#2 Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake (or bars)

It's chocolate chip cookie cake time! Sean asked for a cookie cake for his birthday this year. I have tried this recipe before and wasn't crazy about it, but I thought it might be a good time to adapt recipe #2. I fully expected this one to flop. I baked it December 21st for a surprise party we held for Sean that evening, and I hoped I wouldn't need to run out just before guests arrived to purchase something different! I remembered certain things I hadn't liked about the recipe the first time around, and tried to edit a bit to improve. It worked! And best of all, this time I actually recorded those changes. :) (Yay, me!)

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This is the chocolate peanut butter fudge I ate while working on the cookie
Delicious. Hey, a girl's gotta' keep up her strength, you know??

The changes I tried were simple... mostly I just added more eggs and flour to my already totally awesome recipe. Then I divided it into two small brownie sized pans, and baked for 25 minutes. Why two small pans and not one large pan? I'd like to say I had the foresight to realize a larger pan might not bake evenly. In truth, however, I don't have access to a full sized oven right now. I bake everything in my little microwave/ convection oven. And it comfortably holds these quarter sheet pans, one on each rack.

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Here's the birthday boy, and the finished product... it's a success! (I plunked the hat on him AS he blew the candle out. He did not appreciate that.)

I imagine Sean might be less than thrilled to have his picture here... but how else will you see the end result??



The cakes were cooled and frosted with a little design on them. The next morning I cut the leftover cake into squares and put it into one of my many Santa cookie jars. I am sad to say that these cookie jars were empty ALL SEASON this Christmas... uncharacteristic, to say the least! It was mostly because an altercation I had with the flu landed me in bed for a week in the beginning of the month! By Christmas however, all cookie jars were full. One was full of terribly crunchy, overbaked molasses crinkles, but we ate some anyway, and that just means we try that recipe again next week!! (note to self: remember to record that molasses crinkles are DONE well before they APPEAR done!)

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It's a little creepy that Santa is pictured here without a head, and with a belly full of cookie bars. But, try not to think about it. Go bake some cookies instead.

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All's well that end's well, right? And recipe #2 is ready.

#1... Cake Truffles!!!

Well, I definitely have these perfected! I'm not saying they couldn't be improved. And I'm sure I will be able to come up with lots of fun variations over the years, but for today I am pretty darn content. And anytime my children rave about a 'cookie' the way they have raved about this specific batch, I consider the test a success!

These little things are pretty popular right now; super simple, ridiculously rich, and delightfully decadent. The filling, when properly mixed, will come out smooth, creamy, and rich. It's seriously difficult to believe what comprises its magnificent middle!

So, here's what you do: bake a cake. Any cake. Try chocolate, just for kicks. Yum. Cool said cake a bit. Now, dump it into a large bowl. The larger the better... you want lots of stirring room. Empty a full container of frosting (may I suggest chocolate??). This is just the regular can/ tub/ plastic container of frosting you get next to the cake mixes at the grocery store. Grab your wooden spoon and stir, stir, stir. It doesn't take too long, but you will JUST be thinking 'this will never work... I need more frosting!' when suddenly the whole concoction will undergo a truly magnificent change. Practically a chemical reaction! Practically. Now, take this super smooth creamy dark goo, and roll it into balls. I have marvelous restaurant-type plastic disposable gloves, but dive right in there with your hands if you don't. These should be about...let's see... ping pong ball size, maybe? Or slightly smaller. (you should see me trying to work this out with my hands right now) A bit smaller than a golf ball. Or golf ball size. Roll them nicely, put them in the refrigerator for a few minutes.

So far so good... really this all went quickly. Now... melt a bag of milk chocolate chips, a little blob of Crisco (maybe a teaspoon or two), and some peanut butter. To taste. I used about a quarter cup. Probably. (See why it will take me a year to get measurements down?? I guess that part of this recipe was a failure.) Melt in a deep narrow bowl (a big glass measuring cup thing works great) in the microwave for a minute or two, stir well. When you take it out to stir it and the chips are melting as you stir it up, it's ready. It's OVER ready if you melt it all the way in the oven. You want to stir it up. Now, using a fork, drop a cake ball in, flip it over, to coat, and lift it out. With the fork. Wipe the bottom of the fork across the side of the bowl to remove excess chocolate, and drop on waxed paper lined sheets. Do a little swirly-cue on top if you need a bit of pretty. Chill a few minutes until hardened. Now, get a BIG glass of milk, and sit down in front of your favorite holiday movie (or with a special book) and enjoy your truffle. So so so good. So rich... I ate three the other day, throughout the day, and nearly died. Three is TOO many. You will get 40-50 from a recipe. Store these in the fridge... I LOVE them cold and crispy right out of the refrigerator!!!

