2011 Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap: Rocky Road Cookies!

You know what I love most about the holidays? BAKING! I don’t know why I don’t just bake cookies all year round. Maybe it’s because it’s hard to find the time and it can get pretty messy… but I do love baking. This year, I’m kicking off the (holiday) baking season with my contribution to the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2011: Rocky Road Cookies!

Rocky road icecream is my ALL-TIME FAVORITE icecream flavor. I love the chocolate and the marshmallows and the nuts… basically everything about it. I know there are other rocky road cookies out there, but I thought that this one would be extra delicious because it’s adapted from Thomas Keller‘s Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe found in his Ad Hoc At Home Cookbook.

Rocky Road Cookies!!

Rocky Road Cookies (adapted from Ad Hoc At Home Cookbook by Thomas Keller) – makes about30-ish cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 1/3 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 cups chocolate chips (I used semisweet)
• 1 heaping cup mini marshmallows
• 1/4 cup slivered almonds, lightly toasted
• 1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
• 3/4 cup vanilla sugar (which is sugar which has been sitting in a container with a vanilla bean)
• 2 large eggs

Directions:

1. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir with a whisk (sifting is for wimps).
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle, beat half the butter on medium speed until fairly smooth. Add both sugars and the remaining butter, and beat until well combined, then beat for a few minutes, until the mixture is light and creamy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating until the first one is incorporated before adding the next and scraping the bowl as necessary.
4. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed to combine. Mix in the chocolate, then almonds, then marshmallows. Mix just enough to incorporate – do not over mix!
5. Remove the bowl from the mixer and fold the dough with a spatula to be sure that the ingredients are evenly incorporated. Shape into balls using an icecream scoop or appropriately sized cookie scoop (My balls were a little more than2 1/2 tablespoons each). Chill in the refrigerator while the oven preheats (Keep the dough balls chilled while they are waiting to bake).
6. Position the oven racks in the lower and upper thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with Silpats or parchment paper.
7. Place chilled cookie dough balls on prepared cookie sheet about 2-3 inches apart.
8. Bake for 12-15 minutes, rotating pans halfway through. Let cool slightly on the cookie sheet (to firm up), then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
9. Seal them up and give away before you eat them all!

NOTE: The dough or shaped cookies can be refrigerated, well wrapped, for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 2 weeks (probably longer, but that’s entirely at your own risk). Freeze shaped cookies on the baking sheets until firm, then transfer to freezer containers. (Defrost frozen cookies overnight in the refrigerator before baking.)

I packed them up nicely with a couple servings of homemade peppermint hot chocolate on a stick and sent them off to my swap matches: Big Bear’s Wife, Katie’s Cucina, and Rosy Girl Baked Goods. I hope they enjoy them!

 

Homemade Pure Vanilla Extract Trio

Last year I was inspired by this post for homemade vanilla extract from Love and Olive Oil. I went and ordered 1/2 pound madagascar bourbon vanilla beans from Beanilla and set my plan in motion. My goal was to allow the extract to seep for as long as possible so that I would have some pretty good gifts this Christmas. And.. as all good plans end up.. IT WORKED!

Homemade Vanilla Extract Trio - made from rum, vodka, and brandy

Using the recipe provided by Love and Olive Oil, I made a vanilla extract trio using vodka (Smirnoff Triple Distilled), rum (Bacardi Superior), and brandy (Christian Brother VS). The vanilla steeped in the alcohol for about 11 months (roughly November 2010 to October 2011). After 11 months (the extract was a nice amber color) of sitting in a cool dark place, it was filtered (through coffee filters) and bottled. I opted for 2-oz bottles from Specialty Bottle. I created labels using a little lace clipart (from Martha Stewart) and some fun fonts.

Pretty nice, don’t you think?

Some photos of the initial steeping process. Didn’t get any photos of the filtering and bottling though.

Let sit and soak in a cool, dark place

Jars labeled so I know what’s what

Vanilla beans cut and scraped

all the ingredients

Homemade Vanilla Extract Trio – made from rum, vodka, and brandy

The Vet, The Dog, and… the Worm

Minh and I have had Sprocket for 3 months now. And for the most part.. those three months have been pretty good, especially since we’ve been going to training (more on that next week). That is.. things have been going good until…

… I took her to the dog park. I’m not saying “Don’t take your dog to the dog park”.. by no means. Sprocket LOVED the dog park. It was her first time, and there were about half a dozen (bigger) dogs for her to run around and play with. She let out a lot of energy, and it was great to be able to see her interact with other dogs and run around freely. But.. she also got peed on, molested by a male pit, and after about 30 minutes was hiding under a bench from another dog who was trying to establish “alpha” status.

