Time for this week’s Thursday Things:
1. The Huffington Post named me as one of The Best Food Bloggers: HuffPost’s Top 10 Picks
I’m honored to have been chosen. Some fellow bloggers whom I’ve gotten to know over the years are also on the list, making it even nicer to be named among friends. I never would have thought I’d be seeing my name on a list like this, but I’m very grateful and highly appreciative. Seriously, I am humbled.
I’m on Slide 7 of 11
2. 10 Tips, no matter the recipe, to bake a better chocolate chip cookie, including don’t overmix, chill the dough, use a cookie scoop.
I thought this point is particularly interesting with regard to not using fancy butter: “When you swap regular butter for European style without otherwise changing the recipe, the cookies wind up with more fat than the flour can reasonably absorb, giving them a greasy mouthfeel.”
I bake all my cookies, including these Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies, with Trader Joe’s unsalted sticks of butter, $2.99 for a pound which suits me just fine. Kerrygold is my splurge butter but I generally don’t bake with it; it’s for eating on things rather than baking with.
3. I wrote a Baking Supplies post nearly a year ago about some of the things I use and do to make cookie-baking results as optimal as possible.
4. Monday, October 8 was National Fluffernutter Day. I didn’t know this until Glamour Magazine featured my Fluffernutter Smoothie
5. I’ve been baking more cakes lately and I want this Fondant Marble Cake Stand, Anthro $128. Even if your cake isn’t perfect looking or perfect tasting, I’m sure that putting it under the glass dome of white marble and carved sheesham wood pedestal would make anything look more beautiful and taste more fabulous.
6. Do you consider yourself to be a positive person? 10 Essential Habits of Positive People
7. Olive Wood Paddle Boards, $19 to $39 at West Elm which is a steal and they can be monogrammed.
“Gorgeous grains. Beautiful marbling, amazing durability and warm, earthy tones—three reasons to go with olive wood for your next wine and cheese party. As functional as they are decorative, these boards can be monogrammed with different letters to separate veggies from meat or gluten-free from wheat.”
8. I’ve started baking bread. Real bread with yeast instead of quick breads and I’ve been having so much fun. I have recipes coming in the weeks ahead for bread and if you’ve ever feared yeast and real bread-making with yeast, don’t. If I can pull it off, so can you because generally speaking, I have the patience of a two-year old and always thought that bread-making was an exercise in waiting around and a big production and wouldn’t it just be easier and faster to buy a loaf at the store. I’m here to say I wish I had started baking bread years ago because it’s incredibly rewarding and the process is gratifying. But in the meantime, make this bread if you need a seasonally-appropriate quickie quick bread.
9. This pink Cuisinart soft serve ice cream maker is on sale for $100 at Neiman Marcus. I think that’s a stellar deal and I’d love it.
10. Chunky throws on sale for $37.90 at Nordstrom. Another thing I’d love. But I also need to buy groceries, pay Skylar’s tuition, and not run up my credit card on ice cream makers and cute blankets. Darn.
What are your Thursday Things?
If you’ve made anything, done, seen, or bought anything fabulous recently, feel free to link it up in the comments.
Do you have any tips or tricks to baking the perfect cookie?
In general, I get better results when I cream the butter rather than melt it, but I love the flavor of butter that’s been browned, cooled, and incorporated into cookie dough. However, I never get quite the thickness I want in my cookies if I melt the butter compared to creaming it. It’s a flavor versus texture trade-off.
Chilling the dough is mandatory. Above all else, if you do one thing, chill it before baking. Chilled dough spreads less and your cookies will bake up thicker, chewier, puffier, denser, and just better with dough that both has had a chance to rest and chill. Most cookie dough can be chilled for up to four days or so before being baked off which gives you time to mix it up, chill it, and then bake the cookies off at your leisure over the next few days.
I always use a cookie scoop because it ensures domed mounds of a uniform size. I linked my $3.99 el cheapo scoop in this post. I recently bought an Italian-made scoop at Williams-Sonoma and it’s fine but I’m not sure if it’s as amazing as it should be for the price; however it’s growing on me the more I use it.
Are you a bread-maker? Would you like to learn? Fave recipe?
If you have anything at all to say about bread or a fave recipe, please speak up and link up. I’m all ears because I’m learning as I go.
