My Sweet Tooth

Look at these gorgeous little pastel parcels of loveliness!  Look at them all nestled in their soft bed of colored Easter grass just waiting for me to stop by and marvel at their delicate perfection, ponder their lusciousness, and reminisce about their deliciousness.

And then stuff a handful in my mouth and swoon in bliss while breaking the scale at the same time.  Don't ask me how it happens, call it my intuition, but you can just hear the scale cracking and groaning from the bathroom when eating these little buggers.  Not that this stops me.  I've just taken to avoiding the scale.  Our breakup wasn't him, it was me.


 

This is what my parents do to me!!!  Situated right next to the fruit bowl is the ever present Cadbury egg and white chocolate M&M bowl, and it never ends!  Seriously, when this thing gets low it just get refilled.  Magically.  By the fairies who hate bathroom scales and my jeans.

You see my parents have this thing called "self control" when it comes to these delightful delicacies.  I don't.  None.  Not at all.  It must be a gene I'm missing.  Or maybe I have the "it's delicious, I'm going to eat more of it" gene.  So, for them, having this bowl of tempting lusciousness out all day, every day is no problem.  For me it's a nightmare.  A wonderful nightmare filled with longing, satisfaction, and guilt.  Lots of guilt.  I think bowls of cadbury eggs are why confession was invented.

When faced with situations like this, I normally choose avoidance.  I would physically remove myself from the temptation by not purchasing any sweets.  Lent was also a time when I was spectacular in self restraint (New year's resolution, not so successful.  Lent, very successful.  Again with the guilt thing).  Sadly I can't say to my family "I have to fit into a bikini and look presentable in less than two months so I'm flushing your entire devilish stash of cadbury eggs and white chocolate m&ms down the toilet." I'm pretty sure I would be disowned.  And I can't even eat them faster to make them all go away.

   

This is what our pantry looks like right now.   You see, we absolutely love, cherish, and adore these little chocolate lovelys and they're only available for a limited time every year.  So we stock up.  Which means we should be set to last the summer and only suffer a few months of deprivation before Christmas rolls around and we can get our fix again.  Why do we have so many bags of these candies?  Because I made them buy them all.  They were pretty embarrassed going to the store and purchasing 8 bags at a time, let me tell you.  And why was I making them buy all this candy when I've just spent the first part of the blog post complaining about my squishy, non-bikini-ready stomach?  Because we didn't buy as many bags last year and we ate them up faster and I had to spend a good 7 months listening to "I miss white chocolate m&ms," "I wish we still had white chocolate m&ms," "weren't those white chocolate m&ms good?"  So to save my sanity I made them buy enough to last the summer, subsequently sabotaging my goal of meeting a future husband or boyfriend and wowing him with my toned physique.


  

But it's worth it, I guess, because these little things are delectable.  Truly they are really, really good.  I confess to having a soft spot for white chocolate.  I have loved it all my life.  As a young kid I only liked milk chocolate and white chocolate.  Small One and Medium Well got the chocolate Easter candy and I got the white chocolate Easter candy.  This was just a fact of life.

(Oh, P.S., for my birthday my mom and Medium Well found white chocolate cake batter bark from Godiva.  Um heaven!)

Where was I?  Oh yes.  I was first introduced to white chocolate m&ms back when the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie came out.  They came out with a special edition version for the movie and omg it was amazing!  My mom and I fell in love.  Sadly this special edition never gained enough popularity to become a mainstay on the shelves and all we were left with was a vague memory of blissful scrumptiousness (and anger at the coconut m&ms they decided to introduce instead.  Honeslty have you ever heard anyone say they actually like the coconut m&ms?  Ever?).  That was until last year when, by some miracle, we found white chocolate m&ms special for Easter!!!  Words cannot describe how excited we were (because our mouths were full, duh!).  But we misjudged our voracious appetites, hence the wailing and the moaning and why I didn't make the same mistake this year.

I did have a minor scare this year when the Cadbury eggs were out at our grocery store for weeks and I looked and looked for white chocolate m&ms and couldn't find them.  I had almost resigned myself to the fact that they weren't popular enough the year before and wouldn't be sold this year when we randomly saw them at Target.  Apparently white chocolate m&ms are a special Target only product.  Who knew.  Anyway, crisis and melt down averted.


