classic chocolate cookies

To be honest, I shied away from making these cookies at first because they seemed almost boring. I thought, 'Just plain chocolate cookies? Where's the mint? Where are the chunks of quality dark chocolate?'

But I guess some cookies don't require sprinkles and chips to shine, 'cause these. are. delicious.

Besides rich chocolate flavour, these cookies have got other things going for them: they're thin, yet chewy, and they have a slightly crispy sugared outside with a slightly gooey center.

I've read somewhere that adding a bit of coffee to chocolate cake enhances the flavour of the cocoa so I figured the same would be true of cookies that are flavoured with cocoa. A bit of instant coffee was the only thing extra I added to the dough and I'd like to think it was partly responsible for kicking the chocolate up a notch.

'grammy's chocolate cookies'
Martha Stewart's Holiday Cookies (2001) special mag
makes 2-3 dozen

2 C plus 2 Tbs all-purpose flour
3/4 C dutch-process cocoa powder
1 teas baking soda
1/2 teas salt
1 1/4 C (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 C granulated sugar, plus more for dipping (or use coarser sanding sugar instead)
2 large eggs
2 teas pure vanilla extract
1 teas instant coffee granules
1 teas warm water

Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In small bowl, combine instant coffee and warm water. Stir to dissolve, then set aside.

In large bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, vanilla, and coffee. Gradually add dry ingredients and combine well. Form dough into flattened disk, wrap with plastic wrap and chill until firm (1 hour).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet(s) with parchment paper. Shape dough into balls, a little larger than 1", and roll in sanding sugar. Place a couple inches apart on baking sheet and bake until set, 10-12 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer cookies to a wire rack.

urban grains

I kind of like saying that I'm a shareholder, but really I'm just a regular ol' member of the CSA Urban Grains. 

Which means in July, I paid some local grain farmers. And in October, I went to pick up four 5kg bags of their organic whole wheat flour that had been milled just days before. 

Now I'm coming to terms with the fact that quality ingredients really do make a difference. First dairy, now flour... what's next, will I be springing for high-end table salt? 

But we enjoy a whole lot of bread around here. And since my weekly batch of bread has never tasted so good, or had such killer consistency, I'll be ponying up the cash again next summer.  

roses are red...

I'm not a big 'hearts and flowers' kind of gal, but I do love an excuse to craft in red.

A few ideas for this year, or next...

make fortune cookies the hard way... or the easy way (I've now tried both)

valentine's crackers (a la Christmas surprise crackers)

order a heart-shaped sparkler 

make soap you want to eat

insta-decorate with heart garland

knitting with noro

This was my first time in the colourful world of Noro. I'd never bought a yarn just to see what all the fuss and bother was about, but I'm glad I did.  The Kureyon knits up something pretty, don't you think? 

Folks on ravelry complain of knots and stuff in the skeins. I found one knot, and only a few little twiggies. The stuff is a bit scratchy off the ball but apparently softens up with washing. My only complaint is that it gets so thin in places.  It was so thin it broke as I was binding off, so that kind of sucked. But I suppose most of those rustic qualities can be overlooked when you're working with such cool colours. 

The pattern and all my notes on ravelry.

tabbouleh with chicken

It's been a long time since I posted a recipe, and that's mostly because we've been content to make our standby recipes over and over (and over) again. But last weekend I tried a recipe from my new Christmas cookbook, Barefoot Contessa's Family Style. 

Wow. Is this tabbouleh salad ever good. The chicken makes it a heartier than your average tabbouleh, and since the lemon dressing is just used for soaking the bulgar, the veggies don't get soggy. Delicious, I tell you. 

It's definitely more of a summer salad, but as long as you find a couple bunches of decent looking fresh herbs, a greenhouse cucumber, and those magic grape tomatoes, you're set for a summer preview. I served mine with pita bread and homemade hummus.  

tabbouleh with chicken
Ina Garten
serves 6-8

1 1/2 C boiling water
1 C bulgur wheat
1/4 C freshly squeezed lemon juice (approx. 2 lemons)
olive oil
kosher salt
1 whole (2 split) chicken breast, bone in, skin on
freshly ground black pepper
1 C minced scallions (1 bunch) -- I just used green parts, but if you want it 'onionier', use white parts too
1 C chopped fresh mint leaves
1 C chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, halved lengthwise, seeded, and medium-diced
2 C (1 pint) halved cherry tomatoes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a medium heat-proof bowl, pour boiling water over the bulgur wheat. Add lemon juice, 1/4 C olive oil and 1 teas salt. Stir. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and allow to stand at room temp for about an hour.