AND… I’m pretty sure she got tapeworm from the dog park. She must have eaten something while I wasn’t looking. For the last week and a half, she’s been peeing in her crate, which is something she NEVER did even after we took her home from the shelter. At first, we thought she had UTI. We took her to the vet yesterday, and while they didn’t find any signs of bacteria infection, they did find TAPEWORM!!! No wonder she’s still so skinny!

The vet gave us antibiotics anyway, just in case she had low levels of bacteria that did not show up in the urinalysis, and a shot to kill the tapeworm. We’re also upping her daily food because apparently we weren’t feeding her enough. So… with not getting enough food and the tapeworm stealing all of her nutrients away, she’s been trying to compensate with lots of water… which led to a full bladder… which led to more accidents… and lots of cleaning. We’re lucky we had the vet check for tapeworm or else we never would have known.

EXTRA: “There’s a battle in your butt between bacteria and antibiotics!” – Oh… the weird things Minh says sometimes. But.. I love him anyway..

And… TWO BIG THUMBS UP to the Animal Medical Center in Fountain Valley. The vet was great, the staff was amazing, and the place was much better than Minh and I were expecting. Only downside is that it’s walk-in only, no appointments, but I can handle waiting.

Homemade Hot Chocolate (On a Stick) with Peppermint Marshmallows

There are certain flavors that signify the start of a season for me. Summer has strawberries, watermelon, and sweet corn. Fall has apples, pumpkin, and ginger spice. Winter has peppermint and hot chocolate. There are, of course, millions of flavor profiles out there that signify different things for different people, but peppermint and hot chocolate are two things that just SCREAM winter for me.

I’ve been wanting to make hot chocolate on a stick for a long time, ever since I first saw it posted for sale at The Ticket Kitchen. Sure, there are tons of other places online that sell this.. and it probably isn’t a “new” idea.. but it’s a genius ideas for the holidays. What’s a better gift than a nice new mug and some hot chocolate on a stick. Pair that with some amazing marshmallows, a fire and a cozy blanket, and you’ve got yourself a pretty nice wintry evening.

Hot Chocolate on a Stick from The Ticket Kitchen - Service for 1, $3.95

But.. $3.95 plus shipping and handling is a little pricey for one steamy mug of hot chocolate with no marshmallows. Of course, it’s simple enough to make on your own (both the hot chocolate and the marshmallows). I found a simple recipe for hot chocolate on a stick from King Arthur Flour and used a cubed ice tray to make my own hot chocolate on a stick. Paired with some homemade peppermint marshmallows (used Alton Brown‘s marshmallow recipe, but replaced the vanilla extract with peppermint extract and swirl in a little bit of red food coloring at the end) and I was good to go for small Christmas presents.

Homemade Peppermint Hot Chocolate on a Stick!

House Work: Stripped

Minh and I (but mostly Minh) have been hard at work around the house. I’m amazed at how much work there is to do around the house. It’s not that the house is in a huge state of disarray.. it’s just that there is so much that we want to do to fix it up (paint, new kitchen, landscaping, etc…) on top of usually up-keep of the house (sweeping, vacuuming, steaming the floor, laundry, making sure we don’t create clutter, etc…). It always seems to take longer than we anticipate, and things pile up, and we never seem to get as much done as we want to before the weekend is up. ::le sigh::

One clear sign of progress that I can share, though, is the front yard. This is what the front of our house looked like when we first moved in:

Front of the House - BEFORE (a.k.a. The Jungle)

The three palm trees on the side hadn’t been trimmed in YEARS. They were being used as housing for two owls (so our neighbor across the street said) and were presenting a huge fire hazard. The large tree by the front door was almost as tall as the house itself, and the branches were starting to damage the roof. The “flowers” and lavender bushes in the front were not maintained for a long time, and the dirt underneath had a soggy, swampy feel to them. The tree in the front corner (what Minh called “the alien” tree) had completely killed off the grass in that area of the lawn. The smaller palm tree next to it was just bothersome. Everything was overgrown, roots all over the place, and just ugly looking.

And.. after months of hacking away at trees and bushes (both in the front, in the back, and on the side of the house), and after hiring a company to trim up the palm trees.. we have this:

Front of the House - AFTER (a.k.a. Striped Bare)

It looks so… naked! Of course, this isn’t how we’re going to leave it, but it’s at least a clean slate to start planting what I want out front. Right now, I’m thinking berries (blueberries, blackberries, rasberries, currants), lavender, hydrangeas, and saffron crocuses. Maybe some daffodils, lilies, ranunculus, and other colorful spring flowers.. we’ll see.