No need to wait for room temp butter

I love cookies, especially chocolate chip cookies, but I hate waiting for the butter to get to room temperature. I don’t always plan on making this sweet treat. I always have the ingredients on hand but I don’t put it on my weekly menu plan. Anyway, I love these chocolate chip cookies!

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

originally posted on: Mel’s Kitchen Cafe

source: adapted from Cook’s Illustrated

*Makes 2-3 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

2 1/8 cups all-purpose flour (about 10 1/2 ounces)

1/2 teaspoon table salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 cup packed light brown sugar (7 ounces)

1/2 cup granulated sugar (3 1/2 ounces)

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet or milk chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Make sure an oven rack is in the center of the oven.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking soda. Set aside.

Either by hand or with an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugars together until well mixed. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla. Mix well until the batter has lightened slightly in color, about 2 minutes. Add the dry ingredients and chocolate chips at the same time. Mix until all the dry ingredients are incorporated.

Form dough into tablespoonful-sized balls and place on parchment or silpat-lined cookie sheets. Frozen cookie dough can be stored for up to 2 months in the freezer.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes until the edges are set and just lightly browned. Don’t overbake or else the cookies will be tough and hard. If baking frozen cookie dough, add 1 to 2 minutes onto the baking time. Store the baked cookies in an airtight container (or baked cookies can be frozen in an airtight container for up to 2 months)

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Halloween pillow cover

Getting ready for Halloween in my Etsy shop. More Halloween themed things coming soon, but for now there is one 12x12in pillow cover listed with free shipping in the US. Thanks for checking it out.

Who doesn’t love a giveaway?

I know that I love one. Hop on over to Moda Bake Shop for the “Love it, Pin it, Win it contest” just by Pinning your favorite “recipes” from their blog and be entered to win Moda pre cut fabric. There are so many wonderful free tutorials for all kinds of projects.

Here are a couple that I have pinned and can’t wait to make.

photo originally from Moda’s recipe page for Charming Stars quilt

I plan on making this quilt for my daughter using Moda fabric in the Vintage Modern collection by Bonnie and Camille. I love this line. The colors are so fresh and sweet. This will be the first big purchase I make once I sell something in my etsy shop. I want the whole collection….did I say how much I love it?

I also want to make this:

photo from Moda Bake shop recipes page.

Isn’t this one of the cutest pincushions you’ve ever seen? I love it and can’t wait to make this too. You can NEVER have too many pincushions I say.

 

Etsy Shop Grand Re-opening!

It’s official…I’ve decided to open my etsy shop again. Yay. Something to keep me busy while my hubby is deployed. Free shipping in the US. There are only 2 listings but I will add more soon. Thanks for checking it out.

Just keep sewing just keep sewing

That has been my moto for this week. I thought that I would post a picture of the quilt that I made for my sons 9th birthday. He picked the colors and the pattern. It felt like it took forever…well I guess it kind of did, I started this last summer before his 8th birthday. Then we moved and it got put away and I finally picked it up again. Once I got sewing it actually didn’t take that long to finish. Don’t know why I do that to myself 🙂 Oh well. Here is the spiderweb quilt tutorial that I used on sew mama sew.

This quilt was machine pieced and hand and machine quilted. I love the backing fabric.

BLT Panzanella

Now that Travis is gone I have been slacking on making dinners, well lets just say it’s been easier to figure out what to make because the kids have to eat anything I put in front of them. So tonight was a super easy dinner night. I love BLT’s and this has all the ingredients of a BLT but with a homemade dressing. So good. I will be eating leftovers tomorrow for sure!

 

BLT Panzanella source: Annie Eats

Ingredients

For the salad:
1 small baguette * I used a loaf of french bread I made 2 the other day, one for french bread pizzas and one for this, more about the pizzas on another post.
2 tbsp. unsalted butter
Kosher salt and pepper
6 oz. bacon
2-3 medium vine-ripened tomatoes
1 heart of Romaine lettuce, rinsed, dried, and chopped (about 3-4 cups)
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

For the dressing:
1 clove garlic, finely grated or minced
Juice of half a lemon
3 tbsp. low-fat Greek yogurt or mayonnaise
3 tbsp. buttermilk
Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450˚ F.  Remove the crust from the baguette and cut into cubes, about ¾- to 1-inches.  Combine the cubed bread in a bowl with the melted butter and toss to coat evenly.  Spread in an even layer on a rimmed baking sheet and season with salt and pepper to taste.  Bake about 6 minutes, tossing once or twice during baking, until the bread cubes are golden brown and somewhat crisp.  Set aside to cool.  Meanwhile, heat a large skillet to medium-high and cook the bacon until crisp but not burned.  Transfer the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate and let cool.

In a large salad bowl, combine the toasted bread cubes, tomatoes, lettuce, and Parmesan.  Crumble the cooked bacon over the top.  Toss gently to combine.  In a jar or small lidded container, combine the garlic, lemon juice, Greek yogurt, and buttermilk.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Portion the salad into serving bowls and drizzle each serving very lightly with the dressing.

A Happy Birthday and a Pillow

Just a quick post to say that I am busy sewing away getting things ready for my etsy shop :). But we did celebrate a birthday in this house. My middle boy turned 9 last week. He requested a chocolate cake with vanilla frosting just like his brother but it had to be blue. Okay no problem I can do that. I used this cake and frosting recipe again, it never fails me.

I also finished up a little project for my daughter. A while back I embroidered this sweet strawberry shortcake with plans on making it a throw pillow. Throw pillow forms can be pricey so I went to the goodwill and found an ugly throw pillow but it was in great conditions. It still had the tag on it but I bought it for $1.99. I used some fabric that I had in my stash. I love the way it turned out!

The back is minky dot fabric, oh so soft but a pain to sew. It’s so slippery. Oh well not perfect in the back but I don’t think that Cierra will care.