Tag: cooking

Chocolate Shortbread Cookies
Sarah from Room for Tuesday and Chloe of Boxwood Avenue are hosting another Blog Hop Cookie Swap! The participants are linked at the end of the post, and everybody is sharing a different cookie recipe today. This is always fun because yes, great recipes, but also we get to see some lovely kitchens put to work.

The first cookies we baked in our fancy pants new oven were the Coffee Walnut Cookies I shared in last year’s Cookie Swap. They were done in teeny batches of six because our previous oven was from 1918 and, shall we say limiting? We have since been able to move on to baking sheets that are of a normal size, hooray! (The fact that they’re pretty gold is a bonus.)

This chocolate shortbread recipe is from an out of print cookbook, Nigella Christmas, but it can also be found online. I have tried the review-recommended additional flour and found it too dry, so I’d stick with what’s below.

CHOCOLATE SHORTBREAD COOKIES
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1-1/4 cups butter, softened
• 3/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder

Pre-heat your oven to 325° and line a couple of baking sheets with parchment paper. Mix the flour, baking powder, and baking soda together, set aside. Cream the butter and powdered sugar together. Add the cocoa powder, mix, then incorporate the flour mixture.

The dough will be crumbly, yet will stick together when rolled into a ball. Flatten your little cookie dough balls slightly and arrange on the baking sheet, bake for 10 minutes. (Though my oven is quick, so these may take more like 12-15 minutes.) When the cookies come out, let them cool on a wire rack before adding the topping.

TOPPING
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• sprinkles

Start the chocolate sauce topping as your cookies go in the oven. Heat water and vanilla in a small saucepan, then whisk in cocoa powder and powdered sugar. Once you have a nice smooth consistency, remove from heat and let cool until your cookies are ready. It will thicken as it cools, so be sure to give it a stir every so often while you’re waiting.

Drizzle the cookies with your chocolate sauce, then top with sprinkles, powdered sugar, or both. I topped mine all three ways so you could see how they look and decide what you want for yourself. I do like the crunch and look of jumbo nonpareils/sugar pearls/whatever you want to call them, but use whatever you like.

The chocolate drizzle will set up a bit as it cools. Do feel free to eat them while still warm (I encourage you to!), but definitely wait to put them away or they’ll stick to everything.

Ready for more recipes? There are 15 in this year’s cookie swap to try!
December 12, 2019
Coffee Walnut Cookies

Sarah from Room for Tuesday is hosting a Blog Hop Cookie Swap! The participants are linked at the end of the post, and everybody is sharing a different cookie recipe today. There are some great ones, but I’m also enjoying the peek into everybody’s kitchens.

Coffee walnut cookies are so easy to make, which is great because they’re the first thing I’ve baked in our new oven! I think there’s always a bit of an adjustment from one appliance to another, but in our case we jumped from a 100-year-old cast iron antique to the double-oven range of my dreams. That’s a full post of its own for another day though — let’s get to the cookies, shall we?

I love sweets and baked goods, but not when they’re too sugary. These are cookies, but they’re scone-like in taste and texture (and thus can be justified as a perfectly fine breakfast item).

COFFEE WALNUT COOKIES
• 1-2/3 cups flour
• tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp instant espresso powder
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup plus 2 tbsp butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup walnut pieces
• optional: chocolate chips

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add eggs, one at a time, then the espresso powder. You can also use instant coffee in a pinch, but the coffee flavor will be far more subtle. Incorporate the flour mixture, then fold in walnuts. These are fantastic with chocolate chips too, either incorporated into the dough or added on top.

I first made these cookies after a recipe by Nigella Lawson, from her 2005 cookbook How to be a Domestic Goddess. I’ve altered the recipe but stay generally true to the original. (Her book is one that I’ve turned to again and again. We’ve made her banana bread too many times to count).

