Americanuck

Hey! As of today Tom and I have been married for five years!

We generally take a low key approach to our Anniversary (and the evil cult of Valentine’s Day) and exchange cards and do a dinner or whatever. After a stretch of Birthdays and Christmas we are pretty much at a loss for gifts around this time, not to mention we tend to go a bit overboard on Christmas especially that it works well.

Of course this will excludes the major 1oth anniversary. I’ve already taken Tom into the jewelry store and shoved his nose against the glass while pointing out what I want ring-wise for that anniversary. I figure this is fair. Ten years to squirrel away money should be plenty of time and I’m not exactly talking a diamond of the Elizabeth Taylor variety

M’kay Hon?

So this morning we exchanged our cards and kisses over post-breakfast morning coffee.

Tom is working a long stretch of nights so we will have to plan out the dinners we are behind for; Chris’ birthday, my birthday and our anniversary. I voted Red Robin for mine, I’ve been craving their California Chicken burger for months now!

I’m giving my bread machine another trial run, this time making a cinnamon bread I found on this blog  (without raisins, thank you Jebus!) and it is currently whirring away as we speak. I cannot wait to smell the cinnamon in the air when baking.  Yum!

One of my Christmas presents this year was a bread machine. I’d been hinting to Chris for the last oh, couple of years or so ever since he started working and had the money to buy me a bread machine really. This year I kept up the hints, turned up the emphasis and this time it paid off. Woot!

I picked up the special bread flour (supposed to be better for bread than all purpose) and some bread machine yeast. I was a tad wary as I’m not exactly Martha Stewart but I figure how can you mess up something that just requires you to put the ingredients in a MACHINE in the required order (wet first, dry next, yeast last) and press a few buttons. Heck, even I can handle that. Of course I had a momentary panic attack when I read in the instruction booklet that I should use the supplied tools to measure the dry ingredients and a measuring cup/glass designed for liquids (there’s a difference??)

*pause to look this up on the ‘net*

I found out this meant one of those pyrex ones as the marks are below the brim and dry means you fill to the top and level. Hey cool something I’ve done for years without even realizing.. Phew! So check, yep I had the appropriate tools.

Ok, not all of us are born chefs!

So anyway, the process itself was super easy. I had to turn the bread machine backwards on my counter as you need to have enough room to open the lid and the cupboards kinda get in the way.

I made the mistake of trying to make homemade bread once and it was a complete disaster. It was still amazing to me however, that a machine could know what to do when it’s supposed to.

After pressing the start button and crossing my fingers I heard the machine making noises every so often, going through each cycle. It took a while but eventually I heard a few dings and it turned off and lo and behold.. BREAD!

The one “bad” thing I can say about it is the rather tall loaf you end up with but heck I can deal. Now I’ve gotten through the initial run it will be nice to be able to make bread whenever the mood hits, and to try different kinds of bread. The cleanup is pretty easy too unlike some of the other appliances I’ve gotten it into my head to buy. I have a bit of an appliance addiction which is very bad considering the limited kitchen space we have.

The recipe I used was from the Robin Hood flour website, a nice basic white loaf. I think next time though I will go with the light crust setting rather than the medium (purely personal taste). I may try to get a little more fancy by adding stuff or trying to make a nice cheese bread. I love cheese bread.

It’s Sunday, I’m alone and bored. So what does that mean? BAKING!

There are so many variations of recipes out there, but I have a favourite chocolate chip (or chunk) cookie recipe that I always use and it’s never let me down. I often use butter flavoured Crisco in baking, but if you’re a butter puritan, this recipe works great with butter too.

For a change I decided to combine some milk chocolate, semi-sweet and white chips together in one cookie.

2 1/4 cups of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup softened butter (or one cup room temp butter flavoured Crisco + 2 tablespoons of water)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla (though I add a touch more and a touch less water when I use the butter flavoured Crisco)

2 eggs

1 package of chocolate chips (variation: break up Hershey Bars Milk is my fave but either works. Don’t put into the dough mix, rather press a couple of squares into the individual cookie dough on the baking sheet, they melt well and add a big chunk of chocolate to a basic cookie)

Flour, salt and baking soda is combined in a small mixing bowl and set aside.
In a larger bowl cream together the butter, both sugars and vanilla until creamy.

Beat in one egg at a time until mixed through.

Add the flour mixture by hand gradually, then stir in the chocolate chips

Bake at 375 degree temperature for 8-10 minutes (my oven is usually smack on 8 minutes)

Let cool for a bit on the cookie sheet, the move to a cooling rack.

These cookies turn out more on the soft and chewy with a little outside crispy side which is my preference.

Then enjoy!