52 weeks of baking: 51 - gingerbread men

Isn't that just like the perfect shade of dog poo? Don't let that deter you, these cookies are delicious and spicy and festive as heck. Dough or batter of any sort containing molasses just always comes out poo colored. Amusing!

This week has been insanity. Not that that is anything new, that's the story of my dang life, y'all! But this week, I got sick! Figured it would happen soon, you can only go full throttle for so long before your body is like, NOPE. But luckily it kind of worked out, most of the feverish worst of it was on my two days off so I only spent one very long day at work feeling absolutely rotten. So baking was pushed to the end of the week. And it was a close call. I've just worked 24 of the last 48 hours, but I somehow managed to bust out these cookies last night and am throwing them onto the internet before I go to work today.

Also, there is something real funky going on with my camera. The top portion of all the photos is blurry as hell and everything sort of looks like a nineties glamour shot. It's been going on for a while and I have no idea whats up. But everything kind of looks like this:

Oh well, faces are overrated anyway.

For shapes we only did a handful of traditional gingerbread men, and the rest were stars, kitties, and ducks! Because why not?

My royal icing was waaaay watery, but I was too lazy to add more powdered sugar, so we rolled with it. Came out just fine.

Brendon's design's were my favorite. He made a cute dark wing duck with a mask!

Clearly my writing skills have some room to grow. But these cookies are GOOD! Like I said, spicy! There's a good amount of black pepper in them, and it's awesome. I think if I made them again I'd roll them out thicker. I like a softer cookie. They're a little ginger snappish when they're thin, which is yummy, but I'm into chewy cookies generally.

ONE MORE WEEK OF BAKING! Craziness. I probably won't bake or have anything interesting to report until after Christmas (I have three days off next week!!!!), so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to the internet!

EDIT: I just realized I did NOT include the recipe I used. What the hell? It's a Smitten Kitchen recipe, I'M SORRY, I WAS RUSHED!

52 weeks of baking: 46 - snickerdoodle cookies

 
PHEW! Cutting it close this week, this post is going to be short and sweet. This week has been BUSY and I feel like I haven't had a second to breathe. But I did squeeze in some baking Friday! I wanted to make something that we could share with our friends, because I feel like we've been hogging (and eating!) all the baked goods lately. Cookies are the best for sharing! I used this recipe and they turned out nothing like the pictures and were not thick or soft, but whatever, they were good!

Snickerdoodles are always a good option. Sugar and cinnamon. You can't go wrong. BAKE ON FOLKS!

52 weeks of baking: 41 - pumpkin chocolate chip cookies

Continuing with the pumpkin theme this month, I give you pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Because that just sounds amazing. As I am currently enamored by Sally's Baking Addiction and her easy and incredibly delicious recipes, I found this recipe and knew I had to get my bake on. And yet again, she delivers. These babies are good. Is there anything chocolate doesn't go well with?

They are chewy and soft and spicy and chocolatey and reeeeeally good. And interestingly, this recipe does not make a whole lot of cookies. It makes just what you see up there, a dozen, which in our case is perfect. We often end up tossing out cookies because recipes tend to make like... 1,000 cookies. There are just the two of us, so a dozen is perfect. Although we do love sharing our 1,000 cookies with coworkers and friends. So if you're making these for a large group, double it up. Or triple it! Brendon and I will probably knock these twelve out in the next day or so. They're good and we love dessert.

52 weeks of baking: 39 - salted caramel dark chocolate chip cookies

Long enough name for ya? These cookies you guys. They are as insane as they sound. Salted caramel dark chocolate chip cookies. I mean, that's a hell of a cookie. I am becoming more and more obsessed with Sally's Baking Addiction, and girlfriend knows how to come up with some delicious goodies. Her recipe for these babies here. These cookies are very very good. SO rich. I mean, there's a freaking rolo baked inside. A rolo! You cannot lose.

Can we stop for a moment and just talk about how fantastic the lighting in my kitchen was for the first half of these photos? Good light makes a world of difference. Forgive the second, they were taken in artificial light after the sun went down because these cookies had to chill for two dang hours!

A MELTED ROLO INSIDE. Oh man, it's good. And the sea salt on these is perfect. I'm so glad someone decided to start adding crunchy sea salt to sweet things. The cookie itself is delicious, worth trying on it's own sans caramel if you're feeling something a little simpler. And speaking of simplicity, next time I think I'd opt for just caramels inside instead of rolos. Don't get me wrong, the rolo inside is brilliant, it's just along with caramel and dark chocolate chips, it adds milk chocolate into the mix. There's already so much going on in these things, and all of it good, I just would maybe simplify it a tad by losing the milk chocolate. These are perfect cookies to make if you are say, having a really rough day. Or week. Or month. Or if your life is completely perfect, make them anyway.

