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26 Jul 2011 Blueberry Chip Cookies
Author:  |  Category: Cookies & Bars, Fruits, Sweets  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,  | 4 Comments

Hey world, there’s a new cookie on the plate!  It’s sort of like a chocolate chip cookie.  It has all the elements of a chocolate chip cookie.  It crunches like a chocolate chip cookie; crisp around the edges and chewy in the middle. It even looks like a chocolate chip cookie.  But it’s NOT!  It’s a Blueberry Chip Cookie!  Nope, not reminiscent of a blueberry muffin  or a blueberry cake.   Nothing like a blueberry tart or a sugar cookie with jam either.  I think it really is a chocolate chip cookie.  With blueberries. And white chocolate chips.

Two secret ingredients:  freeze dried blueberries and dried wild blueberries!  I had never seen freeze dried blueberries either, but there they were right on the shelf at Trader Joe’s, not too far from the dried blueberries.  The freeze dried blueberries are crushed into a powder and then mixed into the dough with the flour.  The small dried blueberries have a lot a flavor and don’t burst into a gooey mess when cooked.   Genius, pure genius!  And we have Irvin, from Eat the Love, to thank for this delightfully twisted Chocolate Chip Cookie 🙂

I made a few changes to the original recipe.  I didn’t use Kamut flour (what IS that?) and I didn’t make these jumbo.  Irvin made 18 cookies from this recipe (they must have been the size of a PIE!), I made 5 dozen.  I am not sure the sugar sprinkle is necessary, I might leave it off next time but my daughter liked the sparkle (she’s such a girlie girl).

Blueberry  Chip  Cookies

  • 3 cups plus 3 tablespoons All-Purpose Flour
  • 1/2 cup freeze dried blueberries, crushed into powder (put into a Ziploc and go to town with a meat tenderizer or rolling pin)
  • 1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) butter at room temperature
  • 1 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 10 oz white chocolate chips (don’t use Nestle’s-they are nasty)
  • 1 cup dried wild blueberries (I’d probably add an extra 1/4 – 1/2 cup next time)
  • 2 tablespoons white sugar to sprinkle on top (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 350º F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat.

2. Place the  flour, freeze dried blueberry powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Whisk vigorously until the dry ingredients are evenly distributed and uniform in color.

3. Place the butter and sugars in the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. On medium speed, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about three minutes.

4. Add one egg to the creamed butter and beat on medium until incorporated. Scrape down the sides and repeat with the second egg and then the vanilla.

5. Add 1/3 of the dry ingredients to the butter and beat on slow speed turning up the speed to medium as the ingredients incorporate into the dough. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then add an additional 1/3 of the batter repeat, beating on slow to medium. Scrap and add the final 1/3 dry ingredients.

6. Add the white chocolate chips and dried blueberries to the cookie dough and turn the mixer on to slow speed, mixing in the chips and blueberries until evenly distributed.

7. Scoop a tablespoon of the dough, roll into a ball, place on cookie sheet and flatten slightly. Sprinkle with a little white sugar. Repeat.  I found I could place 14 cookies on each cookie sheet.

8. Bake in preheated 350º oven for  about 13 minutes or until the edges of the cookie starts to look golden brown. Remove from the oven and let rest on the pan for 5 to 10 minutes to cool before moving them to a wire rack to cool to room temperature.

Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

I am so pleased with these cookies!  They are so much like a chocolate chip cookie, but so different.  The dichotomy tickles me purple!   I hope you are the first person on your block to make Blueberry Chip Cookies!

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today!

31 May 2011 Yes, I am baaaaack…
Author:  |  Category: Notes from Polly  | Tags: , , , , , , , ,  | 13 Comments

I’ve been gone so long, I don’t know what to say. Perhaps an explanation??  OK…

…all of a sudden I was planning my daughter’s wedding.  She gave us nine weeks from announcement day to wedding day.  Not a whole lot of time for a do-it-yourself wedding.  Not a whole lot of time to do anything other than make invitations, programs, wine and water bottle labels, menus, bake cookies and dips and pastas, shop for dresses and all the other clothing bits plus shoes, food, plates…, and ask for HELP!

Handmade invitations.

Fooling around while dress shopping. NO, I am NOT the one  supposed to be getting married.

How many dozen cookies did we make for the Cookie Shoppe thank you gifts?  I think we got up to 20 or 30 dozen.

Then my Aunt-from-England arrived to celebrate Easter with us and to attend the wedding and–stay with me for five weeks.  She turned out to be pretty high maintenance, and firmly attached to my hip.  With being a good and attentive hostess to a much loved aunt,  and doing all sorts of wedding stuff, spending any significant time cooking, photographing, and blogging  was out of the question.

My son gave me a fuzzy pink toilet seat cover for Easter.  When I asked him why, he said it was egg shaped and the right color!!!  Didn’t I think it was brilliant, too?! My next question he couldn’t answer, “What was a 20 year old boy, sorry, man, doing in the toilet seat aisle in Target?”

Then,  just ten days before the planned “I do”s, the wedding was suddenly CANCELLED =:O.

