Category Archives: Food Tips

Thick Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

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The new retail cookie craze is Crumbl. There are a few other companies selling their own version from store fronts as well. But honestly, if I am going to spend $6.50 for a single cookie, it better blow my mind while it blows my budget and bank account! I can also just as easily buy the ingredients to make this knock-off cookie (minus the icing topper) for that much money. And so can you.

I really like a crispy exterior with a softer chewy centre. If you like the same cookie texture, you will love this recipe. Give it a test drive by halving all of the ingredients.

Thick Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies:
1 C Bread Flour + 3/4 C AP Flour *
2 Tea Salt
1 Tea Baking Soda

1 C Butter, melted
1 C Dark Sugar + 1/2 C White Sugar

2 Tbsp Vanilla
1 Tbsp Instant Espresso Powder
1 Egg, room temp
1/2 C Chocolate Chips (or 4 oz Chunks)

Melt the butter and let it sit on the counter about ten mins before stirring all of the wet ingredients together in the same bowl. Whisk up the dry ingredients in another bowl.

Add them together with a spatula to form the dough. Fold in the chocolate chips last. Scoop the dough out into balls onto a lined sheet tray to chill for at least 24 hours. This is a key step. Don’t skip it!

Bake at 355*F for 20 mins. Rest the cookies on a wire rack after a ten min rest out of the oven. Cool completely before topping with an icing if using.

* Bread flour is too expensive and takes up too much room in my pantry, so here’s how I do make my own at home: I mix 1 cup AP flour (minus 1 tbsp) + 1 tbsp Wheat Gluten. *

Awhile back I bought a bag of Bob Mills Vital wheat gluten when it went on sale for making my own bread flour so I can bake proper loaves of bread. Each batch requires so little that I have been storing it in my freezer all year since. It barely takes up space.

I made these 5 cookie test batch a week ago using my biggest 3 oz disher but I found by the time I got well past the halfway point, I started to feel gross in the gut. I figure one half size cookie should be the ideal size for me.

Going forward, I will be using my half-ish size 2 oz disher from now on for more reasonable sized cookies. I also have a smaller 1 oz disher for a mini cookie version.

This wooden disher is an antique. I was given to me by the master baker I used to work for something like 18 years ago. It still works beautifully, unlike its modern version that doesn’t hold up scooping out thick doughs or frozen ice cream. I’ve broken a few modern dishers over the years. These two are my standard for loaded cookie doughs, and the smaller size not shown does a great job on softer plain cookie doughs.

Burger Mac & Cheese Soup

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While tooling around online, I came across this Big Mac & Cheese Soup idea that was perfect for using up some stuff I have kicking around in my fridge. Namely two leftover burger patties, and half a jar of spicy cheese sauce (soo good).

You know I love to play around with recipies to make it my own if I can, but more importantly, I need to make it simple enough to be both fast & dirty, and tasty as hell. I think I nailed this one. Check out what I came up with:

I started by cooking the pasta in water with a beef cube together from the jump. As this pot boiled, I heated up water and chicken stock powder in a small sauce pot off to the side.

When the pasta was done, I reserved about 1/4 cup of the flavoured starch water and drained the rest. While the cheese sauce and ground up burger meat heated through mixed into the pasta, I diced up a dill pickle to stir in as well to keep the Big Mac burger theme going.

I gave it all a good stir together and spooned heaping amounts of the mac & cheese into bowls, and then ladled the chicken stock over top to turn it into a soup. This dish stands on its own without the chicken stock if you’re not into soup. My husband loved this dish as a straight pasta + meal meal.

The original recipe above called for milk in the sauce mixture, but I wasn’t into that idea today, so this is all I used to make this meal:

Burger Mac & Cheese Soup:
2 C Macaroni Pasta
I Beef Bouillion Cube

2 C Chicken Stock

2 leftover Burgers (with an dry onion soup powder in the mixture)
1/2 C Salsa con Queso (found at Walmart)
1/4 C Dill Pickle, small dice

I hope you love making this one. It’s a hearty, tasty meal. It’s also fast and dirty, and tasty enough to satisfy. I really like that the spicy cheese and the onion soup mix did most of the heavy lifting. This is a no-sweat meal to make on the fly when you want to clean our your fridge more than you want to be all gourmet and fancy.

