Triple Chocolate Coffee Bean Cookies

We finally made this recipe. Yes, I changed the name, but that's because we used coffee beans, not espresso beans. I'm too cheap to buy chocolate-covered espresso beans, so I decided we could make our own, and certain places online said that one can use any dark roast to do so. Hence, we bought the darkest roast we could that was on sale at Albertsons and was free trade (conveniently, it was also organic and the same price as regular coffee--which we discovered it always is, even when they aren't all on sale--I've never actually looked at the coffee there before). Then, yesterday morning, instead of cleaning the house, I melted chocolate chips (Ghirardelli 60% cocoa, of course) in our Little Dipper (it was free with our big crock pot) and made chocolate-covered coffee beans...for the next hour. I am no longer too cheap to buy chocolate-covered espresso beans unless we're going to have a chocolate-covering party. I also made chocolate-covered almonds, a chocolate-covered oatmeal peanut butter cookie, and a big mass of chocolate and coffee beans when I was really sick of it at the end. I would like to say, however, that melting chocolate in the Little Dipper is the way to go. It took about 15-20 minutes to melt, but it didn't get very hot at all, and it stayed consistently melted (the Little Dipper stayed plugged in) for the entire time. I was pleased (the idea of melting chocolate in a crock pot came from here).

Our friends Clara and Cindy came over for dinner and cookie making last night. We had Taco Soup, salad, and chips with cheesy salsa, and then we got down to the real reason anyone was there: making these cookies. We basically followed the recipe (except for all the caveats like "aluminum-free"--well, we may have followed those, but I don't actually know--I've never checked. I'm pretty sure our Costco eggs are not organic and I know our Albertsons imitation vanilla extract would not be considered "high quality") except that we used only 1 cup of (local) whole-wheat flour (not pastry flour) and 1.5 cups of (unbleached) white all-purpose flour and we used 1 cup white and 1 cup brown sugar. I thought the recipe was a bit too high maintenance--beat the butter until fluffy all by itself first? Really? But I actually followed the given directions. I don't think it made a bit of difference. The cookies are good, but Ryan is not a fan of the chocolate-covered coffee beans in them (he's not a fan of chocolate-covered espresso beans in general), and I think they'd be better without those as well; next time we'll add more chocolate chips or some peanut butter chips.

Speaking of peanut butter, Clara and I decided that we could add peanut butter to the cookies as well next time (I usually make cookie recipes with 3/4 of the butter that they call for; we didn't this time, but I think it would have been fine--dare I say better?--if we had. So next time, we may use 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup peanut butter--if we're feeling adventuresome. Otherwise, we'll use 3/4 cup butter and 1/4 cup peanut butter. I say these things like we're actually going to carefully measure...you all know that's not true!). Clara and I also declared the dough to be (as usual) significantly better than the cookies, Ryan didn't comment, and Cindy is a rational, self-controlled person who is able to overcome her desire to eat cookie dough with raw eggs and did not partake of the dough.

Soda Bread

We made this recipe last night to go with our Italian Chili (which had no zucchini, but did have some sun dried tomatoes and spinach). We used bread flour instead of all-purpose flour (it's bread--shouldn't it have bread flour in it?) and I was lazy and kneaded it in the bowl instead of on a floured surface. Well, I attempted to knead it in the bowl. The line in the recipe that says the dough will be sticky--well, that's a bit of an understatement.

I'm not incredibly impressed with this bread. Ryan's assessment is that it's like cornbread, except with wheat. It definitely did not go with the Italian chili, but I really wanted bread. It was fast, which is a definite advantage some days. It's pretty good with honey or cinnamon sugar, but it will not make it onto the list of things I crave.

Sun Dried Goodness

Ryan picked the title, but I agree. We bought a bag of sundried tomatoes at Costco today, so we had to do something with them for dinner. This is the result. We put the pasta on, sauted the chicken with onions, garlic, sundried tomatoes, sundried tomato vinagrette, Italian seasoning, and oregano. When things were looking close to done, we added a bit of white wine for more flavor (I couldn't taste the wine, which is always the goal). About a minute before the pasta was done, we threw some spinach in with the chicken mixture. Then we put the finished pasta in the fancy bowls and topped it with the chicken mixture and feta. It was excellent. Next time (yes, there will be a next time), we'll use more spinach and less pasta.


