I thought that I could conquer a 2.5 pound container of blueberries on my own… I was wrong.  After a week of eating blueberries as a snack and with breakfast, I decided it was time to bake with what was left.  Not quite enough for a pie, I decided to make scones.  I had a specific scone in mind, a scone that I used to eat in school on thursday mornings when I had class in the Sharp building.   The scone from my past was only slightly moist, full of blueberries, and was coated in a sugary crust.   The sugary crust was the best part! it added a great crunch.  The scones that I made did not compare to the scones of my past, but they were still tasty… and I still ate them all. 

A note on blueberries:  What is it about the heat that transforms a blueberry? the taste and the color!  I love the way baked blueberries stain a bread or a muffin with a range of blues and purples just surrounding the berry.

This past weekend I made a visit to the Dairy Queen in Florence Oregon.  I get one thing at DQ, and that is a chocolate soft serve cone with chocolate sprinkles.  This DQ was out of sprinkles! not just chocolate sprinkles but rainbow too! Really, Florence DQ get it together…and over 4th of July weekend, it’s un-American. 

These hippopotamus cookies were inspired by an over abundance of  sprinkles in my kitchen cabinet.  I had heart sprinkles and a hippo cookie cutter that I just didn’t know what to do with, so I whipped up these hippos on a whim.  They turned out pretty darn cute!

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Cream together butter sugar and vanilla until combined.  Beat in salt and flour until just combined.  Form dough into a ball, cover in plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours. 

On a floured surface roll dough into a 1/2 inch thick sheet.  Dip the cookie cutter in flour and cut hippos out of the dough.  Re-roll and cut dough until all the dough has been used.  Line baking sheet with parchment paper.  Place the hippos about an inch apart on the parchment paper and chill for 30 minutes.  Bake cookies in the center of the oven for about 15 minutes or until the edges just begin to brown.  Let hippos cool on a wire rack. 

On a double broiler melt chocolate and stir until smooth.  Dip the feet of the cooled hippo cookies into the chocolate and embellish them with the heart sprinkles.  Allow the chocolate to cool and harden and enjoy!

Why make whole wheat seeded biscuits for breakfast? Why not jumbo cinnamon buns studded with chocolate chips, or a full stack of flapjacks dripping with pure maple syrup, maybe a fried egg topped with bacon and sandwiched between two perfectly glazed doughnuts. I will tell you why! because as good as it tastes going down at 9 am, it’s not so good at 3pm when you are STILL full! not only full of greasy heavy breakfast but full of regret.  One of these whole wheat seeded biscuits warm from the oven with a smidge of butter (okay, not just a smidge. Smeared with it, a lot of it! ) and a fresh cup of coffee on a sunday morning will do you good! Trust me, it’s just as satisfying as that 6 egg 5 cheese omelet that you love so much.

This recipe comes from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Cooking. One of my favorite cookbooks and christmas presents last year (thanks mom!)

I don’t really camp.  I have been camping and I even liked it.  I just don’t like doing the work.  Lugging the gear, setting up the tent, starting the fire…  THAT I’m not into.  One night outside is ok…maybe even two, but after that I want a bed and the warmth of the great INDOORS.  I like the hiking, the stars, the fire and the Smores that go along with it.  I think I’m just a cabin girl, or even a motor home girl, I’m just not a tent in the red woods without a rain fly kind of girl… that much I know about myself.  

Because I don’t really see camping in my near future, I decided to make my own Smores.  Little graham cracker cookies dipped in chocolate, smeared with marshmallow and smoooshed together.  Yum! 

Position an oven rack to the center position and preheat it to 350. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Whisk together flour, wheat flour, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed, cream together the butter and brown sugar, about 2 minutes. Scrape down the bowl, and beat in the honey. Stir in dry ingredients on low-speed. Scrape the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap and pat it into a disc, wrap well. Refrigerate until firm but still pliable, about one hour. Once Dough is chilled measure dough using a tablespoon and roll into balls.  place the dough balls an inch apart on baking mat and lightly flatten each ball with the back side of the tablespoon.  Using a fork press four rows of holes into each cookie and sprinkle with Turbinado sugar.  Bake for about ten minutes or until the edges begin to brown.  Remove cookies from cookie sheet and let cool completely on wire rack.

On a double broiler melt two chocolate bars that have been broken into pieces.  Stir chocolate occasionally until completely melted and smooth.  Carefully dip the flat side of each cookie into the melted chocolate and let dry chocolate side up on a wire rack.  Once the chocolate is cool and dry spread a small dollop of marshmallow fluff onto the chocolate side of one cookie and sandwich with another. Repeat with remaining cookies and enjoy! 