A Very Berry Summer

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I bought a container of price reduced strawberries when we were grocery shopping for bbq food. I gave them an eight min bath in 1/4 C white vinegar and enough water to just top the berries. After draining, I placed them on a clean tea towel to dry.

The former customer of ours that gave us blackberries from his backyard as I was making dinner to let me know he pick another huge yield that day. I dispatched the husband to grab another pint from the nice customer. When he got back, i set up the same vinegar and water bath for the blackberries. I rested them eight mins, drained them, and laid them out to air dry.

From there, I lined each plastic container with a bit of paper towel, and placed the berries back inside them before I found some room in the fridge to eat them this week.

Air Fryer Crispy Jacket Potatoes

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I made these lovely ‘baked’ jacket potatoes in my air fryer. It took way too long, but that’s because I should have pricked and microwaved the potatoes for 3-5 minutes before spraying the outsides with oil and S&P, and stuffing them in the air fryer.

I really love how crispy the skins turned out. It was really enjoyable to eat, and the meal inside was perfectly cooked.

It was baked on 400*F for far too long, but if you do the 3-5 microwave trick, you can shave off a lot of time. I would check yours after 15 minutes of air frying. Go from there. Stop when you can stick a knife into one and it comes out with almost zero resistence.

I filled each one with sour cream, shredded marbled cheese, bacon crumble, and diced tomatoes (salsa or Pico de Gallo would work well instead). I think this was the best baked potato I’ve eaten in a very long time. I’m still thinking about it a month later.

Home Reno – Pantry Wall Tweak

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Since we installed our wall of pantry storage cabinets, we have made some tweaks. One of them I had to be convinced we needed by the husband. But, in the end, I am grateful for it when I use it from time to time.

I’m talking about a pullout wood block I can use to drop hot foods from the microwave above it. I can also use it to lay hot trays of food on from the oven steps away in the kitchen. And, as I discovered after I woke up one day with hip pain and couldn’t sit to use my computer, it works as a lovely standing desk area.

Originally we both envisioned me making fresh pasta on that board, but I haven’t had time to use it that way yet. I hope to rectify that in the near future. 😀

Oh, and he hated the small area I had a tiny garbage can sitting in that was also exposed, so he built a pullout tall can drawer with a door panel to hide the can.

Lately I have been working on the organization of my canned goods. Since the drawer I store them in rolls out and hits the middle of my thighs, I find picking up cans to see if it’s the one I need while I’m rushing around to make dinner on the fly just unworkable for me.

I came up with a solution. It isn’t Pinerest worthy, but it works for me. More importantly, now I can ask the husband to grab me a can of something-something quickly. He often asks how he can help, and I can’t deal with him in there rooting around. That’s frustrating given how many cans I store. I’m hopeful this is the low-tech solution we’ve been seeking.

Low-Carb Pasta Alternative

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Ok, so I found this recipe link for a Low-Carb Pasta Alternative buried in my old Pinterest boards. In a board I haven’t looked at in about six or more years. Otherwise, I would have suggested this long ago.

Use that bagged slaw we use for stir-fries. It’s quite versatile. Anyway, if you’re missing pasta in sauce, this might be up your alley, E.

Air Fryer Ciabatta Bread Loaves

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A few nights ago I found a Youtube video showing me how to make ciabatta bread from scratch that can be baked in an air fryer. So, D-UH, I was into it. Here is my first attempt. This picture shows the bottoms after I finished flipping and baking the loaves. The tops look just as beautiful.

I made the mistake of spraying the loaves instead of brushing them with melted butter. I won’t do that again. I didn’t like the finished tops as much, but I did like them. Another thing this recipe calls for is using a bigger than the basket size of parchment so you can pinch up a segregation wall in the middle so the loaves don’t proof and bake together as one square of bread.

Baked at 400* for 8 mins over parchment paper, and then the parchment came off to finish the flipped over loaves in the bare pan another 6-7 mins. When they came out they felt hard or perhaps a tad overbaked, but after a quick rest on a rack, they soften up nicely. I was pleasantly surprised. 🙂

Air Fryer Mac & Cheese

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Made this one last night. It took way too long and too much futzing with it to get the elbow noodles to finally finish cooking before adding the toppings and finishing it. BUT, I have ideas on how to speed it up for the next time.

