The BEST Cookies

 

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 sticks salted butter, melted and cooled

1 cup packed dark brown sugar (or a little more)

1/2 cup white sugar

1 Tbsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 cup of semi sweet chocolate chips and 1 cup of dark chocolate (if you use chips they will stay whole in the cookies or if you shave it off a bar of chocolate it will melt into the dough and be swirly and yummy)

chopped walnuts, pecans,  peanut butter cups or whatever (if you want)

Sea salt(if you want)

Directions:

– pre heat oven to 375

– put butter into a sauce pan and cook on medium until browned and nutty.  transfer to a large mixing bowl (or mixer) and let cool for a few minutes)

– add sugars and beat together.  Add in eggs and vanilla .

– mix in dry ingredients (you’re supposed to stir together the flour baking soda and salt first, i never do…)

– add in the chocolate chips an any other add ins.

– put on lined or sprayed cookie sheets in big dollops, – about two inches in diameter only fitting 6 or 8 on each cookie sheet.

– bake for about 8-10 minutes depending on how gooey you like them.

– sprinkle them with sea salt or kosher salt as soon as they come out of the oven.

 

– makes about 20 big cookies yum yum yum.

 

adapted from the spiffy cookie 

Chicken with Caprese Salsa

 

Grilled Chicken marinated in Italian seasonings   over ricotta basil sticky rice topped with caprese salssa and olive oil and balsalmic.

The ‘salsa’ was so great, it took relatively boring chicken to a whole new level.  I finely chopped fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and basil and tossed it with oil and balsalmic.   Yum.   The rice is sticky Japanese rice-  it gives it a risotto like texture-  with some fresh ricotta and basil.  Very simple, but really delicious.

Ravioli with Two sauces

Home made Raviolis stuffed with ricotta and basil   and mushrooms with mozzarella and paremesan cheeses.

The red sauces is bolognese with ground turkey and the while is garlic alfredo.

Pizza Night!

 

When we make pizza at home we use a bag of dry pizza dough mix.   It’s so good.  I use two bags per cookie sheet sized pizza.  I make the dough and let it sit for a few minutes while we mis en place the rest of the ingredients.  Then we spread the dough on a floured cookie  sheet using a lot of flour to keep it from sticking to everything.  Bake it at 400  for about 15-20 minutes. Then take it off the cookie sheets and put it right on the rack to get crunchy!   We baked our dough for about 10-12 more minutes  and then took it out and brushed it with olive oil that we had heated up with lots of minced garlic and seasoning. This was in loo of any sauce.   Then (here’s the secret) we cover the whole pizza with sliced deli munster cheese. YUM   Top with toppings and shredded italian mix cheese and top it off with some drizzled olive oil.

We made two pizza  both were white, one with fresh tomatoes and basil and the other with sauteed brussel sprouts and shallots.

Banana Nut Cinnamon Mini Muffins

 

Banana Muffins topped with chopped walnuts with cinnamon frosting.

For the banana bread:  (stolen from hayley)  I doubled the recipe to make about 60 mini muffins

 

3-4  large ripe bananas, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg, 4 T butter, melted and cooled, 1 ½ cups of all-purpose flour, 1tsp each salt and baking soda

Mash bananas, beat in sugar, than egg and butter.  Add the dry ingredients.  (or do it the right by mixing them first and ya know..)

Bake in a greased or lined mini muffin tin for about 9-12 minutes.

 

For the  frosting, I added a LOT of cinnamon to a regular tub of a vanilla frosting and pipped it on.

 

You might be thinking, “oh those look nice I should try them without the frosting”  YOU ARE WRONG.   I have made a serious break through with the cinnamon frosting on banana bread thing.  try it. try it now.