ten faves

one: be like sunshine

This is my phrase, thought, contemplation for 2019. I didn't/don't make resolutions, but it does feel like a new beginning [just like any Monday or March 1 or birthday or beginning of school can] and I like to think about things.

via Jenny Gietzen on IG

Sunshine is warm, bright, and promotes growth. Sunshine makes me feel happy. I want to be like that.

two: Last summer I spent about zero time on my front porch because there was so much cat hair from the neighborhood cats on my furniture. I found this fur remover because of it's Amazon reviews. It's ugly. It actually works.

amazon

three: Dumplin'

via 

I read the book [by Julie Murphy] awhile ago, and then the movie came out on Netflix in December. The book is better -- no surprise there! Dolly Parton. GAH.

four: Little Mix LM5

I can't stop listening to this album. It's so good. Don't listen to it if you don't define yourself as a feminist. And listen with discretion if you're opposed to profanity.

five-six-seven: podcasts
Up and Vanished
MURDER MYSTERY. Season one is the case of Tara Grinstead and her mysterious disappearance in 2005. It's a little cheesy as Payne works out the kinks, but it's SO GOOD. Especially for long road trips. Season two needs to get that next episode out.

Dr. Death
THIS IS TERRIFYING. No really, TERRIFYING. Over Christmas I drove from Fort Wayne, IN to McPherson, KS and forced my mother to experience this podcast with me. She was so stressed from listening to it that she called my dad at one point and shouted at him for not pulling over to eat. Yup. The resolution comes, but it's a solid 5 episodes before you realize the horror has to end. Not for the weak stomached. So profound for everyone working in the health care industry and the importance of advocating for our patients when we see something wrong.

EMCrit
This is a super-medical podcast. It's really well done. I learn tons, but there are episodes that fly over my head with medical jargon. The episode on the Opioid-Free ED has been listened to at least 4 times by me...not that I'm prescribing anything, I just like to have suggestions in my back pocket. 😉

eight: cinnamon rolls

I decided in 2019, I'm going to conquer my fear of yeast. I'm starting with cinnamon rolls and I've been gathering recipes starting with the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion.

Because I prefer my cinnamon rolls gooey, I've been trying this method of adding a splash of cream before they go in the oven to maximize goo. 😍 I can't decide if I'm just upping the fat or actually accomplishing any increased goo.

nine: JCPenney bath sheets

I really need to gut my entire bathroom. It's terrible. Like bad 80s shell sink terrible. I told myself I couldn't spend any money or time in here because it's ALL gotta go. But my towels were tragic and I hit an amazing sale, so here we are. I have lovely towels in my unfortunate bathroom. [they're on sale now for $6.29]

ten: happy 2019!

What do you want to see or do differently this year?


xo

browned butter all the chips cookies

THESE COOKIES.

For the big cookie dough fundraiser we made five different kinds of cookies and they're all my faves. Supposedly a mama bear can't have actual favorites, and this is how I feel about my precious little cookie offspring.

But these are...quite good HELLA TASTY.

It's the browned butter. Worth every second of the 7ish minutes it takes to make. [Not inculding cooling time, but you're not actually doing anything while it cools besides watching Parks and Rec reruns.]

Let's make cookies.

Could you stick your face in there for a minute and just smell the butter? It's just butter, but browned and toasty. HOLY HAPPY BATMAN.

Browned Butter All the Chips Cookies
2 sticks butter, browned and room temp
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg, 1 egg yolk
1 3/4 cup AP flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup mixed chips [mini, semi-sweet, milk, and white]

Add the browned butter to your mixer and mix until light and creamy in color and texture. Add the sugars. Once everything is well mixed, add the vanilla, egg, and yolk. Slowly add the flour, salt and baking soda until the flour is incorporated and dough pulls away from the edges of your bowl. Stir in the chips. Bake at 350 for 10-14 minutes, the edges will be lightly browned.

