Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies and Strawberry Preserves

Hi all! We are officially on summer break... Well, my husband is! But I said WE because when he is on break, I am on break too... On break from making supper early on Tuesdays [he has marching band rehearsals every Tuesday, so dinner has to be served right before he leaves at 5:30], I am on break from the buzzing of our numerous alarm clocks in the morning and I am on break from hearing the awful stories from work John feels he has to share with me once in a while. Yay!!!

To celebrate, I made the cookies pictured above. Those are not internet photos, I took those myself soon as the first batch of these tasty goodies came out of my oven. They are called Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies. There is a similar type of cookie that I used to love to eat, they are called Chocolate Crinkles. But I believe the ones I made today are waaaaaaaaayyyy better! I found this recipe in Epicurious and found someone make an attempt on it on their blog but the cookies didn't turn out so good... Although they tasted really good, my very first attempt on this recipe didn't turn out great either. The cookies melted into each other. 

And I blame it on two things: 

1. The recipe wasn't written good. I believe recipes like this, need side notes! For example, let the dough/batter sit on your counter or refrigerate for at least 20 minutes to give the dough/batter time to stiffen, making it easy to roll.

2. Temperature accuracy is crucial in the making of these cookies... It follows the same principle as   making molten lava cakes. High temperature bakes your cookies/cake fast and ends up with a fundgey or gooey  interior. So if your oven is not at 400 degress F, your cookies will melt into each other, and that isn't going to be very pretty. So if you don't have an oven thermometer, make sure you preheat your oven for at least 15 minutes... It takes about that long for your oven to reach the desired temperature.

I also made strawberry preserves for John today... He has already made me promise to make him some peach preserves when they come in season. My husband will gobble anything that is sweet. He will definitely do anything for me if I promise to pay him in baked goods or sweets. These preserves I make are easy. I buy the pectin and follow the instructions in the box except that half of the fruit I mash, the other half I put either in the blender or food processor. John likes some fruit chunks in there, but not too much. I don't like preserves much, so one batch [7 cups] lasts him all year. He doesn't like sharing either. lol He hogs pretty much every baked good and every sweet thing that I make unless someone wants to trade goods.

Here's the cookie recipe, you can get the printer-friendly version here.

Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies

Adapted from Epicurious

Nonstick spray

1 ½ cups bittersweet chocolate chips (about 9 oz) divided

3 large eggwhites, room temperature

2 ½ cups powdered sugar, divided

½ cup sweetened cocoa powder

1 Tbsp cornstarch

¼ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray 2 large cookie sheets with nonstick spray. Melt 1 cup chocolate chips in microwave, stirring twice about 2 minutes. [I melted my chocolate in a double boiler]. Cool slightly.

Using an electric mixer, beat eggwhites in large bowl to soft peaks. Gradually beat in 1 cup of the powdered sugar. Continue beating until meringue resembles soft marshmallow creme. Whisk 1 cup sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt in a medium bowl to blend. On low speed, beat dry ingredients into meringue. Stir in lukewarm chocolate and ½ cup chocolate chips (dough will become very stiff). [let dough sit on your counter or fridge for about 20 minutes before rolling, the dough will stick to your hands and fingers if you don’t wait]

Place ½ cup sugar in a bowl. Roll 1 rounded tablespoon of dough into a ball; roll in sugar, coating quickly. Place on prepared sheet 2 inches apart. Bake until puffed and top crack for 8 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes on cookie sheet then transfer onto cooling racks.

Makes about 18 cookies.

Enjoy!

I Rest Assured

Hey friends! I hope everyone is having a good start to your week. I myself am not a big fan of the Mondays but this particular one has been exceptionally great! The fact that I woke up not having to do anything or go somewhere felt wonderful. Other than finding out that my laptop is dead and needs to be plugged into the wall and I can't read my daily devotions before I get out of bed, I am greatly loving it. 

I am writing this post on John's computer, and it feels weird because my fingers are so used to the small space on my macbook, my fingers keep pushing the wrong keys! lol For a long long time, [read: two weeks], I have pretty much left my www life behind and have not been stalking my favorite websites or blogs like I always do. But today, I got a chance, and I found this on pinterest:

pinterest

I thought it is a great reminder. It made me smile and I hope it does you too. If you have been following my blog, a lot has been going on around here... and I believe it is not just us that needed to be reminded of the fact that Someone out there is watching out for us, Someone loves us unconditionally and Someone has arms long enough to reach down and pull us out of the rut we are in when we ask to be taken out of the bad situations or decisions we put ourselves into. 

