March 15, 2008

"C" Is For ...



I *love* the taste of chillies and chocolate, and lucky for me the neighborhood World Market carries several different types of gourmet bars of at least 60% cacao with some type of chili mixed in.

My favorite for baking is World Market's own brand of 64% dark with chipotle chili. I chop up about a bar and a half for these cookies, which—if done right—should come out chewy with just a bit of crispiness on the edges.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups AP flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1.7 oz. instant vanilla pudding mix
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tabl. vanilla
2 eggs
~1 cup chopped chocolate

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 325°F.
• In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, and pudding mix.
• In a larger bowl, cream the butter and sugars. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until creamy.
• Using a spoon, blend the flour mixture into the butter mixture, adding in about a third at a time.
• Stir in the chocolate.
• Drop dough about a tablespoon at a time onto the cookie sheet.
• Bake for 15 minutes or until the edges are golden and the centers are slightly puffed up.
• Let cool on the sheet for a few minutes and then transfer to racks to cool completely.

The keys to good chewy cookies, I have found, are to use room-temperature butter, do not use an electric mixer to blend in the flour, and bake only until just the edges look done—any longer and the carryover heat will make the cookies too crispy. The pudding mix is a great trick I picked up for keeping the cookies moist for days—if they last that long!

March 13, 2008

Who Doesn't [Heart] Chaos?

Yes, I'm a slacker. I skipped a few days of posting in favor of sleep, house cleaning, and baking cookies. Get over it.

Luckily I resurfaced in time to read about this ever so awesome complete-ish Futurama time line over at I Heart Chaos. Clearly someone has an expensive DVD box set and a lot of time on their hands, but it works out for the benefit of all of us lazier geeks who need a good reference source.

A few dates near and dear to my fangirl heart:

July 9, 1947: Emerging from a time-warp, the Planet Express ship crash-lands near Roswell, New Mexico.

2008: Stop ‘n’ Drop becomes America’s favorite suicide booth.

2200s: The Star Trek cast do some musical reunions, but the guy who plays Scotty has trouble yodeling so he is replaced by Welshy.



2620: To end that stupid joke once and for all, Uranus is renamed.

~1,000,000,000,002,000: Al Gore, Fry, Deep Blue, Stephen Hawking, Michelle Nichols, and Gary Gygax finish playing Dungeons & Dragons.

Now wasn't that worth the wait?