Bad Dog!!!

Mollie is such a michevious little dog! I am not used to having to put food out of reach of the animals, because Sophie would have never dreamed of snatching even the most tempting foods off the table or counter. Not so with Miss Mollie! I turned my back for two seconds and she managed to wolf down two of my homemade chocolate chip cookies.

"It was totally worth it!!"

I can't believe I've never posted about these cookies! They are an all-time family favorite and my go-to cookie recipe. They have instant pudding mix added to the batter, which makes them the ultimate soft cookie. It's also not a very fussy recipe - none of this mixing the dry and wet ingredients seperately! I should have known to double this recipe in order to feed both boys!

Valentine's Day Dinner

We kicked Nils out of the house for the night and took a special trip to the Fresh Market for some free-range beef, salad greens, and herbed yeast rolls. We've been so busy lately that it was nice just to go shopping and make dinner together.

The final product: steaks cooked on the Big Green Egg, mashed potatoes, salad, and those yummy yeast rolls!


For dessert I made Homemade Chocolate Pudding, a Taste of Home recipe that I've been meaning to try for a loooong time. It was good with the strawberries and whipped cream on top, but since it was a lower-fat recipe it wasn't very good the next day.

It made for a pretty picture, though! And we enjoyed the time spent together. Hope you had a nice Valentine's Day!

Mint Julep Ice Cream

I recently checked a book out of the library called Crescent City Cooking by Susan Spicer, a restauranteer in New Orleans. I thought I didn't care much for Creole cuisine, but this book intrigued me, and I was pleasantly surprised. So far I've tried two recipes, both of which I've been happy with. This is called Mint Julep Ice Cream, and I decided to make it in honor of the (rather depressing) Kentucky Derby this past weekend.


First, we start with fresh mint from the porch. This is already an improvement on the Fresh Mint Ice Cream recipe I tried before, because it doesn't call for stemming the leaves, which saves a LOT of time. Plus, I didn't have to steam and cool multiple times - only once. I must say that there was slightly less mint taste to this recipe than the other one

While the mint and cream/half-and-half mixture is cooling, I whisked the sugar and egg yolks together.

Here's the mint and cream mixture, ready to be strained and have the sugar concontion added.

Now the hardest part: you have to cook the custard until it coats the back of a wooden spoon, watching it carefully to make sure you don't overcook and wind up with minty scrambled eggs.

Ready to go in the ice cream freezer...almost there!

The finished product, with shaved semi-sweet chocolate mixed in the last few minutes.

The recipe description states, "My rule of thumb is, 'If something tastes good, it will taste even beter if you turn it into ice cream.'" I tend to agree! Homemade ice cream tends to get even better as it ripens in the freezer, but I'm afraid it will disappear before it reaches its' peak! The bourbon gives it a wonderful flavor and keeps the ice cream soft, but next time I may reduce it just a bit to make it firm up a little more. And I should also mention that I halved this recipe to make 1 quart, because I don't know anyone who has a home ice cream maker that makes 2 quarts. Mmmmmm...

Oreo Cookie Cake

I made this cake for Mike yesterday. He's been working really hard on the yard and house, and hey, it was a great excuse to make a cake! I've made this cake before, and it is so good! I love this recipe because it's a great way to start with a boxed cake mix and end up with something that looks really elaborate and tastes wonderful.

The actual cake is a devil's food cake mix, the middle is made of cream cheese, Cool Whip, and crushed oreos (is there any more heavenly combination?), and the glaze basically melted chocolate. The recipe called for making the glaze out of chocolate baking squares, but I decided to use coating chocolate, which is used for things like chocolate-covered strawberries. I don't think I'll do it next time, because it made cutting a bit of a challenge. It would crack all over the place, not where I wanted it to! This cake is awesome because it tastes even better the next day!