Place chicken breast on baking sheet and rub with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast until cooked, 35-40 mins. Set aside until cool enough to handle.

Remove chicken from the bones and dice into bite-size pieces. Add diced chicken to bulgur, along with the scallions, mint, parsley, cucumber and tomatoes. Stir and season with more salt and pepper, if needed. Either serve immediately or cover and refrigerate.

luxurious wrist warmers

My in-laws went to Peru last summer and brought me some absolutely beautiful baby alpaca. (Their tour guide cautioned them against buying 'maybe alpaca', and I'm grateful!) I have one cream, one brown, and two blue skeins of what's probably the world's softest yarn.

I wanted to make myself some cream wrist warmers. Unfortunately, one skein kept coming up short. Despite frogging the first wrist warmer twice in order to make it shorter, I have ended up with almost two cream wrist warmers.

But after already ripping out this pattern twice, I'm ready to move on to something else. And I've found that if I squint, the brown practically fades into any (brown) outdoor background.

So, any suggestions for two blue skeins and (a little less than) one brown skein? I'm thinking maybe this cowl. (on ravelry here)

** Almost forgot to mention that the wrist warmer pattern is a freebie on ravelry. Find it here.

party bunting

I got on the bunting bandwagon.

We have a small paper-cut banner of sorts that we put up for celebrations, but I wanted something a bit more sturdy and well, bunting-like.

I went after my fabric scraps with pinking shears and now we've got seven yards of bright bunting. Party on.

I know, I know, the silly things have been everywhere. But I don't care. They're cute! Don't they make you want to have a cupcake or a slice of pie?

In case you're interested in all things bunting...
say it with a bunting birthday card
tell guests they're awesome with compliment bunting
or tell them whatever you want with alphabet bunting
icing's out, bunting on cakes is in
paint one on your tablecloth
Easter is coming. make a string of peeps
every nap is worthy of a rainbow bunting baby quilt

a year at our table

Happy New Year!

After Christmas last year, I began compiling recipes and ideas and pictures and came up with the one gift we would give everyone on our list this year: a cookbook of our family's favourite recipes.

It was a project I enjoyed working on all year long. The book ended up with five recipes for each season, lots of pictures of food, and some pics of our kid too.

Thanks to Blurb, it was relatively simple to design what I wanted and the quality of the final book is great. But no thanks to Blurb, the pictures printed a tad dark and I ran into a few bugs in their formatting software. Such is life. I'd still use them again and recommend 'em to anyone looking to do a similar project.

toddler's apron

My kid's got the best play kitchen ever, so naturally, she needed an apron in her stocking.

But since I didn't want to have to make a new apron every time her head grew, there was the problem of making it adjustable. I didn't have one of those buckles on hand, nor did I like the idea of tying ties at the waist and at the neck every time she wants to put on her apron.

Then I saw this apron (via this motherload list of apron tutorials), which is completely adjustable thanks to just one long tie. Genius!

Rough instructions should you want to make one: 

Measure the kid and decide on your length and widths*, create a pattern piece out of paper and cut out one piece from cool fabric and one from muslin or bedsheet (or whatever you want as a backing). Sew right sides together, turn inside-out, topstitch, sew in casings along side edges, and finally thread through a tie (I use cotton twill tape). 

*Final measurements for my two-year old's apron (add seam allowance if you want to make the same size):

8" from top to waist, another 7" to bottom, total of 15" long

6" wide at top, 12" wide at waist, 14" wide at bottom

******************************

And with that final stocking stuffer, I'm signing off for a little while. Instead of a picture of boring poinsettias, I'll give the final word to my purple pansies. (I had no idea these little guys were so hardy.)

Enjoy the holidays!

it's finally done

Wow. I finished this little quilt top and back in February of '08 (original post). I said then that I wanted to use its little size to learn the proper way to bind a quilt. 

Four. Years. Later. 

All the quilts I've ever made made use of some sort of cheater binding -- either folding over and topstitching extra fabric from the quilt back or just machine-sewing on the binding, both of which leave a visible stitch. I finally did it the 'right' way, using using Heather Bailey's instructions.

Sure, I like the result, but meh, I think a little visible stitching is far preferable to so much handstitching.