Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops -- Tuesdays with Dorie

The kids and I really enjoyed these, they were just the kind of cookie texture I love, soft and a little puffy, slightly chewy with some crunch from the Whoppers and the chocolate chips giving you something to sink your teeth into. I had no problems with this recipe, it was fun to make and the resulting cookies were delicious to eat.

How could you not love these ingredients? Thanks, amazon, around here malted milk powder is hard to find, I don't think I've ever even had it before, unless at a milkshake in a restaurant, have to love that amazon grocery!

Glad I got to use my little food processor! I've been feeling a little guilty lately, after I broke down and got a 14 cup model my little one (4 cup I think) doesn't get used that much.

I also got an excuse to use my new Oxo Kitchen Scale, which I love! It's my first kitchen scale, and I'm so happy to have it, now I can tackle some European recipes and weight conversions :)

My husband liked them but didn't really like the Whoppers baked into the cookies, because of the way they changed texture while baking and got kind of hard, I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about so I won't try to explain it any better. Even though he is a Whopper fan these cookies weren't a favorite for him.

My first cookie sheet out of the oven were a touch under done, and tasted WAY too sweet. The rest of the cookies I let cook a little longer, between 13-14 minutes. After they cooled and were stored at room temperate overnight I think they were at their peak of flavor -- if cookies have such a thing. They were not too sweet any more, and you could actually tell there were Whoppers in there, right after baking you really weren't sure what was in the cookies unless you knew the title of the recipe and ingredient list.

I think these would be even better if you just left the Whoppers out of the cookie dough, frosted the cookies, then sprinkled the crushed up Whoppers on top. I know the extra frosting would make these really decadent, but if you're going to eat one of these you should be in a decadent mood to begin with.




Thank you Rachel of Confessions of a Tangerine Tart , who chose this delicious cookie recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie! These are just the kind of cookies I love to bake, they are fun, and even if this is not a "must make again" recipe (for us, I'm sure some of you will be making these over and over) they were delicious and happily eaten by my little family. Baking and trying new recipes is so much fun, and it's recipes like this, that have you think "whoa, I bet those will be amazing" just by the title, gets any baker excited about being in the kitchen!

"Clean out the Fridge" Panzanella

After making my first panzanella with the Barefoot Bloggers I found myself craving those crusty cubes of toasted bread soaking in oil and vinegar and dancing with fresh veggies. I had a bunch of odds and ends in the vegetable drawer in the fridge and instead of my usual "clean out the fridge stir fry" I decided to put those veggies to use in a panzanella modeled after Ina's that I had made a few weeks ago.

Luck would also have it that at the same time my veggie drawer was getting jam packed I had just made two loaves of Honey French Bread, luck or maybe not, maybe I just made the bread because it's the same bread I made last time I made Ina's panzanella and it was just perfect for it. Shhhh don't tell my husband the real reason I made the Honey French Bread he adores was not for him but really so I could make panzanella again. And he won't even touch panzanella, WAY too many veggies for that man. Oh-well.

For the veggies I used cucumbers, peppers, and tomatoes, which were all in Ina's recipe. I forgot to add the tomatoes last time, so really wanted to add them this time around. I also added some mushrooms that were at that sad point where they beg to be used, knowing that if they aren't used right then, the next time you take a peek at them hanging out in the fridge they will need to be surely tossed. First I sauteed them with some seasoned salt in olive oil, then let them cool a little bit, but when I tossed them into the panzanella they were still slightly warm, which was a wonderful contrast to the cool raw veggies.

Also in my fridge I had half a container of goat cheese, left over from another one of Ina's amazing recipes from grilled pizzas -- the goat cheese was a suggested topping which I'm so glad I was reminded of, I love goat cheese on pizzas out at a restaurant but for some reason never thought to buy it for pizza night at home until I saw it in Ina's ingredient list.

For my dressing I used Ina's panzanella vinagrette as a base. I really only used the champagne vinegar and olive oil, used a bit of seasoned salt to make up for the lack of minced garlic, and added a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar in place of the dijon mustard in Ina's recipe. I tried it the first time, knowing I'm not a mustard fan, it wasn't too bad then, but I knew I would prefer it sans mustard if I made it again. I just love balsamic vinegar and I could tell it wanted to be used after I reached for the champagne vinegar next to it. :) That special champagne vinegar I special ordered just for Barefoot Bloggers when we made Ina's panzanella, and you know what I just noticed, when you look at the bottle it says "Champagne Wine Vinegar" -- I added the picture again just incase you missed the the first time. I know when I ordered it I was just looking for Champagne vinegar and I totally missed the 'wine' in the title, does it really matter? Is there a difference between champagne vinegar and champagne wine vinegar? I'd really like to know! I really love buying all of these specialty ingredients I'd never try otherwise, makes me feel like my culinary horizons are expanding just a touch with each new spice or vinegar I try.

My second panzanella was amazing! Even better than the first because I could customize it, leave out the mustard, add in the mushrooms and goat cheese and balsamic vinegar, I really enjoyed all of the flavors and textures mingling together. I already am craving it again. And I'm craving Ina's jalapeno cheddar cornbread, another Barefoot Bloggers pick, oh man was that delicious. There must be something really special about Ina's recipes, because they make you want to make them again, they make you crave those flavors. I really love trying new recipes, and I like lots of the recipes I try but there are not that many that leave me wanting to make them over and over again. Thanks, Ina, and Barefoot Bloggers, who are the real reason I've taken the plunge and tried these recipes.

Indonesian Dinner -- My Kitchen My World

A huge thank you to Michelle of My Year to Get Skinny! She picked Indonesia as our country of the week and I had so much fun trying my hand at an Indonesian dinner. As I looked for foods I discovered that Indonesia is the home of satay. Across Indonesia there are many many variations of this dish. I found a recipe for tofu satay on foodnetwork.com and it was amazing!

The marinade:

2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce

2 tablespoons Asian sesame oil

2 tablespoons sherry (I used white wine)

2 pounds extra-firm tofu, sliced 1 inch thick and patted very dry, then cut into 1-inch cubes and patted again (I only had 1 lb tofu but I made the entire portion of marinade and sauce which was a great idea since it was so delicious!)

1 red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch squares (I used a wonderful purple pepper we picked up at a farm stand)

The sauce:

3/4 cup canned coconut milk
1/2 cup natural-style peanut butter, smooth or chunky
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder (I used red curry powder)

1 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon lime juice (I used lemon)

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 1/2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce

Dash cayenne pepper

Combine the marinade ingredients in a large bowl. Add the dry tofu and red pepper and toss gently with a rubber spatula to coat evenly. Let marinate 30 minutes or up to 8 hours. Refrigerate if longer than 1 hour. Prepare the grill or preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

To make the sauce, place all the sauce ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. Pour into a decorative serving bowl.

Remove about 1/3 cup of the sauce and drizzle it over the tofu. Use the rubber spatula to toss the tofu gently with the sauce. If you are grilling the satay, thread the tofu and red peppers on skewers. (Bamboo skewers must be soaked for 30 minutes.) If you are roasting the tofu in the oven, place it in 1 layer in a large, shallow baking dish such as a 9 x 13-inch lasagna pan. Use 2 pans if one pan isn't large enough.

Cook the tofu on the hot grill at least 20 minutes, turning it occasionally, or roast in the oven for 25 minutes. The tofu is done when it is a deep golden brown. Let the tofu cool to room temperature before serving. Serve alongside a bowl of sauce for dipping.

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This was amazing, I had so much fun making these and the results were SO delicious! I think this is one of my new favorite tofu recipes, really!

I had a bunch of peppers and decided to slice them up, salt the lightly with some sea salt from the grinder, and serve them with my extra sauce from the tofu satay recipe (I made double the sauce).

