Dark Chocolate M&M Cookies! - Cooking Post

Okay, so last week I had this grand idea that for our weekend baking extravaganza (that's right - every weekend we're baking a treat!) I decided that I just HAD to HAVE chocolate chip cookies, but I didn't necesarrily WANT chocolate chips, I wanted color... I wanted pizazz... I wanted M&Ms. So I enlisted the help of JR and we set to work. 

Once you go dark chocolate, you realize EVERYTHING tastes better with it

I had found this recipe online, and decided that it had a solid base. We tweaked it a little bit because I dont believe that nuts should EVER be in cookies, unless we're talking coconuts.  

Ingredients

2 cups dark chocolate m&ms
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons hot water
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 cup brownulated
1 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened

Directions1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2.Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, and at the last possible moment the m&ms. 

3.Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.

JR is super helpful!!! 

4.Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

I dont particularly like brown edges, so mine were a bit soft/fall-apart-y

So that's the recipe, but here's my main opinion... this cookie (and I can't believe that I'm about to say this) was WAY TOO SWEET. I recommend upping the salt by 1/2 tsp, and using dark brown sugar instead of the brownulated sugar that I used. I think that those two changes would definitely improve this recipe for the better.

Other than that... it turned out EXACTLY how we wanted them - tasty! Just because it was too sweet doesn't mean we didn't devour them, just put them with salted caramel ice cream for a delicious ice cream sandwich.

This weekend - red velvet brownies!!! We'll let you know how they go.


Happy Cooking! 

Eastern Market - Give me ALL the butter!

A few months ago, JR and I were wandering through my favorite weekend market (the great EM), when we came across the lovely guys that just cook and make you taste things, right on the corner before the flea market, past the farmer's market. You know the guys I'm talking about... they are catty corner from the guy that makes the wire giraffes. Got it? Good.

If you don't know who they are, I recommend visiting EM this weekend to explore.

Soooo anyway. We're standing there and the two cooks are all cooking and telling us how great everything tastes and waxing poetically about farm fresh butter...

I'm all for new things butter... love butter. I didn't get to my curvy figure, not loving butter, butter that's not the point (haha, see what I did there).

So we listen to this guy preach butter for 15 mins, and we were turned. We've been swayed to the religious-spiritual motherland that is butter not from the dairy case at your local supermarket.

He says, buy some of that Amish butter at the stand behind you (is he getting a kick-back?), go home, put a sliver of that on your tongue, then put a sliver of the stuff you've been buying on your tongue and tell me you'd ever buy the mass processed shit again.

I'm never buying the mass processed shit again. Unless I'm making mass baked goods or mashed potatoes (too much butter is harmed in those processes to use the heavenly nectar from the farming gods in those).

But I have a problem. JR and I have run out of the butter.
So I have a solution. EM this weekend! Can't wait.

We're going to pick up some butter, and I'm going to see if I can hunt down more pairs of my sweet, sweet felt-lined (you heard it here) faybans.

I love my felt lined faybans! LOVE THEM! It's like a hug for my face, and heaven knows I love me some hugs!

What else does everyone have planned this weekend!?