Time for this week’s Thursday Things:
1. The Huffington Post named me as one of The Best Food Bloggers: HuffPost’s Top 10 Picks
I’m honored to have been chosen. Some fellow bloggers whom I’ve gotten to know over the years are also on the list, making it even nicer to be named among friends. I never would have thought I’d be seeing my name on a list like this, but I’m very grateful and highly appreciative. Seriously, I am humbled.
I’m on Slide 7 of 11
2. 10 Tips, no matter the recipe, to bake a better chocolate chip cookie, including don’t overmix, chill the dough, use a cookie scoop.
I thought this point is particularly interesting with regard to not using fancy butter: “When you swap regular butter for European style without otherwise changing the recipe, the cookies wind up with more fat than the flour can reasonably absorb, giving them a greasy mouthfeel.”
I bake all my cookies, including these Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies, with Trader Joe’s unsalted sticks of butter, $2.99 for a pound which suits me just fine. Kerrygold is my splurge butter but I generally don’t bake with it; it’s for eating on things rather than baking with.
3. I wrote a Baking Supplies post nearly a year ago about some of the things I use and do to make cookie-baking results as optimal as possible.
4. Monday, October 8 was National Fluffernutter Day. I didn’t know this until Glamour Magazine featured my Fluffernutter Smoothie
5. I’ve been baking more cakes lately and I want this Fondant Marble Cake Stand, Anthro $128. Even if your cake isn’t perfect looking or perfect tasting, I’m sure that putting it under the glass dome of white marble and carved sheesham wood pedestal would make anything look more beautiful and taste more fabulous.
6. Do you consider yourself to be a positive person? 10 Essential Habits of Positive People
7. Olive Wood Paddle Boards, $19 to $39 at West Elm which is a steal and they can be monogrammed.
“Gorgeous grains. Beautiful marbling, amazing durability and warm, earthy tones—three reasons to go with olive wood for your next wine and cheese party. As functional as they are decorative, these boards can be monogrammed with different letters to separate veggies from meat or gluten-free from wheat.”
8. I’ve started baking bread. Real bread with yeast instead of quick breads and I’ve been having so much fun. I have recipes coming in the weeks ahead for bread and if you’ve ever feared yeast and real bread-making with yeast, don’t. If I can pull it off, so can you because generally speaking, I have the patience of a two-year old and always thought that bread-making was an exercise in waiting around and a big production and wouldn’t it just be easier and faster to buy a loaf at the store. I’m here to say I wish I had started baking bread years ago because it’s incredibly rewarding and the process is gratifying. But in the meantime, make this bread if you need a seasonally-appropriate quickie quick bread.
9. This pink Cuisinart soft serve ice cream maker is on sale for $100 at Neiman Marcus. I think that’s a stellar deal and I’d love it.
10. Chunky throws on sale for $37.90 at Nordstrom. Another thing I’d love. But I also need to buy groceries, pay Skylar’s tuition, and not run up my credit card on ice cream makers and cute blankets. Darn.
What are your Thursday Things?
If you’ve made anything, done, seen, or bought anything fabulous recently, feel free to link it up in the comments.
Do you have any tips or tricks to baking the perfect cookie?
In general, I get better results when I cream the butter rather than melt it, but I love the flavor of butter that’s been browned, cooled, and incorporated into cookie dough. However, I never get quite the thickness I want in my cookies if I melt the butter compared to creaming it. It’s a flavor versus texture trade-off.
Chilling the dough is mandatory. Above all else, if you do one thing, chill it before baking. Chilled dough spreads less and your cookies will bake up thicker, chewier, puffier, denser, and just better with dough that both has had a chance to rest and chill. Most cookie dough can be chilled for up to four days or so before being baked off which gives you time to mix it up, chill it, and then bake the cookies off at your leisure over the next few days.
I always use a cookie scoop because it ensures domed mounds of a uniform size. I linked my $3.99 el cheapo scoop in this post. I recently bought an Italian-made scoop at Williams-Sonoma and it’s fine but I’m not sure if it’s as amazing as it should be for the price; however it’s growing on me the more I use it.
Are you a bread-maker? Would you like to learn? Fave recipe?
If you have anything at all to say about bread or a fave recipe, please speak up and link up. I’m all ears because I’m learning as I go.
Thanks for the Pumpkin Whoopie Pies + Book Giveaway entries
CONGRATSSSSSSSSS!!!
Congrats on the Huff, lady! Noice jorb!
Thanks and you crack me up :)
Congrats Averie! Yes, I am a bread-maker but only via a bread machine. I am a little scared to attempt it all by myself! Those chunky throws from Nordy’s look like something I would love to snuggle up in!
Well at least you’re making bread, machine or otherwise!
Congrats on your success and making the list!! That is a hella cool accomplishment!
Thank you, Ed!
Averie, CONGRATS on the feature! That is wonderful!
Excited to see your upcoming bread posts! I’ve just started getting into baking my own bread, and you are right: it is SO approachable and seriously anyone can do it! Every the worst bread you bake at home would beat the crust off anything commercially produced!
This is a good post to pump up beginnings (or pros!) to tackle this Rosemary Olive Oil bread. It’s whole wheat and makes your house smell AMAZING. Hope you enjoy!
https://www.thelawstudentswife.com/2012/10/rosemary-olive-oil-bread.html
That little round looks easy and do-able – but I really want your cinn rolls. Now THAT’S the bread I’m coveting!
