A Quest For The Best........Chocolate Chip Cookies

Birthdays, as well as a New Year, cause people to reflect on things.
On this, my 40th birthday, I am reflecting on how much I love birthday cake!
As my mother has stated about me - anyone who knows me well, knows how important cake is to me.
Since we had our family celebration on Saturday, I have been able to enjoy my birthday cake for several days already.  Yum!

Being that I am an early January Birthday, my year seems to start on the 9th, not the first.
I am super excited about what is going to happen with my business this year, and all the upcoming projects.

I decided that I wanted to work on the best chocolate chip cookie (CCC) recipe.  Well, of course, everyone and their dog claims to have the best chocolate chip cookie recipe!  I did a search for the best CCC and found that this is quite a popular topic.  There are so many variations to this classic cookie, and several people have set out to test for the best.  So, I will conduct my own testing using two of the "winners" from others' testing and a few of my own.

I was going to start this on Friday, but discovered that I had zero chocolate chips in the house.  How that happened, I'll never know.  So, I organized part of the pantry instead, bought chocolate chips over the weekend, and started the testing today.

The first, which I am baking right now, are the CCC's from my Junior Chef Cookbook that I received for my 9th birthday.  They are an easy, yummy cookie that has been my favorite for years (many).   I asked Little C if she wanted me to make CCC's and she asked if I could also put white chips in them.  Could I say no to that....NO!  So, part of the batch is Chocolate and White Chip Cookies.

Batch one has been baked.  I haven't tried them yet - birthday cake earlier and I don't want to be in a sugar coma for my birthday dinner.  I will taste them later, and get the reviews from my taste testers.

Tomorrow in the test kitchen - whoopie pies!
Test batch two of the CCC's will be in the near future.

Chocolate Chip Cookies - Quest for the Best, Recipe 1

Fun on the last day of Christmas break

Today Little C and I broke out the Easy-Bake Oven that Santa brought!
We made both the red velvet cupcakes and the chocolate chip cookies that it came with.
Both were made double-deckers, iced, and sprinkled (heavily).

All I remember from the Easy-Bake Oven that I had, was making a marble cake.
I guess you don't make cakes with the new ultimate version.

I am off to make real food for dinner.
At least dessert is taken care of! ;)

I Resolve To Bake More Brownies

Happy New Year!

After all the Christmas baking, I realized yesterday that we didn't have anything for dessert. (Tragedy!)

Brownies to the rescue!

May your New Year be full of sweetness!

Sea Salt Brownie Stack

I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas Cake

A cake full of Christmas deliciousness!
I had been concocting this cake in my head for the past few weeks.
It is four layers of super moist chocolate cake, pink peppermint filling between each layer, and vanilla icing.

The peppermint "plate" idea came from Southern Living.

I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe.  The filling is a whoopie pie filling recipe that includes marshmallow cream.  I wish I knew how many drops of red food coloring I used to get this perfect pink color, but the food coloring was a new bottle that squirted rather than dropped, so I got a lot more than I expected with one squeeze!   The vanilla frosting is the new recipe that I had tried a few months ago.

It made for a pretty and yummy Christmas dessert!

A Cinnamon & Sugar Topped Christmas

This is my first Christmas as a Mom and I am loving it!
We have had so much fun this week doing Christmas crafts, baking, making gifts, seeing Christmas movies and The Nutcracker, and all sorts of other family things!

We adopted the Christmas breakfast tradition that I grew up with......French Breakfast Puffs.
The muffins have a bit of nutmeg, and are dipped in butter, then coated with a cinnamon sugar mixture.
Of course we opened presents first, and then I made the French Breakfast Puffs which we agreed are the perfect Christmas Breakfast!

More later, as I am about to put together a cake I have been dreaming up!

French Breakfast Puff and Hot Chocolate

French Breakfast Puffs