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m kind of a cookie girl.  Sure cake is good, but I don’t crave cake like a crave cookies.  I never NEED cake, except for the occasional desire for one of those frozen Pepperidge Farm cakes…which I never actually purchase by the way, it’s just a dirty fantasy.  I really only made these cupcakes because I wanted to make something beautiful.  I wanted some color on this blog page. Here it is! And it’s pink! It is sooo pink, all natural pink! The best part about these cupcakes is the intense strawberry flavor.  Real Strawberry, the kind of strawberry flavor that isn’t sickeningly sweet, but combined with the sugar in the cupcake it’s perfect.  The recipe comes from LA’s famous Sprinkles Cupcakes.  I did tweak the frosting recipe slightly, but only because it calls for two sticks of butter! Two sticks for 12 cupcakes! That’s not even counting the stick of butter in the cake batter… Three sticks for a dozen! I like butter a lot, but I couldn’t do it, not with a clean conscience.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with cupcake liners; set aside.  Place strawberries in a small food processor; process until pureed. You should have about 1/3 cup of puree, add a few more strawberries if necessary or save any extra puree for frosting; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In a small bowl, mix together milk, vanilla, and strawberry puree; set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter on medium-high speed, until light and fluffy. Gradually add sugar and continue to beat until well combined and fluffy. Reduce the mixer speed to medium and slowly add egg and egg whites until just blended. With the mixer on low, slowly add half the flour mixture; mix until just blended. Add the milk mixture; mix until just blended. Slowly add remaining flour mixture, scraping down sides of the bowl with a spatula, as necessary, until just blended.   Divide batter evenly among prepared muffin cups. Transfer muffin tin to oven and bake until tops are just dry to the touch, 22 to 25 minutes. Transfer muffin tin to a wire rack and let cupcakes cool completely in tin before icing.

Now that it has been said and done, I don’t know what drove me to make these cookies.  They are much too wholesome.  The recipe does not even contain an entire stick of butter.  They are chewy and sweet, but only slightly sweet even with the generous sprinkle of turbinado sugar on the top.  When a cookie is only slightly sweet, it needs to make up for its lack of sugar with extra butter! For instance shortbread cookies…not so sweet but oh so buttery.  I suppose this cookie just does not contain enough “bad stuff”.   So I’m not going to call it a cookie.  I will call it a Newton, because that is exactly what it is in the sense that the term ”Newton” is completely ambiguous.  Wikipedia tells me that Nabisco Fig Newtons were named because they were created in Newton, Massachusetts, but I have a feeling that they chose the name as an easy out.   Really, what else could you call a high fiber, not enough butter, whole wheat, fig filled treat?  Yes they are still tasty, pretty good for breakfast, but certainly not deserving of any sort of praise.

Cream together butter and brown sugar until fluffy.  Mix in vanilla and egg until mixture is smooth.  Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl and then combine with the wet ingredients.  Mix until combined.  Knead the dough on a floured surface for a few turns and then divide the dough into for pieces.  Wrap with plastic and chill fo at least 30 minutes.

Coarsely chop the figs.  On medium heat cook figs, sugar, water and lemon juice until the liquid is absorbed, about twenty minutes.  Let the fig jam cool completely.

Roll out the dough to about a 5′ x 9′ rectangle.  Spread fig jam in the center of the rectangle and gently fold the dough over the jam.  Seal each end, and very carefully place the log onto an ungreased cookie sheet seam side down.  Brush the log with egg white and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.  Repeat steps with the remaining dough and jam and bake for about 25 minutes or until just golden.  Let the logs cool completely before slicing into bars.

Recipe has been adapted from Bakespace.com and Epicurious.com

Smores? Blueberry? Strawberry? Cherry?  No.  The best kind of  Poptart without a doubt is Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon.  Coffee cake? Yes please just the crumb top.

This cookie bar is like a combination of the inside of a brown sugar cinnamon poptart and the crumb topping on a slice of coffee cake compressed together to make a dense bar of crumbly goodness.  This cookie is so good that I made them on Sunday night and then again on Monday night.  So good that I couldn’t finish drawing the cookie before I ate it…three times.  I found these cookies to be especially enjoyable with a cup of coffee, first thing in the morning.  Yes I eat cookies for breakfast.   Thank you Mrs Potts and Mr Drost for such a delightful recipe!

