Texas Governor's Mansion Cowboy Cookies

As you may or may not know, every First Lady has a unique dessert recipe that they share with the public. At my work, we sell a book called Presidential Cookies. Each page gives a summary about every President and their First Lady, along with one or two of their favorite recipes. Fun, right? The only sucky part about the book is that the pictures included are terrible! No offense, but every picture is taken on the same plate-- same scene-- same ol' dim lighting. I especially love cookbooks with great pictures of each recipe, so I wasn't a fan of the visuals in this one.

It's funny because you can tell how much the cookies have improved from the 1700's. They start out with three ingredients and gradually increase as time goes on. I chose to try one a bit closer to our time period, one from Laura Bush. To be honest, a coworker baked them and brought them into work. They were so good that I had to bake some for myself. I opted to make them smaller rather than putting 1/4 cup of dough into each cookie. I also omitted the coconut, because I can always do without that. These cookies would be easy to sub some ingredients into depending on your liking.. Just take out one and replace with another! Try them for yourself!

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 tablespoon baking soda

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar

3 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats

2 cups sweetened flake coconut

2 cups chopped pecans (8 ounces)

Directions

Prep Time: 25 minutes
Bake Time: 17 to 29 minutes
Yield: About 3 dozen cookies (see note below)

1. Heat oven to 350 F.
2. Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in bowl.
3. In 8-quart bowl, beat butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy, 1 minute. Gradually beat in sugars; beat to combine, 2 minutes.
4. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each. Beat in vanilla.
5. Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Add chocolate chips, oats, coconut and pecans.
6. For each cookie, drop 1/4 cup dough onto ungreased baking sheets, spacing 3 inches apart.
7. Bake in 350 F oven 17 to 29 minutes, until edges are lightly browned; rotate sheets halfway through. Remove cookies from rack to cool.

Note: For 6 dozen small cookies, use 2 tablespoons dough for each. Bake at 350 F for 15 to 18 minutes.

Massive Seattle Foodie Post

I'm backkkk from Seattle! I can't even begin to tell you how much I enjoyed the trip. It was my third time there, and I know I'll be visiting again. The people, the environment, not to mention THE FOOD... were all extremely comforting and welcoming. Now, I have to break the myth-- it doesn't rain in Seattle 24:7. We were there for 4 days and it only sprinkled a bit, allowing us to walk everywhere. Now don't get me wrong, this Southern California girl was definitely not used to the cold.. but I survived!

These two pictures (the one above and below) were the only two taken of me and the bf on the entire trip.. it's kind of hard to have pictures taken when there's only the two of you there! Anyways, I promised I'd take pictures of the food that I ate, so here they are! This isn't even all the food that we consumed on our trip-- so you know we went all out, food wise. Please excuse the poor lighting in some of the pictures.. I did the best I could! With all that aside, let's go on a Seattle foodie journey!

