Christelle's Scones with Strawberry and Lemon (The best scone recipe ever)

* 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 4 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/4 cup white sugar + 1 tbsp sugar reserved
* 5 tablespoons butter
* 1/2 cup dried currants or raisins, dried strawberries, or whatever you want.
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1/4 cup sour cream
* 1 egg
* 1 tablespoon milk

*zest of 2 lemons, or an orange, or a lime, again whatever you want

strawberries and lemon are good, and blueberries and lime are good.

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and sugar into a large bowl. Cut in butter using a cheese grater or rubbing between your fingers until it is in pea sized lumps. Stir in the currants or whatever fruit you choose. Mix together 1/2 cup milk and sour cream in a measuring cup. Grate your zest into this mixture. Pour all at once into the dry ingredients, and stir gently until mostly blended. A little flour not fully mixed in is about when you should stop. Overworking the dough results in terrible scones!
3. With floured hands, pat scone dough into balls 2 to 3 inches across, depending on what size you want. The dough is very sticky so just do the best you can. They don't have to be perfect. Place onto a baking sheet, and flatten lightly. Do not grease sheet, there is plenty of butter in the scones that will take care of the sticking and you may end up with burnt bottoms if you grease. Let the scones barely touch each other. Whisk together the egg and 1 tablespoon of milk. Brush the tops of the scones with the egg wash, and sprinkle each with a little bit of sugar.
4. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until the tops are golden brown, not deep brown. Allow to cool slightly before eating.

I made this batch into 4 big scones and if you do that then they are 10 weight watchers points a piece. Ouch!!!

Dark Chocolate, Smoked Almond, & Sea Salt Bark

While enjoying a cup of coffee and a bowl of cherries one day with her son, a young woman (OK, not sooo young woman) STUMBLED upon a recipe that quite took her fancy. If your were a reader from the start you may already know about the woman's penchant for a certain dark chocolate, caramel, sea salt creation from a trendy store that's all the rage, I'm sure you've heard of it. That Trader Joe's. Well anyway, the recipe she found reminded her of those very chocolates. She thought perhaps even more extraordinary.
Out the door she ran, fur flying. She nearly took off the dog's tail with the door in her haste to get to the store!

OK, so really she waited for her mother-in-law to arrive, checked and double checked to make sure the baby had what he needed, put the dog outside (tail safe, intact, and still a dangerous weapon), and slowly backed down the driveway, hoping that she had remembered to put everything on her grocery list. The chocolate, almonds, and sea salt especially!!!
(Read to the end of recipe for the end of the story)

• 8 oz 53% Cacao Dark Chocolate Baking Bar

(I couldn't find this so I bought a 10 oz bag of 62% and used the whole thing)

• 1/2 cup smoked almonds coarsely chopped

(save a few to sprinkle on top)

• 1 tsp sea salt

2 hours and $175 dollars worth of groceries (for just one week!) later, the lady was back home and ready to tackle her latest desert.

Dark Chocolate, Smoked Almond, & Sea Salt Bark

It became clear very shortly that this beauty would take mere minutes. A major plus for a mommy with a 4 month old.

Melt the chocolate in a glass microwave safe bowl for 40 seconds. Stir. Replace in microwave, cooking in 10 second intervals, stirring between, until chocolate is almost but not completely melted. A little bit more melted than in the picture. The more you stir the chocolate the more it will melt. If you heat it too much the chocolate will seize up and you will have to start over with new chocolate. (I don't personally know how to save seized chocolate, or if there even is a way.)

Stir in the almonds.
(I added a handful of raisins to half of my chocolate mixture because I began to think that maybe something a little sweeter might break the monotony of all that salt and dark chocolate. Totally up to you.)

Spread the chocolate over a sheet pan covered with wax paper. Tap the pan to spread out the chocolate. (My pan was too big and its an 8 in)
Sprinkle with the reserved almonds and the salt.
Refrigerate for 1 hour.


When the woman removed the bark from her Frigidaire later that evening, broke the bark into pieces, and tasted her latest treat, she fainted right there on the floor, in the kitchen, and that is where her husband found her when he got home. With dark chocolate all over her face and a stupid grin from ear to ear.

The end!!!!!