     

White chocolate m&ms joined our mainstays of Cadbury eggs for Easter.  I can't remember when we first had cadbury eggs.  I mean we knew about the cadbury cream eggs for years.  Those were synonymous with Easter candy, but I think mom and dad got the mini eggs randomly one year and they became a given in our Easter baskets.  I have no idea what makes them so addictive but they are so good it's ridiculous!  Thankfully they now sell them at Christmas time too (although they're just balls, not eggs.  I've never heard of Christmas eggs.)

We also found the dark chocolate version a few years ago and dad has been loving them.  I think they taste fine, but I prefer the milk chocolate and so does everyone else so dad gets these all to himself.

So that is the story of our stash.  My wasitline will get bigger as our stash gets slowly smaller.  I might hide a few bags and bring them out in August when morale gets low.  But I'll only have to do this with the Cadbury eggs because . . . they now sell the white chocolate m&ms at Target and not just for Easter!!!  I was almost disappointed, all those embarrassing shopping trips looking like a hoarder of candy for nothing!  We can now indulge our passion for white chocolate whenever we want!  Forget the ten bags we still have in the cabinet.  Sigh.   Oh well, at least now you all can go and try them and experience them and then maybe you won't think I'm as crazy for writing a blog post about how much I love white chocolate and the angst I've gone through for years over these things :)

If You Give a Girl a Baking Sheet

So I cookie.  That's what it's called, "cookie-ing." Trust me, I've read enough cookie blogs to know that because I "cookie" I am a "cookier"and what I do is called "cookie-ing."  Apparently people who "cookie" are smart enough that they can make up their own words . . . lol, oh well, at least it makes sense. 
Btw, I think I'm addicted to reading cookie blogs.  Pinterest and cookie blogs.

I like to cookie a lot and since my family is pretty much sick of sugar cookies by now (they haven't said anything to me, but I can infer) I keep having to invent new reasons to justify making cookies and decorating them.  "Hey mom and dad, you now have two dozen cookies just because I wanted to try out this new piping technique.  Surprise!" doesn't sit too well.  But it's getting to be a bit of an obsession.  If I go more than two weeks without making cookies it feels weird.  Thankfully there are enough events and holidays (first volleyball game of the season anyone?) that I can make cookies pretty often.

So since I make so many cookies and post the designs ad nauseum I figured I should show the process of how I make the cookies and not just the finished product!

First, make any cookie dough you want.  I make the cookie dough from the blog Bake at 350.  I had a blind taste test between our traditional cookie dough, the cookie dough I used during college, and this cookie dough this past Christmas with the family and the Bake at 350 cookie dough won!  It also stands up pretty well to baking and shipping.  This is what works for me, but you can use your favorite recipe for cookie dough.

Take the dough and plop it down on a lightly floured surface.  The dough that I use doesn't use softened butter, instead it takes cold butter, cut into cubes, and mixes it with the sugar.  This means that you don't have to refrigerate your cookie dough before you roll it out.  It saves A LOT of time.  It's awesome.

I also like to take a piece of freezer paper and tape it to the counter and roll my cookie dough out on that.  You don't have to do this if you don't want to, I just like being able to untape the paper and put the whole mess into the trash can instead of having to scrub the counter for ages after rolling out the dough.

 

This is the rolling pin I use.  I got it for Christmas and it's really nice because the plastic disk on the side keeps the entire dough the same thickness.  I use the 1/4" thickness.  I've heard that people do it thicker at 3/8" but that is a thick cookie!  Who knows, I might switch to a 3/8" thick cookie in the future but for now I make a 1/4" thick cookie.

Having the cookies all one thickness and never having to guess at how thick to roll the dough makes sure that all the cookies bake at the same rate.

