Birthday Recap, Utah, and Happy Spring???? and My Adaptation of the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Let’s start with Happy Spring everyone!  Here’s what we woke up to this morning!

I must say, rather annoying!  It rainy/icy/slushed Friday afternoon, then by the evening, it began snowing.  When I went to bed, there was already a few inches on the ground.  It was windy all night, so it’s hard to tell how much snow fell.  About 8 inches at our doorstep, which always seems to pile up.  Some places of the driveway had a good inch of slush under the snow, it’s was heavy and a great workout for me.  It has been snowing all day.  Good thing is, it hasn’t stuck to the driveway much, yet.  It’s still snowing late into Saturday night.  Sigh!  And I think it’s supposed to be in the 60’s by Monday. 

The good thing is we were in Utah, saw on the news that the storm was coming, decided to leave a day early and drove straight through (21 hours!---ahhh!)  We usually stay a night in Denver, but knew if we did that the storm would be in Wyoming and Colorado and we could get stuck there.  We left Thursday at 4 a.m. and got home just before 1 a.m. the next day.  Sigh.  Poor little Sammie was not a happy camper.  He kept crying, “I want to walk,” as he’d struggle in his car seat.  We persevered and are glad we got home before the snow!

Before we left, Sam got a few more birthday presents.

   

While we were in Utah, we had a Smith gathering with lots of family.  It was Emilee’s birthday (one of Kevin’s nieces) on the 15th and Sam’s on the 16th, so we had a yummy dinner that Cindy prepared and I made cake.

Since Sam loves the zoo and animals so much, I went with a cute paw print on some rainbow cupcakes.  (I made these with a box mix.  It’s hard to bake from scratch when you’re not in your own home!)

The paws are made with some devil’s food cookies, and Junior Caramels.  I thought they were pretty cute.

The kids all devoured these.  There were ump-teen kids there.

For the adults and whoever else didn’t want cupcakes, I made my Divine Carrot Cake.  I doubled the recipe and baked it in a 9x13 pan.  I left out the coconut, because some people don’t like coconut (whatever! ;))  I used pecans instead of walnuts.

I made cream cheese frosting to go with it, which is also what I frosted the cupcakes with.  The carrot cake is so good and moist and flavorful.  I used white whole wheat flour, so it was healthy!  ahem.

And I think I did a not-too-shabby job with the lettering, which is not one of my strong points.  At least I don’t think this would be Cake Wrecks worthy!

 

This photo of the carrot cake is from my original post.  If you like carrot cake, this is certainly one to try.  I’ve even made cupcakes with it and you could do two 8-inch round cakes and layer it.

I fried an egg for Taylor for breakfast one morning while we were in Utah.  I know double yolks are pretty common, but have you ever seen a quadruple?

That is not 2 eggs or four.  Okay, it’s one egg and four yolks.  (I had some extra after making the white cake mix for the rainbow cupcakes.  Taylor loves the yolk, especially when he can dip his toast in it.  This was A LOT of yolk.  His plate was just a swimmin’ in it.  But he ate a lot of it (I’m happy about any fat and protein I can get in this kid!)

While in Utah, staying at Kevin’s sister Cindy’s (Thanks for letting us stay with you Clydes!), I wanted to make them some of the New York Times chocolate chip cookies that I love so much, I even bought some cake flour and bread flour and good chocolate chips.  Then I got back to their house and realized they only had margarine!  What to do?  So just to experiment and see what would happen, I made half a batch with the margarine. 

They weren’t half bad!  I was afraid using an oven I’m not familiar with that I’d overbake them, so I slightly underbaked them.  They were still good and got eaten up.  I have actually adapted the recipe quite a bit from the fabulous and “fancy” New York Times recipe, so here is the recipe as I make them.  One big thing is I almost never chill the dough.  And I don’t put extra salt on the cookies.  But I will stand by the using of cake flour and bread flour in the recipe and I gotta say, way better with good chocolate chips (I often use Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips) and butta!  ;)

New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies, adapted by Katrina Smith

8 ½ ounces cake flour (2 cups minus 2 tablespoons)

8 ½ ounces bread flour (1 and 2/3 cups)

1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt

2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups) unsalted butter, room temperature

10 ounces (1 ¼ cups) light brown sugar

8 ounces (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons) granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ¼ pounds chocolate chips or chopped chocolate

Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl with a wire whisk. Set aside.

