Brown Sugar Cookies With Chocolate Chips

Yesterday for dessert was Brown Sugar Cookies with Chocolate Chips. (I'm not a fan of nuts in a cookie, sorry Paula Deen, but you did say Chocolate Chips could be a substitute).

First thing, you might want to make sure you have a little bit extra brown sugar if you are anything like me, one cup for the recipe, one spoonful for my mouth, one cup for the recipe, one spoonful for my mouth. Taste testing these was awesome! Is there anything better than butter, vanilla and brown sugar all mixed up. I think not. After a few taste tests of the that I mixed in the flour and other ingredients that I can't remember off the top of my head. That cookie dough was good too. I decided to add the Chocolate Chips instead of nuts because I believe that everything is better with chocolate. (This turned into having to drive half an hour into town to get chocolate chips that weren't all melted together, but that's ok).

I found that the oven really does need to be pre-heated all the way or else your cookies will just melt all over the cookie sheet before they start to cook. After about 30-45 minutes my oven seemed hot enough to cook cookies, (not quite sure what temperature my 1950's oven was set on, still dreaming of an oven with a temperature knob and door handles). I also found that smaller cookie dough pieces worked better than large ones, they seemed to cook better, but leave room for them to spread. Picture of my cookie dough:

After about 15 minutes in the oven they were ready to come out. I highly recommend eating at least 2 while they are still hot and gewy with a big glass of milk, it is worth it. Even though I put a butt ton of chocolate chips in mine, this is one cookie that you will not be disappointed if you don't get a chocolate chip in it. This will be the new go to base for all my chocolate chip cookies from now on.

(yay this picture turned out the right way, I have no clue why or how)



Fried Ravioli with a Creamy Marinara Dipping Sauce

This was a very productive weekend cooking wise I must say. Last night's dinner was courtesy of Paula Deen and was Fried Ravioli with a Creamy Marinara Dipping Sauce. This was a very simple to prepare dish since it doesn't call for you to create your own ravioli or sauce, you can just use the store bought kind. It makes it feel more homemade without spending hours in the kitchen!

Since my grocery store is on the smaller side (way smaller) I only got one choice of ravioli shapes and it wasn't squared, which I assume would of been easier to bread and fry. Instead it was a horseshoe shaped type of cheese ravioli, whatever, it worked in the end. You just cook this for about 2 or 3 minutes in some boiling water and then place them on a paper towel to dry off a bit while you make your crust.

The crust for this is just Parmesan cheese and pecans. I put my pecan pieces in a blender and pulverized them until they were the constancy of the Parmesan cheese and then I mixed the two. Next time, I am going to separate this breading into two bowls after mixing because after about 20 mini raviolis have been dunked in egg batter and then into the breading, it started to get lumpy and wasn't sticking to the ravioli well. So next time, about half way through I will have some fresh breading to work with.

Frying was easy, just about a minute on each side, they turned golden brown and looked amazing. Word to the wise though, wait until they cool before you pop one in your mouth. When they are cool enough to eat with out scalding your taste buds, they melt in your mouth. You can't really taste the pecans when they are finely chopped like that. The crust is very very crispy but the inside is still soft and the cheesy is all melty inside the ravioli. It really is amazing.

If you have any left over after "taste testing" you can make a dipping sauce from canned marinara sauce and heavy cream. Just heat these two on the stove, mix and you have a great tasting dipping sauce.

If your marinara or pasta sauce went missing, or ran away like mine seemed to do, you can always just make a simple pasta sauce with some canned tomatoes and some Italian seasoning. (I just used the one McCormick has that has all the spices already mixed up). Just pop this into your bullet for a minute and wa-la, you have pasta sauce.

Below is what I think your finished product should look like. Paula Deen, if this is not correct, I'd be more than willing for you to show me how to do it right. (there was no picture with the recipe)

Blue Velvet Cake

Paula Deen makes this dessert as a cake. Paula Deen also has cake pans, and probably regular size cupcake pans, apparently I don't own a normal size cupcake pan. But I did happen to find out that I have like 4 mini cupcake pans....but only 13 mini cupcake liners. Ugh! I cut the batch down to half the size and I still could only make a half of that with what I had. Which is probably all right because after the Fried Butter Balls, I don't really think I need that many cupcakes.

Mixing up this batter was very interesting. It wasn't difficult at all, just interesting. First off, unless you want to turn your finger blue, I wouldn't recommend testing the batter every 3 seconds for quality control with your finger. Second, if you get some blue food coloring on your hands, DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING! In a matter of seconds, I managed to re-decorate parts of my pretty new counters, face, fridge and stove. And last but not least. One of the steps said mix baking soda and vinegar and then put into the batter and mix in. A) I didn't read the mix first and then add, part of the recipe, i just dumped it in, i think it turned out fine.. and B) I am NOT a science person. I did not know that when you introduce the baking soda and vinegar that they would bubble and fizz. Paula Deen, you should of warned me!! This was the last part of the batter recipe and I swore I had just ruined the entire thing. I've never had cake batter bubble and fizzle before.

