A stripe-less bee!

What a funny expression, the bees knees. It’s not the first thing I think about when I think of a bee. I think, yellow and black, stingers, pollination, honey… but those fuzzy knees… not so much. Haha! But it’s such a catchy phrase. I even looked it up on google and here is what the first site describes about it. I like to look up very random things, I should have majored in procrastination…perhaps a major in psychology is not too far off. Anyways, on to baking…

So, as you may know, I have a couple of awesome cookie cutter shapes. A turtle, which created the one and only ginger snapping turtle, and the ever seasonal bat, from which the batkin was born. As I was digging through one of our oh-so-organized (can you sense the sarcasm? haha) kitchen utensil drawers, I found a little surprise. Nestled in the far corner was a bee. Crazy, right? Ok, ok, so, it wasn’t a real bee, but a cookie cutter bee (totally a better find). I completely forgot that I got it last summer, and was even more surprised that I hadn’t used it to make cute bee cookies. How can I call myself a baker if I don’t use all of my resources? I was utterly ashamed.

The good news is that a friend of mine had a party at her new apartment, so I decided that this darling cookie cutter would be put to good use. There was no way that I was going to make another batch of chocolate chip cookies or even brownies, I was craving to try something new. Again, I was not smart about timing, and had to turn to an easier recipe, but something new nonetheless. My scottish senses must have been super controlling while I was looking for a recipe, because all I wanted was to find a great shortbread recipe. Simple and delicious. I was craving it. Of course my favorite recipe site came to my rescue. I added in a little shumthing to make these bee cookies buzz.

Shortbread Bee Cookies (adapted from joyofbaking.com)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt (I added a pinch more)
• 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter
• 1/2 cup of powdered  sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla (or a bit more)
• 1 tablespoon of honey (this was my addition)

Directions:

• Mix flour and salt together in a bowl.
• In another bowl, whip up the butter until it’s nice and fluffy. I slightly messed up on this step because I accidentally melted the butter too much and had to spend a lot of time whipping it to make it a bit fluffier. Then I added in the honey.

• Add in the sugar to the butter and whip together until even fluffier.
• Add in the vanilla to the butter/sugar mixture.
• Then add the flour/salt mixture to the sugar/butter/vanilla mixture. Gently hand mix together, but don’t over mix.

• Roll the dough into a ball and flatten a bit.

• Wrap up the dough and put in the refrigerator for about an hour.
• Once the hour is up, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Roll out the door on a lightly floured surface and cut out whatever shape you want those cookies to be.

Yes, I did this step on a cookie sheet. Shhhh. Don't tell.

• Transfer to the cookie sheet.

• The site suggests that the cookie sheet then be transferred to the refrigerator to let the cookie shape firm up. I didn’t do that and the cookies turned out wonderfully.
• Bake for 8-10 minutes.
• Let cool for a few minutes.

Bee hive... kinda. Would have been a great idea to have put them in that formation. Too bad we ate them right up.

You can try to dip the cookies in melted chocolate. I wanted to drizzle chocolate stripes on this specific batch, but ran out of time. I also wanted to try making blackberry or even blueberry jam stripes. I’ll keep you posted when I do that. So, go forth, make cookies and be merry. and ENJOY!

This summer has been of whirlwind of traveling, job hunting, exploring, spending time with old/new friends, and trying to sort out my life. Oh yes, and baking. What baking? you may ask. I know, I once again failed to be consistent with my posts. I also have been baking many of the things that I have posted recipes for before. The summer has been filled with chocolate chip cookies, snickerdoodles, brownies, banana breads, berry crisps, etc.

As the summer is winding down, I have a few things more sorted out. Though the whole “what am I going to do with my life” thing isn’t quite all together, I at least found a job in Portland, so I’m going to be able to stay here for a while!!!! (which I am very excited about, if you couldn’t tell). I also got to spend some good quality time with family, which is always soothing for the soul. Being with friends, old and new, also brings a smile to my face each and every day. So, right now, I am very happy where I am and am excited for what’s to come.