In bowl of electric mixer, cream together butter and sugars until very light, about five minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. With mixer on low, add dry ingredients and mix just until combined. Stir in chocolate with rubber spatula. Optional--Put dough in a plastic container and refrigerate for at least a couple hours, but ideally 24 to 36 hours! (You think it won’t make a difference, but it’s really good! Although, I often only chill for a couple hours and these are still excellent cookies.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and scoop dough into balls on sheet. Bake 9-15 minutes depending on size. ½ ounce cookies baked 9 minutes. Regular sized cookies are about 1 ½ ounces and baked 11-13 minutes. (Made 9 ½ dozen ½ ounce cookies!)  2-3 oz. cookies are huge and delicious and more like NYT.

Eagle Mountain, Utah.  Our new house is one of those out there in the distance.  You can see it from Cindy’s house where the picture was taken.

For Sam’s birthday, we went to the SLC Hogle Zoo.  It was a perfect day.  But for some reason that morning, Sam was walking with a limp and said his leg hurt.  We think he must have got up in the night and fallen in the room we were sleeping in.  So he had to sit in a stroller through the whole zoo. 

He hobbled around a bit for a couple days, but is fine now.

See the monkeys?

My almost-12-year-old monkey refuses to be on camera!

How cute is this baby elephant?!

And this baby giraffe?

The baby is already 7 feet tall!

How about them Cougars?  Uh, let’s not talk about that tonight!  (BYU reference, while we’re on the subject, let’s not talk about Jayhawks either.  Sigh.)

And now just a few more random photos.  I made pancakes for breakfast yesterday.  Parker LOVES to play with his food, sometimes he’s still messing around with it after everyone else is done eating.  But he was pretty proud of his Picachu from Pokemon.

Taylor and Sam were playing with a box of diapers yesterday.  Hey, when you’ve packed most of the toys, you gotta make due, right!

And this morning, Sam came in our room while we were still asleep (he often does!), but I let him climb in bed with us about 7:45.  We got up shortly after that, and Sam slept all comfy in our bed until after 11 a.m.!

Ahh, how would that be?

TWD—Soft Chocolate Pistachio Tart and Sam’s Third Birthday!

Howdy Ya’ll!  It’s the birthday boy!

We’re in Utah right now.  We got to see “our” house today.  (I say “our” in quotes, because technically, we haven’t completed the purchase yet, but I’ll let ya’ll know more soon!)  The home we are buying is in Eagle Mountain.  We LOVE it.  We drove out with the boys over the weekend and will be here during spring break.  It’s great to be back “home” in Utah. 

I knew we’d be out of town this week, so I made the tart(s) early last week before we left. I halved the tart dough and divided it between two 4 inch mini tart pans and had a little leftover, so I made a yummy shortbread cookie.  I used ground pistachios in the dough.  I was trying to “go green” for St. Patrick’s Day.  Great flavored dough!  I would make the sweet tart dough with pistachios again just to make shortbread cookies.  And I’d definitely do this again----

Dipped in melted bittersweet chocolate, it was delicious.

Since this was supposed to be soft chocolate pudding-like, I decided to make the full recipe for the chocolate and just put some in a pan without the crust.  I was thinking it would have been scoopable like pudding and I’d make little parfaits out of it.

I baked off the two tarts and forgot to photograph the rest of the chocolate I put in a bread pan.

 

They looked nice and pudding-y before they baked.

But I thought they were almost brownie-like after they baked.  It was not the consistency I really wanted.  Is this how it’s supposed to be?  Oh, by the way, I didn’t use raspberries because they are outrageously priced right now and although I really like the fruity-chocolate combo, Kevin really doesn’t.  I don’t know why I worry so much about that sometimes, as I’m pretty sure he didn’t even taste this.  He was gone the evening I made them.  The boys had some and liked it.  Not sure they would have really liked the raspberries with the chocolate.  But the pistachios were really good, so besides in the dough, I sprinkled some on top.

Then to stick with my green thinking, I decided to tint some whipped topping with some green food coloring (too lazy to whip my own again this time).  It’s a very pale green, but festive anyway.

I think Scott ate half a tart and wanted more, but I wouldn’t let him.

Parker ate a little.  Taylor took a bite and didn’t want any.  I think Sam ate a cookie instead.  Overall, I thought it tasted okay.  I probably wouldn’t make it again, I like (love) a chocolate ganache tart more.  Like that one we made with the caramel---Chocolate Crunched Caramel Tart from TWD a few months ago.

