Dark Chocolate Cookies

I did it!  I finally convinced two of my closest friends to watch Star Trek!  Admittedly, it didn’t take much effort. . . . just a bit of perseverance.

To mark this superb occasion, I made a. . . . dessert!  Surprised?  No?  Neither were they.  I knew that Natalie would be making an amazing dinner that would fill us up, so I decided to go with something a bit lighter for the after-supper culinary entertainment.  These cookies aren’t necessarily light, but they have one very significant advantage – built-in portion control!  As it turns out, they’re pretty addictive,  so plan to hide them from yourself.

They reminded me very much of brownies actually.  Not over-baking these will be key; they’re incredibly moist, but will get hard pretty quickly.  Not crispy hard – chunk of masonry hard.

I don’t know if you can tell from the photo below, but the dough is ridiculously thick – and stiff.  It takes some elbow grease to work the minichips throughout!

One thing I noticed is how much more delicious these cookies were after having spent a few hours in the refrigerator.  They’re delightful while still warm, but the flavor is softer when cold.  They’re very quick to make as well – a definite bonus!

Source:  Weight Watchers Five Ingredient 15 Minute Cookbook (2007)

Recipe for Dark Chocolate Cookies:

• 1 (18.25 oz.) package devil’s food cake mix
• 1/4 C strong brewed coffee (at room temperature)  ~ If you don’t like coffee, don’t let this turn you off the recipe.  We couldn’t even taste it in the finished product.
• 3 Tbsp. butter, melted
• 1 Tbsp. water
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 C milk chocolate minichips
• cooking spray
• milk

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 deg. F.
2. Combine the first 5 ingredients in a large bowl.  Beat with a mixer at medium speed 2 minutes, stopping to scrape down sides.  Stir in chocolate minichips.
3. Drop by level tablespoons 2″ apart on baking sheets coated with cooking spray.  Bake at 350 deg. F for 11 minutes, or until just set.  Let stand on pans 2 minutes.  Remove cookies to wire racks to cool completely.
4. Once at room temperature, transfer to refrigerator for an hour or so.  Serve with milk!

Yield:  38 cookies (serving size:  1 cookie) ~ I must have used a bit more per cookie than the WW team did, because I only got 30 cookies total.

POINTS value:  2

* My additions to the recipe are in italics.

Christmas Lights

I took this photo this Christmas season.  Some friends took me on a drive for the sole purpose of enjoying the lights.  There are a few very wealthy neighborhoods in the city where I live, and people create very beautiful things there.

I only took two photos, one of which was very blurry.  This is the other!  I think I like it best in black & white, though.  Not bad for a point & shoot!  What do you guys think?

Maybe one of these days I’ll really invest some time and money into photography.  Until then….

***UPDATED 02.05.2010***

This morning I remembered a post about a Photoshop trick I read a few days ago on PW’s blog.  Check out how it impacted these photos – took the detail in the background away, and took the lights’ haziness away.  I think I like the originals better – but still interesting how such a small tool can change a photo so much.

Fruit Pizza

The other day one of my closest friends invited K and I over for dinner.  Her parents were in town, and I’d spent quite a bit of time with them while in high school.  Then they went and moved out of the country….and Natalie stayed here!  I was very happy about that.  (Not that they moved, of course – that she stayed.)

Anyway, as they know and as I’m sure you can tell, I truly adore making desserts.  (Note, I would have used the word “love,” there, but for this).  Thus, my role is the dinner preparation was…dessert!

Please don’t fall into the trap that this is a “low-fat” dessert, just because fresh fruit is involved.  It is not.  Oleo and cream cheese play a very significant role here, believe me.  Of course, you will receive the health benefits of eating whole, raw fruit, so it could be considered healthier than most desserts in that respect.

Also, please forgive the blurry spots in these fruit photos.  I didn’t realize until it was too late that there was something on the lense.  Sad day!

Let me know what you think!  Any suggestions on how to make it keep longer would be great.  It’s pretty time intensive, and sometimes you just don’t have a couple of hours (I work really slowly) to spend playing with your food before a dinner party.

This stuff doesn’t last long once it’s been cut into, though – believe me!

Pizza Ingredients:

• 1/2 C powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 C flour
• 3/4 C margarine (oleo), softened
• 8 oz. (1 pkg.) cream cheese
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/2 C sugar
• various fruit – strawberries, pineapple, kiwi, blueberries, bananas, grapes, etc.