After 25 mins, the cheese sauce was like molten lava. But that was ok; I felt it would help the toppings bake up faster, and I was right. Look at those bubbles along the rim of the baking dish in the video below. Love that visual.

Air Fryer Mac & Cheese:
1 1/2 C: Elbow Pasta / Water
1 tub Black Diamond White Cheddar Sauce (my new fave product!)
2+ tbsp Dry Mustard
1 tea: Onion Powder / Paprika
S&P

Stir it all up and put the baking dish inside the basket. Cook it at 360* for about 20 mins, stirring often to pull the protein skin down into the sauce every 4-5 mins. Till and turn the noodles up from the bottom so it all gets an even cook overall each time.

When you hit the 20+ mark, taste the noodles to see where their doneness is. If you need more liquid to get them softer, add 1/4 cup of water or heavy cream. Continue cooking it another 5 mins. Before adding the toppings, make sure the pasta is el dente. And then, add:

1+ C Marble Cheddar, grated
1/4 C Italian Seasoned Breadcrumbs

Bake the dish with the toppings about 4 more mins. The dish was super hot, so I pulled the drawer out and scooped the mac out with a serving spoon directly. I didn’t even bother trying to get that hot dish out of the basket. It wasn’t necessary to do so.

I will post an update to the time saving changes after I make this again next week.

Cake Mix + Soda = Soda Pop Cakes

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I’m not a big fan of basic birthday cake, and by extension, cupcakes. But. I have to believe if you spice up a basic cake batter, I might try a portion should I be offered. I made half a box of yellow cake mix for the husband’s recent birthday, but I forgot all about flavouring it because I wanted to try futzing around with the icing in a can to make a galaxy looking effect for him. It wasn’t special beyond the icing effect which turned out ok. He liked what I was going for.

Anyway, back to the flavour matrix. There is a Youtuber who did a taste test on most of the above and she only deemed a few of them worth the effort. If you care, here is her full video.

DIY Butter Making

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I am really into making various dairy products from one carton of dairy. Given the rising prices (two increases this year alone!) of dairy across the board, it made sense to me to start making my own butter, cream cheese, and soft mozza cheese. All of these are staples in our fridge.

First up, buttah! Made in my KitchenAid mixer. Just like the pioneers did. Ahem. 🙂

The process of making butter is simply whisking (or churning) the cream long enough with enough force to separate the cream’s fat solids from the whey liquid.

And before you ask, yes I lightly salted the butter. Tastes so good. Can’t wait it use it. *swoon*

In a nutshell, this is what I did:
1. Ran 1 cup of 35% whipping cream in my mixer machine with the whisk attachment on a very high speed for about 8 mins. I scrapped the bowl down once before finishing up.
2. I dumped the butter mix into a mesh strainer over a bowl. I pushed the butter down into the mesh but quickly realised I should have put a cheese cloth between the butter and the strainer, so I gloved up and started squeezing it in my hands.
3. While still holding the butter lump in my hand, I moved it around in a bowl of cold filtered water to clean out that last of the whey liquids before squeezing it dry again. I had to be gentle because the butter was so soft at this stage. It kept trying to ooze out between my fingers, so I wrapped the lump of gold up in some Bounty. That helped.
4. While holding the butter in my gloved hand, I shook some salt on the blob and on my glove, and then proceeded to massage/knead the two together. I did a quick taste test, and then wrapped it in plastic film.
5. I formed it into a small brick and tucked it in the fridge so it can firm up.

In the end, this is what I was left with:

It weights 74g, and it measures out to 5″ x 3 1/4″ x 1 1/4″. All from 1 cup of cream and a bit of salt + time. This is good. I will do this more in future.

We don’t normally use a lot of butter day to day, so there is always the worry that our butter would go rancid in the fridge before we get around to using it up since I don’t do a lot of baking anymore. This will be a good money saver (hella expensive even for the low-end store butters) and a very real time saver (I typically wait for butter to go on sale, buy a few bricks, and store it in the freezer. I would then have to wait for it to thaw in the fridge over night, and then again on the counter as it comes up to room temp to use it.)

I can make a small batch in about 10 mins, and have it ready to use in a few more mins should I need it to be soft, or butter in 30 mins should it need to be firm. I hate that I didn’t try this years ago. Grr.

And now I finally have some pretty handmade butter to put in my late MIL’s cute glass butter dish with this cute cow embedded in the design.