I spoon the dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper. I don’t have a great gauge on time and temperature, but do know that these are very forgiving cookies. In our old oven, I would make these at the “warm” temperature (it ranged from warm, to hot, and then very hot) for about 6 minutes. They’re supposed to be baked at 350° for 10-12 minutes but they were done sooner than that in my new oven too. So basically bake them at whatever, check on them, don’t let them burn. Scientific! (Like I said, these forgiving. My baking methods are all skewed from working with the antique range for so long, but these cookies have a high success rate with all kinds of variables.)

I know this looks like the world’s tiniest batch of cookies. I need to buy new baking sheets now that we’re going to bake in an oven that can fit something slightly larger than a postage stamp!

So… first look at the antique stove’s replacement? I wish the lighting were better. I really do! This was a rainy/snowy winter day and I needed the lights on, which makes the photos not as pretty as they could be. I’m not planning a full renovation of the kitchen right now, but obviously the CornuFé is a huge upgrade. I have no shortage of ideas for a full renovation that would of course utilize the new range, but I also have smaller incremental changes in mind that would add up to a perfectly lovely kitchen for years to come.

Anyway! Thanks for stopping by for the coffee walnut cookie recipe! I’d love to hear from you if you make them. And be sure to visit each person linked below for another recipe.

BLOG HOP COOKIE SWAP

• Making it Lovely
• Centered by Design
• Bria Hammel Interiors
• Place St. Russel
• Anita Yokota
• Simply Grove
• Room for Tuesday
• Francois et Moi
• Life on Virginia Street
• Boxwood Avenue
• Coco Kelley
• Erin Kestenbaum
• Kate Lester Interiors
• House of Hipsters
• Jojotastic

December 3, 2018
Taco Tuesday is Great and All, But…

This post is sponsored by Blue Apron. If you’d like to give it a try, you can get your own first box with 3 free meals when you sign up here!

Brandon does the cooking for us just about every night. He also does the grocery shopping. And he’s great at it!

Alas, I am no help at all when it comes to meal planning.

I wish I was someone who knew how to take some garlic, tomatoes, and whatever else and turn it into something new and inventive, but I’m not. Neither of us are. It’s easy to put things on autopilot when we’re busy and we cook the same meals over and over.

We love Blue Apron because it gets us out of our dinner rut, especially during busy times like the holiday season. Everything can be made in 40 minutes or less, each menu is between 500-800 calories per person, and you get all the fresh ingredients you need in exactly the right proportions. If you don’t need a week, skip it. (You can skip or cancel at any time.)

And ahem… New Year’s resolutions, anyone? More cooking at home. Healthier meals. Check and check.

Sometimes the recipes are for meals that are completely new to us, and sometimes they’re reminders to make something we’ve had before that sort of fell out of the rotation. Like a couple of weeks ago, one of our dinners was pork chops and yellow tomato sauce, with roasted potatoes and broccoli.

Broccoli is one of my favorites, but we had gotten into the habit of either eating it raw with a dip or steaming it. Why had we not been roasting our broccoli lately? It’s so easy to make, but so good!

The broccoli and potatoes were both supporting players to the main dish, the pork chops. Tasty! I think the tomatoes that went on top would be equally good on chicken (look at me, sort of experimenting). It was a new dish for our family, but nothing so out there that the kids would balk.

Speaking of the kids… We’re a family of 5, and we’ve gone with both types of plans (2-Person or Family Plan). I’m sure my kids’ appetites will increase as they get bigger, but for now we can get away with the 2-Person plan if Brandon and I each share a little of our portions, or the Family Plan which usually leaves us with leftovers.

You can see what’s coming up weeks in advance. Blue Apron is always adding new dishes to the menu every week, and you can choose any combination of recipes for each delivery. Instead of the old standby ‘Taco Tuesday’ (great but predictable), we might look forward to ‘spicy honey-lime chicken tostadas‘ or ‘mushroom & potato tacos with avocado & cara cara orange salad.’

