Lauren Loves Good Food

10 Christmas Light Looking Tips

December 21, 2011

tags: Beanie, Cookies, dessert, family, holiday, Joey, Starbucks

Whew, I need a break. Anyone else feel like this week has been extremely busy? And it’s only Wednesday!

I have, as of today, no less than 5 dozen cookies in my kitchen, plus hand-made truffles from Amsterdam and a giant chunk of almond toffee. God help me.

I know you were probably expecting a What I Ate Wednesday post today, but would you believe in all the busyness of yesterday, I completely forgot to take any pictures. Sorry. But I’ll entertain you with some Christmas light looking tips instead.

Holiday Light Looking Tips:

1. If you’re going to be driving around for 3 hours, you’ll need something to quench your thirst, so Starbucks holiday drinks are a must.

2. Bring cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. See beginning of this post.

3. Get lost no less than 5 times because your driver can’t listen to directions and you’re too distracted by Youtube to be a decent navigator.

For the record, the Michael Buble duets skit on SNL this past Saturday is worth taking a look at. And then watching 4 more times.

4. Talk about light-hearted things like how money makes people do bad things, the lies you told your parents when you were in high school and how you basically have no idea where your life is going.

5. Complain when you “saw this house last year!”

6. Drive away as fast as possible when the radio station you’re supposed to tune in to is playing a recording of the man who lives in the house and he sounds satanic.

I love that little train.

7. Have an in-depth conversation about what you would do if you lived across the street from someone with lights coordinated to music.

Seriously though, how could you sleep with lights blinking in your window??

8. Don’t veer off course to see a house you think will be good. It will take at least 15 minutes to find your way back to the street you actually need to be on.

And you saw that house last year.

9. Don’t assume you’ll be able to find “that one house” without knowing what street it’s on. Or even what part of the neighborhood it’s in.

10. Finally go home when it’s 10 PM, most of the lights on houses are off and you feel like you might pee your pants soon.

In all seriousness, my #1 tip should be to throw out the plan and just drive around and have fun.

Happy Wednesday!

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Do you go Christmas light looking?

Do you decorate your home in lights?

A No-Bake Cookie

December 20, 2011

tags: 12 days of cookies, baking, Chocolate, Cinnamon, Cookies, dessert, Maple, Peanut Butter

These are hot off the press. Err, cold out of the fridge?

What I’m trying to say is, I just made them. Please ignore the fact that it’s not even 10 AM where I am and I’m already eating cookies. It’s going to be a fabulous day.

I’d had about enough of the oven, what with my Oreo malfunction and all, so I figured today was as good a day as any to delve into the world of no-bake cookies. Plus “no-bake” usually means there’s sticky ingredients involved. Sticky is one of my favorite food groups, you know.

I used this recipe and although I’ll be the first to admit mine don’t like quite as picture perfect, I thought they turned out really good.

It calls for graham crackers. Man, how I have missed graham crackers.

And now I have almost an entire box left. Perfect.

Bring on the smores.

This is my “backup peanut butter.” You know, for when you unexpectedly run out of crunchy. Like you don’t have a backup jar, too.

I’m sure there’s fancier ways to crumble graham crackers, but I just used my hands.

And then I got to those sticky ingredients.

Graham crackers, peanut butter and maple syrup?

I made these before breakfast and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t seriously contemplate just making a second bowl of grahams, pb and maple for myself.

And I must say, knowing that there was no baking and therefore no chance of these going from perfectly fine dough to oven-made mess was pretty awesome.

I guess I’m still a little shaken up about those Oreos! 😛

Hmmm, they’re missing something.

Oh, right.

And then this happened.

I used a makeshift double broiler to melt some chocolate chips. Who needs a real double broiler when you can just fit a bowl over a pot of hot water? Not I.

Some got dipped.

Some got smothered.

And some got… Jackson Pollack-ed?

It got a little messy. But an artist is allowed to make a mess in the name of perfection and peanut butter and chocolate is as close to perfection as it gets.

I was going to leave some of the cookies plain for “people who don’t like chocolate and peanut butter together,” but then I realized I don’t anyone like that. And I wouldn’t share any cookies with them even if I did.

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Have you ever made a no-bake cookie?

Do you ever use a double-broiler?

Do you know why peanut butter cookies always have those fork indentations? If you do, you’ll save me the time it would take me to Google it.

First Cookie Mishap

December 19, 2011

tags: 12 days of cookies, baking, Chocolate, Cookies, dessert, holiday, Joey, peppermint

Well, this was bound to happen.

No, those aren’t supposed to look like that.

They’re supposed to look like this.

Why in the world I thought refrigerating dough that was supposed to chill for half an hour, for two days was a good idea is beyond me. Something tells me it was the shock of cold dough to hot oven that did me in.

The good news is, frosting makes everything better. But we’ve already been over that, haven’t we?

So instead of telling you how I was totally wow-ed by my own ability to recreate the Oreo, I’ll show you pictures of pretty frosting and well call it a day.

I won’t even mention the fact that I went to not one, but two, grocery stores looking for food coloring. That part just makes this cookie failure even more depressing.

So, despite the fact that these cookies turned out as flat as a pancake and have a weird texture, the frosting makes them really festive-looking and taste pretty okay.

Joey keeps eating them. Which really says nothing, because he’ll eat anything.

They’re slightly greasy, as you can see…

Anyways, my point is, we’re all human and if I get through 12 batches of cookies and this is the only mess-up, I’ll be a happy girl. Never in a million years, would I have thought myself capable of trying so many different types of cookies, from vegan to butter-filled, simple and fast to labor intensive.

And every cookie has been a learning experience. This cookie’s lesson was “eating butter, shortening and red dye sandwiched between to chocolate cookies is both frightening and extremely delicious.” Oh and don’t over chill your dough. But that one’s less important 🙂