chocolate chocolate chip cookies

I was really craving some soft, chewy chocolate chip cookies. I quickly checked to see if I had ingredients to make something, and of course, I did (would you doubt anything else).

As Paula Deen says, add just a little bit of butta...

I love licking the bowl. Salmonella Palmonella.

I added some dutch cocoa powder to the batter to make these cookies uber chocolatey

About to go in the oven!

The secret ingredient: cocoa powder!

Wow, these are huge!
Please excuse me as I go stuff my face with these huge chocolatey gooey cookies...

The recipe is adapted from here

3 cups all purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 sticks unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly

1 1/2 cups light brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

My addition: 1/4 cup (approximately) of cocoa powder. I really don't know how this "messed up" the chemistry and all that, but the cookies were still gooey and delicious for the next week (yes, they lasted that long).

Strawberry Frozen Yogurt!

I normally hate non-chocolate ice cream, especially fruit based ice creams. But, since I got my ice cream maker, I’ve been trying every recipe under the sun. I’m sure eventually I will even make parsley ice cream.

Fresh, yummy strawberries!

Strawberries and sugar...

Strawberries "marinating" in the bowl over night

Right before whipping up some strawberry puree!

I got up at 8am on a weekday morning to do this...now THAT is dedication (normally I sleep in till 8:30)

Voila!!

Recipe is as follows, adapted from David Lebovitz's book, The Perfect Scoop (makes about 1 quart, or just enough to fill a normal ice cream maker)

1 pound strawberries, rinsed and hulled (just buy one 16 oz. carton)

2/3 cup sugar

1 cup greek yogurt

1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Slice the strawberries into small pieces. (see photo #1). Toss in a bowl with the sugar until the sugar dissolves. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature for 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Or, you can do what I did and leave it in the fridge over night.

Transfer the strawberries + resulting juice to a blender. Add the greek yogurt and the lemon juice. Wheeee! (which means pulse until smooth).

Chill the mixture for an hour (or 8 hours - from the time you blend, go to work, and come back). Throw into your magic ice cream maker and let it do the rest of the work for another 30 minutes!

HOM!

Cheese Fondue

My two favorite things in my kitchen are my heart-shaped fondue pot and of course my ice cream maker. So what do you get when you combine them together? FONDUE ICE CREAM! Ew, just kidding. Wait. That could be good?


I've tried various fondue recipes. Champagne Fondue. Chipotle Cheese Fondue.

This one is good tried and true recipe:


Adapted from here
1 garlic clove, halved crosswise
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 tablespoon cornstarch + extra
1/3 pound Emmental Comte cheese, coarsely grated (a little less than 2 cups)
1/3 pound Gruyère, coarsely grated (a little less than 2 cups)


Because I’ve made some variation of the recipe before and always end up with wayyyy to much cheese stuck to the bottom of the fondue pot, I actually reduced the amount of cheese to about 1/3 pound instead of the original ½ pound from the recipe. This adjustment fed four of my girlfriends and me (so 4 + 2. Haha).


The recipe also called for Emmental cheese as you can see I crossed out above. I used that last time I made this, and the result was a solid, traditional fondue. When I substituted the Comte, the result was DELECTABLE. My friends raved about the flavor. So try it both ways and see which one you like best. But don’t forget to invite me to be a taste tester!

As my cheese was melting, I noticed it still wasn’t thick enough with just the 1 tablespoon of corn starch. So I threw in maybe 2-3 more tablespoons.


As for the white wine, I didn’t use anything special. Just some kind of chardonnay from Trader Joe’s, for probably $6 or less.

The spread:

James Beard Media Award Winners

http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/05/who_won_at_the_james_beard_fou.html

And from this, I found serious eats! Now a link on my blog :)