Salty Chocolate Chip Cookies and Special News!

I have been MIA from my blog and I'm sorry for this. The first half of June was filled with rehearsals and performances of an opera in NYC. Then, I left my office for a 7 week leave of absence and went to Lubbock,TX for the weekend after which I had a road trip to Colorado.

Because (drum roll please)...I am singing at a music festival for 6 weeks in Colorado! It's quite a change from NYC. (Understatement of the year.)

So, I've been busy getting ready for the festival and then acclimating to the new schedule AND new altitude.

While I haven't felt too out of breath singing, I HAVE while running. Whew! Hills are hard enough, but when at 9,000 feet elevation, they are just plain mean. At least the view is amazing. Here's a pic I snapped while running the second day in CO.

I haven't baked yet, but plan to this week. I need to read up on the differences for baking in altitude. I'm rather excited!

In the meantime, here are some cookies I made for the opera cast in NYC in the middle of June. (And I hope to blog again soon!)

Salty Chocolate Chip Cookies

(I made this up. It's quite easy. Take your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and add sea salt to the top of the cookies after they've been in the oven for half the bake time.)

1 stick of margarine/butter (I find that margarine will make them softer. Yum!)
1/2 cup of white sugar
1/4 cup of brown sugar
1 egg well beaten
1 cup and 2 Tablespoons of flour
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (use the real thing....imitation vanilla is a poser!)
1/4 teaspoon of warm water (DO IT! TRUST ME!)
6 oz of semi sweet chocolate chip morsels (Personally, I'm a Nestle girl.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix margarine, sugars, and egg together until margarine chunks are quite small and well beaten. Sift flour, baking soda, and salt together and then stir until well mixed. Add vanilla and then mix. Water and then mix. And then add in the chocolate chips last. Place dollops of dough on cookie sheet with plenty of room between each dollop. Bake 8-10 minutes. At the 5 minute point, pull them out and sprinkle sea salt on top.
Erika's Extra Notes: To get very lovely and soft cookies, take out of oven when they are still fluffy/slightly uncooked looking. They will cook more while cooling. If baking two sheets at once, make sure to switch the top to the bottom and vice-versa half way through baking.

 Bake well and prosper!

Vanilla Bean Yogurt Loaf

This past Saturday I had tons of friends come out for a picnic in Central Park. It was so much fun and we all brought way too much food (a mark of truly good friends.) I took out my camera and started snapping away at the food that I had made. And then I realized that I forgot to put my memory chip back into my camera.

FAIL.

Oh well. The food, friends, and weather made the day so wonderful that I didn't care about my lack of memory chip. I took some photos with my iPhone camera, but thankfully there were 3 slices left of this bread at the end of the day. So I brought them home and took some photos (this time WITH the camera chip in the camera).

Vanilla Bean Yogurt Loaf (adapted from Cupake Muffin)

1 cup vanilla bean yogurt (I used Cabot's but you can use plain yogurt and add in 1 tsp vanilla extract or 1 tsp of group vanilla.)

1 cup sugar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 T light rum

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

generous pinch of salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a loaf pan.
2. Whisk together the yogurt, sugar, oil, eggs, and rum in a medium bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the flour mixture to the yogurt mixture and fold together with a rubber spatula until just combined. It will be slightly lumpy.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake 50-60 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.

Bake well and prosper!

Strawberry Popovers

I had strawberries in my fridge. I hadn't made popovers in a while. What happened in my kitchen was a mixture of these two facts. (Dun dun duhhhhn! - Like Dragnet/Mathnet.)

At Popover Cafe in Manhattan, they serve huge popovers with strawberry butter. I figured I would make strawberry popovers (and add plain butter as needed.) They turned out lovely and the strawberry seeds added a fun texture to the popover.

Strawberry Popovers (basic popover recipe from my Mom's Best Recipe Book)

3 eggs

1 C milk
3 T butter or margarine, melted
1 C flour
1/2 t salt
pulp from 3 strawberries, processed in a food processor

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease muffin pan well. In large bowl with mixer at low speed, beat eggs until frothy; beat in milk and butter until blended. Beat in flour and salt. Stir in strawberry pulp. Fill each muffin cup 1/4-1/3 full with the batter. Bake 30 minutes; then quickly make a small slit in top of each popover to let out steam; bake 8 minutes longer. Immediately remove popovers from pan and serve.

Bake well and prosper!

Chocolate Avocado Pudding

I have "Conjunction Junction, What's Your Function?" stuck in my head. Don't ask. I just do. For those of you who don't know the song, it's from School House Rock, an animated TV program that endeavored to teach kids via cool songs. I can sing you that title, but I can't remember the rest of the song. However, I DO remember what a conjunction is. Whew!

As for the recipe I made this week, it's a nice, healthy fats filled pudding recipe. The avocados give the chocolate pudding a little spice (or at least that's how I feel about it.) I really enjoyed it straight from the blender more than when it was straight from the fridge. Can't wait to try the leftovers with strawberries!

Chocolate Avocado Pudding (found at Honestly Good Food)

2 ripe avocados

1/4 C agave nectar (or substitute honey or food processed dates)

1/4-1/2 C cocoa powder 

1/4-1/2 C almond milk

1 tsp vanilla

Put all ingredients into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Use 1/4 cocoa powder for 'milk' chocolate and 1/2 cocoa powder for dark chocolate. (If you use vegan cocoa, this whole recipe becomes vegan.) Use only as much almond milk as needed to achieve desired consistency. Eat right away or chill for about 4 hours to help it gel more. Depending on how big your avocados are, this makes about 4 half cup servings.  

Bake well and prosper! 

Another Quick Post

I made a cake for a coworker's bday and snapped some quick photos before it was eaten.

I used the seafoam frosting recipe again. Everyone at work loved how it looked and how it tasted good without being too sweet.

Doesn't it look like ocean waves?

Besides those photos, I figured I'd share with y'all that my picture was IN THE NY TIMES!!!!

The Times came to review an all day event that I happened to be singing at. And they chose to print a photo of the opera I performed in.

How cool is that? It definitely made my Monday so much better!

Sorry...no autographs at this time. ;)

Bake well and prosper!