Another thing I tried... yellow cake mix, to which I added peanut butter (again with the amounts. I should have paid better attention... a cup or less) and baked. Cool, mix with white frosting (add more peanut butter here if you like, just a little). Dip in melted milk chocolate chips (no peanut butter here. That's just overkill) YUM!!

Try adding peppermint extract to the chocolate balls, no peanut butter (ugh) and after you dip them in melted semisweet chips, sprinkle some crushed candy canes on top. Mmmm. Festive.

You will love the ease of these AND the spectacular results. Your family will beg for them. A note from last year... I tried a yellow cake with chholate frosting and semisweet chips for dipping... I didn't love this combination. Waste your time in other ways instead.

Recipe One... check!

I need to take photos next time.

No, my cookbook recipes will not read like this. Gosh, I HOPE not. What if they do??? I will need major editing!!!

Lisa Hannigan - I Don't Know

Such a happy, sweet video!

Seventeen Days of SnailMail 365 completed!

So... since December 2nd I am happy to report that I have sent AT LEAST one piece of happy dandelion snail mail each and every day, Saturdays and Sundays, too! Most days I sent out several. I have sent packages to two friends with cancer. I am hoping to send two to three a week for both of them for the duration of their chemotherapy, at least. Something fun to take their minds off their problems for a few minutes!! (Mail can be so fun when it isn't bad news!) I have sent several swaps and tags for Swap-bot. I have sent five prizes for the facebook page I run for my husband's restaurant (I'm counting those, but they all went out on the same day, along with two REAL pieces of mail. :) I even sent out an Etsy order! And a few random- but fun- letters and postcards, too.

AND... for one FULL week I was completely bedridden with the flu. Ugh, down for the count. SO weak and achey and feverish. I am not certain how I got mail out on those days. Well, two of the days I already had something prepared, just had to get it out. And the others... I was simply determined not to quit the very first week I was doing it! I'll quit later if need be, but not already!

I have been thinking about my New Year's resolutions. I would be thinking about them anyway, I guess, but I am hosting a swap concerning them, so I need to actually SET some. It occurred to me that most years I can't really look back and say Oh THAT'S what I did this year! So this year I am going to do several things. I'm going to try to choose a character trait to improve. I'm going to continue my snailmail 365 effort. And I am going to work towards getting a cookbook published.

For years I have been trying to perfect my cookie recipes, thinking maybe one day I will have the courage to open a bakery or something. But honestly, I am just not sure I DO, or ever will. And getting the recipes down, accurately, everything listed correctly and measured properly... this takes work, which has to be done well before any store can be opened. I have decided that besides the Dandelion SnailMail 365 (how cute!), which is really just for fun, I am going to attempt 52 cookie recipes. Initially it sounded SO easy to do. I bake cookies all the time anyway, frequently more than one batch a week... I will simply perfect one recipe a week. Then I started really thinking about it. That means sometimes I will need to try a recipe again and again in one week, to get it right. Or what if it never measures up... do I still count it as an attempt? Or do I have to double up the next week?? It's REALLY quite a few cookies.

Here is what I have come up with: I will attempt one recipe a week, starting with my own personal favorites, which are the result of YEARS of practice and alteration. Frankly, they rock. It's not ME, except that I have made thousands of batches of cookies. Anyone with four cookie-loving kids, that has made thousands of batches of cookies, and corrected and improved bad recipes over the years, baked and ate and changed and baked and ate... will have awesome cookie recipes. I WANT to share them, but I don't want to just give them away. I have put so much into them! And I feel like they are one of the few things I have that are really MINE.

So... I will spend 2011 getting them RIGHT, and trying lots of new ones, too...and hopefully by this time next year I will have a really good start on a supercool-no-fail-cookie cookbook. Cookies anyone can make, with tips and hints I've developed over the years for making really awesome special cookies.