Yield: 22 cookies, 3 Tbsp scoop


Tips:
*cool your browned butter and then bring it back to room temperature
*you CAN bake these right away, but from the frozen cookie dough experience I recently had...they seem almost better from a rest to let everything meld prior to baking

*in further experiments if you rest your dough for at least an hour (I just let it sit on the counter for an hour-ish), it works out quite well
*if you don't have mini chips, semi-sweet chips, milk chocolate chips, AND white chocolate chips you can just use what you have. it's fine. I promise.
*did you get a cookie scoop yet? GET A COOKIE SCOOP.
*this recipe doubles easily, just double it. what else are you going to do with the other 2 sticks of butter in the pound?
*share with your work friends so you don't accidentally eat all the cookies. this will also give you friends for life. you're welcome.

xo

browned butter

Before we can talk about cookies, we have to talk about browned butter. It's one of my favorite ingredients. Basically, we're discussing toasted butter solids [appealing, no?]. Browning butter takes butter from it's buttery-happy-delicious place to a buttery-happy-delicious-toffee/caramel flavored-nutty-richness you're going to adore.

Sounds divine, right?

What you'll need:

• 2 sticks of butter
• a deep-ish pan
• heat-safe bowl

Take your butter and place it in your deep-ish pan, let it melt, and then keep going. It will start to bubble. And bubble some more. The bubbles will almost look like foam. Then you'll see a brown bloom in the middle of the bubbles. THIS IS WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR!  Pour your browned butter into the bowl to let it cool.

[you see the bloom starting, right?]

[off the heat swirling]

Tips:
*VIDEO FROM SAVEUR
*this post from Serious Eats gives you all the technical info on water and solids and things about butter, if you like that sort of thing [you know my nerdy little heart loves it]
*DO NOT STEP AWAY FROM YOUR STOVE, the whole process takes less than 4-5 minutes after the butter melts
*swirl, swirl, swirl
*I don't stir [but you can!], but I do scrape all the goodness off the bottom when I pour it into the bowl
*use a heavy bottomed pan and once you see the bloom, turn the heat off and keep swirling for 30-60 seconds to prevent burning
*BURNED = TERRIBLE, you'll be able to smell it if it's burned. TRUST.
*I love swapping out regular butter for browned butter in recipes [upcoming in these parts are the Browned Butter All the Chips Cookies and Oatmeal Raisin Cookies]

You'll want to stick your face in that and just smell the happiness.


Let's make cookies!
xo

ricotta cookies

I forgot how much I enjoy these cookies! I recently made them for a baby shower [can we just talk about the baby wave of 2018? everybody from work is now on maternity leave], so I'm going to re-share the recipe. The original time I posted in 2009, is way over here. This is a cakey cookie. Moist, but light [TWO TABLESPOONS OF BAKING POWDER!]. Not crazy sweet, but *justenough* with a cup o' coffee.

Ricotta Cookies

2 cups sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
15 oz ricotta cheese
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
4 cups flour

Combine the sugar, butter, ricotta, eggs, and vanilla until well mixed. Blend in baking powder, salt, and flour. Mix until just combined. Scoop onto parchment lined baking sheets. Bake at 350 for about 14-16 minutes.

This makes about 3 dozen cookies with a medium (3 Tbsp) cookie scoop.

Once the cookies are cooled, I prefer to glaze them, but you can also dust them with powdered sugar. My favorite glaze is one that hardens, I usually do a variation on this one from allrecipes. Also, sprinkles. Always sprinkles.


Glaze

3 cups powdered sugar
3 tsp extract (you can do a variety of combinations here, I usually do 2 tsp vanilla, 1/2 tsp almond, and 1/2 tsp butter)
1 Tbsp light corn syrup (I think this makes it hard to the touch, yet flexible if that makes any sense)
4-6 tsp milk or water

Mix the powdered sugar, extracts and corn syrup together. Add the milk or water slowly until you reach your desired consistency.

TIPS:
*this is a pretty wet dough, so you definitely want to use either parchment or a silicone liner on your baking sheets
*when you bake these cookies the bottoms will be slightly brown, but there will be very little browning to the edges of the cookies
*let the cookies rest for a few minutes on the cookie sheet before removing them to cool
*once the cookies are cooled and ready to be glazed, I put the glaze into a piping bag or a ziplock and snip the corner to make it easier to glaze the little nuggets
*if you can exhibit just a tiny bit of self-control, these are SO MUCH BETTER 2-4 days after they're baked
*COOKIE SCOOP COOKIE SCOOP COOKIE SCOOP. just get one. thank me later. ❤️


xo

cookie dough

WE SURVIVED THE COOKIE DOUGH FUNDRAISER!