The Ring Bearer shirt arrived too, too large.  Not an issue now though….

The shower for the wedding that never happened.

We didn’t quite make it to the church on time…

Then my Aunt-from-Scotland arrived to attend the now not happening wedding.  Then my Mom arrived from San Diego to attend the not happening wedding.  We were all in shock and totally incapable of anything other than watching the Royal Wedding.  Twice.  No, three times. We stayed up all night to watch it, then we watched all the repeats the next day, and then again the next day.  The day after that my Dad started having tizzy fits so my Mom and Aunt-from Scotland had to fly down to San Diego ahead of schedule to tend to him.

Enjoying the Royal Wedding from San Jose!

Then my daughter left on her honeymoon, which was now not a honeymoon, but I still got to watch my two and half year old grandson while she was gone.  For a week. He’s a handful.  Wonderful, but a handful. Not much time to do much of anything other than count his break dancing head turns, play cars, feed, bathe, change and try to get him to go to bed-which turned out to be a nightmare.

My grandson in his usual motion.  He LOVES to run…and break dance…on his head.

Two days after my daughter returned to pick up her son, my Aunt-from-England and I went on a 10 day cruise to Alaska.  Now that was fun.  In the down time, of which there was a lot, I read 6 novels (only one I would recommend, “Room” by Emma Donoghue, and one Alaskan cookbook (wonderful, can’t wait to try out some Asian influenced Alaskan seafood dishes), but Internet access on board was seventy-five cents a minute, and s-l-o-w.  Plus, although I was eating three or four course meals four times a day (breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner), I was not cooking a thing.  I did receive instruction on how to make Gravlax though.  I can’t wait to try my hand at that and hopefully post some very successful results.

Two tourists in Alaska. (Never trust a skinny cook!)


Five desserts on one plate! Am I in heaven?  BTW, the Pavlova was the best.

Gravlax!  The Head Chef of the cruise ship shared his recipe and method.  I took lots of notes.

After the cruise we were home for about forty eight hours, attended Cookbook Club (fondue!)  and a Dining for Women meeting (our second year anniversary!),  repacked our suitcases, and then headed down to San Diego for five days.  San Diego was heaven, but again, limited Internet access, and I was so busy going out for expensive lunches I had no time to cook or blog anyway!  Then home for two days, my Aunt-from-England had a meltdown, and I put her back on the plane to England with a very heavy heart.

Butterscotch Fondue

Some of the wonderful women from my Dining For Women chapter. We are doing what we can to assist impoverished women and children around the world out of poverty and into self sustainability, and we are doing it one grassroots project at a time, one dinner at a time.

One of the decadent open air lunches in San Diego, this one with my mother at the Hotel Del Coronado.

Now I have been home, alone, more-or-less, as my two college age children have returned home for the Summer, and it’s been bliss, but the only thing I have cooked is a s’more at my elder daughter’s home after a Memorial Day BBQ!  Tonight, another house guest arrives.  I’ve never met him.  My daughter invited him to stay with us, for the Summer, because he had nowhere else to go.  Um…what???? OUR house?  Are we a half-way house now?  I barely have enough bedrooms for my two returning students and ME!  We are adding one more now?  WHERE???  But I digress, this is tomorrow’s story, not yesterdays!

So today I am moving furniture around to accommodate one more summer resident and I am flipping through the cookbooks and magazines I have bought over the last few weeks, in hopes and anticipation of the day and time I will get back into the kitchen…which seems to be SOON!  Maybe this afternoon!  I have an cheese enchilada dish I want to remake, and lollipop steaks, and anything at all from my newly purchased David Lebovitz cookbook “Ready for Dessert”, and the previously mentioned Alaskan seafood cookbook, “Fishes and Dishes”.  I’ve made butterscotch fondue and Grand Marnier marshmallows, and Microwave Marmalade that I want to remake and photograph, along with my Blackberry Ribs, and recent sorbets that my Aunt-from-England enjoyed every afternoon.  And there’s the Blueberry Hot Chocolate I tasted in Alaska that I want to create for my non-coffee drinking daughter, and the Strawberry-Mango Meringue Pie my daughter and I want to perfect.  So much fun stuff to do…and hopefully I will have all Summer to do it.

Blackberry Ribs.

Pie with promise, Strawberry-Mango Meringue.

It’s good to be back!  Hope you missed me.  Now let’s start where we left off!  Where to begin, where to begin?

 

08 Feb 2011 Milky Way Rice Krispie Treats
Author:  |  Category: Cookies & Bars, Holidays & Events, Sweets  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,  | Leave a Comment

One more week until Valentine’s Day.  I wonder if I can pull together a week of chocolate posts?  LOL.  Of course I can!  Is there any ingredient I like more? Aside from chocolate (and coffee), what is my private, secret, shameful indulgence?  Rice Krispie treats.  I can’t be left in a room alone with them. Terrible, horrible-immoral-things happen.  So what better way to start out my Valentine’s Day posts than with a recipe for a chocolate Rice Krispie Treats?!

