Did I mention that this is an awesome recipe?

Okay, just look at that. Look at how yummy that cookie is.

I made another batch of the chocolate chip cookies from an earlier post . I devoured about 5 of them and then quickly stashed them in the freezer, so that I could take them along on my beach vacation this week. Homemade cookies will be so much better than chewy chips ahoy, no?

This time, I split the batch in two. One batch had your basic milk chocolate chips and semi-sweet chocolate chips (as a side note, I used hershey brand semi-sweet chips and they are awesome! they melted completely in the cookies. I used ghiradelli milk chocolate chips). Then in the other batch, I used up some remaining peanut butter chips and butterscotch chips and threw in some semi-sweet and milk chocolate for some chocolate-y taste, too. And they both turned out delicious!

On saturday, I had a Christie cookie... a chocolate chip one, and I noticed that the chocolate in it sucked, but that the cookie had an awesome buttery, soft texture (I had forgotten how great their texture was). So, while this cookie recipe is the best I've found... it does get a little crunchier on the top than I'd like sometimes... so, I think I'll try some more recipes soon just to see if I can find a softer, chewier one.

These are still awesome though. Mmmm... I wish I had one right now.

Pancakes

So, yeah, pancakes aren't technically baking. But I needed a break from biscuits for a week. And I decided to make homemade pancakes for the first time!

I found a recipe on recipezaar and they turned out great! I added more milk than the recipe called for so that I could pour them. The recipe reflects the extra milk.

Pancakes
(makes about 10 small pancakes)

1 egg
1 cup milk
2 tbsps of butter, melted
1 cup flour
1 tbsp sugar
3 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Melt the butter and let come up to room temperature (so you won't scramble the eggs when you add it).

Beat the egg until bubbly and frothy. Add milk and melted butter. Add dry ingredients and mix well.

They turn out fluffy and cook up quick. Yum.

Mmmm.. buttery.... Yum!

Blueberry Muffins - Healthy ones.

So, I’d love to be able to say that I can make cookies everyday and eat them everyday and that I’m healthy as a horse (are horses even really that healthy? where did that phrase come from?). But, the truth is… May, June, and July are my gluttonous months. These are the three months that I give into my sugar cravings and my fatty carb cravings whenever I they strike. These are the three non-marathon training months.

Starting at the end of this month… the blog will be filled with healthy, whole grain, flax-seed filled, antioxidant rich, protein packed recipes… there will still probably be plenty of sweet recipes, too… but, hopefully there will be lots of healthy ones mixed in.

Back to the post at hand… last night, I noticed some blueberries that were fastly approaching toss-out condition. And I remembered a recipe that I printed from recipezaar awhile back for supposedly excellent low-fat blueberry muffins.

I pulled the recipe out, realized I had all the ingredients and whipped these up from start to done in about 35 minutes.

I tweaked the recipe, so I’ll post the recipe I made and you can find the original recipe here.

Next time, I will add more sugar (or something to sweeten it more) and maybe some nuts. They come out very mild in flavor, but have a great, muffin texture. Also, I think I'll cook mine till the toothpick comes out completely clean. This time it was still a little tacky and I thought it would be fine, but I'd like the texture to be a little drier. Overall... a recipe worth tweaking and trying again.

Whole Wheat Blueberry Muffins

2 cups whole wheat flour (I used king arthurs whole wheat organic)
1 tsp baking soda
1 ¼ cup buttermilk
2 egg whites
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup splenda
½ cup flax seed
1 cup blueberries
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350.

Coat 12 muffin cups with cooking spray.

Sift together flour and baking soda.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg whites, oil, sugar, flax seed, and vanilla until creamy, then stir in the blueberries.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and fold together with a rubber spatula until the batter is moist.

The batter is thick, scoop batter into 12 cups and bake for about 20 minutes, checking with a toothpick till it comes out clean. If you want smooth-topped muffins, be sure to smooth out the tops before you put them in the oven as they don’t spread.

Martha Stewart would call these "rustic."

Cheesecake... my specialty.

My mom has her cornbread, my aunt Evelyn has her broccoli & potato casserole, my aunt Rita had her pecan pie, and I...well, I have cheesecake.

It all started when I was a kid.. when I was around 7 or 8, I remember my mom buying a turtle cheesecake to go with our christmas dinner. It was the first time I had ever had cheesecake that didn't come out of a box and it was marvelous. So, for years we had this cheesecake every christmas. We looked forward to it, almost as much as our presents!

A few years ago, I was watching the food network (as I often do) and caught an episode of Tyler's Ultimate about Cheesecakes. I printed the recipe and made my first cheesecake and it was so easy and it was amazing! I mean, like the perfect cheesecake. Light and moist (I don't like dry cheescakes), creamy and mild. It was a hit and since then, I've made the recipe at least 20 times. It's foolproof. I've overcooked it, I've undercooked it and it still always tastes incredible. My mom has made the recipe and just dumped all the ingredients in at once instead of following the directions and it was still delicious. I've even made a low carb version with a pecan crust and splenda. Delicious. Now, I always make it with splenda instead of sugar. Why add the extra calories when it tastes great without!

So, without further ado... here is the recipe. It's quick, easy, cheap, and fantastic!

Ultimate Cheesecake
Recipe Courtesy of Tyler Florence

Crust:
2 cups finely ground graham crackers
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 stick of unsalted butter, melted

Filling:
1 pound of cream cheese, 2 (8 oz) blocks, softened
3 eggs
1 cup sugar (I use a cup of splenda)
1 pint sour cream
1 lemon, zested
1 dash of vanilla extract (I actually measure 1 tsp)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and put on some water to boil because the cheesecake cooks in a water bath.