Mrs Potts Cookies

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.  beat in egg yolk.  Mix flour and cinnamon into the wet mixture until completely combined.  Press the dough into an ungreased cookie sheet and then brush with the egg white.  Sprinkle with coconut and chopped walnuts as desired. Bake for about 30 minutes, let cool and cut into squares.

Lucky Charms cereal was created in 1962 by General Mills Employee John Holahan.   John was inspired to combine Cheerios and Branches Circus peanuts to create a cereal with a crunch and a candy-like sweetness (Circus Peanuts! Can you believe that?! My beloved Lucky Charms was inspired by the most repulsive candy in existence!) An advertising company hired by General Mills suggested marketing the cereal using a charm bracelet concept.  Charm bracelet + luck and leprechauns – bracelet and there you have it! Lucky Charms.

To celebrate my Irish heritage this St Patrick’s Day I ate Lucky Charms for breakfast…and then again for lunch!  The marshmallows were much more deformed than I remember.  Some of the pink hearts and red balloons had the same shape… blob.  Despite my disappointment with the aesthetics of the marshmallows, I was not disappointed with the taste.  Just as wonderful as I remember! Actually even better than I remember!  Lucky Charms is an explosion of color.   After all, the box does contain “hearts, stars and horse shoes! Clovers and blue moons! Pots of gold and rainbows! And me red balloon!” (Note the pot of gold is now a key lock and the clover is now a hat, I think that jingle needs an update) All those colors and the milk still turns green! Coincidence? I don’t think so.

I have three distinct memories of my time spent as a girl scout.  I remember making a “stove” from a coffee can and using it to cook a hot dog in a church parking lot.  I remember going to camp and being reprimanded along with my fellow cabin mates for leaving a large clump of dried mud in a pair of Hanes underwear on our neighbors stoop.  What a stupid prank!… 11 year olds have the best ideas. Lastly I remember cookies! And I remember them every year right around the end of February.  In addition to buying Girl Scout cookies this season, I made my own!

These Tagalongs are a little bit more sophisticated than the original, with a shortbread base and a dark chocolate finish.   I used Theo chocolate a local bean to bar chocolatier.   Really good.  I did not take these cookies to work to share.

Homemade Tagalongs

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Cream butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Mix in vanilla. Mix dry ingredients in a separate bowl.  Using a hand mixer, mix dry ingredients with the wet ingredients until combined.  Form dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap.  Chill for 30 minutes.  Roll out chilled dough on a lightly floured surface about 1/2″ thick.  Using a circular cookie cutter cut dough into small circles, re-roll and cut until all the dough has been used.  Bake cookies on a slip mat an inch apart for about 12 minutes or until edges begin to brown.  You want to have crispy cookies.  Let cookies cool and set aside.

Over a double broiler melt the peanut butter. Sift the powered sugar into the peanut butter continually stirring.  Stir the mixture until it is smooth and free of any small lumps.  Stir in the vanilla extract.  using a butter knife, spread a generous amount of the peanut butter mixture onto each cookie.  Chill cookies in the freezer for about 20 minutes.

Break chocolate into small pieces.  Over a double broiler melt chocolate and stir in corn syrup. When the mixture is smooth use a butter knife to carefully spread the chocolate over the peanut butter mixture.  The chocolate on my cookies did not cover the entire cookie.  Let the chocolate solidify and enjoy!

Quaint little violet flowers.  I did not know they grew on rosemary, maybe because I have only purchased rosemary from the grocery store, packaged in small plastic containers.  Not this time! I acquired REAL rosemary from a coworker who grows the herb in her garden.  So I went with a recipe for rosemary olive oil crackers that I adapted from Eat Make Read.   These crackers are so simple to make and so tasty!  I will absolutely be making these crackers again.  Oddly I had a craving for a tuna melt and bowl of tomato soup.  Thank you crackers, for making my tuna melt fancy.

In a food processor pulse flour, salt, parmesan, rosemary and olive oil until pea size crumbs form.  Add cream and run food processor for a few minutes until a ball of dough forms (if dough will not form a ball add a tablespoon of water and continue to run the food processor).  On a floured surface roll dough into a 1/4-1/2 inch rectangle.  Using a knife or pizza cutter slice dough into 1×1″ squares.  Transfer squares to a slipmat or cookie sheet and sprinkle with sea salt.  Bake crackers for 10 minutes or until edges are golden.  Cool crackers on wire rack.  Snack.