I also have a recipe to share with you!! It’s a recipe that I have used before, but tweaked a bit to make it something even more scrumptious. My friend David loves to cook dinner for groups of friends, and I am the one to make the dessert. I love getting that job. The last dinner I had made a peach raspberry crisp, and for this one I wanted something chocolatey. I didn’t leave myself enough time to try something completely extravagant or brand spankin’ new, but I didn’t want to be a repeat offender either. With the ingredients and time limit that I had, I came to the conclusion that I would make bite-sized brownies, with a berrylicious twist (yes, I said berrylicious, I’m a dork). I had raspberry preserves and fresh raspberries on hand, and raspberries and chocolate work beautifully together, so BAM, there was the idea for dessert. I really like my brownie recipe that I have used before, especially because it works well for bite-sized brownies as well. I used the exact same recipe, but, below I will show the changes I made to transform plain ol’ brownies into…

Raspberry Swirl Bite-Sized Brownies! 

• For the first step of melting butter, add in 1/3 cup of raspberry preserves. Mix well, and make sure they are blended into a raspberry butter.

Starting to blend

Raspberry butter. Quite pretty.

• Continue following the recipe as before, but now instead of regular butter, you have raspberry butter.
• Then, after baking for a good 15-20minutes, stick fresh raspberries on top of each brownie bite. Bake for another 5-10 minutes.

Be careful not to burn your hands. Baking the berries a bit makes them a bit juicier.

• Voila! A new version of brownie is born.

Alright, so there are not THAAAT many changes, but it is surprising what adding an ingredient or so will do to enhance a perfectly good recipe. So, go out there. Experiment with your recipes. Make use of the fresh berries while they are still here (and freeze a bunch for the winter so that you have them in stock). And, as always, ENJOY!

I know, I know, I have been so awful about keeping up with this blog. I’m not one to make up excuses, but finishing up senior year of college did kind of take over my entire existence. I did do my stress relieving baking, but most writing was geared towards those papers and projects that I should have started weeks in advance, and instead waited until the night before to even begin working on. If there is one thing that I will not miss about college, it’s the infamous all-nighter. Not the all-nighter you pull to party with friends, oh no, let’s be clear, this all-nighter involves you being surrounded by energy drinks, books, papers, your computer, perhaps a blanket, and no sleep is allowed. There are of course those moments where you get up and stretch because you can’t bear to look at the computer screen any longer (or it becomes blurry due to your vision going whack from concentrating on the computer screen for way too long). You may even try to nap, but that method tends to backfire…you either completely pass out and don’t hear your alarm screaming at you to get back to work, or you lie there, unable to rest because you aren’t working and there is just so much to do before 9am. Needless to say, I will not miss that kind of night.

I haven’t been able to absorb the fact that I am done with my undergrad career. Even with graduation and friends leaving, it just feels like summer break. I keep thinking that I’ll be heading back to LC for classes in the fall. That’s not going to happen. No more school for me. I’m not sure if I will go to grad school or not. I want to keep my options open, but right now, I just can’t do it. I need a break, hence my job search here in Portland, OR. Well, more like, I need a job, hence the great search. Hahaha. I’m hoping to find something soon, but I am also very focussed on being involved with something that will allow me to continue to learn, inspire me, get the creativity flowing, etc. (another reason why the search is a bit harder than expected). Buuuuuut, this time does allow me to try new recipes, so I will get on that and post more.

The recipe this post focusses on is one I did ages ago, during my college days…haha! But really… these beauties were created while I was still in school, pre-graduation.