See? We wouldn’t think to plan those dinners, but we would all sure want to eat them! Yum. The variety of recipes is what I love about Blue Apron the most.

p.s. Yes, the first 50 readers to take advantage of this offer will get 3 meals free in their first Blue Apron order! Just click here to visit Blue Apron.

December 5, 2017
“Boxed Cooking Experience”

This post is sponsored by Blue Apron.

We’ve been using Blue Apron throughout the past year or so, and most recently, we made their Swedish-style turkey meatballs. I told the kids that we were having meatballs for dinner like the ones we get at IKEA, and I got cheers in response. “YAAAAYY!” Then Brandon was like, “um, you better tell them that they aren’t exactly the same meatballs.” (You know how kids can be sometimes with food and expectations and such.) I did, and they were still on board! Cooking time.

The dinner turned out perfectly. Do you use ground turkey very often? Whenever we make meatballs, we’ve always used ground beef, but I couldn’t tell the difference. I suppose this is healthier, right? Right. (All of their meals are chef-designed and between 500-700 calories per serving.) The kids loved ’em too.

You can skip deliveries any time you’d like, but I wasn’t thinking properly about my schedule last week. We get the Family Plan that comes with two meals, each for four people. We made the Swedish meatballs dinner right away, but then I went out of town the next night! It was the first trip I’d gone on since having Calvin. Brandon’s great at holding down the fort and taking care of the kids, but having all three (and dealing with a baby that’s not fond of taking a bottle) was going to be rough, so he gave our other meal (pan-seared steaks and salsa verde) to his mom. I’ve talked about Blue Apron with my mother-in-law before because she knew that we had been using it, but I don’t think she realized how good the food is until she tried it herself. I got this photo from her while I was away.

Subject line: “Boxed cooking experience.” (LOL.) Email text: “WOW!” (Also, how fun is she? I love that she thought to take a picture.)

Blue Apron adds new recipes every week and we’ve always been impressed by how tasty they are. I wish I was better at planning meals and searching out new things to make, but the truth is, I’m just not. It isn’t one of my strengths, so I love that they make getting a good dinner on the table easier. I want to try making their chilaquiles some time too; I love it but have never made it myself! Same with Thai food, like their spicy thai chicken noodle soup. I would love to know how to make it at home instead of relying on take-out.

Blue Apron is available nationwide with free shipping to over 80% of the country. If you want to try the service out, they’re offering the first 50 readers two meals off of their first Blue Apron order for free! I think it’s such a smart solution for people like us who want to cook, but aren’t great at sitting down to plan everything out and come up with new ideas every week. They’ve made our dinners so much better.

April 28, 2015
Better Water

This post is sponsored by Soma.

Our fridge doesn’t have an automatic ice/water dispenser and we don’t buy bottled water, so I bought a Soma water carafe a couple of years ago. The team at Soma recently debuted their newest pitcher and offered to send one over, since they knew that I’d already been using the carafe and was a fan. The plastic pitcher has the same filter and functionality, but it’s larger, with a new shape and a wooden handle.

I’m still nursing Calvin, so I drink a ton of water throughout the day. I keep a glass bottle on my desk and another next to the bed that I refill, and we’re trying to drink water as a family more often than not with our meals. The kids call me out if I have a pop with dinner, because they’re only allowed to have it on special occasions! Most of the time we drink our filtered water plain (there’s no funny taste and it’s nice and cold from being in the fridge), but sometimes it is nice to give it a little flavor for a change. I don’t follow a strict recipe; pretty much any combination of lemon, lime, mint, basil, and cucumber works.

Two varieties that I like a lot are lemon, lime, and mint, or lemon, cucumber, and basil. I slice everything up and add it to a pitcher, top it off with water, and let it chill in the fridge for at least an hour for the flavors come together.

You can add simple syrup if you want to make it sweeter, or even mix in a little lemon-lime soda if you want some sweetness and fizz. We’re trying to drink less pop here, but I thought I’d mention it because it does taste really good — especially with the basil.

