Cookie Nights

 It's that time again! You're probably going to be seeing a lot more recipes from me in the next while, with Thanksgiving around the corner and Christmas on its way. I've given cookies as gifts the last couple years and I'm searching for a few new recipes for the collection. You'll probably be seeing lots more cookies on here in the next little while.

Some time ago I posted a link to this blog and told you about the peanut butter pie. It was spectacular. I've been reading her blog since then and decided this week to make her Chocolate Snap cookies.

First I want to say I love her blog. It reminds me all the time to treasure my family and the time we spend together. It also makes me feel a little less guilty about expressing my affection through food--it's just how I do it. Maybe I should do it less, or at least with more healthy options, but there's just a part of myself I can give to them in the kitchen that I can't access any other way. Her blog is heartbreaking of late, I'll warn you, but it's certainly worth a read. It reminds me just how precious life really is, especially the life I know.

So I made these this week. It's an inexpensive recipe to make, easy, and requires ingredients I generally keep around the house anyway. To me the cookies taste like hot chocolate and I considered adding little marshmallows next time, just to see how they turned out. Anyway, here's the original recipe, copied directly from her page, exactly the way she posted it.

Chocolate Snaps

1cup (129 grams) all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons (6 grans) cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon (3 grams) baking soda
1/8 teaspoon (1 gram) salt
1/2 cup (86 grams) bittersweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup (4 ounces) butter, softened
1/4 cup (54 grams) sugar
1/4 cup (62 grams) brown sugar, light or dark
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.
Place the choclate chips in a glass, microwave-safe bowl, and cook, uncovered, for 90 seconds, or until melted. Set aside to cool slightly.
In a large mixing bowl on medium-high speed, beat the butter and sugars until creamy. Add the egg and vanilla; beat for 1 minute until light and fluffy. Pour the melted chocolate into the bowl and beat for 1 more minute, until well-mixed.
Add the flour mixture, turn the mixer onto the lowest speed and mix until the flour is just incorporated. Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. Turn speed up to medium-high and beat for 30 seconds. The dough will look more like a thick cake batter than traditional cookie dough.
Fill a pastry bag and squeeze coin-sized dollops of dough 1-inch apart onto the prepared baking sheets. I can fit 24 cookies each on my half-sheet pans. Bake for 9 minutes, then remove sheets from the oven and let cool on the tray for two minutes. Using a spatula, transfer the cookies to the rack and let cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough, or see note for freezing formed cookies to bake at another time.


These cookies have a beautiful consistency--soft and light and almost fluffy, if it were possible for a cookie to be. I'm in love. Nice Guy and his cousin destroyed nearly an entire batch of these in one evening, they liked them so much.

So I wondered: How would these be if I didn't melt the chocolate chips but instead left them whole? I only made two changes to the recipe. The first was using a tablespoon of cocoa powder instead of two teaspoons and the second was leaving my chips whole. I used slightly more than the recipe called for but not much. This is the result:

They have the same soft and fluffy texture of the original recipe. They taste great and have the same lightness on the tongue. They don't have tons of chips (something I'd probably change next time around) and the chips aren't really visible in the picture since they mostly lay along the inner layer. They are worth a try, though, especially if someone in your house prefers the soft-and-light texture over the gooey-chewy alternative. These would be perfect for my dad (he likes softer cookies on account of his bad teeth) and I'll probably make him some for Christmas.

Jennie also has a chocolate chip cookie recipe that I will be trying soon, so check back and I'll let you know how it goes.

Simple Magic

 This is a repost of today's entry on my other blog. I'm going to update soon, I promise... But for now, my special morning.



 We're having car trouble so last night was hard on us. We are all tired and stressed after finding ourselves stranded last night. Yet again my parents rode in to the rescue. Sweet'ums loved that part; me, I just wish it wasn't necessary.

So in light of all of that, I really wasn't expecting a charmed morning.

Sweet'ums didn't want to get out of bed. I don't blame her, since it's pretty chilly. She gave me a little trouble getting dressed but once we headed out the door she was a different kid.

We got to the bus stop and I asked her if she was warm enough or if she wanted to snuggle. Immediately she jumped up and held her arms in the air to be picked up. So I tucked one of her arms in one side of my hoodie and her other arm in the other side. I wrapped the body of it around us both and just held her.

Then, the sweetness happened.

She looked up at the sky and informed me first that the moon was walking. I think she said that because there were a few clouds slipping by. The moon did look like it was walking. Then she told me the moon was following the stars.

I don't know why it struck me the way it did. Maybe it's because she kept talking about it. Maybe it was just how she said it, all sweet and quiet. Maybe it was just the cold getting to my brain. But to me, it was the sweetest thing.

We giggled over Eskimo kisses and she kept just looking at me with this look in her eyes. I don't know what got into her but I wish it would happen more often. It was just a beautiful, magical morning.

