Food: Basket Weave Bacon

A quick and easy post about the best BLT I've ever had! When I first saw the picture of the basket weave bacon on Pinterest I thought it was a neat idea but how much difference could it really make to have it all nicely held together instead of just piling all of the bacon together on the sandwich. I didn't bother actually clicking on the Pin to see if there were any instructions on how to create this because I figured it would be simple enough to recreate on my own.

I started by taking four strips of bacon and cutting them in half to make them more manageable for weaving. I laid the first strip vertically then the next horizontally and continued this process until I had it all woven together. Uncooked, the square of bacon looked rather large and Billy kept making comments about how that was way too big and way too much bacon. I ignored him and pressed on, confident that it would all turn out well. I mean... we're talking about bacon here so how bad could it be? I put my large square of baccon in the skillet on a medium heat and put my awesome bacon press (previously heated on the stove) on top to mash the bacon down and cook the top. If you are unfamiliar with a bacon press, I suggest you google and then purchase one, we have two in our house.

I let it cook for a few minutes and was greeted with this tasty sight when I pulled it off and put it on the paper towels to drain the grease a bit.

I toasted up my bread, spread a little olive oil mayo on both slices, sprinkled with pepper and salt, added baby spinach and tomatoes then capped it off with the basket weave bacon and enjoyed what is definitely the best BLT I've ever had in my life. The joy of finding a perfect ration of bacon in every bite of sandwich is hard to convey but let me just say that I was completely fulfulliled and didn't have to experience the major let down of taking that standard bite and finding only bread and maybe some lettuce and tomatoe.

Food: The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Competition - Recipe 1

Chocolate chip cookie dough may just be my favorite food in the world. Everything from the buttery vanilla flavor to the soft, melt-in-your-mouth texture makes it the most delicious thing ever. No matter what the recipe, I generally love the dough. Mostly I stick to the basic recipe on the back of the Nestle Toll House chips bag with mixed results. Sometimes I get super flat cookies that may be due to cold pans, over-warm butter, expired baking powder, or whatever else. Other times I end up with crusty over-done cookies. In general, the cookies come out pretty standard and never taste as good as the actual dough did, at which point I regret not just eating the whole batch raw. I like my cookies super soft so I make a habit of pulling them out of the oven before they're done in an effort to maintain softness. People like my sister and husband don't really go for the under doneness so it's always a battle. In my effort to find the ever elusive, perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, I have endeavored to test out four different recipes (not including the old Toll House one)to see if I can find an improviement to the standard. I am kicking off this competition with my results for the first attempt, the Cooks Illustrated recipe (http://www.ourbestbites.com/2009/03/chewy-chocolate-chip-cookies/).

So the standard chocolate chip cookie dough recipe calls for 2 sticks of softened butter, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 3/4 cup white sugar, flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and 2 eggs, then throw in the chips. The differences in this new recipe include half a stick less of butter, melting the butter, more brown sugar, less white sugar, 1 full egg plus just the yoke of a second, and backing at 325 degrees. The concept behind the melted butter and less egg is to make them soft and moist, similar to brownies.

The initial crafting of the dough went smoothly. I found it far easier to use
melted butter than to plan ahead before making my cookies and take the butter out to thaw several hours in advance (I often forget to do this and end up having to just microwave it while trying not to melt). My first concern arose when I went for that much coveted, first taste of dough. It seemed kind of grainy and not soft and fluffy like I am used to. My Mom was assisting me and took issue with the fact that once the chips were added, they seemed to "sit on top" of the dough rather than get incorporated into the mixture. We went to scoop the dough on to the cookie sheet and ended up having to mash the chocolate chips into the dough balls so they wouldn't lose their chips. With all of that settled, into the oven they went. Mom and I were so eager to try them and see if they would in fact be a success after our skepticism over the dough.