Ok, pre-recipe story time. When I was in elementary school, I was a girl scout. Yes, one of those cute girls who pestered people to buy those infamous cookies at that certain time of year. To be honest, I wasn’t the best girl scout, and I think I really joined to go to the meetings after school for snacks and to sell those cookies. There was always something so rewarding about having complete strangers want to buy the cookies I was selling (maybe this is where the notion of selling baked goods came to be). I must admit that my mom was one of my biggest clients, and I was so happy about it because it meant we had SOOOOO many boxes of delicious cookies in our house. I swear, I could have downed a box of thin mints like no tomorrow. I still probably could, but my metabolism doesn’t quite work the same anymore. Anyways, seeing as I no longer have that instant access to Girl Scout cookies, I get suuuuuper excited when the tables stacked with brightly colored boxes are set up in front of various grocery stores and those adorable girls decked out in their green or brown uniforms timidly ask if you want to buy a box for $4. Actually, some of those girls are quite sassy. You get a mix of the ones who get too nervous to talk to strangers (I was totally one of those) and the others who have absolutely no issue walking right on up and selling those cookies. Where I am going with this? Well, this year I saw a ton of posts on other blogs for how to make Girl Scout cookies. The idea was, now you can have these delectable treats at any time of the year. I had been itching to make some of my very own, but truly got the push to do so when I walked to the store one day and saw the Girl Scouts doing their thing. Once my house demolished the box of Samoas that I had gotten, I decided to make homemade ones, to make up for lack of those tasty cookies. I saw bunches of blog posts for thus recipe but decided to stick to this one…

Samoa Doppelgangers (adapted from Once Upon A Plate)

Cookie Base Ingredients:

• 1 cup of softened butter
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 2 cups of flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• a dash of vanilla (original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon, I always put more)
• Around 2 tablespoons of milk

Cookie Base Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• Mix the butter and sugar together until creamy.
• Add flour, baking powder, and salt to the sugar/butter mixture.

• Then add in vanilla.

• The mixture will need to help coming together, so add in some milk, but make sure that the mixture isn’t too sticky. If the dough does get too sticky, you can throw some flour in it to even it out.

• Roll the dough out and cut out circular shapes. (I didn’t have a circular cookie cutter, so I used a random lid that was lying in the kitchen to make the perfect size outline for Samoas. Don’t worry, I thoroughly cleaned it). 

I accidentally baked these without punching the holes, but you can see around how they should be shaped.

• Once you have your rounds, then you can punch holes in the middle of them for the ultimate Samoa cookie shape. I used the lid from my vanilla extract container to do this.

No mo middles yo

• Repeat this process (with the occasional re-roll of the dough once you punched too many holes in it) until you have used up most of the dough (if not all of it).
• Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes. Let cool and go on to making the topping.

The mistakes and proper ones all making friends on the cooling plate.

Topping Ingredients:

• 3 cups of shredded coconut (I used unsweetened, but you can use either sweetened or unsweetened). 
• 12 oz of chewy caramels (I had such difficulty finding these in the store I went to, so I used a 12 oz jar of caramel topping instead, that way I could also skip the melting caramel process). 
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 3 tablespoons of milk
• 8 oz of semisweet chocolate (I used a combo of chocolate chips and baking chocolate). 

Topping Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
• Spread the shredded coconut on a baking sheet and toast in the oven for 20 minutes. Make sure to stir the coconut every 5 minutes so that it doesn’t burn. You want to end up with golden looking coconut shreds.

Stirring time!

Golden delicious. The non-apple kind

• Once coconut has reached the desired golden hue, set aside and cool.
• If you used the caramel chewies, you mix them with the salt and milk and you are to melt then in a microwave safe bowl in the microwave for 3-4 minutes (stopping to stir every here and there). I didn’t have to deal with this step, as I said, because I used caramel topping which is all melty anyways (and I stirred in the salt and milk into it).

• Mix the caramel and coconut together.

• Then start melting the chocolate on the stove. (I used double boiler technique, which is when you have a pit of boiling water going and you put another pot in/on it and the heat from the boiling water is what melts the chocolate without burning the chocolate). 

• You can see the original steps on the site that I took the recipe from, but I decided to take a different approach…
• Once the chocolate is melted, I dipped the bottom of the cookies in it.