I just had to share this bowl. I love it. It's Sanrio, and I bought it on ebay probably 5 years ago, right after my husband and I got married. When I was little it was on special weekend shopping trips with my mom that I would spend all of my allowance on Sanrio items at the store Middle Earth . I could not wait to go in and go the the left wall where they had all of these neat Sanrio items.

After seeing Natashya at Living in the Kitchen with Puppies do a recipe from Deborah Madison's book, Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone, I thought, hey, I have that book! I've never cooked from it, it mostly just sat on my shelf since I bought it a year or so ago. I was turned off by the lack of pictures that I just pushed it aside. I think I've been missing out! I'm a picture cookbook person. No offense to non picture cookbooks, I have a ton of them, but when I want to cook from a book I tend to grab the ones off of the shelves that I know have gorgeous foodie photos. Anyway, I decided I'd look in the index of this book and check to see if there were any Indonesian recipes for MKMW this week. And there was! I picked Indonesian Fried Rice -- Nasi Goreng to try. I deviated so much from the actual recipe it isn't even funny, but let's just say you start with rice, I used our favorite jasmine variety, make a paste with chiles and an onion, add in some soy sauce, molasses, and ketchup (which I forgot), then some peas and fry it all up in roasted peanut oil, which I didn't have so I used sesame. See, I told you I switched up the recipe way too much. I also about tripled the pea amount, just because I had some peas to use up and I thought, why not? Can extra peas really make a rice dish that bad? Nope! Those little peas did just fine.

Rice just starting to get spiced up...

Overall this was an amazing dinner which I loved and would happily make again! I plan to try the rice recipe as written at some point, but I got the just of it with this recipe and I liked it. I think Indonesia and Jamaica are tied so far as my favorite My Kitchen My World meals, they were both packed with amazing flavors and totally new for me to try. I'd always seen the 'meat' versions at ethnic restaurants and longed to try the exotic flavors, it was great to try my hand at making it vegetarian.

Cornish Pasty -- My Kitchen My World England

I have wanted to make vegetarian pasties for a long time! They sound so delicious and any time I've seen pasties for sale they do not have vegetarian versions available, although I know lots of places do, which is great if you can find them...anyway I decided to tackle making a Cornish Pasty sans meat for My Kitchen My World - England week.

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It is generally accepted that the pasty (as we know it today), originates from Cornwall. Tradition claims that the pasty was originally made as lunch ('croust' or 'crib' in the Cornish language) for Cornish tin miners who were unable to return to the surface to eat. The story goes that, covered in dirt from head to foot (including some arsenic often found with tin), they could hold the pasty by the folded crust and eat the rest without touching it, discarding the dirty pastry. The pastry they threw away was supposed to appease the knockers, capricious spirits in the mines who might otherwise lead miners into danger. A related tradition holds that it is bad luck for fishermen to take pasties to sea. Pasties were also popular with farmers and labourers.

Thanks wikipedia, what interesting information! A fun meal in a pocket with some folklore.

I found a recipe via google on cooks.com for my pasty dough and basic filling, sadly it didn't really turn out that well :( I think it was half operator error and half not so great recipe... The dough which I've always seen as more pie crust-ish ended up being more biscuit-ish. Oh-well.

I still adore the idea of a vegetarian pasty and will try at some point to make them again, and hopefully next time I will have an awesome recipe to share and tell you that you must make your own pasties because they are 'that good.' This week My Kitchen My World is 'visiting' Indonesia and I am really excited about trying tofu satay and some Indonesian rice, posting day for My Kitchen My World is supposed to be on Saturday (sorry, I'm late with England!) -- stay tuned :)

Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters -- Tuesdays with Dorie

Time for Tuesdays with Dorie! This week Stefany of Proceed with Caution chose Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters from Dorie's oh-so-fabulous book, Baking From My Home To Yours. There is not too much to say about this recipe, other than it was great! I followed the recipe pretty closely, instead of two sticks of butter I used one butter and one margarine. Why would I do this? I love butter, but once I was making cookies that used one cup of butter and I only had one stick and one stick of margarine, which was strange because I don't even know why I would have purchased stick margarine since I am a 'friend of butter' but anyway, I loved the end result. Something about the oil or whatever it is in margarine that makes the cookies spread less and puff up more, and stay just a touch softer. I like my cookies soft. But I would never use all margarine, just half and half. If a recipe says "butter, no margarine" I usually follow, but if it just says "butter" I take liberties and do halfsies with Blue Bonnet.