This was my fortieth week of baking. How insane is that? FORTY weeks have already gone by. Only twelve left in the year. Only twelve more baked goodies left. It's a little sad, seeing the end approaching. It's become such a nice and welcome part of my life, and I'm pretty proud of my little project. I'll need to think up a new one for next year! 52 weeks of... who knows!
EDIT: I couldn't believe it was the 40th week of the year, so I googled it. Turns out it's the 39th. I somehow misnumbered my weeks and missed 28. All is adjusted now, everything is numbered correctly. Forgive me, I am terrible with numbers. Just copy past that last paragraph onto next week's post with your mind, okay?

52 weeks of baking: 34 - coconut chocolate chip cookies

This is vacation week. I am taking a vacation. A real one. Put it in your books people! Six days with my man and no work. So baking day was Monday (today). And after last weeks rather labor intensive adventure in baking, I thought I'd take it easy. Cookies are easy. And good. Chocolate chip is always my go-to cookie, but I had some coconut in my pantry begging to be baked. So viola, coconut chocolate chip cookies.

I based this recipe on a few general cookie recipes and hoped for the best. Worked out pretty well!
These cookies are fat and all kinds of yummy. Stuff of dreams, y'all. Here's the deets:

Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies (quadruple C's!)

2 cups of all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 sticks of butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
2 cups sweetened shredded coconut

Preheat your oven to 375. Whisk your flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Cream your butter and sugar for about two minutes in the bowl of a mixer. Beat in your vanilla. Add your eggs, beating after each. Dump in those chocolate chips, mix it up! Add your coconut and mix it up some more!

Spoon 1 tablespoonish balls onto cookie sheet, spaced a couple inches apart. If you're me, eat copious amounts of cookie dough during this process. Bake those babies for about 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool and devour.

52 weeks of baking: 25 - molasses cookies

This is not what I planned on baking this week. I originally was going to try out a recipe my momma suggested, however all of a sudden it was Saturday night and I hadn't baked squat. This week! So busy! So boom, molasses cookies happened via a recipe from my Women of the Farm Bureau Cookbook (this book, y'all... so many winners). Because I had all the ingredients and look at that recipe. LOOK AT THE THREE SENTENCE INSTRUCTIONS. So easy. And they turned out SO good. Some of the best cookies I've made ever. I completely overlooked the last sentence of the instructions and missed the powdered sugar. Completely missed it. Ironically, when we were trying them fresh out of the oven, I said to Brendon "these would be really good with sugar on them". Didn't notice until writing this post that the creator of these cookies thought so too. I think I might have added coarse sugar versus powdered, but regardless, they're delish even without sugar.

Don't let the fact that the cookie dough looks an awful lot like dog poo scare you away. I promise, that cookie dough is yummy.

These cookies are great fresh out of the oven, but I think they're even better the next day. They're so soft and chewy, which my cookies never seem to be a day after. They are perfect for breakfast with a glass of cold orange juice. Having cookies for breakfast is acceptable in my house. After sleeping in today (!!!) I sent Brendon a text at work after noshing on some cookies, remarking on how yummy they were, and he confirmed as he too had a breakfast o' cookies. Great minds.

52 weeks of baking: 22 - Snickerdoodle cookies

My two favorite things, Brendon and butter! Man, this boy. He is in Temple and I miss him. He will be home tomorrow night and mine for the rest of the summer. Counting down the seconds.

I think I've talked before about how fortunate we are to have people in our lives who treat us like family. Well, we are spoiled. In your second year of pharmacy school, you have the option to be a mentor to a first year pharmacy student. Of course Brendon signed up. His mentee is a really sweet and awesome guy who just so happens to be from Temple. And he and his family were sweet enough to welcome Brendon into their home for the past couple weeks while he's been doing his rotations at the VA hospital there. They are the kindest folks and we are so grateful. So so grateful. So, as a wee thank you (although this is not enough at all!), we baked snickerdoodle cookies for their family as well as for the pharmacists that Brendon has been working with. Because everyone loves snickerdoodles and it's extra fun to say.

Attempting to figure out why my butter, sugar, and egg mixture looks a bit like jello pudding. I know I have mentioned how Brendon being in the kitchen with me usually ends badly. This time, he was in charge of measuring out the sugar for the cookies. I thought nothing of it, this was a small task. However, he measured out the amount of sugar for the coating and not for the cookies, so instead of 1 1/2 cups of sugar, we just had 1/3. I noticed something was odd when I added the eggs, but it wasn't until I tasted the dough that I realized what was wrong. Thankfully I am a cookie dough fiend and connoisseur, so we just added more sugar and the cookies were saved. Though I just might have to kick Mr. Hogan out of the kitchen for a while.

This recipe I have for these snickerdoodles is amazing. It's so easy and has never failed me. It's long though, so I'm not typing it out unless someone is in serious need. These are phenomenal right out of the oven, delicious three days later, and reeeeally good dipped in coffee. Kudos to Brendon for discovering that last one. And I leave you with a creepy shot of me, because you need a laugh: