und meinen Chocolate Chip Cookies kann keine widersteh’n

I know that many, like me, are constantly searching for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. I myself have at least six vastly different recipes in my recipe folder, including Triple Threat Hot Chocolate Chip Cookies, one proclaiming to be the Softest CCC ever… but I think I’ve finally found… The Recipe. The One.

It’s The Brown Eyed Baker’s Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. Oh my.

These are the chocolate chip cookies I’ve been dreaming of all my life – thick, chewy in the middle, crisp on the outside, too large to dunk into milk unless you break them in two… simply divine.

And now, excuse me. I’m gonna go shackle myself to the bed so I don’t eat them all at once.

Money, fame and fortune never could compete

Playing with my Macbook, I discovered that uploading my photos from my camera and uploading them to Flickrs was easier than ever, so here’s a long-overdue picture post!

I shall start with today, proceed reverse-chronologically, and illustrate (quite literally) some random items along the way. Yay!

Anyway, this weekend is Thanksgiving weekend as well as the first Advent Sunday, so I decided to throw a Thanksgiving dinner. I might have overdone it slightly…

… keep in mind that this is for four people! Although somehow, miraculously, we have a surprisingly low amount of leftovers. What was on the menu? Rosemary goose (mostly following these instructions), Burgundy Mushrooms, Thanksgiving Mashed Potatoes, Sweet Potato Casserole, Buttermilk Biscuits, Cornbread Stuffing, Creamed Corn, Pumpkin Pie, Hard Sauce, and I think that was it. It was beyond awesome, and totally worth the spending two days in the kitchen.

After dinner, we took a walk along the canal to aid digestion. It’s been cold here the last couple of days, and it’s even snowed – it feels kind of early for snow, but then again, I keep forgetting it’s almost December. Oh, wait, I don’t forget that: I purposefully push it out of my mind. Oh god.

Incidentally, this was the first time I wore my Vespergyle mitts outside! The right mitten hasn’t been steamed yet and it shows a little if you know what you’re looking for, but I’m absolutely enamored with these mittens: big enough to fit my hands, comfy, Argyle… lovely, just lovely.

Anyway, the pumpkin pie with hard sauce was kind of the highlight of my evening. Lovely stuff. I really like this photo for some reason.

In other, less gluttony-induced news, I’ve been spinning! That’s 50g of New Zealand Lamb, dyed by Sandy at Alles Handgemacht, bought at the Bunter November event at the Strickcafé. I bought a bunch of stuff, including two skeins of BFL yarn and some red laceweight, but the thing I love most is this gorgeous 150g skein of merino from Handgefaerbt.com:

I kid you not, it’s the most beautiful yarn I’ve ever seen. I don’t know how it’ll look knit up, but it’s rich, and subtle, and earthy, and vivid, and soft, and brilliant, and just so, so gorgeous! In every stage of winding, too, which is something I see rarely:

It’s one of these yarns I’m not sure I’ll ever knit up, because it’s so hard to live up to something that gorgeous.

So, yeah. In other words: nothing new in my corner of the Land of Knitting. I’m trudging along on my Christmas project and getting my instant gratification through cooking and baking. (Two days of cooking are instant gratification?! Somebody help me!)

How far this bad wild child’s gonna go

Sometimes, just sometimes, I kind of realize that it would be much more beneficial to my weight if my preferred method of procrastination wasn’t baking.

Batch of a new recipe for Quiche Lorraine Scones, huge (as per usual) batch of Hot Chocolate Chip Cookies, the best damn cookies ever. The only thing more chocolatey are the Quintuple Chocolate Brownies.

Days to paper deadline: Six.

This is gonna end in tears and/or a baking orgy of post-Denny Izzie proportions.

Can music save your mortal soul?

I’ve considered a dozen different captions with witty references to Supernatural, or a certain series of high school/college movies, or Don McLean, but really…

… whatever I say, it can’t even come close to this freaking amazing, perfect, brilliant apple pie I made today.

Mach das Radio an und dreh richtig laut auf

Holy crap, I haven’t blogged in a while! I guess it’s mostly because I felt like I didn’t knit that much, but now that I look around on Ravrav and in my apartment, a couple of things have accumulated. Plus, recipe recommendations!

