Thursday, October 29, 2009

Measuring Flour



I noticed something while leafing through my Betty Crocker cookbook that I received when Mike and I were married. Apparently, you're supposed to scoop flour out with a spoon and put it in your measuring cup that way. After its overflowing you then level it off with a knife.

I googled "measuring flour" and came upon a website that gave the correct weight for one cup
  • One cup of white flour weighs 120 grams.
  • One cup of whole wheat flour weighs 140 grams.
  • One cup of bread flour weighs 130 grams.
  • One cup of cake flour weighs 114 grams.
So, if you have a scale you can do it that way! Correct flour measuring is very important. Too much flour and your end product will be tough and dry. Too little and it will just fall apart!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Dark Chocolate Toffee Cookies!

Its been a bit of time huh? Sorry, life has been a bit busy and I've had no time to try to bake.

The other day I grabbed some Hersheys Special Dark chocolate chips while shopping at Wal-mart. Dark chocolate is by far my favorite type of chocolate.

Sooo, here we go!



Set your oven to 375



Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup(2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 cups(1 12oz pkg) HERSHEYS SPECIAL DARK CHIPS
1 cup chopped nuts(I used toffee instead)




Stir together flour, baking soda, and salt. (I xferred it to another bowl after I realized that I needed 2 bowls)






Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl with mixer until creamy




Add eggs and beat well






Gradually add flour mixture, beating well






Stir in chocolate chips and nuts(toffee)




Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet.




bake 8 -10 minutes or until lightly browned.




let cool and then move to wire rack...I dont have one so I just put them on parchment paper



Ivie approved AGAIN!! yay


and one last image:


I made a giant one for Mike with the last of the dough.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Butter Pecan cookies

Rhonda and I went to Sams the other day and I found this book:



I had to pick it up! While leafing through the book I found a four ingredient cookie recipe for butter pecans and decided to try them out!


3/4 cup softened butter
1 pkg of 3.4oz Butterscotch pudding
1 1/4 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 cup of chopped pecans



Set oven at 375



In small bowl beat butter and pudding mix until smooth



Gradually beat in flour



Fold in pecans



roll into 1 1/2 in balls and place on pan 2 inches apart (apparently I was supposed to flatten them..but I didnt. Whoops!)



Bake 10-13 minutes or until light golden brown.



Ivie approves!

They turned out okay. I wasn't amazingly impressed, but they weren't hard to make. It said it yields about 2 dozen. I ended up with 20.

Thursday, October 1, 2009

Sugar Cookies

Last Christmas I was shopping at Sams with Rhonda when I found a giant box of sugar cookie mix. I was struck with the idea that, since I was pretty low on money to get my family gifts, I would give them cookies! At that point, I had never baked cookies by myself. It was a bit scary, but I was going to do it! My first batch I tried to do cut out cookies.



I wasn't so impressed with them. So, I decided to do drop cookies with my second batch. I tried putting the sprinkles in mix. This caused the cookies to change colors. I put the red sprinkles on top of the green cookies and green sprinkles on the "pink" cookies. This wasn't really what I wanted. I had wanted. I really had wanted regular cookies with the sprinkles mixed in. I did achieve this with my third batch! What I did was that I rolled my scooped out dough into the sprinkles!

This is how they looked!!



I pulled them out while the tops were looking a little undone. I wasn't really for sure if I was supposed to do that(you are if you want your cookies chewy). After I was done I separated all the cookies in little ziplock bags. Then I took these stick on Christmas-y fun foam letters and spelled everyone's names on the bags. Everyone really liked my cookies. The other day my best friend Sharleen asked me to bake them again! I am planning on baking them again, just from scratch.