I need a countdown meter on the side of my blog. Two, actually. How do I do that??

And if one of you is a cookbook publisher, I'd really appreciate you giving some of my recipes a shot! Once they are ready, that is. I'll meet you here, the same time next year.

Packages, parcels, and postcards...A year of postal glee

Do you like the new look of my blog? I thought it was just about time I updated a bit. And just in time for the holidays! I have been SO bad about posting, but I resolve to do better! (Yep, resolutions already.) Just to let you know, I DID banish a bunch of nasty little LIMFACs, AND reached several goals, including my walking goal, listed below... I was just extraordinarily bad at keeping everything recorded!

This year I am going to send out a piece of snail mail every day that I can. I got the idea from another blog, called a Year of Letters, which I think is a lovely idea. However I know I will be sending more than just letters, so I thought I'd rather go the snail mail route. Plus, I don't want to commit to days with no mail delivery. I will fall hopelessly behind that way, I'm sure of it!! I guess mine is a year of postal Dandelion Smiles, minus Sundays and holidays. :)

So, to aid me in my goal of spreading Dandelion Smiles all over the place, I will focus on several things:

One, I am an active (overly active, actually) member of swap-bot.com, a swapping community. So lots of my mail will be sent for swaps, I'm sure.

Two, I have an Etsy shop, Dandelion Smiles, and I am going to count packages sent for that. Although, let's be honest here... Those parcels are few and far between! But I do try to make them extra special, so hopefully the receivers do smile when they open them.

Three, I have joined chemoangels.net, an organization that matches up "angels" with chemo patients, so the patient will receive several letters or packages each week of their treatment. (They also sponsor senior angels... check them out!) I think this is a spectacular idea, and giving someone something positive to focus on will be great. I will also be sending a weekly package or letter to a friend's mother who will be starting her chemo again shortly (or she may have already begun! I need to get on the ball!)

And four, I have several lovely ladies with whom I regularly correspond, and friends to whom I NEED to write but haven't. They will all benefit from this!

In reading over my list, I think I can easily fit in Sundays and holidays as well! That sounds like a crazy amount of mail! Well, we'll just start it off and see where it goes, right? And, always looking for interesting and fun ways to package or send my mail, if you stumble across an interesting site or page in your web-travels that relates to mail or packages or letters, etc, throw me a link and I will join you there. Thanks!

Tea For Me!

TEA!!! I just have to blog about my favorite teas... from teavana.com. (click the blog title to visit) They are ridiculously expensive, some of them. But I love them SO much. So far all of the flavors I have tried are sweet and smooth, with absolutely NO bitterness. And they are so pretty, too! They make me smile when I just measure them out into the cup. and sometimes I display the dried teas in pretty clear glass jars on the counter. (Don't tell them I do this, though... they highly discourage letting any light get to their teas.) I like globs of amber-honey-loveliness in my tea, but these teas are slightly sweet on their own. I am trying to wean myself down to a normal amount of honey each morning, and am proud of my success.

This morning I had Pear Lemon Panache... YUM. Herbal Awesomeness. Yesterday I mixed Lemon Youkou: a lovely golden herbal tea with large pieces of dried lemon, and a very strong lemony fragrance: with Queen of Babylon, a delicately fruity flavored white tea. What a sweet way to wake up! And no bitterness at all. Now I am steeping a cup of Raspberry Riot Lemon Mate... always delicious. The teas are full of lovely dried bits and pieces... I found a tiny little rosebud in this one that I pulled out to show you.

Strawberry Lemonade is another that I love, and Weight to Go is a fruity flavored black tea that is supposed to help you lose weight, too. I'm not sure about that claim, but I CAN attest that it is one of the few black teas I've tried and really loved. (tastes much better than its drab name implies!) There's also a raspberry jasmine thing, and a raspberry green tea with a strong vanilla flavor... are you noticing a pattern emerging? I do love fruity teas, and anything with berry in the name is bound to get my attention. But next on my list to taste is Fruta Lemon Pomegranate Tea Blend. Mmmm. Pomegranate teas are some of my favorites. They also have these delicious sugar stick tea stirrers, and cute little bags for making your own tea bags (although I use the infuser most of the time)

If you are lucky enough to live near a retail store you can sample teas all day long, and smell and see them in person. Sounds silly but it's so much fun. It's two hours for me to the closest store, but I do occasionally do it. The online store has reviews of each tea that the purchasers have left, which I, as a non-tea-connoisseur, found quite helpful. And there are SO many to choose from. Almost makes you wish the work week had more mornings! Almost.

