COOOOOOOKIES!

Well! It's been a couple of weeks since I have been able to blog, after my last entry, Vivi's stomach virus made the rounds and we all had a turn being sick. After we had all pretty much recovered, Bella and I decided to surprise the family with some delicious treats!



Everyone in my family is a cookie monster. I mean, we are all thoroughly obsessed with cookies. My husband has been asking me for a while to make him some homemade white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, so I decided to do just that. Bella and I went to the grocery store and bought the white chocolate chips, and we bought whole, raw macadamia nuts from the bulk foods aisle at H-E-B. I used this recipe, with the addition of toasting the macadamia nuts. I heartily recommend you purchase your nuts on the bulk foods aisle of your grocery store has one, they are fresher and cheaper than what you can find prepackaged on the baking aisle. My grocery store has several options of the more popular varieties like peanuts and cashews, but only the one option for things like pistachios and macadamia nuts, both of which were offered whole and raw.

Unfortunately, whole, raw nuts can't be used in cookie recipes without modification. First of all, whole macadamia nuts are enormous! You'd have to have a jaw like a python to eat them. If I had time, I would have liked to chop them up with a knife, but I was taking care of the kids while baking so I settled for leaving them in the bag I bought them in, and smacking them a few times with the flat side of my meat tenderizer. Doing this ends up with some huge chunks and some tiny, microscopic nut particles, which is not ideal, but we do what we can with what time we have. So after I busted the nuts (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID) I tossed them in some browned butter and a dash of sea salt, and put them in the oven at 350 degrees for five minutes. This process gave the nuts a nice, robust flavor that you don't get with raw nuts.

After that I simply followed this recipe, which is pure perfection.

These cookies are thick, soft, and chewy – just what you want a chocolate chunk cookie to be. They’re not too sweet, except when you happen across a nice cool hunk of white chocolate, and when that happens at the same time as when you get a bit of salty macadamia nut, it’s pure cookie nirvana.
Author: Kitchen Treaty
Recipe type: Dessert
Yield: About 36

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg (optional)
1½ cups white chocolate chunks (about 8 ounces, chopped)
1 cup coarsely chopped roasted salted macadamia nuts (about 4½ ounces)

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper or Silpat.
In the bowl of a stand mixer affixed with paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes (or use a large bowl and a hand mixer).
Add the brown sugar and granulated (white) sugar and continue beating on medium speed for about 2 minutes.
Add the eggs one at a time, continuing to beat each time until well-incorporated. Mix in the vanilla.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg.
With the mixer on low speed, carefully add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix just until the ingredients are incorporated. Stir in the white chocolate chunks and the macadamia nuts.
Scoop a generous tablespoonful of the dough (I use this cookie dough scoop) and roll into a ball. Tear the ball in half, turn each half a quarter turn, and smoosh the dough back together with the torn side now at the top of the cookie. Gently shape so that the dough ball is taller than it is wide and place on cookie sheet about three inches apart.
Bake for about 10 minutes, until edges of cookie begin to turn golden brown. Remove from oven and let sit for 5 – 10 minutes on cookie sheet so the cookie can set. Carefully move to wire rack to cool completely.
Cookies stay fresh when kept in a sealed container at room temperature for 3 – 4 days, or can be frozen for up to two months.

Zombie Mint Mojitos!

The mojito is one of my favorite summer drinks. Mojitos originate in Cuba and are said to have been the favorite drink of famed author Ernest Hemmingway. We happen to have mint growing in our garden, or rather, taking over our garden. Mint sends out creepers and creates new plants with the same root system, so it tends to spread out everywhere. A while back we decided to get rid of it. We dug it up and literally chopped up the roots and pulled them out of the dirt, leaving only miniscule, mutilated root fragments, and it still came back from the dead. Thus the name, "Zombie Mint Mojitos". I love the combination of fresh limes and fresh mint muddled together, soaked in simple syrup and drenched in rum. ¡Delicioso! I spent much of my college years bartending so I am familiar with the recipes but if you're not here's the one I used, I used simple syrup instead of straight sugar. Simple syrup is two parts sugar to one part hot water, mixed until the sugar dissolves. There are a lot of fun variations on the mojito, some people like to use dark rum or flavored rum, but I like the classic version. Enjoy!

Ingredients
Ice
6 ounces light rum
12 mint sprigs, or spearmint, 8 roughly broken apart
6 tablespoons fresh lime juice
4 tablespoons sugar
Club soda
4 slices lime

Directions
Place ice in beverage shaker then add in the rum, 8 broken up mint sprigs, lime juice and sugar. Shake well and serve over ice in a high ball glass. Top off each glass with a splash of club soda.