So here’s what I did with the bread pan full of the “soft chocolate”--

I made a S’mores Rocky Road “Parfait”.  It was pretty good.  Then I put the rest of the chocolate and half a tart in the fridge and we got busy doing lots of things and I threw it out before we headed for Utah after it sat for 3-4 days.  I know, crazy me.  We just got to getting ready for our road trip and it kinda got put by the wayside in the fridge. 

So to wrap it up, thanks, Rachelle from Mommy?  I'm Hungry! because I do like to try all these different recipes and have fun with them and it WAS chocolate, so that worked for me! ;)  You can get the recipe on Rachelle’s blog.  Hey, check out all the other TWD blogger's tarts, too. 

It’s Sammie’s birthday!  I can’t believe he’s three.  He was just sitting on the couch earlier singing so cute out of nowhere, “Jingle bells, jingle all the way, how I wonder what you are.”  And he’s been walking around singing, “Hap Birtday, Hap Birtday.”  So darn cute.  I’ll post more about his birthday soon.  Here’s a quick preview of more to come as my parents are here in Utah and brought him a little gift.

 

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!  Grandma knew that one of Sam’s favorite books is Dinosaurs Love Underpants, so they gave him some dinosaurs.  He loves them.

We are staying at Aunt Cindy’s while we’re here in Utah and I was sitting out on the front porch with Sam.  He picked up a little push broom and said, “This is a wittle broom for wittle people like me.”  Taylor came outside a few minutes later and wanted to use the broom, Sam looked at him with extreme seriousness and said, “Are you wittle enough to use this wittle broom?”  DADGUM CUTE!  You know I usually write up these posts on Monday night, so Sam’s birthday is really tomorrow (or today, Tuesday, however you want to look at it).  So tomorrow/today/Tuesday we’re going to the SLC Hogle Zoo.  Sam is quite excited.  He wuvs the zoo!  So am I, it’s supposed to be in the 60’s.  The day we got here on Saturday it was literally blizzard with 50 mph winds!  It blew right out of here on Sunday and today/Monday has been beautiful in the 50’s.  Spring is sprunging!

TWD—Thumbprints For Us Big Guys and Catch Up Wit Da Guys

First up, a couple photos of da guys.

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Parker was student-of-the-day at school last week.  He got to do a display of his favorite things and make a poster with lots of photos.  Every photo we went through and looked at for Parker’s poster was him being goofy in one way or another.  He really is always being silly.  But then he got to lead the school in the pledge of allegiance on tv and he got all nervous and serious.  I could barely get this smile out of him.

Here’s the “normal” Parker.  That’s more like it.

 

Taylor had his kindergarten music program last week, too.  Those are always fun!  Unless you’re like me and take really crappy pictures and video while the husband is teaching that night and can’t be there, especially to stop Sam from bumping my filming arm the whole time.

That and when the annoying couple a few rows in front of you will NOT stop putting their heads together and swaying to the music, thereby blocking your filming view.  I just wanted to go knock their heads together.  Okay, sorry, I just had to get that out.  I feel better now.  Sigh.  And because of that, there will be no video worth sharing, unless you want to see those lovely heads.

Then here’s how I have to get ANY pictures of Scottie if I’m going to get any of him at all.  While he’s not looking, say “Hey, Scottie”, then when he turns, snap a quick one as he tries to back out of the shot.  Nice.

Okay, you’re here for the cookies, I know.  Here goes. 

I thought these were titled such (Thumbprints For Us Big Guys) because they were going to be bigger than the average thumbprint cookie, but not so much.  But the hole I made in them with the end of a wooden spoon sure made craters in the cookies.  When I think of Big Guys, like my husband, he just doesn’t go for jam.  He rarely eats any jam, but when he has one of his two or so pb & j’s for the year, it has to be raspberry jam.   I do agree with Dorie that hazelnuts are a “grown-up” kind of nut, but I just couldn’t “do” jam.  (Although, I do love those thumbprint cookies that are rolled in walnuts or pecans and have jam in the middle!)

I will admit, just because I’m a big girl that way, that I don’t read ALL 400 TWD blogs every week.  I know, don’t hate me. ;)  That being said, I hadn’t ever seen Mike’s blog from Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude before.  Just clicking over to get his link, I read a few of his posts and dude, he’s rather funny.  Anyway, where was I going with this?  Oh, Mike chose our recipe this week.  You can get the recipe for these de-licious cookies on his blog.