Glaze Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 tsp. cornstarch (may be 2 1/2 Tbsp – the original recipe reads “Tsp.”….?!?  If I remember correctly, I used tsp.  You can always add more!)
• 1 tsp. lemon juice
• 1 C pineapple juice
• 3/4 C sugar

1. Crust:  Mix first 3 ingredients (powdered sugar, flour & margarine) together.  Spread onto a pizza pan & bake at 300 deg. F for 10-15 minutes.  Set aside to cool. ~ I used a cookie sheet for baking and transferred it to the pan (?) you see below instead.  I didn’t have time to wait for the stoneware to completely cool.  It worked, but the transfer process was a bit tricky!
2. “Sauce” Layer:  Beat next 3 ingredients (cream cheese, vanilla & sugar) until creamy.  When crust has completely cooled, spread cream cheese mixture on top.  If you don’t wait for the crust to cool, it will come apart during the spreading process – just a little hint.
3. Toppings Layer:  Wash fruit.  Slice and arrange on pizza as desired.
4. Glaze:  Mix all ingredients together in a small saucepan; boil until slightly thick.  Brush on top of pizza.  Note on the glaze – if you want to cut it in half, or even a third, that’d be fine.  I barely used any, and it was perfect.  The original recipe says to pour it on top, but when I tried that it never set completely and the pizza was more gooey than anything else.
5. Serve immediately, or store in refrigerator until needed.  It will probably only stay fresh for a few hours, possibly overnight, since the glaze locks some of the freshness in.

Crust & Glaze

Ta Da!

And, just for the fun of it:

It's some of my favorite people! Aren't they lovely?

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Endless “can’t keep elements joined” messages are not an acceptable method of communication.  Either believe me when I say yes, “unjoin elements,” or pick another error message.

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Christmas Baking

I didn’t bake this Christmas – at all.   Well, technically, I made sugar cookies – but I don’t count the break-and-bake style of cookies as actual baking.  Not that they weren’t delicious!  Hopefully next year I’ll have a better repertoire for you to choose from.

I would, however, like to share a recipe that my Mom made this year.  It’s one of our family favorites; we’re constantly asking her to make it for family gatherings.  The recipe is titled “Hot Fudge Dessert.”  Can you guess any of the ingredients?  Ice cream, you say?  Chocolate, perhaps?  Hot fudge, surely.

Nope.  None of those are in this dessert.  There IS cream cheese….and whipped cream….and a crust….and bananas.  But absolutely no chocolate or hot-fudge-sundae-like ingredients.  Personally, I think it’s a mistake in the original recipe book.  We just call it “The Banana Dessert,” typically.  I believe I’ll start calling it Bananza. 

It’s absolutely delicious – a great dessert regardless of season, and only dependent on everyone liking bananas.  Enjoy!

Bananza Recipe:

Layer 1:

• 2 C flour
• 1 C butter, melted

1. Mix and press into lightly greased 9×13 pan.  Bake at 350 deg. F for 15-20 min., until light brown.  Cool.

Layer 2:

• 2 C powdered sugar
• 16 oz. cream cheese
• 10 oz. Cool Whip

1. Blend ingredients together & spread on cooled crust.

Layer 3:

• bananas

1. Slice & spread full layer on top of Layer 2.

Layer 4:

• 2 packages instant vanilla pudding
• 4 C milk

1. Blend pudding & milk together (per pudding package instructions).
2. Spread over banana layer.
3. Cool completely in refrigerator.
4. Top with 6 oz. Cool Whip.

Book Signing

I realize it’s been a few weeks, but I thought it’d still be fun to write about seeing PW. 

The other day, I went to my first-ever book signing.  It was for PW’s cookbook,  The Pioneer Woman Cooks, which is excellent!  I love all the photographs and stories interspersed with the delicious-sounding recipes.  The tone is exactly the same as her blog writings – lighthearted and personal.

Anyway, I left work at the normal time and went to the bookstore where PW would be.  The event was supposed to start at 7:00, and I got there around 6:45.  I really should have considered how incredibly popular this woman is beforehand, and called ahead to see what their plan of attack was.  Had I done so, I’d have been much more awake the next day!  I went to the register and was handed a wristband – a light blue paper wristband.  Cool, I thought, they’re breaking us into color groups.  Organization makes me happy, you see.