Garnish each with a slice of lime and a sprig of mint.

Taking a Nature Walk on an "I'm bored" Summer Day

Picture source: www.mrjacksfarm.com

It has been miserably hot here since about mid June so we have been staying inside with the blinds closed, the curtains drawn and the lights off, cave man style to save energy. We only have one family car, so Eric takes it to work and it leaves us with few options of how to fill our hours. There's only so much coloring a kid can do before she starts speaking whine-ese and repeating the phrase "I'm bored" like a broken record. She loves movies but I hate having her planted in front of the TV for hours on end so yesterday morning, before the whining could start I decided we would go take a nature walk.

Bella's "yuck" face!

Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of us on the walk, because I was having too much fun! We just walked around the lake in our neighborhood and picked "samples" (aka leaves). I would have Bella run up and grab a leaf sample and we would talk about the tree or bush it came from, she would smell it and see if it smelled good and then we would put them in our "sample box" (the compartment in the stroller handle). After we picked a sample from pretty much every tree, bush and interesting piece of grass out there I walked her to the playground and pushed her and Vivienne on the swings, and even let Vivi go down the baby slide!

When we got home we had a snack of apples and water, and Vivi had this Dole "fruit squish 'ems" thing. I can't say precisely what it is about this thing that is so nasty, but it is just absolutely repellent. Eric bought them because we had a coupon for them, and it's essentially baby food so we thought we could take them with us when we went places and give them to Vivi, but they are gross! It might be that they have the color and texture of grainy applesauce and the odd flavor of blueberries, like, extremely potent blueberries. Whatever the issue, none of us liked it. Vivi and Bella made the funniest faces when trying it, so of course I had to try it myself. Yuck. After that I just gave Vivi an apple slice and let her use her two teeth to chomp on it a bit and gum it all up.

Bella's rubbings! I can't identify all of these - there's Juniper,
Crepe Myrtle, Red Oak, and some kind of evergreen, and I
don't know what that cat-tail looking thing is.

After snack we sat down with some paper and crayons and made leaf rubbings! We talked about each plant sample again and how to make a leaf rubbing. I had intended to press each sample and keep it for a scrap book, but Vivi got grumpy and needed to be nursed and put down for a nap and then afterwords I just forgot about them until this morning and they're all dried out! I suppose I could still press them if I had some clear contact paper or laminating sheets but I don't, and it was fun enough that we could do it again and I will save those instead.

The trick about doing something like this in the Texas heat is to do it well before noon. We left the house at 9:00 AM and got back before 11:00, and we were all still sweaty and tired! Thank God for air conditioning!

Rainbow Cupcakes to Celebrate the Death of DOMA

I actually made these cupcakes for my daughter's third birthday last July, but I feel like in light of today's Supreme Court decision, it makes an appropriate post! This is actually a combination of two different cupcake recipes I found on Pinterest, and I can't resist a fun looking cupcake challenge! I'll post more of those later! The original recipes are posted here and here, and you can find them below with my changes! The original recipes are much more involved, I am all about shortcuts when making something like this that is mostly ornamental, so I just used cake mix and canned frosting.


You will need:
1 box white cake mix (and whatever extra ingredients are listed on the box you bought, typically eggs and oil)

Wilton Gel Food Coloring

1 can white frosting

1 tube Wilton white icing (You will need the star tip if you don't have one)

1 package rainbow sour ribbons

6 extra bowls (or one per color you will use + 1 for the frosting)

cupcake pan

paper cupcake cups

Instructions:

• Make the cake mix according to instructions on the box
• Divide batter according to how many colors you are using.
• Use food coloring to color batter to desired intensity. Wilton brand gel colors have the brightest colors and wont thin your batter. They can be found at Walmart or Michaels (I got mine at H-E-B).
• Put a spoonful of each color in the cupcake one at a time. 
• The cupcakes won't be identical unless you are meticulous with your measuring of batter (and I'm not) so I had wildly varied cupcakes, but I thought it was fun that way, each person's cupcake was different!
• Bake them according to the package directions, until a toothpick comes out dry. Makes around 15 cupcakes.

Frosting:

• While the cupcakes are baking, empty the frosting canister into a bowl and add blue gel food coloring, mix it until it is fully incorporated.
• After you're done mixing the frosting, set it aside and get out the rainbow sour ribbons, I used Airhead brand (like these) and one package was plenty for what I made. Take out the ribbons and cut them into thirds horizontally. You might want to put them into the fridge until ready to use so they will be a bit stiffer.
• Once the cupcakes are out of the oven and cooled, you can add the blue frosting, the white icing stars and the rainbow ribbons!