I used 2 small bottles of blue food coloring. According to my half scaled recipe, I should of put in an ounce and these were thirds of an ounce of coloring in each bottle, so simple math says it should of been blue-r, I'm not quite sure if that's a word. Anyways, the color I achieved was GORGEOUS! I loved it. ]

Around 15-20 minutes later, wasn't paying attention (housewives was on TV), the cupcakes were done. It's a common rule of thumb in my kitchen that you have to eat one right hot out of the oven, and I'm not one to break my own rules. I ate it without icing it and it was magnificent! Not to much of a cocoa taste, it was light and fluffy and ooohhhh soo good!

I mixed up the icing in a full batch size, I never skimp out on the icing. Sorry Paula, but I cannot do coconut, it's a texture thing, and I used the pecans as a topper in case someone didn't like them. The icing is very cream cheesy, kind of heavy. I added half a teaspoon of vanilla to it, but that's just my tastes.

Anywho, below is a picture of my wonderful creation. I promise I will figure out how to turn the images the right way around soon. Have a wonderful day and thanks for checking in on my blog.

Frying & Tasting Fried Butter Balls

So last night I finally got to fry my Paula's Fried Butter Balls. I heated the grease and didn't take the frozen butter balls out of the freezer until it was time to drop them in. (I was afraid they would start melting before they hit the grease) It literally took 2 seconds to fry them. I rested the butter balls one at a time on the strainer and dipped it into the grease, I just let it sit there for 2 seconds and then pulled it right out and onto a plate and paper towel to drain the excess grease.

By the looks of them, I figured I would only need about 5 Fried Butter Balls for the 3 of us that were hovering around the kitchen. I over estimated.

I LOVE BUTTER!! I mean I really really love butter. So I figured what could be better than Fried Butter?!?

The taste....it's one of those things that you really only need one bite of. Like if I served this at a restaurant as an appetizer, I would only bring one out per person. The thing literally melts in your mouth. It has a very light hit of cream cheese but mostly tastes like just what you would expect. Greasy melty butter.

I put the rest of them in a zip lock and thew them back in the freezer. These might just be an easy go to greasy heart attack snack.

Picture below:

Paula's Fried Butter Balls

If I'm going to cook like Paula Deen I figured what better way to start than with FRIED BUTTER!! Butter seems to be a trending ingredient in just about every recipe on her website, and something that I need to stock up on apparently.

The recipe is as follows: 1 egg, 1 cup flour, salt and pepper, 2 ounces of cream cheese, 2 sticks of butter, peanut oil for frying and seasoned bread crumbs. How ever no trip to the grocery store is ever complete without forgetting something and this time it was the seasoned bread crumbs. I improvised, altho I don't really know what seasoned bread crumbs taste like so I will season them to my tastes after they are done cooking.

To make the bread crumbs, I broke apart bread and spread it out in a dish and put it in the oven on low (my oven doesn't have a temperature gauge, it's a little old, so we just have carved notices in the knob) I let it sit in there until they felt completely dried out and then put them in my bullet and chopped them all up.

The first part of the recipe was to cream the butter and cream cheese and then make balls out of it with a melon baller. Either I'm just not a baller or butter does not agree with a melon baller. Maybe it was because it was still in a mixing bowl and getting warm. I put it in some tupperware and stuck in the freezer to firm it up a bit. Looks like this: (this is my first blog, so I dont know how to not make the pictures side ways)

Needless to say, it was still hard to melon ball butter even half frozen. But I kinda managed to get them round like and out by sticking a knife down the side and popping the butter out of the baller. After that it was back in the freezer until they were completely frozen.

Next was to roll them in the flour, then dip them in the beaten egg, and into the bread crumbs. It took 2 eggs to coat everything but that may just be because the flour was coming off. I don't think your floured butter balls can just wade around in the egg, it has to be a quick in and out or else the flour starts coming off and the egg doesn't want to stick. Then it's time to drop them into the bread crumbs and roll them around until they are completely coated. And back in the freezer to freeze again. Below is a picture of the butter balls, some already coated with bread crumbs.

By this time my kitchen was a wreck, I think it's because I don't have a swanky island like Paula's where you can put the dishes below the countertop and they just disappear. I need one of those, but that will have to wait since we don't have room in our mobile mansion for an island. I was pretty excited waiting for them to freeze so that I could fry them and try them, but it was already 9 o'clock and when my honey got home he said that fried butter balls was not a dinner. bumm. They are still in the freezer, but tonight when I get home, those things are going in the deep fryer! I'll let you know how they taste.