Soma makes their products here in the United States and they’re committed to good design, which is no small thing. I like that my Soma looks good on the table! That was a major deciding factor when I first bought my carafe, versus some of the other brands out there. I like the look of the new pitcher’s oak handle too, but it’s also nice because I’m usually holding the baby in one hand and refilling my glass or water bottle with the other, and a handle is easier to grab and hold onto. Plus, the larger size means I don’t have to refill the pitcher as often and it still fits on the fridge door. Beyond the good design, Soma’s filters are sustainable and plant-based (I have a new one delivered to replace the old every two months), and they do the job without leaving any black flecks behind. I also appreciate that Soma gives back through donations to charity: water, which I’ve donated directly to in the past, and it’s nice that I can support them through the brands I buy from too.

Target carries the entire Soma family, and they chose the brand as one of just sixteen Made to Matter companies, highlighting products devoted to wellness. And here’s some good news: the first 50 readers to use the code MIL1FREEFILTER at drinksoma.com will receive 1 free filter ($12.99 value) off their first Soma order!

April 23, 2015
No More Excuses

Sponsored by Blue Apron.

Do you eat dinner together as a family every night? We do, but until a couple of weeks ago, we didn’t always finish together. Eleanor and August know that they have to ask “may I be excused?” before they leave the table. (I highly recommend teaching your kids to do this too, because once they’re in the habit and they do it in front of company or at a friend’s house, they look super-polite and you get a million parenting points. Grandparents especially notice.) The problem is that we started getting to the point where the kids would each finish their meal and immediately ask to be excused — leaving the rest of us still at the table. So now we’re trying a new rule where they stay at the table until everyone is done.

The pictures in this post are from a dinner we made over the weekend: blood orange roasted salmon, from Blue Apron.

I’ve partnered with Blue Apron before, and I’m happy to continue to do so. They deliver fresh ingredients to your door, saving you a trip to the grocery store, and delivering exactly the right proportions for each recipe. I like it because the recipes don’t take too long (40 minutes or less), and they push me to include extra touches that I wouldn’t think to add otherwise. Do I usually top my food with pepitas or use a blood orange in place of a regular one? No, and adding them made our dinner feel more special, like we were getting a restaurant-style meal at home.

The recipe we made called for the salmon to be roasted, which meant cooking in our unpredictable antique oven. We’re pretty used to its quirks and we do often make fish in it, but I finally bought an oven thermometer so now we know that “Hot” actually means 500 degrees. (I suppose that’s why we’ve never seen the gauge go all the way to “Very Hot.” Can you imagine?)

You know the pink dishes I painted last week? I went and picked some up, and let me tell you — everything looks prettier on a pink plate!

Using gold flatware helps too, as demonstrated by my little hand model. She was a big fan of the salmon.

So, the new rule? It’s working so far! The kids are getting an exercise in patience, waiting until everyone has finished before being excused, and it’s giving us a little more time to sit at the table as a family and talk. Of course, a lot of that ‘talk’ is made up of little kid jokes that don’t make any sense, but it’s still nice. (And won’t the grandparents be impressed!)

If you’d like to try Blue Apron, I have a discount offer to share with you. The first 50 readers to sign up via Making it Lovely get two free meals on their first Blue Apron order!

The service is available nationwide to over 80% of the country. The plans have changed a little since I last wrote about the service and they now offer two types: the 2-Person Plan and Family Plan. We use the Family Plan, which is designed for a family of four (or more, if your kids are little and don’t eat a ton at each meal). Each delivery has enough food for two meals to be served family-style, you can choose to receive either one or two deliveries per week. The price is $69.92 per delivery ($8.74/serving) but there’s also a 2-Person plan offering one delivery a week with three meals for $59.94 ($9.99/serving). The food arrives in a refrigerated box so the ingredients will stay fresh, and they have a Blue Apron market with kitchenware, should you find yourself wanting to add a few new tools to your arsenal. They add new dishes all the time, shipping is always free, and there’s no commitment — you can skip or cancel whenever you’d like to.

January 20, 2015