Mint Condition Cookies

It was my dear friend Sara's birthday on Tuesday.  Sara lives all the way out in Washington state.  :(  One of Sara's favorite things in the world is a Mint Condition from Caribou.  Mint + chocolate + coffee = happy Sara.  One of the bummers about living in Washington (aside from being far away from friends and family) is that there are no Caribous.  Poor Sara.  So for her birthday I wanted to send her something to remind her of home - aka a Mint Condition.  I figured the good ol' USPS probably would not approve of me sending a cup of coffee through the mail, so I decided the next best thing was to make a mint condition in cookie form. 

Sidenote:  Why do people always take pictures of their baked goods in mugs?  When's the last time you ever used a mug to serve cookies?  But, I'm nothing if not a band-wagon joiner, so enjoy the cookies-in-a-mug picture.

I combined a bunch of different recipes and here's what I ended up with:

Mint Condition Cookies:

• 2 teaspoons instant coffee granules
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted
• 2 eggs
• 2 2/3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• dash of salt
• 1 cup Andes Mints baking pieces (or other mint chips)
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375.
2. Dissolve the coffee granules in the milk.  Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars.
4. Add the coffee mixture, melted chocolate and eggs.
5. Add the flour, baking soda and salt.
6. Stir in the mint and chocolate chips.
7. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes.  Allow to cool slightly, then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

They were pretty darn good!  You could also drizzle a little chocolate over the cookies when they're cool....mmmmm.  Enjoy!

Extra Milk?

I had a gallon of milk that was getting near the expiration date and was still 2/3 full.  There was no way I could use that much milk in 2 days, but I didn't want to throw it out.  What's a girl to do?  I poured the milk into ice cube trays and froze it.  (I figured I can freeze breastmilk, why not try it with cow's milk?  TMI?)  It worked!  Now I use those cubes for milk shakes or smoothies (this one was milk cubes, a banana and some pineapple juice).

Baby Food Co-op

Drew started eating baby food about a month and a half ago and I decided that we were going to homemade baby food.  I wish I could say that I made that decision because I want only the best, organic, no-weird-stuff-added food going into my baby's belly.  I mean, I guess all that's true, but the real reason I decided to go the homemade route is because I'm cheap,  I can get one jar of baby food for a buck, or a pound of sweet potatoes which makes the equivalent of about 4 jars of baby food.  Sold. 

After making sweet potatoes and then carrots for Drew, I realized making baby food is kind of time consuming.  And if I wanted my child to have some variety in his diet, I needed a new plan.  And so the Baby Food Co-op was born.  It's basically the same as the cookie exchanges you do around Christmas, but with homemade baby food.  Five other moms and I each made a ton of one type of baby food, froze it ice cube trays, and then had a little party where we swapped.  Okay, we did more than swap at the party.  We drank some wine, had some yummy appetizers and desserts and chatted.  Without kids.  It was glorious.

Confession:  I was all about having this be a "moms only" night and thought I had made plans for my mom to watch Drew.  Come to find out, what she thought the plans were and what I thought the plans were didn't quite match up.  :)  And Drew was only awake for about 15 minutes of the party.  Hooray for early bedtimes!

My contribution to the baby food extravaganza?  Peas and parsnips.  I know, I made two things.  I'm kind of an over-achiever.  Not.  (Who says "not" anymore?)  Apparently parsnips are not the most popular vegetable and I cleaned out our local grocery store and didn't have enough.  (We were supposed to make enough for each person to go home with the equivalent of one ice cube tray of each food.)  So I made peas as well.

My peas and parsnips in all of their baby food glory.

The lovely ladies at the party

(Sarah, Samarah, Erin, me and Laurali.  Emily is taking the pic.)

We each ended up going home with peas, parsnips, applesauce, carrots, plums, peaches and pears!

And here's the babe enjoying some of his tasty food.

Homemade Granola Bars

I love granola bars. They are such a handy snack! What I don't love about granola bars is the price. They can get spendy! And I'm sure the commercially made ones are chock full of not-so-great stuff.

Enter the homemade granola bar.

I did some google-ing and found this recipe.

I gathered my supplies, made a few tweaks, and had homemade granola bars! I made mine with peanuts, dried cranberries and flax seeds. Delish! (The husband says they're a little on the sweet side, so I think I'll cut down on the brown sugar next time...) I'm excited to try other varieties - coconut, chocolate and dried pineapple; almond and dark chocolate; maybe I'll even try adding some peanut butter and pretzel pieces to a batch if I get real crazy. :) Yum!

Popularity Cookies

I made Popularity Cookies the other day and thought I'd share the recipe. They are easy and sooooo good! You only need 4 (maybe 5) indredients!
Ingredients:
- Saltine crackers (or club crackers)
- 1 C butter
- 1 C brown sugar
- 1 bag chocolate chips
- Chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:
Heat oven to 400. Cover a jelly roll pan with foil and arrange saltines on it. Break some in half to fill in empty spots if you need to.

Combine the butter and brown sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Boil for 3 minutes. (Nothing smells better than melted butter and brown sugar. It took some serious self-control to not eat spoonfuls out of the pan.)

Then pour the butter and sugar mixture over the saltines and bake for 5-6 minutes, watching closely.

Put the pan on the open oven door or pull the rack out. Sprinkle the chocolate chips on and let melt.

When they are melted, use the back of a spoon to spread them over the crackers. Sprinkle chopped nuts on top if you so desire.

Put the pan in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours. Then peel the cookies off the foil and break into cookie-size pieces. Supposedly this recipe freezes well, but they've never lasted that long in our house. :)

I was so excited to eat the cookies that I forgot to take a picture of the finished product!

Coconut Milk

I bought a can of coconut milk last summer with the intentions of making some delicious-sounding Thai dish. Never happened. Now every time I open the pantry, I see this can of coconut milk staring at me. Daring me to use it. Today I decided to not let a fear of unusual ingredients rule my life. (Ok, so that's a little dramatic....). So I checked the expiration date (June 30, 2011) and allrecipes.com and was on my way.

On allrecipes.com I found a recipe for Pineapple Scones that uses coconut milk. Go here http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pineapple-Scones/Detail.aspx for the recipe. I tweaked it a little bit for what I had on hand. My recipe is below.

ingredients all ready to go

cutting in the butter

into the oven they go

Finished product!

Ingredients:

- 2 C flour

- 1 T baking powder

- 1/4 t salt

- 1/4 C butter, chilled

- 3/4 C coconut milk

- 1/4 C honey

- 1 egg, beaten

- 8 oz. crushed pineapple
I didn't have crushed pineapple, so I cut up pineapple tidbits. Next time I think I'll add flaked coconut to amp up the coconut flavor....

1. Heat oven to 375

2. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Cut in butter until it resembles course crumbs.

3. In a small bowl, mix the coconut milk, honey and egg. Stir into the flour mixture. Fold in pineapple. Batter will be pretty goopy - not your normal scone batter.

4. Divide batter into 12 and drop onto ungreased cookie sheet.

5. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until golden brown.

I made a glaze out of powdered sugar and some of the leftover coconut milk and put it on the scones when they were cool.

The flavors aren't super vivid, but they're still yummy! And I learned that I like coconut milk. I mean, I REALLY like coconut milk. Be watching for more coconut milk experimentation in the future....