Whew, felt like confession, glad I got that out of the way. Now on to my other teensy weensy change, I had a bag of Nestle Toll House Milk Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirled morsels, just chillin' in my pantry for a while. The bag was 10 ounces. Dorie's recipe called for 9 ounces. A fine trade.

I loved the nutmeg and cinnamon and vanilla, those alone would make almost any cookie delicious, add in some peanut butter, and oatmeal, and chocolate chips, yum!

The bad news is that my husband, the main cookie monster of our house (I would prefer cake or bread to cookies, although I do love cookies), did not like them. At all. And there are no scary ingredients like, gasp, coconut, or, shudder, cashews (just for clarification I love both), or something he can't stand. He liked all of the ingredients, but he said these cookies were too dry and too oatmeal-y. He had one bite. Can you believe he only took one bite of a cookie?!? He did not give these little gems the common courtesey of a second bite, maybe a sip of milk inbetween, no, just put it down with one sad little bite mark. Poor cookie. On the other hand I liked them, and the kids loved them, yay! And I got to use up some oatmeal, score!

My one little problem, or maybe footnote, for these cookies is that they look underdone when they are done. If you read my baby nina loafies post you might remember that I am crazy and love it ooey gooey almost underdone but not, well I was a little afraid I would take these out too early and they would completely fall apart because of the oatmeal -- which I have had happen, so I waited until I was 'sure' they were done. And I really should have taken them out at the earliest time mentioned in the recipe and not second guessed, pulled the sheet out, the popped it back in the 'make sure' they were done. Oh-well.

Daring Bakers Debut -- Chocolate Eclairs

I'm so excited to be posting my first Daring Bakers challenge results! For the month of August, the Daring Bakers tackled Pierre Herme's Chocolate Eclairs chosen by Meeta from What’s For Lunch, Honey? and Tony Tahhan


Where's my chocolate middle? I just went with a plain cream filling...I hope that's okay. Sorry! I have to admit I've been super busy this past month and actually did the Eclairs yesterday morning! Yikes! Talk about waiting until the last minute. Will not be making that mistake next month, if the Daring Bakers will still have me...


It was a fun challenge, I've never made eclairs before, and I think I underbaked my cream puff dough -- it puffed up beautifully and looked done, but after leaving the oven it deflated a bit. I had no trouble making it, it was actually kind of fun and came together really nicely, I love the thick shiny dough before piping, it looked exactly like what I expected it to look like based on Pierre's description in the recipe.

For the chocolate glaze I had to sneak in some Nutella! I love Nutella but hadn't had in a long time, and this was the first time my kids have had Nutella as well, I think they are fans, yay! The kids had fun decorating with the nonpareils as well, of course!

I can't wait to see what challenging treat September with the Daring Bakers will bring :)

A special note to any My Kitchen My World friends viewing my blog, I'm so sorry I did not get my British selection up yesterday, I had trouble getting ingredients, and hopefully I will be able to make my meal soon and post it later this week!

Lemon Rosemary "Butterflied" Tofu -- Barefoot Bloggers

Ha! I knew I should probably just skip this selection since, well, how can you butterfly tofu? I don't know, but lemon and rosemary sounded nice together along with some garlic and sea salt and olive oil, why not try it with tofu?

This didn't really turn out, I pretty much expected it wouldn't so I only used half a block of tofu. Oh-well. I'm glad I tried! I think I should have made some lemon rosemary pasta instead.

Butterflied Chicken was the original recipe chosen by Stefany of Proceed with Caution for Barefoot Bloggers this week, which I'm sure is an amazing choice if you eat chicken. I pretty much took Ina's flavors from the recipe and tried it with broiled tofu. I hope everyone else in our group had a great meal :)