I SURVIVED THE [FIRST] COOKIE DOUGH FUNDRAISER!
whew.

I had never done a fundraiser like this before. For work we do a week long bake sale for bus passes [we purchase our own bus passes to help patients get home after a visit to the ER], but this was nothing like that.

My expectations were basically that it was going to be this fun experience: my girlfriends were going to come and help me [yay!], and we were going to raise about $400-500 [eee!] for Ama. That felt like a good number to settle on. I'm no sales-person, but I can totally sell 10-15 orders of 5 kinds of cookies. I HAVE SAMPLES TO HELP ME, AFTER ALL. Each order was $12 for 24 cookies. I can totally do that. I'd hit up my co-workers and out on my personal social media for about a week. 💪🏽

Goals fly out windows sometimes.

On the first day I opened up cookie dough sales, orders trickled in for a few hours. Then they rolled in. Then my armpits got all sweaty and my heart started pounding and I started freaking out.

I talked it out with Kate and Meagan and Michelle and Jessica and Marissa and Sarah and Bea and Sarah and Rach and Ama and Nicole and Erin. I'm a verbal processor. It was panicking and rambling and setting boundaries and changing expectations. We decided to cut off orders at 40 per cookies.

FORTY.

I love math. Have we talked about this? I looooooove it. I used to do augmented matrices for fun in high school when other people were playing tetris on their graphing calculator. #noshameinmynerdgame

40 orders x 24 cookies x 5 types  = 4800 COOKIES!

HOLY CRAP.

We closed orders Sunday morning. Orders opened on the previous Friday night. We maxed out in less than 72 hours.

I waved goodbye to the fun Saturday I had in my head where we sang Christmas songs and caught up on each others' lives and ate snacks.

Before all this started I made a practice round of each cookie. A half batch to tell me how many cookies a full batch would make and how much it would cost in ingredients. I whipped up strawberry white chocolate chip cookies, browned butter all the chips cookies, salted chocolate chip cookies, ginger-molasses cookies, and oatmeal cream pies. All the cookies were frozen for 3-5 days to see how they baked after freezing. I broke down how much an ounce of flour cost and how many ounces were in each recipe. Every ingredient was priced and split and calculated so that we could know how much profit we'd make if we charged $8 vs $10 vs $12 per order. 

Armed with my cookie research, I did the actual math for what we'd need to fill the actual cookie orders. 

And promptly freaked out again. 

HOW IN THE WORLD COULD WE NEED THIS MUCH STUFF??? I had 100% believed I would be purchasing from Aldi, Kroger, and maybe [maybe] Costco. 

Yeah. No. 

When you need 344 sticks of butter, 104 cups of sugar, 127 cups of brown sugar, 250 cups of AP flour, 33 cups of 60% chocolate chips, 222 tablespoons of molasses, and all the other ingredients...you're past shopping at Aldi and Kroger. 

We had our big workday on Saturday, Dec 8 and I have never been more grateful for good friends willing to dive in for my not-so-little dream. A total of 12 people worked for about 10 hours in a church basement making and scooping and freezing and packaging these little balls of love for our dear Ama. 

I got to deposit $1800 into the Ama's Army crowd fund. CAN I TELL YOU HOW GRATEFUL I AM TO MY COMMUNITY? MY BOMB CO-WORKERS MADE UP ALMOST HALF OF THE ORDERS. 😘 MY FAMILY? MY FRIENDS OF FRIENDS? MY FAMILY OF FRIENDS? I'm happy to say that she gets to have a little less to worry about because of people who ordered and gave and helped and supported us. 💜💜💜

I'll be blogging the recipes for each cookie [with all my personal little tips/tricks/changes] here in the next few weeks.
-Brown Butter All the Chips

-Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies

-Strawberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies [it's in the archives already, friends!]

-Ginger-Molasses Cookies

-Oatmeal Cream Pies