dear marta

dear marta,

i dont know if i should thank you
or curse you.
why you ask?
your coconut krispie chocolate chunk cookies,
of course!

we are having a family
dinner tomorrow
and i thought they would be perfect.

these cookies are perfection!
i love them.
they are my new favorite.
my new go to.

i am not sure which
i ate more of last night while
baking them,
the cookie dough or the cookies out of the oven.

so much for weight watchers.

thank you for sharing the recipe.
i think....
next batch i make i might add peanut butter chips too.
ohhhh the possibilities.

xo
luc

triple berry

one of the things
i love about living
in the northeast
is the abundance of
pick your own farms.

chace and i
have done our fair share
of berry picking this summer.

it is a great opportunity
to teach young children
about where our food comes from
and the importance of supporting local farmers.

earlier this month
we picked raspberries.
knowing we were leaving town,
i put them in the freezer.

yesterday we picked blueberries.
again.
loads of them.

growing up my mom used
to make these triple berry muffins.
they were so good.
i started thinking about those muffins yesterday.

i began looking through my cookbooks
and found a recipe
in one of my barefoot contessa books.
i decided to give it a try.

turns out she got the recipe
from a friend of hers
who happened to write
the silver palette cookbook,
which just happens to be the recipe my mom used.

i highly recommend these.
they are delicious.

sunday baking

sour cream sugar cookies, that will change your life, is that the recipe says. well, i was intrigued. i love sugar cookies, in particular cut outs from wegmans with lots of frosting. they are divine. so i thought i would give this recipe a try.

they are good, but they are not life changing good. i will say that i did not frost them, maybe i should have, maybe i will. i ran out of steam, my pregnant body would not let me stand any longer. precious husband said that he liked them fine without frosting. so naked they will remain. maybe its the frosting that makes them life changing, but i will have to wait until i am no longer pregnant to find out.

i did learn one important baking lesson this week. when baking soda loses its power, you end up with flat cookies. precious husband and i were talking about how despite the fact that the cookies i have made over the last few weeks have been good, they have been very flat, which leads to crispy cookies. the only thing that was the same in all the cookies was the baking soda, which led us to believe that it was past its prime. i have this app on my iphone, called still tasty, which tells you the shelf life of stuff. its fantastic. i looked it up and sure enough, baking soda after opened is only good for 6 months. i am quite certain that the baking soda i had been using was older than 6 months. so i bought new baking soda this week, and today's baking adventure produced very fluffy cookies.

who knew?

weekend baking

i had the urge to bake both days this weekend. i am chalking it up to the nesting instincts kicking in, which means that the bean is on his way. well, not at the moment, but in the next 3 weeks. there are a plethora of cooking blogs on the internet, way too many for me to follow. but there are two that i do follow smitten kitchen and rookie cookie. i found the recipes for both of my baking adventures this weekend from these two blogs.

the photo above is rookie cookie's recipe for banana muffins. see, i am trying something other than cookies. i had some bananas that were, well a little too brown for my liking, so i thought i would use them for muffins. these were very easy to make, and taste great. not an overwhelming flavor of banana nor are they too sweet. it does make 24 muffins, great for freezing or company. i told precious husband we should freeze some and his reply was "don't worry, they wont last long." i guess they passed his taste test.

i think there are is no better combination than peanut butter and chocolate, so when i saw the recipe for peanut butter and chocolate cookies, adapted from a recipe from magnolia bakery in nyc, on smitten kitchen, i was well smitten. these are divine! chunky peanut butter, peanut butter chip, and chocolate chips, whats not to love! they are definitely keepers.

precious husband is very focused on getting every last bit of dough out of the bowl, which he then promptly put in his mouth.

sunday baking

for the third sunday in a row i made cookies, seems as if sunday baking has become part of our sunday ritual, along with pancakes( made by precious husband) and walking the dogs. although, i suspect that once the bean is here i wont be baking much, and will need to refrain from cookie eating.

last week, darling alyssa, sent me a link for this rolo cookie recipe. she gave it rave reviews, so i thought i would give it a try. it was a little more time consuming than the past two weeks' recipes, but these cookies are delicious!

inside each little round ball of chocolate dough is a rolo.....

which creates another layer of chocolate and a yummy caramel center when baked. seriously, what's not to love. precious husband and i are trying hard not to eat all the cookies today while watching football.