Heath Bar Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 eggs
• 3-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1-1/3 cups (8 oz. pkg.) HEATH BITS 'O BRICKLE Toffee Bits
• 1 8 oz. pkg. semi sweet chocolate bits.
  

Preheat oven to 350 F

Combine 2 stick softened butter with 1 cup white sugar and 1 cup brown sugar. Blend with hand mixer until combined.
Add 1 tsp. vanilla extract.

Add three whole large eggs and combine.

Add 3 1/2 cups of flour 1 cup at a time until well blended. In between 1st cup of flour and second add 2 tsp. baking soda.
In between 2nd cup of flour add 2 tsp. cream of tartar.

Add 1 bag of Heath-1/3 cups (8 oz. pkg.) HEATH BITS 'O BRICKLE Toffee Bits and 1 8 oz. pkg. semi sweet chocolate bits. Mix well.

Use a tbsp. to measure out your cookies onto a greased cookie sheet and
bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes

A Few More of My Favorite Things... How could I forget these?

These are delicious. That's all you need to know.

The Yogi Tea company makes a tea for just about everything. Right now I am taking their Mother To Be Tea which contains raspberry and other things that are supposed to support uterine health and help with a healthy labor. When I have PMS i drink this Woman's Moon Cycle Tea. It works wonders. It calms me down, mellows me out, helps with all the aches, pains, bloating, mania, and everything else. Plus, it tastes like and oatmeal cookie kind of.
My dad just recently had some trouble with kidney stones and Yogi Tea makes a tea for that so I'm going to buy him some of that. It cant hurt right?

My Dad's Oatmeal Raisin Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

My dad has been making me these cookies for as long as I can remember. They are so soft and delicious. It's difficult not to devour the whole batch in one sitting. I kid you not. These cookies actually held me over on a trip to China that I just recently took. I was 4 months pregnant and not into eating anything. Especially weird Chinese things. (I'm usually not a picky eater...blame it on the baby, I will.) So anyway, dad made us a bunch of these cookies, and I ate them everyday till they ran out while we were traveling around China.

This is me at the Forbidden City

Lets start with an ingredients/tools list shall we?

What you will need:

1 cup (2 sticks) butter softened

(take out of fridge a couple of hours before baking)

1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1.5 cups white flour
1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

(DO NOT FORGET THE CINNAMON)
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups oatmeal

1.5-2 cups dark chocolate chips
1 cup raisins (opt)

This recipe makes about 4 dozen cookies

Mixing bowl

Spoon

(Wooden)

1 cup

1/2 cup

1 teaspoon

an oven

a cookie sheet

parchment paper (optional)

Lets preheat the oven to 375 F now that we've got all our crap together.

In your mixing bowl, cream together 1 cup of white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, and two sticks of butter. (If you have not left your butter out to soften this will be next to impossible. You can try to soften the butter in the microwave, but you will usually end up with melted butter instead of softened. Bottom line? Let your butter soften ahead of time foo'!) This mixture will be a little stiff but will loosen up once you add the eggs and vanilla

BEFORE MIXED

AFTER MIXED

Next add two eggs and 1 tsp. of vanilla and mix together. After this step the batter should be nice and smooth

Mix in 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of baking soda. The batter will start to get thicker now, and harder to mix.



Add 3 cups of oatmeal and stir until combined. The batter will begin to get very difficult to stir. This is normal.


Add 2 cups of dark chocolate chips and 1 cup of raisins.



This is what your batter should look like when complete

Spray your cookie sheet with cooking spray or line with parchment paper. I didn't have any today but parchment paper is a good way to save your pans. It's not good for the environment though. Neither is the spray can either I suppose. It's so hard!!!!! Maybe the best way to grease a pan would be to wipe it down with shortening. I wonder if shortening is bad for the environment somehow. I guess even with the shortening you have to use a paper towel to wipe it on with. OH! Who knows?

I used a tablespoon to make my cookies. They are just the right size that way. Keep the cookies about two inches apart. In my oven they bake up to just perfect in about 10 minutes on 375 F. The recipe I was following said 12 minutes so I would start with around 9 or 10 and keep and eye on them. They should be a little brown around the edges but still soft to the touch. They will firm up while sitting.

And here is the finished product. They aren't the prettiest cookies in the world but they are chewy and delicious.