Cranberry, Pistachio and White Chocolate Cookies

I think I may have found my go-to Cranberry, Pistachio and White Chocolate cookie.

I actually made a batch of these a week earlier while I was prepping for my fourth annual baking night with red and green colored white chocolate chips, sans nuts. I didn't think the cookies were anything special but Andrew and his sister Amanda kept raving about them, so I decided to make a second batch. With a little tweaking, these cookies looked and tasted great, and may make it into my annual Christmas baking list.

Adapted from Yankee Magazine's White Chocolate Chip Cranberry Cookie recipe.

Ingredients
2/3 cup finely snipped dried sweetened cranberries (I skipped the "snipped" part and just dumped in the cranberries as is - Ocean Spray Craisins or Trader Joe's dried cranberries both work great!)
2 tablespoons water (I omitted this part as well - I didn't think the cranberries needed to be softened)
3/4 cup white granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 large egg
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped nuts (I used whole roasted and salted pistachios from Trader Joe's, plus I chopped a half cup to top the cookies with)
2 cups (12 oz package) white chocolate chips - (try to use anything that lists cocoa butter as an ingredient for a decent white chocolate - again, Trader Joe's came through on this front with the best quality and price)

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees
2. Cream butter and sugars, then add egg.
3. In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, pistachios, and white chocolate chips. Add to first mixture. (I combined all the dry ingredients with the butter/egg/sugar mixture first, and then added cranberries, nuts and chips.

Look how pretty and festive all the ingredients look - I love seeing the red of the cranberries and the green of the pistachios:

4. Drop by spoonfuls on parchment lined cookie sheets. (I used my handy dandy Oxo cookie scoop to form rounded balls, gently pushed the tops into crushed pistachios and baked on my Silpat covered cookie sheets).

The ratio of cookie dough to ingredients was insane - I felt like there was barely enough cookie dough to hold all the pistachio, cranberry and white chocolate goodness but somehow, it all came together:

After coming out of the oven, I loved how the cookies retained their rounded shape, ensuring that they would stay crisp on the outside and soft on the inside:

The best part - the roasted pistachios on top. I couldn't stop picking bits off and eating them! Their saltiness and toasted flavor balanced out the sweetness from the chocolate and cranberries:


This batch ended up being split in two, one half for Andrew's Christmas Eve office potluck and one half for dessert at Andrew's parents' place on Christmas eve. I think I ended up with around four dozen cookies with my medium size scoop.

I also made a chocolate cake with white chocolate peppermint ganache for Andrew's Christmas potluck, but I was so frustrated by how messy the cake got at the end that I didn't bother taking picures. It apparently turned out amazing so I will have to make it again, this time carefully and with pictures documenting all the steps!

Very Berry Granola and Muddy Buddies

OK, I know it's been ages since I've blogged.
I had a wonderful trip to NYC over the weekend but sadly, I think I may have accidentally
deleted most of the pictures. There is a small chance that I did manage to upload the photos to Andrew's sister's (our gracious hostess) computer, so there may be catch up later this week.

So onto the present.

As a last minute decision, I decided to make some holiday treats as Christmas gifts for my coworkers. I'm usually not around for Christmas, as I usually spend a couple of weeks visiting my parents in Japan around this time. So it was strange to be in the office so close to holidays and not have anything to offer people.

Based on the fact that I've been on baking overload lately, I wanted something quick, relatively easy and something that could be packaged attractively.

I decided on homemade Berry Granola and Muddy Buddies.

I adapted a recipe from Martha Stewart to use for the granola:

Ingredients (I doubled this recipe)
2 cups of old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 cup of sweetened shredded coconut (I upped this by an extra 1/2 cup because I LOVE coconut)
1/2 cup sliced almonds
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (I doubled this and the honey, so with the double batch, I had 8 tablespoons of each total)
2 tablespoons honey
1 cup dried blueberries (Replaced this with a cup of mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries and cherries) from Trader Joes and added a half cup of cranberries)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

On a large rimmed baking sheet, toss oats, coconut and almonds (since I doubled the batch, I had to split the mixture into half for baking):

In a small bowl, stir together oil and honey. Pour over oat mixture and toss

Bake, tossing occasionally, until lightly toasted, 16 to 20 minutes (I mixed it every five minutes and baked it for 15 minutes total).