A View from Above

• Then I put them in the freezer.
• Once the chocolate had cooled, I topped the cookies with the coconut/caramel mixture.

• To top it off, I drizzled more chocolate on top.

• I put them in the refrigerator to make sure they didn’t get too melty.
• Then I served them up, and like the Girl Scout versions, my house gobbled them all up.

There ya go. Instant Girl Scout Cookies in your very home at any time of the year. Ok, instant is a bit optimistic, but they are definitely worth the work that goes into the cookies. I can’t wait to try the others, especially Thin Mints because they are my other favorite ones. However you go about making these treats, I hope you have fun and beware, they go pretty fast. ENJOY

You may have heard that sickness is taking over. The coughs and wheezing and sniffles and sneezing. The calling in to work or school sick. The intense flashes of feeling hot and cold. The feeling like you are in a constant daze. It usually hits people at this time of year, and let me tell you that it seems to love to prey upon college campuses. It hit my house. Somehow I managed to escape it for the time being, maybe it steers clear from gingers.

Of course going to the health center or doctor can be helpful. Taking medicine and getting lots of rest is also recommended. Drinking fluids and getting tons of vitamin C is a must. What does this have to do with this blog? I have answers for you!

When I was home over this past winter break, there was this one morning where my mom gave me a tall glass of juice. Yes, you read correctly, juice. But this wasn’t ordinary store-bought juice. She had squeezed several grapefruits and oranges and put that juice in the freezer in order to make a refreshing morning beverage. No other ingredient necessary to make this taste oh so good. Surprising what years of drinking store-bought/processed juice will do to you. I was a non-believer, a hater, a blind ignorant fool, and now my eyes have been opened to something spectacular. I just knew that once I got back to Portland that I was going to be having a lot more of the fresh juice business.

The first night I was back with the roomies, we made a family dinner, and as it is usually my job to do dessert (and it’s never a chore, but rather something I DEMAND to do), I thought I would introduce this treat. I bought a bunch of grapefruits and blood oranges (thought the color would be really pretty) and made some juice popsicles. They were a huge success! It was only fitting that when everyone was getting sick, and when we got school cancelled for a snow day (it’s a rare thing to happen here in Portland, but it was glorious), that I would make some healthy, vitamin c rich, soothing, popsicles.

7am. Questing for a good spot to go sledding. Glorious start to a snow day.

This lamp looked lovely covered in snow

In all honesty, this wasn’t something baked. I juiced. Then the freezer froze. Then we slurped down our popsicles. I have been doing other baking though. Lots of cookies. Chocolate chip (this has become a staple in our house), coconut macaroons, and gingery snaps. I have also made a really awesome treat, but that gets a post all to itself.

Step 1: Get some juicy fruit (blood oranges are BEAUTIFUL)

Step 2: Get even more juicy fruit. Combos are tasty.

Step 3: Collect the juice. This can be done by hand (I have accomplished that before, but it's a bit time consuming). Or, use a juicer.

Step 4: Pour juice into some kind of ice or popsicle tray. You can cover it with plastic wrap and stick in toothpicks to make it easier to get at the pops when they are ready.

Step 5: Nom nom nom. Warning: May be cold. If you have sensitive teeth, don't bite into it.

A picture to prove that I have done some baking too. I forgot to take pictures of the other specimen.

Anyways, moral of the story is… freshly squeezed juice is awesome. It’s great for flu/cold season, especially frozen, as it is soothing on sore throats and very healthy and full of good vitamins.

ENJOY!

Rice Crispy Treats. There is something about them that brings one back to childhood. I mean, I remember being quite obsessed with them. Especially the ones that had sprinkles or chocolate on them (Yes, some things never change. My love for chocolate and sprinkles has been around for ages and is here to stay). If I had a rice crispy treat in my lunch for dessert, I knew it was a good day.

