My Solution for Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know a lot of people (although the scientist isn't one of them) who like soft chocolate chip cookies. I like them soft. My brother and sister like them soft. I know because they always undercook their cookies. While I will eat raw cookie dough in a heartbeat, I don't like half-cooked chocolate chip cookies.

My solution:  always eat your chocolate chip cookies fresh baked and still warm off the tray! It's the best way, in my opinion. You can have a soft cookie that is actually all the way cooked and has a nice crunchy edge.

I have been using this recipe lately (with modifications): Chocolate Chip and Chunk Cookies by Averie Cooks.

My modifications:

• I use salted butter, and I also add the optional salt in the recipe.
• I use about 1 and a half cups of chocolate chips (no other chocolate chunks).
• I use the 2 cups of all purpose flour that she mentions, as an alternative to the mix of all purpose flour and bread flour.
• And the biggest modification: I make regular sized cookies (my scoop is 1 and a half tablespoons in volume) and I cook them for about 14 minutes to achieve a nice browning on the edges.

And I eat them when they are still warm.

I do refrigerate my pre-made dough balls as she recommends. From my experience with this recipe, I suspect that if you cooked them straight away they would spread out a lot. If I cook my first batch several hours after preparing the dough it will still spread a little. But if cooked the next day (and subsequent days) they hold their shape really well.

Enjoy!

Cauliflower Patties

This is one of my favorite side dishes, especially if I've made my meat dish in the crock pot or in the oven. These patties cook on the stove top.

The recipe comes from a book called Quinoa for Families by Rena Patten. Here is the gist of it (with my own slight modifications)

• Cook a medium sized cauliflower in boiling water until tender. I have always cut my cauliflower into pieces before cooking, but now that I take a closer look at the recipe, I see that she says to cook it first and then cut it into pieces.
• Drain it, then mash it up.  I use my potato masher in the same pot in which I cooked it. Let it cool a little.
• Mix the mashed cauliflower with the following:
• 2-3 green onions, sliced
• 2 beaten eggs
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• A couple tablespoons of chopped parsley (tonight I substituted about 2 teaspoons of my own dried parsley)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt and a dash of pepper
• 1/2 cup quinoa flour
• Now fry them:
• Pool oil in the bottom of a frying pan and heat it up (maybe medium high ... I start at a 7 and drop down if it seems too hot later). Drop in large spoonfuls (about a heaping 1/4 cup each) of cauliflower and flatten them out with the back of the spoon. I fit four patties in my pan at a time. When they are golden brown on one side, carefully flip them and brown the other side.
• Transfer to paper towels and repeat.
• Makes about 8-10 patties.

Even Miller will eat one of these patties (if properly motivated in a super positive matter). When the scientist and I eat them, we dip the bites into Grama's Sweet Chilli Sauce. So yummy!

I think I could eat a whole head of cauliflower prepared this way, but since the scientist can inhale them as fast as I can I've never been able to. Maybe some day. Enjoy!

Oven-Fried Bacon and Buttermilk Ranch Dressing

Last week I made a big salad for dinner, with grilled chicken, homemade ranch dressing, and crispy bacon on top. It was really yummy. Here are the recipes I used for the ranch dressing and the bacon.

BLT Chopped Salad with Creamy Buttermilk Ranch Dressing from Averie Cooks. At first I was not impressed by the dressing, thinking that the Hidden Valley envelope mix was better. BUT the mayo I used was canola oil mayo, which definitely has a different color and texture than regular mayo.  I'm looking forward to trying this recipe again with regular mayo.  (Even with the canola oil may, over time, the dressing definitely grew on me and by the time I was finishing off the jar I had no complaints.)

For the bacon in my salad I did this: Oven-Fried Bacon from Brown Eyed Baker. I always have a hard time cooking bacon - getting it crispy but not burned. This technique was so simple (you just get it going and then walk away for 20 minutes!), and I'll probably make bacon this way for the rest of my life. In fact, I have bacon in the oven right this minute, for some fancy grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. YUM!

Thanks for stopping by!

Easy Chicken Stroganoff Recipe

I wanted to share a really yummy new recipe I just made. With the word "Easy" in the title, I have to admit that I did not have high expectations. But as I sat at the table with a belly full of goodness I found myself disappointed that I only made a half batch. I think it would be great as leftovers.  The scientist loved this recipe as much as, if not more, I did. He has already requested that we have it again very soon.

Here is the recipe: Easy Homemade Chicken Stroganoff from Parent Pretty

I might be a little biased because when I was a little girl my Grandma Charlie made Meatballs and Gravy which was my favorite meal. Meatballs and Gravy was beef meatballs cooked up in a pan. Then you put in some cream of mushroom soup and water to make a gravy, scraping up all the yummy bits that cooked off the meatballs. You let that all cook for a while and then serve the meatballs and gravy over egg noodles or rice. It was my favorite!

I think Easy Homemade Chicken Stroganoff is even better than Meatballs and Gravy. First, simply dicing up some chicken is way easier than preparing meatballs. Second, the flavor ... the flavor brought back childhood memories. It was the flavor of Meatballs and Gravy, but just a little bit better. Thirdly, this recipe does not contain cream of mushroom soup. Cream of mushroom soup doesn't bother me too much, but the scientist's response to it is, "Yuck!" And he doesn't hesitate to voice his objection to cream of anything in a can no matter how nice it is that someone else made him a meal. So to be spared that is the third plus to this recipe.

Easy Homemade Chicken Stroganoff is made from scratch, is quite easy, and totally yummy.

The only note I would make is that you might want to hold off on starting the noodles cooking so that they aren't sitting around getting cold while the rest cooks. I actually got all of the chopping done before I started the water heating, and that worked out really well. My noodles only needed to cook for 6 minutes once the water was boiling.

Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

I can't stop making these peanut butter cookies.

I've actually come across several similar recipes recently, but this is the one I've been following:

Flourless Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Cookies from myrecipes.com

I've tried several different versions using: natural peanut butter and unnatural peanut butter; white sugar and brown sugar; and different mix-ins. Natural peanut butter gives a much better flavor, but the cookies can fall apart easily. I didn't really arrive at a preference for the sugar, but if I've got brown sugar on hand, I'll gravitate toward that. Depending on how thick your dough turns out, it might be hard to incorporate a whole cup of chocolate chips. You can cut back on those and still have great cookies. Heck, you could probably leave out the chips all together and just have a peanut butter cookies. But I've never done that myself.

The cookies pictured above have chocolate chips, M&Ms and Reeses Pieces. The most recent batch that I made (and was my most favorite) used brown sugar, half natural peanut butter and half unnatural peanut butter, and chocolate chips only.

I want to make more. Happy baking!

New Recipes

I have tried a few more new recipes that have turned out well.

Baked Chicken and Cheese Taquitos from Just A Taste. I used corn tortillas, and even after letting them soak for 30 seconds or more, I had trouble getting the tortillas to roll without splitting. It was quite frustrating, and I think I even cried and/or yelled a curse word. BUT the chicken was really yummy. I kept sneaking bites of it as I was putting the taquitos together. I did not use cumin in the chicken, though. I don't like the smell of it.  So my chicken was flavored with the onions (which I actually let caramelize a little), garlic, lime juice, paprika, salt and pepper, and a dash of coriander. I actually made this chicken filling a second time tonight for burritos. This chicken is scientist approved!

Yellow Curry Chicken with Basmati Rice from Just A Taste. The scientist really liked this one, but it was a bit too much for me. I think the coconut milk sauce was just too much. I had leftover rice to eat with this, so I didn't actually make the Basmati rice.

Creamy Chive Potatoes from Annie's Eats. This was a nice substitute for mashed potatoes. I overcooked the potatoes because they were done before my meat was done, but I really loved the flavor.

Quick French Dip Sandwiches from Kitchen Simplicity. This was a really easy meal. I think the garlic and cheese on the bread was what really made this recipe. I wouldn't call it a favorite, but I'll make it again. The scientist liked it more than I did. The thyme in the broth was very strong, despite the fact that I only used half of the called for amount.

30 Minute Caramelized Shallot, Spinach and Goat Cheese Garlic Butter Pasta from How Sweet It Is. This was REALLY good! It came together quickly, although it was a bit hectic. I was trying to watch both the shallots and the butter at the same time to make sure neither burned. And I was also cooking up some chicken in another pan at the same time too. But everything came out great! The goat cheese on top was so good! This is what I call a really fancy recipe because it has shallots AND goat cheese AND garlic brown butter. And even though it was fancy it was actually pretty easy.

Thanks for stopping by!

New Recipes Tried and Liked

The past week has delivered a few major new recipe successes - I will definitely be making all of these again.

The following  two recipes come from Taste and Tell Blog.

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Muffins. A great light and sweet muffin. I think it tastes a lot like a chocolate chip cookie. They are best out of the oven, cooled down a bit but still warm and melty. When I saw this recipe, I suspected it would be similar to the Chocolate Chip Coffee Cake at Noah's Bagels that Miller likes. It did not disappoint.

Thai Chopped Chicken Salad. Very good. The scientist really like it. The only flaw was that the peanut butter sauce was a bit thick and hard to get a nice drizzle over the salad. The chicken marinade called for 1/2 cup of vegetable oil, which seemed like a lot to me. I only put in 1/4 cup and was able to marinade two medium/small chicken breasts. I do suggest preparing 2 breasts because then you can have it for lunch the next day too, which is what we did.

The next two recipes come from Kitchen Simplicity.

Slow Cooker Roast Chicken. This is brilliant because it frees the oven for making side dishes!

Baked Crispy Chicken Sandwiches with Homemade Shake'n Bake. Love these! The scientist praised them several times. I thought it was weird to marinate the chicken in a sour cream mixture, but it was good! I think it made the chicken very tender. And in my opinion the Quick Aioli really makes this sandwich. I'm planning to make this again next week. I have left over shake'n bake mixture so it will even be less work next time. Love that! There were two leftover chicken pieces so we got lunch the next day on this one too.

I can't wait to try more recipes from these sites. Another new one is on the menu for tonight, actually. Happy cooking!

Rice Pudding

I have a favorite rice putting recipe.  It's really simple, and it's made on the stove top with leftover cooked rice. I have made it with leftover rice from our favorite Thai restaurants, but I don't recommend this - it makes for extremely salty rice pudding. I didn't even know that restaurants put salt in their rice.

When I make this, I love to get it cooking on an extra burner while I'm preparing dinner.  That way the pudding can cool while you eat dinner. It is utter perfection when it has cooled to just a slightly-warm mixture.

Ingredients

• 2 Cups cooked rice
• 2 Cups milk, separated into 1 1/2 Cup portion and 1/2 Cup portion
• 1/3 Cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions
Combine rice, 1 1/2 Cups milk, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat until thick and creamy. This takes a while, like 20 minutes. I always walk away and come back several times to stir. Of course, you run the danger of burning the bottom when you do that.  I've never actually burned the bottom, but one time I got what I called "caramelized flakes." The pudding was fine.

Once it is real thick, stir in the rest of the milk, quickly followed by the egg, butter and vanilla.  I believe the purpose of this second portion of milk is to cool the mixture slightly so that the egg can be stirred in completely before it cooks.

Cook for a few minutes more so that it re-thickens a little.  Then pour into a serving dish and let cool.

Enjoy!