Homemade Oreos

I have had my eye on a homemade oreo recipe on Smitten Kitchen for months. Deb, the author of Smitten Kitchen, suggests that this recipe falls into the “you’ve been warned” category because once you make these you will have to make them a million times as everyone will love them and request them. I’m okay with that!

I grew up with an actual cookie jar that was almost always filled with oreos. We had a two cookie rule in our house so sometimes the oreos would even get stale – tragic. These days I don’t have oreos in my house unless they come in a 100-calorie pack and we all know those aren’t even close to the real thing. I have the feeling this version will get shared, and devoured before they get stale…

Happy dunking!

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

I think it’s true you never know how much you love something until you let it go… in this case I’m not talking about some sappy love story, I’m talking about my oven! A month or so ago I was baking muffins when the second batch just wouldn’t bake. I kept adding another 3 minutes to the baking time since it didn’t dawn on me that the oven would just stop working mid-baking. Just my luck – my brand new GE oven that had plastic wrap on it when I moved in was already busted. Needless to say, I finally got it fixed. And, of course I felt compelled to put it to good use.

This summer one of my mom’s friends baked some cookies for her. They were so good she refused to bring them to a family BBQ and froze them to enjoy on her own terms. Now, for anyone who knows my mom, that is saying a LOT, because she could sit with a humongous bag of candy, or a big batch of brownies in front of her and have one little nibble. The woman has amazing will power and is not tempted by sweets. Sadly, I did not inherit that from her.

Anyway, I was told these delicious chocolate cookies were from a Williams-Sonoma recipe so I did some digging and here is what I found… Chocolate Crinkle Cookies. The best part is these are so easy… so if your oven hasn’t been used in a while, I recommend a chocolatey reunion.

Happy crinkling!

Lentil Soup

Every Friday my co-teachers and I buy lunch (instead of being frugal and bringing something from home). With the weather getting colder, one of the only things I get excited about is having soup for lunch on Fridays. Devon and Blakely has a million soup options, but some how I always get vegetarian lentil. Despite the warm, sunny day, I felt inspired to make my own today. I began my search for a recipe by looking on Epicurious. It was overwhelming - so many recipes with so many different spices and ingredients. So I called my dad who didn’t have a recipe for me. Mom was my next call, a lentil soup recipe from Moosewood Restaurant. In the end, I used the reviews from Epicurious, the recipe from my mom, and came up with my very own lentil soup recipe. The experiment was deliciously successful.

Happy soup-ing!