WOW ! That’s such an accomplishment!! You put a lot of time and effort into your blog Averie & it shows. Very very cool. Congrats girl!!
Thanks and we’ve known each other since the beginning – almost 4 years I’d say. Wow! :)
Congrats on your feature, Averie! That’s so exciting and deserving–your blog is simply stunning and I am so glad I’ve found you and come to get to know you through this crazy world of blogging :) celebrate by buying that soft-serve machine which, OMG, is sooooo going on my Christmas list this year. Holy cowabunga.
You better get it now. It’s on sale and by xmas, they’ll have replaced pretty pink with shiny red. Tis the jingle bell season. And it’s awesome to have connected with you, too, Hayley! Your dessert posts and creations always make me smile to see what creative thing you’ve come up with next! :)
CONGRATULATIONS Averie! You deserve it girl. You work so hard on your blog, posting every day and all. I’m proud of you ☺ What I love about you is that you connect to your readers. You don’t just put out posts, but you interact with your readers and answer questions and keep lines of communication open. I have been to many blogs and asked questions about a recipe or what not, and I have never gotten a response or even seen them respond to anyone else’s question. I think it’s important to answer at least a recipe question. That’s what I love about you and your blog, your honest and open and friendly! I hope someday that we can connect in person. I’m sure we would get along famously!
I love the chocolate chip cookie tips. I’m definitely going to try the different types of chocolate and topping the baked cookies with some extra chocolate. I did that on my last skillet cookie and it made it look so pretty and the chocolate chips did stay glossy.
I can’t wait to see your from scratch bread recipes. I have been talking about making homemade bread for sometime, (were talking years) and I still haven’t gotten the courage to do it. Zoe and I are working on a cooking with kids post this weekend and she wants to make homemade pretzels. Those require yeast, so wish us luck as it will be our first times using yeast.
Ok, my birthday boy is up! I gotta sing him a song!
Have a great day Averie and congrats on your amazing week ☺
Jackie
What a lovely comment, and as always, your support means the world, Jackie! I too know about the blogs that you read, ask a question, get nothing back. Or leave 100 comments and they never reply to one or you’re not quite sure if they know you exist from any of the other readers they have, even after years of reading.
Good to know you tried the glossy chip trick. Every once in awhile I do things kind of like that just on 1 piece or 1 or two items that I know will be photographed, hand insert chocolate, crumble topping, breadcrumbs, etc. I stage my ‘hero food’ as it’s called in food styling books so it’s primed for the camera.
Your bread-making sounds fun! The only reason I didn’t begin with pretzels is I know that you have to boil them to really get a nice finish and after all that work, I don’t even want to deal with boiling. I’ll let you go first :) LMK!
Congrats on the list, so happy to be there with amazingly talented people! And those olive wood boards – amazing!
It’s great to be there with you, Cassie :)
Congratulations on being chosen as a top 10 food blogger!! Your passion for this is evident in so many ways–from the time you’ve put in to your photography and blog, and all the hours you spend in the kitchen to give us great recipes. I don’t make a lot of yeast bread, but once you dive in and do it a couple of times, it’s pretty easy. I like dense,rustic whole wheat loaves and my favorite recipes are from the Williams Sonoma kitchen library series (simply titled “Breads”). I tend to use fast rise yeast to save a little time and I am diligent about making sure my liquids are in the correct temperature range. I might just have to make a loaf to go with that soup tomorrow!
Thank you for the kind words and for commenting on every post, Paula! And you, and maybe 3 or 4 other women, to my knowledge or at least the ones who tell me about it, make more of my recipes than anyone else and I appreciate that! I wouldn’t do all this if I didn’t want people to actually make the food :)
That’s so funny you mention the W-S ‘Breads’ series b/c I was googling some recipes last nite and came across one from W-S. Not from that series but it’s a W-S recipe and I feel like I can trust it even more now!
Look at you all famous ;-) I love it! I enjoy making breads, but I will readily admit that usually I let my bread machine do the work of kneading and rising then I’ll take it out, shape, and bake it. I’ve played around with several recipes over the years to get them how I like. But, there is definitely something to be said for true artisan bread.
Thanks, Heather! And that’s good to know you make bread, in a machine or otherwise. I guess I didn’t even know that about you or somehow have missed that in all your posts over the years!
I saw you on that list and had to stop by to say congrats. ;) And your photos are looking as gorgeous as ever!
Thanks, Lindsay, for stopping by and the compliments! Means a lot regarding my photos coming from you and your gorgeous images!
you my dear are amazing! Well deserved recognition. What took them so long?
xxoo
Can’t believe we’ve known each other since the beginning, too! 4 years and counting :)
Wow, this is awesome news, Avie! Congrats :)
Congrats on the recognition in both the Huffington Post and Glamour! Nice work! :)
I finally posted my healthy pumpkin bread recipe that I had mentioned a while back: https://eatmovebalance.com/protein-pumpkin-bread/
It’s funny that you adapted the recipe from Cory, who does the tech side of things for me on my site!
So terrific you got recognized by the Huffington, congrats! You should get that pink ice cream maker as a reward present to yourself.
As for my Thursday things, how about muffins and a pretty milkshake?:)
https://scrumptiousgruel.wordpress.com/2012/10/10/boyfriends-and-bran/
The muffins, and the shake, look great! I like the way you think regarding rewards :)