After settling into our hotel, we walked to the Baguette Box for lunch, as recommended by my cousin. Their logo was adorable and there were dog paintings all over the inside of the restaurant. It was the perfect place for lunch-- fast, delicious, and moderately priced. How would I describe the Baguette Box? The food is basically upper scale Vietnamese sandwiches with a bit of a kick.
My bf got the lemongrass steak with cheese (which I didn't take a picture of) and I got the tofu with avocado sandwich. AMAZING! My boyfriend raved about his sandwich as well.. I'd highly recommend this place to anyone near Capitol Hill.
For dinner that night, my cousin took us out to The Chapel Bar, Machiavelli's, and Molly Moon's for dessert. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture from the first two places.. but trust me, they are both amazing! Molly Moon's reminded me of Scoops over here in LA, but more hip. Apparently everywhere we went that day had dogs as their logos. I tried the salted caramel ice cream, since it's supposedly big in Seattle, but that just didn't float my boat. Instead, I got the Vivace coffee ice cream (as did the bf) and my cousin got a lavender ice cream. Yum!
This coffee shop in particular- Bauhaus- was also located in Capitol Hill. They had the most amazing bookshelf I have ever seen. It looks exactly like the one from Beauty and the Beast, where Belle climbs the ladder and gets all her books from, except this one was REAL! They even had the huge ladder to climb to the very top! love love love.
I can't even tell you how many cups of coffee my boyfriend drank a day. He was determined to try every coffee while in Seattle and find the most amazing one. I actually don't drink coffee-- so I just ordered chai tea lattes and hot chocolates. :) On one of our many stops, we went the monorail espresso. It's a fun and trendy little place and I found it on where else but yelp. Yelp never steers me wrong-- we got the mocha and white mocha latte and both were delish.
For breakfast, we ate at a restaurant at our hotel (we stayed at the Hyatt at Olive 8) called Urbane. Though it was a bit pricy -- we spent nearly 40 bucks on breakfast! -- it was well worth it. The service, environment, and quality was up to par on all aspects. I just got the standard eggs and bacon...
while my bf got the steak and potatoes. He's such a meat man.
We got to visit the original Starbucks. It's crazy how such a HUGE company started from such a little store! Side note-- don't mind my hand. What in the world am I doing?
And walked around Pike Place Market (my favorite!)
I've also heard Lowell's (as you can barely see in the pic underneath) is great for breakfast/brunch, but we didn't get to try that out because the bf was scared it'd all be seafood. He doesn't eat any seafood, so eating at a restaurant by tons of fish markets wasn't too appealing for him.
We stopped for some more espresso and chai...
And then snacked a bit since we were going to eat dinner so late. The boy's snack from Taco Del Mar- chicken burrito with beans.
and mine! I'm such a sucker for guacamole.
Of course, I had to bring my boyfriend to the bakery I lived at on my last visit, Macrina!
We had breakfast here one of the days and just had good ol' bread and butter. I can live off of that stuff. I also picked up a chocolate chip cookie to go, along with various rolls. My boyfriend fell in love with the mocha latte he got there and said it was the best that he's tried.
Before dinner, we had to catch the first Laker game, but we didn't have a TV at the place we were staying! What else were we to do, but go to a bar! Sport is actually literally right across the street from the Space Needle and was within 3 blocks or so from where we were staying. How convenient!
This bar was quite lovely, since every booth had their own TV and we were able to watch the Laker game in peace. :) Meanwhile, we snacked on these delicious soft baked pretzels with cheese. I used to eat this for lunch every day in high school. How healthy, right?
Finally, we met up at Umi Sake House for a late dinner with some of my boyfriend's friends. We choose this place because of my cousin's recommendation. This was my favorite atmosphere of all the restaurants that we've been to on our trip. Our waitress was just the sweetest and most helpful person. They even have happy hour 3 times a day!
We had dinner around 11PM and hung out til about 1AM. This place is open late, which is always a plus. I had a spicy california roll and a seattle roll-- both for only 8 bucks total because of the happy hour special! My boyfriend got short ribs and sesame chicken for only $10.50 total. Sorry I don't have pictures of the actual food! I was too hungry to take pictures before I even remembered.
Walking around on Post Alley, I wandered into this store simply because of the name. I am immediately drawn to all sorts of sweets and had to buy something from this cute little chocolate boutique. 2 truffles for 4 dollars, totally worth it. My boyfriend got a blueberry basil truffle and I got a cherry cordial. Everything was handmade by the little sweet lady that worked there and I was so impressed with everything! She even used to live in Santa Monica, so we had a lot in common.
Now, I got a lot of suggestions from my previous post to go to the Tom Douglas restaurants. I have a confession to make--- I had to google Tom Douglas because I had no idea who he was. I thought he was either A.) a book author, B.) a famous old war hero, or C.) Christopher Columbus' best friend. The name just fits all of them. After looking at yelp reviews and various menus, I HAD to drop by the infamous Tom Douglas corner and dine at some of his restaurants. All of his restaurants had amazing reviews and I was definitely not disappointed. First stop.. Serious Pie!
My bf and I share the buffalo cheese w/tomato for lunch and WOW. Seriously, the best pizza I've ever had. I can only imagine what the rest of the pizzas taste like. It's like heaven in my mouth.. perfectly crisp and flavorful. The combination of ingredients were to die for. You just have to try it for yourself to fully understand what I mean.
I mean, just look at that.. I don't even normally like flat crispy pizzas, but I'll surely make an exception for this one! You can even see them make the pizza in a big ol' brick oven. Fantastic! I love being able to eat and getting a glimpse into the kitchen at the same time.
After devouring the pizza, we walked around the corner to:
The bakery was adorable and the staff was very friendly. I got the monkey bread with caramel sauce. When I went to go pay for it, I got it for half off because it was after one o'clock! Score! Apparently there's a row of baked goods that's all half off after one. I love getting deals without even knowing about them.

Alright, so I walked by the yellow leaf cupcake and even walked in to check out what the new fuss was about. This is Seattle's most recent cupcake shop and although it looked cute, I just wasn't impressed with it. According to my cousin who lives in Seattle and is a major foodie as well, this cupcakery didn't impress her either. She said the cupcakes were too oily, but I didn't try them myself. I was saving my stomach for guaranteed satisfaction... at Trophy!
This is what I came to Seattle for-- my most favorite cupcake shop of all time: Trophy! I imagine that if I ever opened my own cupcake shop, it'd look exactly like this. They have the most adorable color palette, decorations, chairs.. heck, they even sell gift wrapping supplies! This bakery just yells out all sorts of love.

My boyfriend and I ended up getting a stout, mint chocolate chip, and a red velvet cupcake to share. Both of our favorites was the red velvet, hands down. What I love about Trophy's cupcakes is that they're moist, you can never go wrong with ANY of the flavors, the cream cheese frosting is pure heaven, and the buttercream isn't too rich. The buttercream is actually very light and sort of whipped. Ah, I just die thinking about these lovelies.
For our last night in Seattle, my boyfriend and I wanted waterfront dining to end our trip with a bang. After a lot of research and menu-searching, we ended up here, at Pier 59? 55? Something like that:

My starter- casear salad (I eat, live, and breathe ceasar salads, in case you didn't know. This one was just average)
Boyfriend's appetizer- clam chowder. You can't have waterfront dining without some clam chowder!
My entree- grilled salmon. Honestly, I've had better salmon. It was a bit tough for me, but the broccoli was amazing. I finished all mine and ate my bf's.
Boyfriend's entree- What can I say... he's a steak and potatoes kinda guy. Believe it or not, he doesn't eat any vegetables at all. Nothing. No broccoli, lettuce, green beans, zucchini.. zip, zilch, nada. How does he survive? I have no idea. But it works out for me because that means I can eat all his vegetables!
Whew! You made it to the end-- thanks for reading!

