Chocolate Chip Cookies Just the Way I Like Them

For the longest time, my chocolate chip cookies would flatten out and be too crunchy. I have always liked those soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies that you can buy at some places, but I don't like some of the ingredients they use. I decided that I needed to embark on a quest for a chocolate chip cookie recipe that produced the results that I like best. I experimented for a while with different little changes to see what I could come up with. This recipe is the closest thing I have to 'my own recipe', and I'm a little proud of it. The cookies turn out pretty, they have a slightly crunchy crust, and they are soft and chewy on the inside. I know that everyone has a different idea of a perfect chocolate chip cookie, but I have finally found mine!

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter (at room temperature)
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2-1/2 cups flour
• 12 oz semisweet chocolate chips

Beat butter and coconut oil on high speed until blended (about 30 seconds). Add the next four dry ingredients and beat until well-blended. You can substitute a gluten-free flour here if you want. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until everything is well-combined. Mix in flour. Mix in chocolate chips. Refrigerate dough for at least an hour (I think this is a real key).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Put rounded, large walnut-sized, drops of dough on ungreased insulated cookie sheet. Bake cookies for 9 minutes, until they are brownish on the outside. Let the cookies sit on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes outside the oven before transferring them to a cooling rack. This recipe should make around 44 cookies.

Delicious Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Ganache (with Gluten-Free Alternative)

These cupcakes are REALLY GOOD! And I'm pretty picky about chocolate cake. I love the ganache on top, and I could (and have) just eat it by the spoonful. This recipe is adapted from a Julia Child cookbook, but she uses espresso in the cake. To make a gluten-free flour alternative, mix 1 part tapioca flour, 2 parts potato flour, and 6 parts rice flour (by weight). You can then just substitute it straight for the bread flour.

Cupcakes:

• 7 oz. dark chocolate
• 3 oz. butter
• 3/4 cup bread flour
• 3/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 5 eggs
• 1 cup sugar

Preheat the oven to 350°. Melt the dark chocolate with the butter in a double boiler. In a bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt. With a mixer in another bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar for about two minutes, until the mixture has tripled in volume. Slowly drizzle the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture, whisking it while drizzling until they are mostly combined. Fold in the flour mixture with a rubber spatula. (I still haven't really gotten the art of folding down yet.) Pour the batter into about 18 cupcake liners and bake for about 17 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Ganache:

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1-1/2 Tbsp. butter
• 1-1/2 Tbsp. sugar
• 6 oz. dark chocolate

Melt melt chocolate with other ingredients in a double boiler. Cool at room temperature for an hour or two. Just kidding, who has the patience for this?? You can put the pot from the double boiler in a bowl of ice water to cool it off way faster. Stir it while it's cooling. Once the cupcakes have cooled, spread the ganache on, and try not to eat them all in one night!

Butternut Squash Soup

This recipe comes straight from Emeril on the Food Network website. I pretty much stick to the original recipe on this one. I start craving this soup once fall arrives, and it never fails me. I made it a month or so ago, but it's taken me while to get around to posting.

Ingredients:

• 1 butternut squash, about 2 lbs.
• 2 Tbsp peanut oil
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1-1/2 tsp chopped garlic
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced carrot
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1 Tbsp finely minced jalapeno pepper
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup heavy cream

Cut the squash in half, lengthwise, and scoop out the seeds. Peel the squash, and cut it into 1-inch pieces. In a large pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook, stirring often, until they begin to brown, about 5 minutes. Add the carrot, cumin, salt, and pepper. Cook for 1 minute and then add squash, jalapeno pepper, and veggie stock (okay, Emeril calls for chicken stock). Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender. Remove from the heat and puree the soup using an immersion blender (I LOVE my immersion blender) or transfer to a blender or food processor. Puree until smooth. Return to the heat; add the cream and adjust the seasonings. He calls for topping it off with a shrimp salsa here, but I skip that. Yum!

Easy Orange Cranberries

I love cranberry sauce at holiday meals. Not the can-shaped cranberry sauce, but the sauce with the little cranberries poking out. I think it goes wonderfully with turkey, or stuffing, or potatoes, or rolls, or whatever you eat. I adapted this recipe slightly from the back of the bag of cranberries that you can buy in the produce department of the grocery store. I made it for Thanksgiving dinner, and it was fun and orangey!