Treat yourself!

September snuck up on me!

I am so terribly embarrassed!! My last post was in April?? seriously??? Well, that is craziness.
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Updates:
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Through September 1 I have walked 261 miles towards my goal. Pretty darn good, I'd say!! I have made exercise a regular part of my week and while I do feel it's time to step it up a bit, I feel good about my success here.
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I have not actually lost much weight... but that could be the result of all the EATING I do. I am in both the walking challenge (which I am succeeding in!) AND a diet swap... which I am failing miserably... but to be honest the diet swap is the only reason I have not ADDED weight this summer. So maybe that's not a total failure.
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My Dad's diabetes is causing some circulation and swelling problems in his legs, and also serious kidney problems. And I won't even go into my Mom's physical problems (not that they are any less important... it just gets to be too much!) They are both doing okay, but not great, spending most of their time now focused on their physical issues, which is no fun. So, any prayers going in their direction would be truly lovely! They are, however, going on a wonderful trip to the midwest to visit all of their friends and family again. It is my Mom's 60th high school reunion, and she will be the belle of the ball. (She looks very young) AND is determined not to wear orthopedic shoes, which made me laugh. I am not sure why, as I would be determined not to wear them, either!! Go, Mom! The heels will be awesome! They are all thinking it will be too much for them to travel out again to all meet, so are anticipating in a bittersweet way, with lots of excitement AND some small amount of sadness, too.
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And finally some big happy news-es about myself... I will be walking in a walk against Diabetes Saturday October 9th. I'd love it if any of you would be willing to support my walk financially. Every single gift counts, whether it is $100 or $1. I will add the link as soon as I figure out how. ;) I think if you click on the title of this blog it will take you to my walk page. I am really looking forward to making this small contribution to help defeat something several members of my family are struggling with. My goal is only $300, but I am hoping to collect even more than that. Next year hopefully I will start planning sooner!
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And... (prepare yourself for some giant green feelings of jealousy)... On Saturday one of my 'old' high school friends (and I use the term 'old' to describe our friendship, not HER) flies in from the other side of the world (figuratively) and Sunday we drive down to North Carolina for a full WEEK on the beach with two other high school friends. (also OLD friends but certainly none of us is actually OLD!!) SO MUCH excitement between the four of us. We have tried to get several other ladies from school to join us (the house is all paid for, after all, no matter who comes or doesn't!!) but things just don't seem to work out for them. Hopefully one or two will at least be joining us for a couple of days.
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But a FULL WEEK... on the BEACH... just so fun. We have been anticipating this week for 12 months. I will try to tell you about it later.
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I am going to include a poem I wrote about our beach weekend last year (did I mention it's a full week this year???) because I don't really think anybody will read this anyway, and I just love it. It is exactly how I felt while we sat under the shooting stars eating chocolate someone in Germany had sent me, and making wishes. I hope you guys have a great day today.
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Glitter tossed across a darkened sky; stars, reflected in the ocean,
seem to give the notion they are waiting for reply from man or moon.
They shimmer fully bright, no city lights to dim them,
and listen to the water's music crashing on the shore.
Do they know that there is more than this, or is this all the world tonight,
this darkened shiny bit of coastline where we sit?
Friends sigh and think and breathe beneath this sparkled velvet sky;
count shooting stars that fly and burn away the worries of the back-home-day;
chocolate bars are broken into bits of creamy dreamy bliss
And shared between the whispered wishes and the silliness that comes to mind.
When we look back, we'll find a perfect moment, framed in memory;
a snapshot of my friends and me that we can save inside,
to pull out when the smiles have nearly died away; to brighten up a future night
where stars are dimmer, with more space between, and wishes nearly wished away.
We'll save one wish for that long day,
that we can soon be back beneath the glitter scattered night.