with salt. Mix thoroughly.
- Manually stir in flour, then chocolate chips. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
- Bake for about 14 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are golden brown. Don't overbake.
NOTES
- Butter vs. Crisco: I have always been a really big proponent of using the highest-quality natural ingredients available. No margarine or synthetic vanillin here. But through zoodles of tests, I've come to realize that in the case of these cookies, you need a little Crisco to keep them soft over time. Except that they are nasty with regular Crisco: you must use the butter-flavored Crisco. If you just can't bring yourself to believe it, or if all of the cookies are to be consumed straight out of the oven, just make it with one full cup of butter and no Crisco.
- Chocolate chips: I recommend the specified chocolate for a couple reasons. The Ghirardelli melts in the cookie (unlike Hershey's) and has a wonderful, almost fruity overtone (which is perfect if you use orange blossom honey in the recipe, and even better than perfect when combined with the subtle undertones of Madagascar vanilla); in fact, it is even liked by people who swear they don't like dark chocolate. I find the brand of milk chocolate chips are less critical; but they do provide a nice balance to the intensity of the dark chocolate. 3 cups is fine, but heavy-duty chocolate lovers can push the recipe to 4 cups of chips with no problem.
on June 5 2007
Greenville train station
on May 29 2007
FWA, part 2
on May 28 2007
Freedom Weekend Aloft
11:10 am ~ Pics and video
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on May 27 2007
April trip to Birmingham (photos)
03:31 pm ~ Pics and video
We went to visit Mimi (Bethany's grandmother) at her apartment. Jonathan loved the fountain outside. He enjoyed a visit to Big Daddy's work, where he got to climb into big trucks and - his favorite! - "drive" a forklift. We then went to the lake.
Leaving WordPress...
02:54 am ~ Our lives
Moving to YACS.
For those who care: I was never really satisfied with WordPress, which was running PlanetLovegrove for the past year. As much as other people love it, I just found it to have too much overhead (too many steps to make a post) and too difficult to configure and customize.When I was helping with the TAG game, I needed a super quick and easy management system that would let me built a complex and powerful site with as little work as possible.
I tried Joomla, which was massively powerful but it was just a little too hard to work. Searching around, I finally settled on YACS, a little-known CMS from France.
It turned out to be a great choice - bjtag.net had forums, a blog, a wiki, and simple photo and video capabilities, with very little setup or ongoing management from me. So I'm bringing it over here. Hopefully you will enjoy the results!
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