Though I have eaten tons and tons of rice crispy treats in my day, I have never actually made them from scratch. Crazy, right? Well, this obviously had to change seeing as I’m a senior in college and need to get on my baking game. Slash, I feel like being a senior in college has also made me want to revert back to my childhood at times. The real world was so far away back in the time of naps, finger painting, craft time, LEGOs, snack time, Beanie Babies, etc. When our biggest worries were how we would steal basketballs away from the boys during recess, or what movie would be perfect to watch for the sleepover. Sometimes, a college student needs a break from the pending real world, and would like to have a nap (by the way, I do not skimp out on those!) or a rice crispy treat or just a tiny slice of the carefree life we once knew so well.

Therefore, I ventured into the store, grabbed the necessary ingredients, and stirred up a bit of time-machine magic so that my friends could have a taste of childhood once more. This is a stretch, but eating these could be seen as going back in time… hence my title for this post. Something funny that I noticed while making these suckers, THEY ARE MESSY. Seriously though. I feel like just by making them I was sent back in time to when I couldn’t be in the kitchen without making a mess.

Rice Crispy Treats (adapted from the cereal box)

Ingredients:

• 6 cups of toasted rice cereal (store brand works just as well as Rice Krispies)
• 40 large marshmallows
• 3 tablespoons of butter (or margarine)

Directions:

• In a large saucepan over low heat, melt the butter.

• Once the butter is melted, add in the marshmallows.

• Stir until both the butter and marshmallows have become a melted glob of sweet goodness (aka: mallow mash).

Morphing

Morphing

Almost there...

DONE

• Then add in the cereal and mix. Warning: It gets quite sticky and harder to mix once the mellow mash cools down, so do this step asap so that the next step isn’t as hard.

• Put and press the mixture into a 9 x 13 inch pan (preferably coated with butter or cooking spray). I couldn’t find our large pan, so I divided the mixture into a brownie pan and a bread pan that were covered in tin foil. This was a super messy way of doing this, but it you are out of luck, it doesn’t hurt to try.

Couldn't get it all off of this spoon...

The other spoon didn't work...

Then I tried my fingers...

WHAT A MESS! and some major red eye... I look like a demon

Man oh man, that stuff was a pain to get out of the pan.

• Let cool and then serve (they are pretty damn bomb diggity right after making them, just sayin).
• You can always dress them up with chocolate or sprinkles or something snazzy, or eat them just are.

Sorry I don’t have a picture of the final product. My hands were too sticky to take photos immediately after, and by the time they cooled down, they all got eaten. I’m sure you can remember what they look like anyways…hehe. Hope you are able to relive a happy memory, or create new ones with this yummy treat. ENJOY!

This year I am flying solo, but got to celebrate with my lovely friend/roommate/girlfriend, Rachel. Even though she had a Valentine’s date with her man, we celebrated together the night before by making and decorating sugar cookie valentines for all of our friends in our pjs while watching Grey’s Anatomy. Lots of laughing and giggling and sugar and cuteness. A ridiculously great night indeed.

Valentine’s Sugar Cookies (adapted from joyofbaking.com)

We doubled the recipe so that we could have enough cookies for everyone!

Ingredients:

• 3 cups of flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1 cup of unsalted butter
• 1 cup of sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla
• frosting (we bought it from the store, but you can always find a recipe to go along with sugar cookies)

Directions

• Mix the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

• Beat the butter and sugar until fluffy in another bowl.

• Add in the eggs and vanilla to the sugar/butter mixture.

• Slowly add in the flour mixture and combine everything until smooth.

• Refrigerate dough for about an hour.

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• We rolled out the shapes of the cookies by hand, but you can always roll out the entire dough and cut out shapes. It’s up to you how you fashion the cookies. We also added in some red dye to make pink dough.

• Once you have your shapes, put the cookies on a cookies sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

• Let the cookies cool before frosting them. Here is the process we followed…
• Made colorful frostings…

• Put unfrosted cookies in fridge to cool. Take out and frost with frosting. Put back in fridge so that frosting wouldn’t melt. Take out and write on them in icing. Put back in fridge so everything was set.