Cookie Dough Brownies

Sorry about the pictures-- I didn't enough lighting to take a decent picture and it was the best I could do before I had to rush off to work. I can't stand the shadow in the second picture and tried to brighten them up the best I could without photoshop :(

My friend, Ian, turned 23 this past week and he celebrated by having a dessert pot luck at his place after dinner at Macaroni Grill. He's a vegan, but makes an exception for my baked goods, so I knew I had to include lots of good ol' fatty dairy products in it :) What a good friend I am, right? Haha.

I saw this recipe on Let's Get Cookin'! and had to give it a shot with my favorite brownie recipe. I used my favorite brownie recipe posted numerous times before here on my blog, but to make it easy for you, I'll repost it again. You can also opt for using a brownie mix rather than making brownies from scratch to cut down on time if that tickles your fancy. This dessert is very decadent and rich. A bite was plenty for me, and I'm usually a monstrous dessert eater. Don't get me wrong, they're delicious.. it's just a bit overload for me!

Brownie:

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
  
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup AP flour
• ½ cup cocoa
• ½ teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 8"x8" pan.
   
2. Melt butter in saucepan over low heat. Once melted remove from heat and add sugar, vanilla, and eggs. Blend together.
   
3. In separate bowl, mix together flour, cocoa, and salt. Add dry mixture to the wet and mix well.
   
4. Pour into greased pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.

• 1-1/2 sticks butter, softened
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 4-1/2 tbsp milk
• 1-1/2 cups flour
• 1-1/2 cups mini chocolate chips.

1. Prepare your brownies according to the package in a 9×13 pan. Let cool completely.
2. Next, combine the butter, sugars, milk and flour until well combined. Then stir in the mini chocolate chips.
3. Spread the cookie dough on the cooled brownies.
4. Then chill the brownies until the cookie dough is firm. Cut into bars and serve.

P.S. Thanks so much for all your Seattle suggestions! I'm such a foodie and can't wait to try out some of the restaurants/cafes/bakeries that you all have suggested. I'll be gone the 26th-29th (Mon-Thurs), but I'll make sure to document and keep you guys posted on all the good food!

My Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

You can never have enough chocolate chip cookies and you can never bake enough of them. I used to search high and low for the perfect CCC recipe while experimenting with all the different ingredients to see what made the best difference. This is my one and only CCC recipe that I use and I don't even bother glancing at another one anymore. It's perfectly thick, chewy, and crispy, while maintaining the perfect amount of flavor. I've posted the recipe on here before, but I'll post it again to make sure you don't miss it. Just look how photogenic these cookies are! They've pleased everyone so far and I've baked them at least a dozen times!

These cookies go great with the snuggly weather, which I sure do miss. I'd gladly give up a week of sun for a week of overcast and rain. Good thing I'll be going to Seattle next week with my boyfriend! That way, I get to soak in the lovely cold weather and cuddle with my love! Speaking of Seattle, does anyone have any places to recommend going besides my favorite cupcake shop, Trophy's? I'd love to hear any suggestions! We'll be going for 4 days, 3 nights and will be staying in downtown Seattle, so anywhere nearby is fair game! :)

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon.
   
3. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. When it's time, Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
   
4. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
5. Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Heath Bar Blondies

First of all, six days of work in a row? Really now? I just want to stay home and cuddle in this gloomy weather with the smell of something pumpkin baking in the oven. Before you think that I had disappeared again, I did bake apple crisp last week but it was all gone before I had decent lighting to take a picture of it. That's what happens when you don't have fancy lighting equipment and have to wait for the sun to rise the next morning for light (I hate taking food pictures at night while depending on the regular light bulbs as a natural light source). I definitely used the word "light" a million times in that last sentence. I apologize.

I searched through my cabinets and managed to find half a bag of Heath toffee bits.. how wonderful! I bookmarked a recipe from the blog: "3 B's.. Baseball, Baking, and Books" and finally had the chance to try it from my list. These blondies were a hit! The middle of the pan were nice and chewy, while the edges were a bit more crisp. I can only imagine the possibilities you can do with this basic recipe.. you can sub in white chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, raisins, nuts, coconut.. anything your heart desires! Here is the recipe with my minor tweaks. I also baked it in a glass pan so the baking time took a bit longer for me.

1 cup AP flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped Heath Bars (I used 1/2 cup Heath toffee bits and 1/2 cup choco chips)

1.) Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2.) Cream together the brown sugar and melted butter. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the batter and mix until blended.
3.) Stir in the Heath Bars (or whatever addition you prefer) and pour into a greased 8x8 pan.
4.) Bake for 30-35 minutes.
5.) Let the blondies completely cool before cutting. Enjoy!