I try every recipe for  Rice Krispie Treats that I run across.  I have quite a collection of Rice Krispie recipes: Coconut, Browned Butter, Peanut Butter, and Chocolate-Cherry.  Sadly, not all the recipes I’ve tried have worked.  The coffee ones and the butterscotch ones, both made with pudding, were major disappointments.  Not this one though.  I found this recipe on a British food site, The Greedy Gourmet. These, these my friends, are winners. Only one problem though, there are no marshmallows in them! =:O  In fact, the entire recipe has only three ingredients! (I might try to remake this recipe with some marshmallows at a future date  because I do miss some of that marshmallow gooeyness.)  With no marshmallows, these Rice Krispie Treats are more crispy than gooey, but they are ohhhhh soooo good!

The original recipe was made with Mars bars, which is a UK chocolate bar very similar to a Milky Way bar, so I subbed Milky Way bars. The original recipe also called for slicing some additional Mars/Milky Way bars and laying the slices on top of the treats, then covering the entire thing with some melted chocolate.  I didn’t do that.  Five melted Milky Way bars stirred into 4 cups of Rice Kripies sounded decadent enough for me.

Milky Way Rice Krispie Treats

  • 5 Milky Way Bars (about 11 oz. total)
  • ¼ cup butter
  • 4 cups Rice Krispies
  1. Prepare a 8×8 or a 9×9 baking dish by spraying with Pam or smearing with butter.
  2. Pour 4 cups Rice Krispies into a large heat proof bowl and set aside.
  3. Chop the Milky Way bars and place in a small saucepan with the butter.  Over low heat stir the Milky Way bars and the butter until both are melted and the mixture is smooth and creamy.  Remove from heat.
  4. Pour the chocolate mixture over the Rice Krispies and stir well.  Coat as many Rice Krispies as possible with the chocolate mixture.
  5. Pour the Rice Krispie mixture into prepared square pan.  Press lightly on mixture to remove air pockets and to level out and flatten mixture.
  6. Let set.
  7. Cut into serving sized squares and enjoy.

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today.  Maybe you’ll put some of these in your kids lunch box this week? And, maybe, for Valentine’s Day dinner, you’ll consider a recipe for Hot Chocolate Lava Cakes.  My daughter made them for us last year…, yummm!  This year, she made four kinds of brownies.  I’ll be posting the two winners shortly (the bacon ones will not be posted…)

14 Jan 2011 Milk Chocolate Coconut Macaroons
Author:  |  Category: Cookies & Bars, Sweets  | Tags: , , , , , ,  | One Comment

Ever had a “Bounty” Bar?  If  you are a coconut lover, I sure hope you have!   “Mounds” bars and “Almond Joy” bars are OK in a pinch, but if you are a serious coconut lover, search out a Bounty Bar! It’s an English candy bar, so it is often found at stores like Cost Plus World Market, English specialty stores (of course) and grocery stores with a well developed International Foods section (I’ve seen them at larger Safeways), and I just found them hiding out at Indian grocery stores (and there is an Indian grocery store within walking distance of my home…!)

Did you find one? Good! Now that you’ve tasted a Bounty Bar, you  know the appeal of these Coconut Macaroons.  You know the joy of a creamy coconut filling enrobed in some seriously good milk chocolate. And I know you’ll want to make these, because you’ve realized that if you continue to pay exorbitant US prices for a UK Bounty Bar you are going to go broke rather quickly.  And, I know that you want to share the joy!

You’ll notice that some of my macaroons don’t have milk chocolate on them.  What was I thinking?!  LOL!  I was making a batch to share, and I thought that some people might not want chocolate on their macaroon.  I was wrong!

I found the original recipe at The Brown Eyed Baker (one of my favorite recipe websites) who adapted the recipe from a combination of Joy of Cooking and Baking Illustrated recipes.  I changed the chocolate to make it so this macaroon more closely resembles a Bounty Bar.

The Brown Eyed Baker said this recipe yields about 3 dozen cookies.  I got half that many.

Milk Chocolate Coconut Macaroons

For the macaroons:

2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 large egg white
1½ teaspoons vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt
3½ cups sweetened flaked coconut

For the chocolate dipping & drizzle-ing:

1 large Cadbury Milk Chocolate bar, chopped (about 4 oz)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a large bowl, stir together the sweetened condensed milk, egg white, vanilla and salt until combined. Stir in the coconut until well blended.

3. With a small scoop, drop the dough by tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto the cookie sheets.

4. Bake, one sheet at a time, until the cookies are light golden brown, 15 to 2o minutes.

5. Cool the cookies on the baking sheets until slightly set, about 2 minutes; remove to a wire rack with a wide metal spatula.

6. Melt the chopped chocolate in the microwave on 50% power for 2 to 3 minutes.  Stir well.

7. Dip the bottoms of the macaroon in the melted chocolate.  Scrape off the excess chocolate. Place the macaroons a wax or parchment paper covered plate.

8.  Drizzle remaining chocolate over the tops of the macaroons.

9. Refrigerate the macaroons until the chocolate sets, about 15 minutes.

Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today!  Leave me a comment…, I’d love to know that you were here!

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