Have a wonderful week!

Congratulations Class of 2011!

The Husband and I are at our friends' [Quinton's and Sara's] home today to celebrate their oldest son's 8th grade graduation. : ) We have known Sara and Q for about four years I believe but we didn't start hanging out 'til about 3 years ago. In the process, John and I didn't only win friends in S and Q but we also got two very wonderful kid friends that we consider our own niece and nephew, Will and Whitney. Ever since we have known their parents, the kids, too have become a part of our lives. There has never been a birthday that John and I are not present. Long story short, we just got to love these two kids like they were our own. 

So to celebrate Will's 8th grade graduation, I made him this:

And here is our graduate:

And here's Whitney, she is going to be graduating in a couple of years:

So here's my CONGRATULATIONS to all of the graduates this year! Hope all of you got a really great cake to celebrate you, your hard work and your education! : )

Hugs!

C is for Cookie

Hello friends! It is only Tuesday and I already feel like it's Friday. A lot is going around here. The weather is bad, bad, bad; we are still trying to straighten our house out from being moved around so many times in the past week and by we, I mean ME; and this is also the time of the year where I help my Aunt Betty whip her yard back into shape. She is almost 90 and she is living by herself, doesn't want to go to Assisted living apartments just yet so every year for the past five years we would hang out mid-spring and get that beautiful yard of hers manicured and pruned... This is also a rough time for the husband. He is a teacher so work is stressful and everything is organized chaos with awards, graduation, spring productions, and add to that my husband wanting to up the pay scale and taking another job offer. So now, he is juggling doing the things he loves and the stuff he is sick of plus the stuff we are doing to our house. Even though we feel like plucking our eyelids off, I believe we are keeping a good balance between home and work [that's what I tell myself at least! lol]. : )

So yesterday, it was awards day where my Hubby works. To help him out, I wrote all the names in the certificates during the weekend. It was a lot but I knew I didn't miss to write anybody's name. I know those kids' names and I know them personally. I have worked on and off at his school in the past couple of years. It about gave him a heart attack when there were three kids that didn't get called up the stage because there was not a s certificate for them and one of the kids were almost in tears when all of her classmates have been called except for her! So Mr. Randolph had to do some serious damage control and  tell the truth that he actually didn't notice that there were three certificates he didn't grab as he was hurrying to the gym for the awards ceremony. I got a phone call immediately right after from him and I knew he was feeling really bad so I did some damage control myself. I didn't want him to leave them with bad memories, so I made these cupcakes and handmade cards for the three kids:

And here's my QUALITY CONTROL person:

Have a great rest of the week everyone! 

Hugs,

Things Have Just Gotten Even Better

Hey friends! I am still on a home reno coma... and I don't believe I will get out of this state until the new floors are installed in my living room. We are thinking about stepping it up and ripping the carpet out of the dining room too, so we will see. 

This has been such a great week. John has finally gotten out of the rut that he was in career-wise and found a new home for his overflowing energy and passion for music and the arts. The current job just isn't doing it for him anymore, and the fact that a lot of small schools have been going through very rough financial times was a great motivation. He felt like he had to move on and get an even better program... And he did! He got two out of the three places he sent an app to, which makes me ever so proud of him. He had to turn one offer down. This is a good problem to have in times where jobs are becoming so scarce. : ) So I have been having a very excited, hyper hubby all week. He is very very excited. And when he is happy, I am happy. 

I have been endlessly painting all week... and figuring out which of the stuff I want to keep and which ones go. Seems like since we have been doing our updates, the look of each room changes and some of the stuff that used to be there don't work like it used to. As I was realizing this, I was also trying to look for a way to think of ways to make up for the stuff I am possibly going to be eliminating in the room. However, I am loving the minimized look!!! So we may stick with that for a while. 

At around 3 PM today, I decided to take a break after I ran out of paint. Sat and watched TV for a while, and got to work in my craft room. Here are the finished products:

I love tone on tone cards. They are simple but very pleasing to the eyes! And of course I love this green cardstock from Paper Trey Ink. I forget the name of it... But I think this is my favorite among the greens that Paper Trey Ink have. I used a Basic Grey stamp set to stamp the background. I didn't have the matching ink, so I used Versamark Ink.

The patterned paper I used on this card didn't match the kraft cardstock I used [from Paper Trey Ink also]. But there is nothing impossible when you have distress inks on hand! I simply distressed the edges of the patterned paper and the cardstock too, and voila! They match! :)

Everyone have a wonderful rest of the week!!!