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life in the basement has come and gone. we loved living underground, but are excited to practice maintaining a home. join me as i journal chapter two of our life, as we save up, look forward, and plan for a home in the city. as we seek after our great God to glorify Him daily, join in as we figure out what it means to radically pursue Him in "everyday life"

31 May 2011

Baking night!

So last night, I got in the baking mood and for once had everything I needed to bake a few things. We have a surplus of eggs right now, so I had already planned on making breakfast for dinner. To go with, I had been wanting to try a recipe for white chocolate chip raspberry muffins. Additionally, we are hanging out with some friends tomorrow so I wanted to make some chocolate chips cookies.

So we will start with the muffins. The recipe can be found here http://gimmesomeoven.com/raspberry-and-white-chocolate-muffins/

So I followed the recipe, using a mix of fresh and frozen berries. I think I would just use frozen berries, as the fresh ones quickly broke up while I was stirring. I used a mix of white and whole wheat flour but I don't think that is what led to my disappointment. Honestly, they just were not worth the effort. The taste was off and they werent pretty. We ate them anyways, but not a keeper.

Following that, I made some of our favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies, following a recipe my dear friend Ash gave me. These are always a hit and always turn out perfect! I have tweaked her recipe a bit, using half whole wheat flour and half normal flour, so they are the perfect brown color, plus have some healthy whole wheat in them!

Recipe:
2 sticks softened butter (I always bake with unsalted butter)
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour (I do 1 1/4 whole wheat, 1 1/4 white flour)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 12oz. bags of semisweet chocolate chips (Ash uses milk chocolate, but I like the semi-sweet better)

Preheat oven to 350.
In mixing bowl, cream together butter, sugars, eggs, vanilla, and salt.
In another bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients except for the chips.
Combine the dry ingredients into the wet mix, and stir in chips.
Using a cookie scoop, scoop out your cookies onto a greased pan or a pan with parchment paper (my new fav). I only bake 9 at a time, regardless of pan size.
Bake for 9-10 mins (in my oven, more like 8) until edges are just turning light brown. They will look not finished when you pull them out. Let them rest on the pan for a few minutes, then move them to a cooling rack.
These are the yummiest things ever!! I threw in some Reese's peanut butter chips in a few which was a fun mix it up thing.
To store, keep in an airtight container with 1-2 pieces of bread. Change bread daily to keep cookies soft and chewy.

Yum! Ready for another baking night real soon!!

27 May 2011

pinterest

have you heard about pinterest? it might just be my favorite site right now! its like a virtual pinboard- you collect pictures of anything (food, decor, etc) and "pin" it to your board- the site saves the website that it came from, and you can collect your bins on different boards to keep them organized. so much better than a bookmark folder full of websites that you can't quite remember what they were for- this is a great way to save images!! check it out! and take a look at some of my pinboards. they are full of things that look like me! http://re.pn/b/04k9

a new blog

so i've wanted to blog for a long time now. i've started like 5 blogs and never written in them...deleted them because i realized the idea was stupid or i just really didn't have more than one blog to post. i love to read other blogs, although i really don't regularly follow any (except southernsavers, which yeah, i guess that counts). sometimes, i feel like blogs are extremely self-centered- like, look at me and how great my life is. that's not what i want this to be. i'll admit, i do skim through former friends from school and such's blogs to see whats going on, pictures, etc. and recently, i have gotten into viewing random blogs for inspiration- from food, to cupcake decorating, to pictures of things i like to pin on my pinterest wall. so hopefully, maybe, someone will stumble across this and find the perfect tip to get their pumpkin bread to turn out great. maybe someone can offer me advice as to what to do with our closet office. or maybe, just maybe, someone can relate and learn something from one of my experiences. who knows. here's to trying though...if nothing else, i will have a virtual journal/scrapbook/story of the next little while!