I still haven’t duplicate stitched a huge letter on my Weasley sweater. I still haven’t finished Haruni. I haven’t knit a pair of socks in a long time. And I haven’t been out and about so much in quite some time.

I have, however, learned to double knit, and it’s a TON of fun. So much fun, in fact, that I kind of never want to do anything else. (I’m sure that effect will wear of sooner than later, but I’ll bask in the glow as long as I can.) I love the HOLY CRAP! effect you get when you first show people the one side…

and then you say SURPRISE! and turn it around.

So, yeah. What I got there is really a glorified swatch that is kind of like a really oversized potholder but in reality is too big and unwieldy to be a proper potholder. It still hangs in the kitchen, on the potholder hook, cause I’m that proud.

Knit with Rico Creative Cotton (1 ball yellow, the other four colors left over from washcloths) on 3.5mm.  It’s a colored version of a washcloth design, cut by 10 stitches because in my head, 20+17 is apparently 47, not 37. It turned out to be a blessing that I cast on too few stitches, because the yarn was just barely enough. As in, there was barely enough yellow left to weave the end in after crocheting around the edge. The next DK project I’ve planned: Winchester Potholders. Oh yeah.

Speaking of Rico Creative Cotton, I finished my kitchen towel the day after my birthday, and it’s okay. We mostly use it for drying off hands and pans, cause it kinda lints. Which is weird, for cotton. But it does, and because it’s bright red, the lint looks really unappealing on white plates and glassware. Good thing that’s not an issue for the two washcloths I churned out, one red Knit Apple Cloth for the kitchen and one blue Stargate Earth for Saskia. Man, those two aren’t even on Rav yet.

On a less successful note, I cast on for the Swallowtail Stole a couple of days ago, and… holy crap, it’s kicking my ass. A puny little 6-stitch repeat is kicking my ass so hard I can feel it in my throat. Meaning: I still haven’t gotten beyond the set-up row. In fact, I haven’t gotten beyond half of the set-up row. Granted, it’s like 350 sts or something, but man. Six-stitch repeat. Of a pattern I’ve knit two shawls in. And I keep tinking back and fixing things and realizing forty stitches later that I shouldn’t have fixed that. It’s terrible. I don’t know what it is, either. I know it’ll get better once I’m past the set-up round, cause then I can read the pattern in the knitting, but shit, I am so close to giving up on this. Or I was, until my stubbornness kicked in and I realized I refuse to be beaten by, you know. A six-stitch repeat.

Which is just plain pathetic.

Speaking of plain, I’m thinking about ripping back the Ghostproof sweater to the salt line, add a couple rows of plain brown, and then… possibly just go on with the ribbing, and just do salt lines around the arms. Maybe the neck. Maybe just duplicate stitch fornicating moose on one shoulder. I thought the salt line placement wouldn’t bother me, cause, you know, it’s so damn smart and I was so damn proud, but honestly, I don’t think I could’ve found a less flattering place for it. So yeah, there’s that. And it was such a perfect fit, too.

***

Now, one of the reasons I haven’t been knitting a whole lot is that I’ve been baking and cooking like crazy. It’s kind of ridiculous, really, the amount of flour and butter we go through here. Especially flour. Which is in everything, from homemade pasta to brownies. And baking is just so satisfying, especially when you’re like me and getting your ass kicked by a six-stitch repeat and *trails off, grumbling*

So, here my go-to baked goodies:

Biscuits. Good, old-fashioned biscuits. Or the ones with parmesan and thyme. I loved them when I was in the US, and when I wanted to do biscuits and gravy here in Germany, I dug up this recipe site, and let me tell you: you won’t need any gravy with this amount of delicious.

Focaccia. Italian flatbread with herbs and garlic. It takes its time, being a yeast dough and everything, but pounding the dough is just about the most satisfying thing ever, plus your hands are butter-soft and smell like herbs and olive oil afterward. Alternatively, leave out the herbs & garlic and replace with ‘a goodly amount’ of sugar and cinnamon, and make 12 delicious cinnamon balls with it.

Caramel Apple Sticky Buns. Speaking of cinnamon. Oh, my.

Quintuple Chocolate Brownies. I know I’ve linked the recipe before, but man, these would probably be on my short list for a last meal. Along with the Sticky Buns and a steak with green beans.