Why were they SO delicious?  Chocolate, my friends.  You had to know it.  Now THAT’S a big flavor!  ;)

And not just any chocolate, but Nutella.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who will use Nutella with these cookies that are just screamin “use me”.    I reckon I don’t much really care.  All I know is these are scrumdillicious!  Nutty, buttery, tender and chocolaty.  I thought the big crater in the middle was perfect for filling with Nutella!

I only made half a batch and got 24 cookies---pah-lenty.  You may recall Dorie specifically saying DO NOT OVERBAKE the cookies.  I made the first batch just fine, perfect in 14 minutes.  Then with the second batch, I did the usual.  Baked 10 minutes, checked them, set the timer for another 2, checked again, then MEANT to set it for the final 2 minutes.  Oh, it was probably 6-7 minutes later that I realized the timer hadn’t gone off.

Quick, get them off the baking sheet!

Okay, maybe not that fast.  Hate to say it, but although the cookies were well done and darker than the others, they were/are still edible and quite tasty to me.

 

So, you may notice a few of the cookies have Hershey’s Kisses on them.  Didn’t know the craters would be so big, so the Kisses didn’t really work.  I didn’t want them totally melted, so I put them on after the cookies were mostly cooled.  Wouldn’t you guess it, those are the cookies the boys ate!  Found some new Kisses, so I just had to try them.  Kisses filled with buttercreme.  They are super sweet, but not bad.

The Nutella with these cookies is fabulous.  Did I say that already?  Okay, I’m done then.  Great pick, Mike, thanks.

And finally, FINALLY got Sam’s hair cut.

Thanks, Tes!

Sam is so good when he’s getting his hair cut.  He just sits there perfectly still.

Ahhh, much better!

Um, Daddy, we DON’T sit on the counter, then look who follows!

OH, and I almost forgot—we sold the house!!!  One week after putting it on the market, we got an offer and took it.  The house is under contract.  Holy cow, I’m so thankful.  I really don’t know how long I could have kept the thing so perfectly spotless!  We close on April 30 and it has worked out splendidly to move in to a duplex right by the kid’s school until we move in June.  Some friends from church are looking for someone to sub lease their duplex as they are moving near the end of April.  Could not be more perfect.  We got a great deal on the house, and are really being blessed with having a place to leave until the school year is over.  HUGE sigh of relief!

TWD—Toasted-Coconut Custard Tart

I wasn’t going to make this coconut custard tart this week.  It’s just been a crazy week.  For some reason, I just didn’t want to or think I was going to get to making the tart crust.   But I was making the Calypso Cookies that I recently posted about and out of nowhere, I decided to just stick some of the cookie dough in my two little individual tart pans.  I thought it sounded perfect, since the cookies have coconut, pecans and some dried pineapple.  The cookies are delicious, you need to try them!

  

Monday I whipped up 1/3 of the recipe for the custard (thanks to Nancy for her wonderful math and sharing it on the TWD P&Q’s!).  I left out the rum and added 1/2 teaspoon of pure coconut flavoring along with the vanilla.  I also left out the coriander, it’s too much of a savory spice for me.

The only thing that concerned me is that the custard thickened on the stove before it even had a chance to come to a boil.   I didn’t let it go too long past the thickening, but after it chilled in the fridge, it was really thick, like too thick, almost gummy.  I was worried that the custard was going to be eggy.

I mean, look at it, too thick and not really all that tasty looking.  Sigh.

I carried on and made the two tarts, then I served them for dessert to the boys, but I made the mistake of telling Kevin it was thick and kind of interesting and that I was worried about it.  So he wouldn’t even taste it.  Well, I think it was pretty good.  Our friends, Bob and Tes were visiting and Tes had some and said it was good.  Scott and Parker ate some, too.  So, I would consider this a success.  And I’m glad I participated in this week’s pick.  Thanks to Beryl of Cinemon Girl for a fun pick.  I’m always happy when I get to make something I haven’t made before.

I’m always proud when I can say that I also whipped the cream by hand (ok, I used a bowl and a whisk—ba dum dum).  It’s kind of fun and a nice little arm workout.  I threw a few chopped pecans on with the toasted coconut as well.

 

You can find the recipe on Beryl’s blog.  You can also check out all the other Coconut Custard Tarts in TWD Land.  Catch ya next time.