You will need:

• a bag of cranberries
• 1 orange
• 1 cup sugar
• water

Juice and zest your orange. Add enough water to the orange juice to make 1 cup of orange juice/water. Bring the orange juice/water to a boil. Add the cranberries and turn the heat down, letting them simmer for about 20 minutes, until most of the cranberries have popped. Stir in the sugar and the orange zest. Chill the cranberries in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving.

Red Mole with Cheese Enchiladas

No, not 'Cheese Enchiladas with Red Mole,' definitely 'Red Mole with Cheese Enchiladas'. A recipe worthy of being the first in this blog. This recipe is adapted from the book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman. The book is an amazing comprehensive compilation of vegetarian cuisine, and it has rarely let me down. I want to try everything in this book. I made these with some friends the other night, for the second time. I'm not going to lie, it takes a long time to cook, but it's well worth it, and I'm working on trying to figure out some shortcuts that I will share if I do. But for some things there are no shortcuts.

• 12 to 15 medium dried guajillo chiles
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup tahini
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 head garlic, peeled
• 4 roma tomatoes
• 2 thick slices white bread
• 1 quart vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup peanut oil
• 4 bay leaves
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 2 Tbsp. ground cumin
• 1 Tbsp. ground allspice
• 2 tsp. anise seeds
• salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 6 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 24 small corn tortillas
• 3 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
• lime wedges

1. The original recipe says you can use any type of dried chiles: New Mexico, mulatto, pasilla, guajillo, ancho, etc., but I have used guajillo both times I made it and LOVED it. Also, when I went to buy the chiles at the local Mexican market this last time, the owner told me that mole is traditionally made with seven different kinds of chiles, so mix and match, if you're feeling adventurous. So first, toast, clean, and soak the chiles. I put the chiles on a plate in the toaster oven this time for a couple of minutes, and they puffed up when they toasted. This made it easy to cut the ends off and pour the seeds out of them when cleaning them. Then I put them in a bowl and poured boiling water over them and let them soak for half an hour.
2. Next, put the chiles, peanut butter (the original recipe called for 2 cups of nuts, which I used last time, but peanut butter was a great shortcut this time), tahini (or sesame seeds), cocoa, onion, garlic, tomatoes, and bread (use corn tortillas for a gluten-free alternative) in a blender with enough stock to get the blender going. We had to do this in two batches, and it's pretty tough work for a blender, even an old-fashioned Osterizer. I might try using an immersion blender next time. Blend these together, getting the mixture as smooth as possible.
3. Put 1/4 cup of the oil (the recipe calls for a neutral oil, like grapeseed or corn oil, but I used peanut) in a large pot over medium heat. Add the blended mixture and all of the spices. Sprinkle with the salt and pepper. It really didn't take much salt and pepper, and you can taste as you go and add those later, too. Cook the mixture, stirring frequently and scraping the bottom of the pan, until it begins to color and become fragrant, about 3 to 5 minutes. Turn the heat to low and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is deeply colored and nearly dry, another 15 to 20 minutes.
4. Turn the heat back up to medium-high and slowly stir in the remaining stock. Bring the pot to a boil, then lower the heat so the sauce barely bubbles. Cook, stirring occasionally and adding more liquid as needed, for an hour or so, until the sauce is thick and smooth. Unfortunately, I don't think you can really shortcut this. I think the sauce needs all this time to get all infused with all of that spicy goodness. Taste and adjust the seasoning and add some brown sugar. The original recipe calls for adding 1 or 2 Tbsp. of brown sugar, but I like this mole sweet, so I used 6 Tbsp. Remove the cinnamon stick and bay leaves and keep the sauce warm. You can make the mole ahead of time and refrigerate it for up to 3 days if you need to.
5. Preheat the oven to 350° F. Spoon a thin layer of the mole into the bottom of a 9 x 12-inch baking dish, or as many baking dishes as you will need for your enchiladas. The recipe calls for using 24 tortillas, but we just used all of the tortillas in the package from the market. I think it was about 30. Put some of the peanut oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and cook the tortillas, one at a time, until softened and pliable, about 10 seconds each. Drain the tortillas on paper towels.
6. Sprinkle about 2 Tbsp of the Monterey Jack cheese in the center of each tortilla, roll tightly, and put them in the baking dish, seam side down. Pack the rolls in tightly with each other. Cover the top with some more mole (but be sure to save some for topping later) and bake for 25 minutes.
7. Garnish the enchiladas with more mole, queso fresco, cilantro, and lime juice. Another thing the recipe suggests topping the enchiladas with is chopped hard-boiled eggs. I think I'll try that sometime.
8. Enjoy! Yum!