Falling

Fall has officially... well, fallen. Other than being rainy, this weekend has been absolutely beautiful. A week or two ago it was nice and cool and magnificent. This weekend has that odd winter/summer mix that we get sometimes this time of year. Right now it is 73 degrees and I think our low last night was like 68 or 69. Nice, steady temps, a pleasant breeze, tons of rain... Okay, okay, it's WINDY, not breezy, but I'm glad there's air movement instead of that awful stillness we get in late summer/early fall. And as for the rain, we've actually got some flooded roads and one of the rivers nearby is set to flood this week. But I'm still thankful! We've had drought conditions this year and hopefully this will help break that. I mean, it brought down a tree at the end of my road, so the drought index should be no problem!

Now we're on our way into the apples-and-pumpkins time of year. As far as my food preferences go, this is by far my favorite time of year. I LOVE apples (and the desserts that result!) and pumpkins are wonderful too. I love the fact that, this time of year, you get the warm, savory desserts. You get huge family meals. You have cool afternoons with steaming mugs of soup or stew or chili. There's so many opportunities for togetherness in the fall and I just love that. We're entering into the time of year where I get to have my mom over to help me cook holiday meals and all the fun that brings with it. And let's face it, girls, you've seen my picture. You know I'm all about some good food.

To kick things off I'm going to share a recipe I found and made this week. It was AMAZING! It's a very forgiving recipe (I accidentally left out 1/4 cup of sugar from the pumpkin part of it and it still tasted great!) and not difficult at all. The hardest part for me was the crust, and that's only because I can't leave well enough alone and just follow instructions.

Let me begin by sharing what I changed. I asked Nice Guy whether he wanted the gingersnap-and-pecan crust or a cinnamon graham cracker crust. He opted for graham cracker. So what I did was crush up about two cups of cinnamon graham crackers into fine crumbs and combined it with butter, starting with the amount called for and adding more until it really started to stick to itself. For me it took almost an entire stick of butter, but I chalk that up to the fact that graham crackers are very dry and I used the store brand variety. If I'd gone with name brand that might have been different. And who knows, I might have been able to get by with less butter, but I just couldn't get the crumbs to hold together. I didn't really want a crumbly crust, so I did what I thought was best. Also, like I mentioned, I accidentally left out a quarter cup of sugar. You'll notice in the instructions it says where to add the first half cup and shows the numbers. Silly me just completely overlooked the second addition of sugar since I was looking for numbers, not words. Honestly, my mom and my husband both loved it and wouldn't have noticed the missing sugar if I hadn't brought it up. So you could probably slide by without it or even add something like Splenda and have it still turn out if sugar is an issue for you.

One last thing: My springform pan is bigger than the one in the directions. This results in a bigger, but less impressive, cheesecake. My picture doesn't really do it justice. When it was whole it was beautiful.

Anyway, here we go. This is copied directly from the website.

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cups crushed gingersnap cookies (about 30 cookies)
• 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar, divided
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 
  GARNISH:
• Whipped topping, optional
• Additional gingersnap cookies, cut into wedges, optional

Directions

• Place a greased 9-in. springform pan on a double thickness of heavy-duty foil (about 18 in. square). Securely wrap foil around pan; set aside.
• In a small bowl, combine cookie crumbs and pecans; stir in butter. Press onto the bottom and 1 in. up the sides of prepared pan. Bake at 325° for 9-11 minutes or until set. Cool on a wire rack.
• Meanwhile, in a large bowl, beat cream cheese and 1/2 cup sugar until smooth. Beat in vanilla. Add eggs; beat on low speed just until combined.
• Place 1 cup filling in a small bowl; stir in the pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg and remaining sugar. Remove 3/4 cup pumpkin filling and set aside. Pour remaining pumpkin filling into the crust; top with plain filling. Drop reserved pumpkin filling by spoonfuls over top; cut through filling with a knife to swirl.
• Place pan in a large baking pan; add 1 in. of hot water to larger pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until center is just set and top appears dull. Remove springform pan from water bath. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Carefully run a knife around edge of pan to loosen; cool 1 hour longer. Refrigerate overnight. Remove sides of pan. Garnish with whipped topping and cookie wedges if desired. Yield: 12 servings.

Next time I make this I'm going to double the plain cheesecake part and maybe use less of the pumpkin part. I'll make more of the crust and bring it further up the sides of my pan because, let me TELL you, that crust was good!

I hope you are able to take the time to make this cheesecake. It'll be great for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Birthday

A little while ago Libbie commented on some of my photos on Facebook and brought to my attention that I hadn't posted here about Sweet'ums' birthday party!

It wasn't a big thing. By the time it was all said and done, the only people who showed up were Nice Guy's cousin, NG's mom and two of his sisters, his nephews, and my parents. I made a couple cakes so I knew there'd be plenty of leftovers for everybody to take to the family members who couldn't make it. Sweet'ums had a blast even though it was small. She just wanted that cake.

In answer to your question on FB, Libbie, yes, I made the cakes. I used a McQueen cake pan put out by Wilton and it has these little grooves that help with the decorating. So it wasn't just me. :-D

She was REALLY excited about those cakes! I don't think she cared who was there or if it was here by her lonesome, she just wanted her cake.

And this is our happy little family on the big day. *sigh* I love these two monkeys! It was a great afternoon and even though it was small, it was worth the time.