When the dough is all rolled out and the cookie shapes are cut out, arrange the cookies on a silpat.  This lovely invention makes sure that the bottoms of the cookies never burn and that the cookies never stick to the pan.  And it's pretty inexpensive, just $25.  If you make a lot of sugar cookies I really suggest it.  Chocolate chip cookies don't work as well on it, they spread out.  So if you like flat chocolate ship cookies this will also work for you (but we like our chocolate chip cookies mounded.  Personal preference and all that). 

Isn't it funny how something as simple as cookies can have so many different "right" ways of being made?


 

Ok, here are the cookies arranged on the cookie sheet.  You don't need them to be spaced very far apart because . . . . 

You freeze them before you bake them!  Seriously.  Put the cookies in the freezer for at least five minutes before you cook them.  This will ensure that the cookies keep their shape.  Ever had those Christmases where the snowman migrated into the santa and morphed into a reindeer?  Yeah, that's because the cookies weren't frozen beforehand.  Trust me on this, it will change your life and save you a lot of tears!

Bake them for 10-12 minutes.  I know that at 12 minutes the cookies will be perfect, but that's for my oven and all ovens are different, so finding the exact time will take some trial and error.

Five minutes is the minimum, but I normally freeze them for 10-12 minutes.  I work on two cookie sheets so while one sheet is in the oven, I have the other cookie sheet in the freezer (and it takes 12 minutes to bake a pan of cookies, hence the 12 minute freezing time lol).

See?  Pretty cookies, no spreadage (making up words again).  You can take them off the pan to cook on a cookie rack, but leave them on the pan to cook down a bit and firm up first.  There is nothing worse than lifting a freshly baked cookie off the cookie sheet and having it break in half because it hadn't hardened enough.  Leaving them on the sheet won't harm them at all.

Ah, the most important (and yummiest) part of the cookie baking process . . . tasting!  Now before you go poo-pooing taste testing as just an excuse to eat a cookie (which is partly is), it's also important if you're giving cookies to other people to eat, like your office or your friends.  Case in point:  I use salted butter to make the cookie dough.  It's pretty much the only thing I ever use salted butter for, so I ran out one day and didn't want to go to the store just to get salted butter when I had butter in the fridge and salt in the cabinet.  So made the dough as normal and I just added a teaspoon of salt to the butter in the beginning.  BIG mistake!  I later learned that each stick of butter only has 1/8th of a teaspoon of salt in it, so by adding 1 teaspoon of salt I had added four times the salt needed to the dough!  Those cookies were for my mom's birthday so it's a good thing I tasted them before I had decorated them and sent them out the door. 

Moral of the story (or blog post), taste your finished cookies, freeze you cookies before baking, and use cold butter to make the dough.  Voila!  You will have perfect cookies every time :) 

Frosting how-to coming soon . . .

Lace Evolution

I made these star cake cookies for a certain someone's birthday recently.  I asked for her favorite colors (lime green and navy blue) and decorated the cakes accordingly.  I'd seen this idea on one of my favorite cookier blogs, but once I was finished frosting the cookies with the lime green bunting and navy blue back ground, I was bored.  There was nothing interesting about the cookies to draw the eye.  I was frustrated the the cookies on the blog looked so amazing and mine looked blah.  So I took some of the white icing I had leftover and started making "lace" patterns like I had seen on another cookie blog.

Now I say "lace" in quotations because to me this isn't lace, this is a pretty pattern, but the lady on the blog called it lace.  Even if it wasn't an exact replica of lace I still think it achieved what I was going for, which was to brighten up the cookies. 

Now for Easter.  I wanted to make some cookies for certain people at Easter just as a special way to say "Happy Easter!" The problem was I tried a lot of different things with this set of cookies.  I tried a new glaze under the frosting and a few other designs and it was just too much and I didn't have a clear plan.  Cookies take TIME.  You have to make the dough, bake the cookies, let the cookies cool for at least a day so oil won't leach into the frosting, make the frosting, decorate the first layer, let that dry overnight, add the final frosting details and let them dry for a few hours before packaging.  The whole process takes about three days when you have a plan, but with no plan it took close to a week and a half from the time the cookies were baked to when I was ready to ship them and then there would be about a week of shipping and handling so I just couldn't send them.  They would have been stale.  So we got to eat them all :)  

I have a confession to make, I can do things as long as I have an example to follow.  I learned calculus and fluids and physics by using the solutions manual and the problems as example problems.  Let me tell you there are NO examples for this kind of "lace" pattern on the internet.  I spent weeks searching for "lace edges," "lace details," "lace clip art" and all I ended up with was a few decent patterns and some rather risque photos of people in lingerie!

