I can be honest to a fault, so I must admit that this blog entry was inspired by my love of baking & recent viewing of the Julie/Julia Project.  Great movie! Sorry style, you are shelved for this post……

It is 12:36a.m. on December 24th.  I finished at p!ay today and came home and took a 2 hour pre-baking nap.  I didn’t have much of a recipe plan except to make my mom’s hard butter candy recipe.  I headed to Albertson’s at 10p.m. and grabbed a few necessary items.  I also came across a recipe for Cinnamon Crumble Cake.  I have been craving anything cinnamon since my client Jenn Erzen brought me a mini loaf of “banana bread without the banana” on Saturday.  It barely made it home with me.  So much for “hands free” driving.

Let me be honest, I didn’t find a recipe, I found a Krusteaz box in isle 7 that calls for you to add an egg & some water.  Love it.

Easy and cinnamon.

I’m making the batter now.

So the recipe wasn’t as easy as the box lead me to believe.  If you make this, READ the directions all the way through before you start.  It gets put together in a few layers.

I will let you know later if I think that makes a difference in the outcome. It is finishing up baking in the oven right now.  5 more minutes.  I think.  I hate the guess work on baking.  Is it done?  Is it not?

My apartment smells ridiculously good, in fact if it wasn’t this late or 49 degrees out, I would open my windows and torture the neighbors.  I only hope they get to taste it before the sugar devil inside of me goes on a rampage tomorrow.

While that is baking I whipped up a batch of dough for my Mom’s “Melting Moments Stamp Cookie recipe.  It called for flour, so while I was pouring the flour I noticed a recipe teasing me on the back of the flour package.

(Wait, timer buzzing…checking cake….)

hmm, is it done or not?  5 more minutes for safe measure or to completely dry it out.  Hope it isn’t the latter.

So this Gold Medal Flour recipe is for “Extraordinary Chocolate Chip Cookies”.

Wow.  Extraordinary?  I am intrigued and must make immediately.

I am headed back to the kitchen to remove the Cinnamon Crumble Cake from the oven & whip up this new recipe.  Says it makes 6 dozen cookies, I am NOT falling for that @ 12:49a.m.  I am going to 1/2 it and see if they live up to their name.

(Crumble cake turned out perfect except for the crust was too hard.  Definitely follow the directions with the layering of the batter.  Taste is good.)

1:19a.m. and the “extraordinary” dough is complete.  I 1/2 everything except the chocolate chips.  1 entire bag.  Actually 1/2 a bag of sweet & 1/2 a bag of semi-sweet.  Ahhh yeah!  The dough tastes great. One funny thing about the recipe is that is gives a “#40″ size ice cream scoop instruction for the dough ball size, or you can use a tablespoon.  Hmmm.  Do they think that we, home kitchen cooks, have a plethora of different scoopers? I have a 1.5 inch gelato scooper…I’ll use that.

I decided I need to bake the stamp cookies and get my candy cooking on the stove, so I am sparing the chocolate chip cookies for an early morning bake…after I sleep for a few hours.  I will deliver most of those to p!ay for the Christmas Eve guests and stylists & see if I get EXTRAORDINARY feedback.

(45 minutes later)

Back to the kitchen…. I couldn’t wait ’til the morning to bake the chocolate chip cookies.  While away on a trip this summer, I couldn’t find a baking sheet where I was staying, so I used a cupcake tray to bake chocolate chip cookies and they came out kinda RAD.  Remembering this I decide to used a mini muffin pan for these ones.  I followed the directions except I added a few minutes to the baking time since I had used the mini muffin pan.

Waiting…waiting…waiting….. YUMMY!  They are perfection.  ”Extraordinary” if someone else did all the work and I just got to eat them, but seriously try the recipe for yourself.  It will not fail you.

It is 2:40a.m. and I need some sleep.  My original 9:30p.m. idea to make “Mom’s Hard Candy Recipe” came out great.  I will share all of these treats with Mom & Dad later today….

Happy Holidays & a FANTASTIC New Year to you!  Brig

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