We let these babies bake for the recommended 10-13 minutes and they looked awesome! They hadn't turned into doughy puddles, they had a nice light brown color, and they looked soft. I'm not sure if you know this, but you can see softness in a cookie and it looks like deliciousness. The chips sitting on top of the dough had the effect of not getting coated with dough so they were more easily visible and made the cookies look like quintissential chocolate chips! I let them go for an extra minute or so just to be sure they were completely cooked then pulled them out and indulged while they were still warm. My Mom and I savored those delicious first bites and agreed we had to go back for more cookies just to be sure we liked them. I let my husband have one then took the remainders into work to get a broad rating of how this chocolate chip cookie recipe stacked up. The cookies were very well received and I am sad to admit that in one day, I personally consumed over six of these tastey mosels. Everyone enjoyed the texture and kept remarking about the perfect amount of salt. This wasn't necessarily part of the recipe but whenver I bake, I like to use kosher salt because it has a little more punch. So, in our first round of the competition, the Cooks Illustrated (melted butter) cookies are out to a strong lead!

Food: Vanilla Almond Cupcakes with Blackberry Buttercream

http://www.loveandoliveoil.com/2009/05/vanilla-almond-cupcakes-with-blackberry-buttercream.html

As I am sure you will soon find, most of my attempts from Pinterest are food related, though not all. For a long time I was on this big cupcake kick. Not neceessarily buying or eating them, just pinning a ton of recipes for them. Maybe I was thinking about one day making these gourmet treats for bake sales or class birthday parties when I become a mom but realistically, I was probably sitting at work, starving and bored, and cupcakes kept jumping out at me from Pinterest. So... one night I decided to finally try one of these bad boys out. I chose the Vanilla Almond Cupcakes because for some reason I was also on an almond kick, even though I hate almonds.

I hope to have more "in progress" pictures for later posts but since I made these last February, I only took an after picture. The recipe called for several ingredients more than my usual cake from a box creations so this required a trip to the grocery store. Despite my best efforts at combing the baking aisle for twenty minutes, I could not locate almond meal. I finally decided I would just buy a package of slided almonds and grind them up in the food processor. Later upon checking the internet, I found this is exactly what you are supposed to do to get almond meal, so go me! The recipe also required a vanilla bean and those little babies are expensive. Fortunately for me, my Mom had given me a jar with a few of them so I had those on hand and didn't have to shell out $20 to make 12 cupcakes.

So, after mixing up the batter and sampling it, I wasn't super jazzed yet. I'm a huge believer in delicious batter. The better the batter, the better the baked product. Just look at chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and box cakes... mmmm. Frankly, I would generally rather just eat the batter for most things but then you get people shouting at you about salmonella... Funny story, I've eaten what must equate to a hundred raw eggs over the years with my consumption of cookie dough and batters and I have never once gotten salmonella. My husband who has eaten exactly 0 raw eggs... got salmonella from tomatoes (we think). Of course, now I'm probably tempting things by gloating. Also, I do imagine that when I have kids I'll be worried about them eating this stuff and getting sick but for now, I choose to indulge.

Okay, so back to the baking. I baked the cupcakes and they smelled really good in the oven, so much so that even my non-dessert eating husband took an interest. On to the icing. As a disclaimer, I previously tried making another icing with blackberries and it was the grossest thing I have ever seen or tasted. Picture separated butter bits in a super sweet tasting jam. I was of course skeptical about this blackberry icing for fear it would end up the same way. I followed the directions to a T and found myself with a substance similar to the nastiness I had created before but I decided to press on and give it longer to mix together. This proved to be the magic cure... separated butter bits in sweet jam turned in to smooth, tasty buttercream icing. I had hoped it would taste a little more like blackberries and less like powdered sugar, perhaps dreaming of the pure taste of blackberries in a creamy form but I guess that's not really how buttercream works.

So, I let my cupckaes cool, piped on the icing and decided to jazz them up with a fresh blackberry on top because I didn't have any pretty litle marzipan flowers like in the picture. Once done, my husband and I indulged. He really liked them but I'm thinking that's mostly because of the almond. He loves nuts and isn't a huge fan of sweets. I feel pretty graitified when he likes a dessert I make. I found the cupcakes to be super moist and it wasn't your standard cupcake experience so overall, a success I think. I took the rest into work and people didn't say much about them, they seemed to prefer the standard vanilla and chocolate ones I also made that day... oh well.

Made It Rating: 8/10