 So I went with the moto "you can never have too many half circles" and just had fun.

I really liked how they turned our in the end!

The purple cookie on the right was an interesting experiment.  I've seen a blog where the cookier makes a net pattern and then fills in the squares like it's cross-stitch.  I tried this technique but I didn't have a small enough frosting tip :(  No worries, I ordered one recently!

I think my favorite design was the pink cookie on the right.  It was just swirly and symmetrical and pretty :)

I also had some smaller circle cookies decorated that I took to my office.  I couldn't bring the egg shaped ones since it was a week after Easter and I didn't want people in the office thinking I had brought them super stale Easter reject cookies!

More half circling.  Btw, it is ridiculously hard to pipe a perfect circle of frosting on a cookie.

And here is my favorite pink design only this time in blue!

Speaking of needing a smaller tip, here are the frosting tips I use.  The tip on the far right is a #2 tip.  This is the most ubiquitous frosting tip out there.  I use it for almost everything.  I outline every cookie I decorate with this tip.  It is also the tip I used to make the "lace" on the cake cookies.  The next tip down the line is a #1 tip.  This is the smallest tip Michaels sells so it's the next tip I got.  This is the tip I used to make the Easter "lace"cookies.  Now the two tips on the left are my new tips that I'm really excited to use!  I have cookie dough in the fridge just waiting to be a vessel for my frosting experiments!

This is a top view of the tips.  The tips on the right are the ones I normally use, the ones on the left are the new ones.  Those things are TINY!  I've been told that people strain their frosting through clean nylon stockings before they pipe it so it doesn't clog the tips!   Well I can promise that I won't squeeze any frosting through stockings but wish me luck in avoiding clumps!

Olive Oil Trials and Travails

Ahhhhh, every time I look at this olive oil topper, I smile :)  First of all it's gorgeous.  Second of all, I got it in Italy.  Specifically in Assisi.  And I LOVED Assisi.  Out of all the towns I visited in Italy Assisi spoke to me.  It was a beautiful, historic, peaceful city and just a really special place.  I recommend going there for anyone who travels to Italy.  So I guess I'm a bit biased about this olive oil topper, but it elicits such good memories! (If I went back I could literally show you the exact place I purchased the topper).

The problem is that I only purchased the topper. They didn't sell empty olive oil bottle to go with the toppers.  So once I got back to the US I had to find a bottle to fit the topper.  But see that cork down at the bottom?  Yeah apparently it doesn't fit every bottle!

And apparently they don't sell that many plain olive oil bottles either.  Actually they don't really sell ANY olive oil bottles, lain or not.  This is one of the bottles we tried (we tried a few others but mom knocked those off the counter and they broke . . . ).  Isn't it gorgeous!?  I'll answer that for you.  No, it's NOT gorgeous.  It's pretty hideous actually.  But at least it worked.


 

This is actually the topper that came with the bottle.  I think my first thought when I saw this topper was "Seriously?!  What were they THINKING?! Whose kitchen does that even MATCH?!" Can you even guess what that is?

It's a peach.  A weird, cumbersome peach.  Because every time I see a peach I immediately think olive oil . . . not.

These were some of the other oil toppers from the broken bottles.  They weren't the same size as the cork one that's for sure.

Medium Well had the idea to use a balsamic vinegar bottle and that worked for a while, but the topper kept falling out.  Then I had the idea, a wine bottle!  Wine bottles use corks so the cork should fit.  Wine bottles are dark so they don't let as much sunlight in (you're supposed to keep your olive oil in a dark container but I don't think that matters for me since the quality of my olive oil isn't that spectacular . . . I mean come on I get it from the grocery store!).  And wine bottles are big and hold a lot of olive oil so I don't have to refill the bottle that often.  It pretty much was a match made in heaven and has worked perfectly :)
So if you ever find yourself with an olive oil topper from Italy and no bottle to go with it, take one for the team and drink a bottle of wine, wash the bottle out (preferably after the effects of consuming the bottle of wine have worn off), let it dry, and then fill it with olive oil, add the topper, and voila!  Perfection!