Thanks for the Pumpkin Whoopie Pies + Book Giveaway entries
Aren’t you just loved all over the world wide web??! Congrats on your Huff post recognition – so great!! – and for your flutternutter smoothie in Glamour! You deserve it, Averie! (You deserve that ice cream maker, too!) ;-)
Look at you, blowing up all over the place! Congrats, girl!! Can’t wait to see some of that bread you’ve been baking… :-)
You make some great bread – wish I could get a tutorial from you :)
Where do I start?? First – congrats on the nod from Huffington Post. You deserve it. Secondly, pass me a cookie and boy are those wood boards gorgeous!
Thanks Rachel. Can I have one of your muffins? Been seeing them everywhere all day today!
I saw you on Huffington Post the other day – Congrats!!! What a huge accomplishment
Congrats on the well-deserved recognition from Huntington Post!
And a baby pink ice cream maker…hook me up!
I saw that article earlier and was so happy to see your name in it!! Congrats!! On the bread making, just pulled out pumpkin yeast bread out of the oven – divine!!!
Mmm. Pumpkin yeast bread. Can’t wait to hear more!
So many wonderful things on this thursday’s round miss Averie! First, a very well deserved CONGRATS for scoring the top ten favorite food bloggers list! Such an amazing and credible accomplishment, just be being your blogging self! Incredible. guess what? I’ve read that ten tips on a better chocolate chip cookie before! can’t believe I never sent it to you! I saw it on FG. Love the tip of using different shapes and kinds of chocolate. I have to try that out! I always use my grovery’s brand butter, nothing fancy! A glamour feature!!! you go girl. Another stellar mention from a super credible source. You are on FIRE and there’s a reason for it! So much hard work lately. I want that ice cream maker. I want those chunky fuzzy blankets. I want those super cheap wooden planks from west elm!!!!!!!!! Ugh. I need more money!
the perfect cookie – you know my standards. ;)
Thanks for all your sweet words and support! I wish I didn’t have so many cookies on hand right now or I’d be baking some…trust me, I have the urge! Just not the need :)
Congrats on the Huff list! Very well deserved. And I’ve totally been lusting after those olive wood boards. I need one.
Congrats on The Huffington Post and Glamour, that’s awesome! Amazing how your blog has grown in the last couple of years!
It’s been a fun ride and we’ve known each other since the beginning!
First of all, CONGRATS!! You are so famous!!! All accolades are very well deserved indeed!
I always use a cookie scoop, as you know and have been for years. Every cookie is baked and shaped the same. It appeals to my Type A personality. ;)
I used to bake all my own bread. For years and years, up until I found out I couldn’t eat gluten anymore. Now I rarely think about it, but I do miss that fresh from the oven smell. Oh, man I miss it. I’m hungry now.
Congrats on the huffington post feature! I was so happy to see you there because you really are one of my favorite bloggers too :) And I totally need to get that cuisinart ice cream maker! My kitchenaid is pink so it’ll go so well with my pink kitchen decor :)
Congrats on the HuffPost feature!! Oh I love that marble cake stand too, gorgeous!
Congrats on all the fun recognition! You deserve it!
Wow, no one better deserving of such recognition Averie. I ditto Jackie’s comments about how you relate to your readers. I could write a book full of items that I now make regularly that I’ve found on your blog: peanut butter, mustard, so many cookies and smoothies! Congrats!
And now I have to change the subject over to the Olive cutting boards………I lost out on a bid for another more expensive one a few months ago on Ebay so when I saw your picture, I had to check them out. The olive wood is gorgeous. I got the small one and it had free shipping even. The Ebay board was over $40 so I’m no longer sad I missed out on it. Can’t wait to get it and I think it would make a great gift as well.
Thanks so much for all you share with us Averie! :)
Thank you for this sweet comment and for your support and enthusiastic spirit over the years – your comments are a joy to read! Thank you for all of them!
And I am so glad you got that board. Now I need to get one! I have been burned so often on Ebay, too. Sadly, I seem to win when the item is overpriced and a week later I’ll see something for a fraction, i.e. these boards. Tell me how you like it once it arrives!
I am getting one of those Olive wood boards! so cute! And Congrtas on your success, I love ur blog!
Congrats on the HuffPost and Glamour features!! That is such an accomplishment-one that you absolutely deserve!