• Last step: HAND OUT VALENTINES COOKIES TO EVERYONE (well, whoever you think deserves them..hehe)!

Enjoy these yummies and the holiday, however you celebrate it, even if you don’t celebrate it…(in that case, happy monday to you, or how about even Happy Birthday Oregon!).

Baker's Chocolate Tower

Chocolate. Such a glorious thing. There is something about this treat that is just magical. It can bring smiles to the most miserable of faces (for the most part). It can soothe a girl anywhere from relationship woes (romantic of friend) to that awesome time of the month. It can make a guy a hero (dare I say a knight in shining armour) to said girl. It can bring groups of friends together for gossip/bonding time. Oh, there are so many ways chocolate can be useful. Even in the baking world, chocolate is super versatile. There are so many kinds of chocolate and the amount of recipes that involve chocolate are beyond my comprehension.

I have always been a HUGE fan of chocolate. I mean, if something has chocolate in it, I’m pretty much going to like it (as long as there is no peanut butter in it). I am especially fond of dark chocolate. Man oh man! I’m craving chocolate just thinking about it… good thing I made some super chocolatey desserts a few days ago.

There has been this dessert that has fascinated me for a long time…Molten Chocolate Cakes (also known as chocolate lava cakes). I used to think that a cake that had melted chocolate in the center must have been magic. How could it be allowed to bake something fully, but have the center all gooey and be ok to eat (without having salmonella poisoning)? How how how?!! These ponderings never did stop me from ordering this bomb diggity dessert. My mom and I even made this once, but it was the Duncan Hines box version and as I have clearly expressed, I like to try to make desserts from scratch nowadays.

My housemate, Rachel, had her family over to our humble abode for some family time and they brought us SUCH A GOOD dinner (chicken enchiladas, cheddar biscuits, salad, drinks). We were such pampered college students. I wanted to be able to contribute something to this delectable meal, so I thought I would try a new recipe, that was chock-full of chocolate. Guess what popped into my mind…. did you guess? no? It’s ok, I’ll tell you… chocolate molten cakes! Well, I attempted to make them, but I cooked them for about one minute too long, so the center wasn’t nearly as gooey as I was hoping it would be. Still, it was a very moist and CHOCOLATEY dessert that put smiles on everyone’s faces and was a nice finishing touch to a great night.

Chocolate Volcanoes (Molten Chocolate Cake adapted from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

• 8 ounces of semisweet chocolate (I used semisweet bakers chocolate)
• 5 large eggs
• 1 cup of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
• 4 tablespoons of flour
• a pinch of salt
• a dash of vanilla (the recipe doesn’t call for it, but you know me, I like the stuff)

Directions:

• Melt the butter and chocolate in a heat-proof bowl over a pot of simmering water on the stove. Stir every once in a while to make sure the butter and chocolate are evenly mixed.

Melting Process: Initiated

• Once melted, remove the butter chocolate from heat.

Melting Process: Complete

• In another bowl, beat eggs, sugar, and salt with a hand mixer until combined.

• Then add the egg/sugar/salt mixture in with the butter/chocolate mixture and stir until smooth.

• Lastly, add in the flour and stir until evenly mixed in.

• Let the mixture sit for a bit so that all the ingredients settle in (apparently, this makes the mixture even more rich and dense).
• Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.
• Line a cupcake pan with paper liners and then evenly distribute the batter among them.

• Bake for about 8-10 minutes, or until the batter puffs up a bit, but the center is not quite set.

I guess I must have baked them just a tiny bit more than I was supposed to. arg.

• Take out of the oven and when cool enough to take out of the pan, do so.

• You can garnish them with a light sprinkle of powdered sugar or berries or vanilla ice cream. Whatever you think will go nicely with these treats… go for it!

