The intro

Ok so I have several friends who blog and I love reading their posts. I have some incredible friends who are smart and funny as hell. Which has always made me kind of scared to blog myself. I tend to sound like a raging alcoholic with non coherent sentence structure (sadly I dont drink anymore). But I have passion to write about a few things: love, my family, memories but most of all, right now at the moment, my hobby. Baking.

If someone told me 5 years ago I would be a married mother who loved to bake i would have laughed in their face (and probably threw up on their shoes- i use to drink). But it’s true. I love to bake.

I love the thought of having ingredients and making something out of them. Something very good. Something sweet but not too sweet. Something that will make people happy (even if it can make them a little fluffy).

So i start this blog with the intention of letting feelings flow and hopefully someone can get a recipe or two out of me. I will probably write about travel or memories that are sparked by a smell or a taste of something i bake. Isn’t that the best anyway? How cool is it to smell something and invoke a memory.

So please bookmark me and ask any and all question about my sweet treats.

Thanks again for stopping by.

My first recipe is fool proof. Literally. Its one of the first cookies I ever made. Its got 3 ingredients and its a snap to make. This was my first recipe I ever tried with baking. I won the cookbook at some lame Home party where they sell you wayyyy overpriced items for your kitchen and living room. At that time we didnt have a lot of money (I know some people can relate to that with the economy in the shitter these days) and I really wanted to make my husband something sweet and homemade. Honestly Dave loves anything I make (except for an ill fated attempt at gravy- yeesh) so I know he would have been happy with a store bought mix cake. But no. I’m a housewife and I need to bake something homemade! So i started looking through the book. The cookies were on the cover and caught my eye. I scoured for the recipe and was surprised when I saw there are only 3 ingredients. How hard could it be? So I set off to make the first batch of my now famous shortbread cookies. David loved them. I still make them for him on occasion. I even start making them as a base for chocolate blobbies. That’s later.

Shortbread Cookies

Shortbread Cookies

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (softened), no substitutes

1/2 cup brown sugar (granulated is fine too in a pinch)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

In a mixer (i use a KitchenAid stand mixer but a handheld is fine too) cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Now GRADUALLY add the flour, slowly to form dough. You will have to stop the mixer from time to time and spoon excess flour from sides back into the mix. Take dough out of the mixer and knead on a lightly floured counter. Pat into a 11 by 8 rectangle. You can chill the dough for 20 minutes and then slice it into strips. Or I usually just take the dough and cut them out into shapes (hearts, ducks, etc) after the dough is a little hard (about 15 min in the fridge). Or you can do blobbies. Form the dough into little balls and press a Hershey’s kiss into it. The edges will crack a little.

Bake for 25 minutes. Cool for 5-10 minutes. If doing blobbies you could put them in the fridge for half an hour (the chocolate will be very easy to get all over the place).

Transfer to wire rack to completely cook.

Depending on the size of your cookies you can get up to 3 dozen. I usually get around 2 dozen with blobbies and with cutout shortbread cookies.

Shortbread Blobbies