As it turns out, there were eight color groups – and light blue was #7 in line.  For each color group, there were approximately 100 people.  Shall I do the math with you?  There were a minimum of 600 people (most of which had brought multiple books) in front of me in line.  If PW took 30 seconds with each person, that’s 18,000 seconds (= 300 minutes = 5 hours).  If she started signing at that speedy rate right at 7:00, it’d be midnight when I reached her table.  Well…that doesn’t account for the welcoming address, or restroom breaks, or the fact that she will, of course, spend more than just 30 seconds with some people.  You see where I’m headed?  It was 1:00 when I finally reached the signing table, and Ree was still funny, gracious and perky!  I was duly impressed.

Here’s are some of my fellow line-buddies.

The ladies on the right ended up calling themselves the “PDub Supper Club” because they were planning to go to IHOP afterward for supper.  I personally thought they were off their rockers – I was going to go home and go to bed!

Oh, my goodness…I can’t tell you how welcome a sight these chairs were!

Is that…her?  Wait – she’s actually here?  There is an end to this line!  Glory, glory, hallelujah!

This sweet girl knitted PW some little pieces of sushi.  Cute idea, huh?

All in all, a wonderful evening.  An evening I did NOT expect to last as long as it did, but wonderful nonetheless.  Oh, and I can’t neglect to mention my wonderful husband – he braved the ridiculous traffic and brought me dinner so I wouldn’t lose my place in line.  Such a wonderful man I’m married to!

Chocolate Pudding Pie

I know that this is incredibly late…I mean, a post about something I baked for Thanksgiving?  On Decemeber 18?  Ridiculous.  I should be posting about the Christmas baking I’ve been doing.  Believe me, I wish I could!  I haven’t been doing any Christmas baking as of yet.  Work has been keeping me away from my oven…and my keyboard.

Not the best of photos, but a delectable dessert, to be sure!

Growing up, my brother didn’t like pumpkin pie.  So…our traditional Thanksgiving dessert has always been one pumpkin pie and one chocolate pudding pie.  We usually just make a pie crust, dump in some instant pudding and smother the top with Cool Whip.  This year, though, I wanted to try something a bit more….challenging?  Real?  Difficult?  I don’t know – just something different, I suppose.

So, I opened up my Mozilla Firefox and meandered to  thinkliz, one of my favorite blogs.  Lo and behold, she’d made a Pudding Pie in September…and I’d even bookmarked the recipe!  Convenient, huh?

It’s not a complex recipe, but it was a bit time consuming for a pie.  I love the fact that I can now say I’ve made pudding from scratch!  It’s delicious, but definitely has a different flavor than the box-style.  I think that has to do with the amount of bittersweet chocolate involved.  I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who loves pudding!

Recipe for Chocolate Pudding Pie

With any luck, I’ll be posting about some delightful Christmas cookies from my Gramma’s kitchen within the next couple of weeks!

Romantic Vignettes

Everyone has a friend like this – the one woman you know who manages to pull together beauty, elegance and serenity into a functional living space in a way that seems almost magical.  Well, my real-life-elegance friend is named Allison (center).

Isn’t she lovely?  We met in college through the other beautiful, amazing woman in this photo.

Anyway, Allison’s gorgeous home was recently featured by Alice W., of Painted White, as a Romantic Vignette.  Check it out!

The Pioneer Woman

Ok, friends – I realize that I’m fairly new the the blogosphere, both the reading and writing portions.  Still, how I was unaware of The Pioneer Woman is a bit of a mystery!  Thank goodness Bakerella (a very fun blog, as well!) mentioned her and I followed the link on a whim.

This woman is positively amazing!  So many of the things I’ve been wanting to explore, she does.  Her photography is beautiful, her Photoshop skills rock, her writing whimsical and fun, her cooking looks delicious (haven’t tried a recipe yet, though…), she homeschools her children, she was born a city girl and now lives on a ranch…..on and on an on, I could go.  Suffice it to say, she’s pretty much awesome – check out her website. 

Oh, and did I mention that her cookbook tour is taking her near my hometown?  Because it IS!  And yes, I’ve already bought two books – one for a gift, and one for myself – which I hope she will graciously autograph.

I am definitely excited!

Absence

Well, I am still alive – even though it may not appear that way from the last post date!  I haven’t been doing any outside-the-norm cooking…or any outside-the-norm anything, really, lately.  Nothing particularly blog-worthy, anyway.

Yup…that’s all I’ve got today, too.  Hopefully soon I’ll be making something worth talking about – holiday cooking/baking should provide ample opportunities!