For the crust, in a mixnig bowl, combine the ingredients with a fork until evenly moistened. Lightly coat the bottom and sides of an 8-inch springform pan with non-stick cooking spray. Then cover the outside of the pan with lots of layers of foil tightly, to keep the water bath from soaking into the cheesecake.

Pour the crumbs into the pan and, using the bottom of a measuring cup or the smooth bottom of a glass, press the crumbs down into the base and up the sides of the pan to your desired crust thickness. (I usually bring it almost all the way up the sides). Refrigerate for 5 minutes.

For the filling, In the bowl of an electric mixer (I use a food processor), beat the cream cheese on low speed for 1 minute until creamy and free of lumps. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and continue to beat slowly until combined. Gradually add the sugar and beat until creamy, for 1 to 2 minutes.

Add sour cream, lemon zest, and vanilla. Periodically scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters. The batter should be well-mixed but not overbeaten. Pour the filling into the crust-lined pan and smooth the top with a spatula.

Place the cake pan in a large roasting pan. Pour the boiling water into the raosting pan until the water is abuot hafway up the sides of the cheesecake pan. Bake for 45 minutes. The cheesecake should still jiggle (it will firm up after chilling), so be careful not to overcook. Let cook in pan for 30 minutes. Chill in the refrigerator, loosely covered, for at least 4 hours.

We usually serve with a side of strawberries that have been cut and soaked with splenda. The original recipe seen here has an awesome lemon blueberry topping that I serve on the side sometimes, too.

White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut

Generally, I spend about 2 hours of my day at work reading recipes online. It's sad. But, it's fun. I have a thick stack of recipes that I have printed out that I want to try. But, I am most drawn to recipes that have pictures to accompany them, which is why I make so many recipes from my favorite food blogs. So, today is yet another recipe from Cookie Madness.

It is a recipe for a white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookie. And the recipe called for Baileys. Now, everyone who knows me, knows that I love all things irish (obsessively, really), so one would naturally assume that I would have two things in my liquor cabinet... 1. Jameson and 2. Baileys. Well, one out of two isnt bad, right? Next time I'll try to find a recipe for cookies that have Jameson in them.

Here is the recipe. They are called Masterpiece White Chocolate Chip Cookies. And instead of the baileys, I used a caramel liquor. I think they would be much better with the Baileys and I will definitely try them again when I pick up another bottle of Baileys... (note to self: must save some Baileys from irish car bombs and use it for cookies). You can taste the hint of the liquor and the cookies are chewy and firm (just the way I like them) and very tasty. Since I chilled the dough before baking, the cookies came out pretty thick and hearty. I had some white chocolate chips (ghiradelli, in fact) leftover from something else, but I think next time I'll use white chunks instead of chips.

Excellent cookies.

I use a medium size cookie scoop and got an enormous batch of cookies...

Biscuits, Redux.

This is the third time I've tried the biscuits... and the first time remains the best. However, I did prepare these for my parents and brother this weekend and they offered great feedback.

Most importantly, my mom told me that I was rolling them out too thin... and when I placed two biscuits on top of each other, that is about the size that I'd like them to be. It was then I noticed that you're only supposed to get 6-8 from the recipe and this weekend, I got about 14. So, that's obviously a major problem, that also means I've been overcooking them... making them too dry.

I can't wait to try again this weekend!

Double Delicious Bars... or, as I like to call them.. Naked Magic Cookie Bars.

On Monday, I met up with a friend of mine who was driving through Nashville on a road trip. He was making his way from North Carolina to Texas, so he would still have about 10 hours left on his trip after he left Nashville. I decided that this was an excellent opportunity to make some cookies. 1. Because its nice to give a friend cookies while they are in the middle of a road trip and 2. Because this means that I won’t end up eating them all. (Well, it means that I’ll only end up eating 2/3 of the cookies).

So, Friday afternoon I started thinking about what cookies I wanted to try. They had to be fairly basic cookies, as, I’m not sure if my friend likes nuts, coconut, fruits, etc… and they had to be sturdy as they would be in a Ziploc bag in a car for 10 hours. So, I decided on the previously blogged butterfinger cookies (luckily, he liked butterfingers). And I decided on these cookies that I originally saw on Bake or Break.

Anytime I see a bar cookie recipe with a graham cracker crust, sweetened condensed milk and toppings, I always think… Magic Cookie Bars.

I prefer magic cookies bars, because I love nuts and coconut, but, for people who don’t like nuts and coconut, these are a great bar cookie alternative. Yum.

Double Delicious Cookie Bars
Courtesy of: Eagle Brand Milk

1 ½ cup graham cracker crumbs
½ cup butter
1 14 oz can of Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used ¾ cup)
½ cup peanut butter chips (I used ¾ cup)

Preheat oven to 350 (325 if using glass dish). Line a 13x9 inch pan completely with heavy duty aluminum foil (makes for easy cutting and cleanup later).

In a small bowl combine graham crackers and butter; mix well.

Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumb mixture and then evenly spread remaining ingredients over the sweetened condensed milk. Press down firmly with a fork.

Cook in oven for 25-30 minutes or until lightly browned, but chips will not be completely melted. (I overcooked mine a little and they still turned out yummy). Cool. (I put mine in the freezer for a bit to firm them up. Lift up the edges of the aluminum to remove from pan. Cut into bars. Lift off aluminum foil.

Makes 2-3 dozen bars.