Heartsick

It's that time again. A dear friend (a slightly older dear friend) is expecting. She was my biggest ally for a while, one of the few people I had who really understood why we weren't just taking the leap with having another baby. She really "got" that sometimes you have good reasons to not do the things you really want to. Oh, and I know that most people understand that on some level, but when it comes to kids most people have this, "Go ahead, the details will work themselves out," kind of attitude about it, and since it's a HUGE life change I don't really like leaving the details to chance. But anyway, she was one of the few people in my life who totally got that, without judgment or comment, and who only occasionally teased me about when we'd have another (she has two young sons and thinks I should have a daughter to marry each of her boys).

I'm sooo happy for her. I truly am. This might be the chance for her to get the daughter she's been wanting. This will most certainly be her last child, as she's not getting any younger and her husband, who is even older than she is, wasn't really looking to have any more kids. And she's nervous about the whole thing, and I get that too--there's so many issues for her right now like how she wasn't actually planning a pregnancy, she isn't sure when her last period was so she has no clue how far along she might be, and she's terrified that a medicine she has taken might have hurt the baby. And I know that having this baby doesn't change that she understands where we're coming from. She was afraid I'd be upset with her.

I guess my problem is I haven't figured out yet how to not get sick to my stomach every time someone I love comes to me about being pregnant. I haven't figured out how to stop being angry every time someone I don't love so much tells us they're pregnant. I don't know how to take me and my feelings out of the equation. And it doesn't even make sense. I mean, how can I be so happy for her and so sad at the same time? How does a person want to dance and cry at the same time? And it just all turns into hating myself for not being happy without reservation and without that sour pang of jealousy.

And I'll confess here what I won't admit to her, what I haven't admitted to my own mother. I was off birth control this month. It's actually the result of a financial hang-up at the beginning of the month when I needed to reorder, and since I have a particular start day that I stick to in regards to my husband's work schedule I had to wait the whole month before that day on his work schedule would roll around again so I could start. We were a little careless, thinking hey, we're never going to just decide to do it, so if we just don't worry about it this month and it happens then we'll just go with it and be happy. And this morning I tested after a week of symptoms that in most women would point towards the possibility. My results were, of course, negative.

This, less than a week after my baby turned 4 and we've been so nostalgic over her. I think back to her baby days and all I want is a time machine so I can go snuggle with 1 year old her for just ten minutes.

I love my friend and I'm so, so happy for her. I don't, however, love myself right now. The absolute polar opposite, in fact.

11:56PM

Hold onto your hats, ladies:

My baby is turning four.

What a ride it has been.

 From a beautiful, screaming newborn;

to a sweet one year old;

to a capable and smiley two year old;

to a prissy, strong-willed three year old;

to a beautiful, screaming, sweet, capable, smiley, prissy, strong-willed, independent, amazing four year old...

I love you, sweetheart. I always will. Happy 4th.

9/11 and all that it entails

So I'm officially getting old (it's downhill to 30 from here) and thanks to 9/11 the last ten years have been neatly outlined for me. It has been a long ride but here we are.

Of the last ten years I've spent five and a half in some kind of school, five and three quarters married, almost four as a mother, and ten wondering what the world would look like tomorrow.

I woke up on that day ten years ago with this heavy feeling. It wasn't something I fabricated after the events unfolded--a couple friends felt "off" that morning too and we talked about how strange it was before school started.

My parents worked hard to keep us sheltered from the world but 9/11 opened my eyes. I think of it sometimes as the day I grew up because before that day, the bad things in the world seemed so far away. I think a lot of young adults would tell you that. It made me realize that there was a whole world out there and it was the first time I became aware that some religious sects harbored a great deal of hostility. In the ten years that followed I learned that there were far more friendly Muslims than there were hostile ones and having religious differences didn't really make us all that different. People are still people, regardless of their faith, and most of us want basically the same things out of life--love, happiness, and to provide for our families.

The last ten years have seen a lot of change in my life. My family uprooted from a church we'd been at since my toddler years and I left my "accelerated" high school program in favor of my newspaper class and AP and honors courses. Two uncles, who hadn't really been in my life much, died; another, who had been involved in my life a great deal, created a chasm in our family. I had two ear surgeries and then went off to college. Marriage and parenthood changed my life in the best way. We had the summer of the hurricanes and countless other storms. Of course we had 9/11 and that created enormous change for our world. What a lot of upheaval.

But you know, other than dealing with the 9/11 stuff, it hasn't been so bad. A lot of good has happened in my life. I've met some truly amazing people and made some great friends. I crossed paths with the man who would become my best friend and husband. I've had a long road with my kid dealing with things I wouldn't have chosen for her but in the long haul, I know it makes us stronger. Things like that happen for a reason.

So hopefully today will be a good day. Hopefully I can tune out all the sad stuff and focus on the things that make my life what it is. Hopefully when I wake up that heavy feeling will be replaced by something better.

But there is one thing... All I really want for my birthday is to see my BFF. The funny part? I don't think she would be overseas were it not for 9/11.