Update: The picture didn't work the first time. And we forgot to mention that this was really easy. And fast.

Vegetarian Curry

I made vegetarian curry in the crockpot Thursday morning, so we ate it Thursday night. We didn't have celery (we never have celery--I strongly dislike celery), vegetable broth, or plain yogurt, so I put onions in it instead (onions belong in almost everything) and substituted beef broth and sour cream. I also added some green peppers (they, too, go in most anything) and skipped the peas (Ryan didn't seem to excited about them). We didn't get home until 8ish, so we didn't bother with rice or naan, but we did have bread that I'd made earlier in the day. So, no, I didn't exactly follow the recipe (surprise!), but I would like to note that this recipe basically says it doesn't need to be followed (at least the vegetable list). It was good, but not amazing. It has gotten better with age, however. And rice. Rice makes it better.

Lemon-Lime Cheesecake Bars

I don't really like the first Sunday of the month because we have to make food for potluck and for our small group meeting Sunday evening. It just seems a bit excessive most of the time--our church definitely fits the stereotype of liking to eat--we were once reading Richard Foster's Celebration of Discipline in our small group and we still had food for the meeting in which we talked about fasting--gobs of food! Anyway, this Sunday we were assigned to bring dessert to our small group meeting, which was going to involve a barbecue. Clearly, we needed something springy. As in, appropriate for Spring, not bouncy. We had some cream cheese in the refrigerator that I'd been wanted to use up (Western Family 1/3 less fat cream cheese is not a good substitute for other brands of such cream cheese--it has a teeny bit of the fat free cream cheese taste. However, it's fine for baking or cooking), so we decided that I would make this recipe (doubled since our "small" group sometimes has 17 people there), except we called them lemon-lime cheesecake bars since we didn't have enough lemons to get 1/2 cup of lemon juice (okay, so we had part of one lemon), but we do have frozen lime juice. Hence, I used the lime juice and lemon peel. Also, I wanted a graham cracker crust instead of a Nilla wafer crust (I've never been a fan of Nilla wafers). The graham cracker crust required melted butter, so in what I consider my most recent moment of brilliance in the kitchen, I put the butter in the glass mixing bowl in the oven as it preheated. Hence, the butter quietly melted away while I crushed the graham crackers. Yes, the bowl got hot, too, but since I barely had to touch it in order to mix the sugar, graham cracker crumbs, and melted butter, my sleeves sufficed for hand protection, and it was cool enough by the time I had to dump the crust into the baking pan that I could touch it directly. There were no butter splatters on the microwave ceiling and no extra pan to clean. It was marvelous. So were the cheesecake bars with defrosted three berry mix (from Costco) on top. There were only 12 people at small group, so we have at least 1/3 of the pan left...come visit us and help us finish it! Oh, and we're discussing The Dangerous Act of Worship in our small group, which is an excellent book if we do say so ourselves (we actually had one of our suggestions for a book accepted!).

Potluck

Potluck Sunday at our church is always a bit difficult for us--we don't want to take anything that needs to be baked because the ovens are always crowded and the potluck oven-use etiquette is entirely unclear, so we usually end up taking brownies or something in the crockpot. Yesterday (we have Potluck Sunday the first Sunday of every month, so this is a frequent issue) we had decided to ride our bikes to church, so the crockpot was clearly not a viable solution. I'm a fan of leaving the brownies in the pan in which they are baked, so they didn't seem to be the greatest solution either. Instead, we made a bean salad because we had all those ingredients and I was sick of having the green beans in our freezer. Ryan liked it, and one of our friends asked for the recipe, but I was not impressed (of course, Ryan picked the recipe with the warning that I would not like it--which I was pretty clear on myself). It was okay, it transported well, it was very easy to make, and it looked pretty (we used black beans instead of garbanzo beans because I used all the garbanzo beans in curry earlier in the week--but that's another post), so I wasn't too disappointed that I had no desire to eat it.