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| Photo by Katie Kay |
The path that led me to these Blondies was a beautiful, complicated, calorie-laden adventure that began and ended with a giant 2 1/2 pound bag of Miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and had a whole lot of awesomeness in-between.
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| Photo by Katie Kay |
Some of my favorite Italian dishes are some of the most simplistic ones with very few ingredients. I love this sauce made of good quality canned tomatoes, garlic, and basil. The first time I made it I served it with my own homemade pasta and it was restaurant-worthy. Truly fabulous. I bought bagged linguine noodles this time, and they looked like they might taste fresher than pasta in a box. They were still excellent, even if they weren't homemade.
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| Photo by Katie Kay |
Take note, this is an overnight French Toast recipe, so don't look at the pretty pictures without reading the recipe, then wake up at 8am in the morning with big promises to little kids, thinking you can whip up some of this sticky sweet goodness! You'll be about 8 hours short.
I don't like cooking in the kitchen once I've already entered my evening relaxation time. Once dinner is done and the kitchen is clean with lights off, I want to leave it that way. But thankfully this recipe prepares quickly, and from start to fridge it only took me about 20 minutes with minimal mess. It was an easy recipe to make, especially the caramel. I hadn't heard of a caramel recipe that calls for dumping everything in a pan and cooking it all at once, but it turned out dark, thick, and perfectly sweet.
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| Photo by Katie Kay |
These Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies are so soft and gooey. When they first come out of the oven, they'll fall out of your fingers and into the bottom of your glass of milk if you try eating them too early. Which I did. And I'd do it again.
If you're patient and don't eat them all in the first 5 minutes after their exit from the oven, then you can enjoy how soft they stay for days. I'm not saying I serve old cookies, but if I have cookies in my cookie jar and you eat one without asking me (you know who you are), that's at your own risk. It's not my fault if they're old. As long as they taste fresh--which these do--who cares?
Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 cups flour
1/2 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
16oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp instant espresso powder
10 Tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup sugar
1 bag semisweet or milk chocolate chips
Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk gently, then set aside.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler until smooth, then set aside.
Crack eggs into a small bowl and stir with fork. Add vanilla and espresso powder and set aside to dissolve.
In a mixer bowl, cream butter until smooth. Add sugars and beat for 45 seconds. At a low speed, slowly add egg mixture until combined. Drizzle the chocolate in at low speed and scrape sides of bowl with a spatula until combined. Slowly add dry ingredients and mix only until incorporated. Add chocolate chips and stir by hand. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit for about 30 minutes until consistency is like fudge and you can scoop it with a spoon.
At this point, you can refrigerate or freeze it. I froze it and cooked off small batches over a few weeks with excellent results.
Preheat oven to 350 and line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Bake for about 10-12 minutes.
Source: Baking Illustrated
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| Photo by Katie Kay |
Theme cookies are so much fun! I wanted to make Halloween cookies but never had the time. I was very motivated this weekend and stayed up way too late a few nights in a row working on these Thanksgiving / Fall cookies. I had no reason to make them other than to share them with you, and the whole time I wondered where I was going to offload all this sugar. My kids' teachers, Matt's co-workers, and my co-workers are getting an even distribution. The neighbors are tired of my cooking, I'm sure. I don't want to wear out that welcome.