Risotto Ridiculousness

I love risotto!  It's yummy and you can honestly put ANYTHING in it.  Mushrooms, asparagus, carrots, peas, cauliflower, broccoli, ham, chicken, mozzarella, basil, rosemary, etc etc etc
I'll show you the base that I make and the vegetables that I added, but honestly you can change up what you add to it.

I start by prepping the vegetables that I'm going to add so they can cook while I'm making the risotto.  Here I'm doing a risotto primavera.  So I'm roasting carrots, broccoli, and cauliflower.

For every risotto I make I always add onions.  I make them in the same pan that I'm going to use to make the risotto so I only make one dish dirty AND all the flavor from the onions cooking stays in the pan.

Speaking of pans.  This is our new risotto pan!  I used to make it in a big pot but then I saw this Essential Pan by All Clad from Williams Sonoma.

It's a massive pan but it's a great size for cooking one pot meals.  More surface area too.

And it's deep so nothing sloshes over the sides.  Btw, did you know that All Clad pots and pans are all made in the USA?  I'm always looking for products made in the USA and these pots are some of my favorites.  But they're also expensive so I've been getting my parents one or two for each Christmas, birthday, or mother's/father's day for a year or so.

 Ok, back to cooking.  Saute the onions until soft in olive oil.

Then add a package of mushrooms once the onions are semi soft (mushrooms take less time to cook than onions do).

While you're waiting for the mushrooms and onions to cook, put 5-6 cups of chicken broth on a pot on the stove and start heating it.

Aw, the mushrooms and onions are now soft.   Take them out of the pan and put them in a bowl over to the side.

Now, in the same pan, melt two tbs of butter.

This is arborio rice.  This is a short grain, starchy rice and it's pretty much the only rice you can use for risotto.  It's sold at pretty much every grocery store though so no worries.

Add 1-1/2 cups of arborio rice to the melted butter and stir till all the rice is coated in butter.

Then add 3/4 cup of white wine.  Mix that in (it will absorb pretty fast).  Then add one cup of the hot chicken stock.  This will take longer to mix in.  

Stir until you can run your spoon/spatula through the risotto and it holds a line for a second (one mississippi) pictured above.  Then add another cup of the warm chicken broth and stir until you can run your spatula through and it holds a line, then add ANOTHER cup of warm chicken broth etc.  Keep adding the chicken broth and stirring until all 5 or 6 cups of broth are gone.  I like my risotto creamy not al dente so I add 6 cups of broth.  If you like al dente things you only need to add 5 cups of broth.

 Ah, look at the mess I have to clean up.  Joy.  Not.

By now the roasted vegetables are probably done (roasted on 450 for about 20-25 minutes) so take them out.  Here they are next to the bowl of mushrooms and onions from earlier.

Once all the chicken broth in incorporated you can add another 3/4 cup of white wine.  This is just to taste, so if you don't like wine you can leave it out.  But I like wine.  Yummy!

This is what it will look like when all the liquid has been added.  It looks a lot bigger than it did to begin with!

Here's a really blurry picture of the rice granules.  The one on the left is the uncooked rice and the on the right is the cooked rice.  It's plumped up and it's let off all it's starch.


 

Now you can leave the rice the way it is or you can add cheese to it.  I like to add a cup of Parmesan cheese and 4oz of goat cheese.  The parmesan cheese just melts right in and adds a little saltiness so I'd suggest adding that no matter what.  The goat cheese is more a personal taste preference.  It makes it creamier but it also makes it tangier.  It pairs nicely with the white wine and I love goat cheese (P.S. warm goat cheese on a salad is delicious!) so I add it.


  

Once all the cheese is mixed in, add the roasted vegetables and the onions and mushrooms.

 Look at that yummy scrumptiousness!

Yummy, yummy, yummy!  Enjoy!