A view from above. Like the helicopter view of the top of a volcano. But...instead of being in a helicopter, you are standing over it, and it's a chocolate cupcake. haha

We ate the cupcakes as is because we were too full to add ice cream, but were too eager to eat them to take time to put any fancy final touches on them. As the title explains, my centers were not gooey enough. The chocolate lava was not ready to burst from within the chocolate cake mountain, but heck, they still tasted great. Enjoy these however they turn out for you!

The non-gooey center. Still moist lookin though.

Hello hello. It’s been a while. This new year has started off quite strangely for me, but, with a new year comes new beginnings, new adventures, new opportunities, new goals, new successes, new failures…just a lot of “new.” I plan on taking advantage of this new year. I am graduating in May from college…that’s a huge, scary-yet-exciting step in life. I am ready for it. I am ready to try a whole bunch of things and make mistakes and get my hands dirty. I do not have a concrete plan, and though it frightens me, it’s also refreshing. Here’s to the new year!

With this new year, I have come up with a pretty extensive list of resolutions. I will not list every single one of them, but some include making my own baking recipes, to cook more, to read and write more for fun, to be in touch with my creative side, to spend as much time with my friends as possible, to be more active, to continue being curious about life and welcome and overcome the opportunities and obstacles that come my way. Oh yeah, and to update this little ol’ blog of mine more often! I think I can at least stick to these, or actively attempt to…hehe.

A friend came over for tea this afternoon, and I wanted to bake a treat to go along with the tea. I mean, what’s tea-time without a treat?! Anyways, they can’t have gluten, so I set out to find a more simple gluten free recipe that didn’t call for a million and a half ingredients. I have never intentionally made a gluten-free dessert. This was an adventure for me. I found one that seemed quite simple, but after trying the dough with the original recipe, I had to tweak it a bit to make it a little more tasty.

Gluten-Free Molasses Spice Cookies (adapted from delectably gluten-free)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups of gluten-free flour
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin spice (I used 2 teaspoons cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon ginger instead)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon (I included this as well as the spices above… lots of cinnamon, I told you I like the stuff)
• 2 teaspoons of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum
• 3/4 cups of melted butter (I added another 2 tablespoons of butter)
• 1 cup of white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup of molasses
• I also added 2 teaspoons of vanillas and 1 teaspoon of salt

DIrections:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
• First mix the flour, spices, baking soda, salt and xanthan gum together in a bowl.
• In another bowl, beat the egg, butter, sugar, vanilla, and molasses together for 2 minutes (I used an electric hand mixer).

• Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet one. Mix well. The dough will become quite thick.

• The recipe calls for you to chill the dough for 2 hours. I put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes.
• You can either roll the dough into balls and put directly into the oven, or you can be like me and roll the dough in some cinnamon sugar (I didn’t even measure, just had a combo of some white sugar and a pinch of cinnamon).

• Bake the cookies for 12 minutes, take out and cool.

Caught them in the act.

• Then enjoy them with tea!!!!! or, well, whatever you want to enjoy them with.

This doesn’t really qualify as my own recipe, but I’m starting to experiment more and am figuring out what flavors work nicely together and before you know it, hopefully I will have come up with my own measurements for everything. I hope that you all are able to have some resolutions to at least ponder on for the new year, and good luck with them!

Christmas, Harney County, Oregon, 1900′s (historicphotoarchive.com)

Ok, so… I’m not that great at updating this blog, but that’s what new year’s resolutions are for, right? haha! Anyways, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Chanukah, whatever you celebrate…HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I have been baking, and those posts will be a comin, but this one is just me wishing everyone a wonderful holiday. I hope everyone is able to spend time with family and friends. And hey, good food in your bellies can’t hurt either, right? hehe.

Have fun and relax and make sure you cherish those moments with those you care about!

Above is a cool picture that I found while searching the interwebs, hope you like it too. If you didn’t know before, I really like to write short stories, and this picture has definitely inspired me to write one. Shmaybe I’ll post it some day, or you can email me to have a looksey