Don’t even fix a price

I spent about four and a half hours today puttering around in the kitchen, baking, cleaning, cooking, eating, and carefully stacking my cookies into tins. My back hurts, I’m beat… and I couldn’t be happier.

Man. I rocked them cookies.

SCHOKOLIS

250 g butter
1 pack vanilla sugar
100 g confectioner’s sugar
250 g corn starch
75 g all-purpose flour
30 g baking cocoa
Filling: 100 g hazelnuts

Beat butter until creamy. Add vanilla sugar and confectioner’s sugar, then the mix of starch, flour and cocoa. Stir first, then switch to kneading. Form rolls with a 2 cm diameter, then cut into 1 cm slices. Add one hazelnut to every slice and form a ball with the nut in the middle. Lay out on a cookie sheet and bake at 180°C for 15-20 minutes. Let the cookies cool off in a strainer or on a rack, then dip into chocolate.

**

VIENNESE VANILLA CRESCENTS

a)
50 g almonds (ground)
50 g hazelnuts (ground)
280 g all-purpose flour
70 g sugar
200 g butter
2 egg yolks
1 pinch of salt

b)
5 packs vanilla sugar
½ cup confectioner’s sugar

Mix all a) ingredients together and knead quickly into a firm dough. Wrap in cling foil and let the dough rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C. Roll dough into cylinders as thick as a pencil, cut into 5 cm/ 2 inch pieces and form into crescents. Bake for 10 minutes until golden.

Mix vanilla sugar and confectioner’s sugar. Dip the crescents into the sugar mixture while they’re still hot, then let them cool on a rack.

It’s the final breakthrough

Few, very few things indeed, are as satisfying as baking.

I do know this makes me sound like an even bigger nerd than I normally am, but man… last night, when I carefully snapped open the springform pan, and stuck my knife in, and landed a perfect piece of pumpkin pie on my plate… my friends, I tell you, it was a slice of heaven right there.

The brilliant, uncomplicated and not-using-a-lot-of-stuff-I-can’t-stick-into-the-dishwasher recipe is over here at Chefkoch. (It’s in German, but if anyone wants a translation, I’ll  be happy to oblige.)

(Just look at that pumpkiny goodness.)

In other news, I have a little tea pot, short and stout, and I bought it so I could make it a sweater.

I’ve always had a secret passion for tea cozies, but I never actually owned a tea pot I could make one for, so… yeah. Other people make cozies cause they have a pot. I buy the pot to make a cozy. Whatever.

It’s Elisabeth Kleven’s Tea Mitten (link goes to the Rav-Rav) in Zitron Nimbus, on 3.5mm metal DPNs and a circ. It’s a tad big, I’ll admit that, but still. It might, uh, shrink in the wash. Or something. But yeah, I totally made a merino tea cozy. Yup.

Quick Garter Stitch Bitch update: chugging along. Choo, choo.

Other exciting stuff that happened today: It’s another gorgeous fall day, and my 650g Hamburger Wollfabrik 5-ply chocolate brown merino extafine arrived.

Time Warp

Gut Ding will Weile haben – loosely equivalent to Good things come to those who wait. Being the optimist that I am, this is one of the few things I really, truly believe in: if you put a lot of time into something and give it time to mature, it will turn out great.

While this puts me at odds with a whole lot of modern society, it is precisely why I love knitting so much, and why yeast dough is my favorite kind of dough. It’s the perfect example for the need to let things sit for a while: You start it, put the flour and the milk and the yeast and a bit of sugar together in a bowl – and then you wait. You do other stuff. When it’s ready, you go back, add eggs and butter and salt and the rest of the sugar, and knead it into something that finally resembles some sort of dough instead of some ingredients lumped together in a bowl and forgotten in a warm spot.

But instead of speeding ahead now, at the first sight of something vaguely doughy, like you would with brownies (especially the cake mix ones), you let it sit yet again. Overnight, if you want to. The longer the better.

And when you wake up in the morning, all you have to do is knead it through once more, divide it into three, make a braid, and shove it in the oven to have a delicious, warm yeast braid for breakfast, so fresh that you need nothing more than a bit of butter melting on the fluffy inside.

Which is while brownies are great, they will never have the class of a nice, matured yeast braid.

What I guess I’m trying to say is… I really, really hope that if I ignore that second Swallowtail Shawl long enough, something in me will snap, I’ll find the mistake, and boom – shawl.