Place mixture in a large bowl and stir in blueberries. (I just poured the berries on top of the pan so the granola could remain on the bowl to cool):

After it cooled, I stored it in an airtight container (plastic tupperware) overnight.

Next, it was onto the Muddy Buddies.

Ingredients

9 cups of Chex cereal (I went with Corn and used the whole box)

1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips (I upped this to 1 1/2 cups)

1/2 cup of peanut butter (I upped this to 3/4 cup and used creamy peanut butter)

1/4 cup butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar

Directions

In a large bowl, measure cereal (I skipped this step).

Microwave chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter in a microwaveable bowl on high for 1 minute, stir. Microwave for another 30 seconds or until mixture can be stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla. Pour mixture over cereal until evenly coated (I reversed this by pouring the cereal on top of the mixture):


Now for the fun part, pour the cereal into a two gallon resealable bag with the powdered sugar, seal, and shake until coated. (I had to split the batch into two parts since I only had one gallon bags):

Spread on waxed paper to cool:

In the morning, I packed the granola into Ziploc bags and placed them into cute Christmas bags I had picked up in Japan, along with a helpful hint from Martha Stewart. The hint (which I printed on individual tags) gave suggestions on what to eat granola with (since I was afraid not everyone was familiar with granola):


The Muddy Buddies were simply put into clear plastic bags and tied with raffia and everything was ready to go to for the office.

Coconut Macaroons

For my office potluck, I was given the challenge of making macaroons for the first time at the request of a British coworker.

Using Google, I found a simple recipe from Ina Garten:

What could be simpler than just five ingredients? And I swapped the kosher salt for the regular salt that I had on hand.

Whipping the egg whites went well - while I didn't take a picture, I used the Top Chef test of holding the bowl upside down to see if the egg whites were stiff enough. Lucky for me, they held on!

I had my doubts with the next step- how does one "gently fold" whipped egg whites into this gluey, clumpy mixture of coconut, condensed milk and vanilla?

With a lot of gentle mixing and folding, it all came together and I used my handy dandy Oxo cookie scoop to form the unruly mixture into something resembling a ball:

The macaroons were supposed to bake for 25 minutes until golden brown - all it took was 14 minutes for them to scorch in my oven, and this was with me lowering the oven temperature by 25 degrees:

Despite their less than golden brown appearance, everyone raved that they were perfectly crisp on the outside and moist and chewy on the inside. Personally, they were a little too sweet for me so I think I'll try it with unsweetened coconut next time:

December Office Potluck

I think my coworkers and I surpassed ourselves with this month's potluck. Don't get me wrong, the food has always been good in the past, even when we first started.

This month seemed to be more like a battle of the crock pots!

Close up look at my boss's "special" mashed potatoes and another coworkers AMAZING turkey white chili - I'm still waiting on the recipe for this, since she basically combined elements from three different recipes:

Teriyaki wings and a hearty beef chili:


We had a bunch of healthier sides, like salad and fruit salad, and not so healthy sides, like homemade corn bread; and spinach and artichoke dip:

Finally - the desserts! You may recognize some of the cookies from Sunday, as I provided three of the desserts. In the lower left corner are hermits - I usually never like anything gingerbread flavored but these were fantastic! Expect a post on them soon, as I was able to snag my coworker's mother's recipe for these:

I made carrot cupcakes at the request of one coworker, whose birthday we were celebrating:


And for the other coworker with a December birthday, coconut macaroons (more to come on these later):

Lost and Found

I had to laugh tonight when I found this green egg.

Where is it from you may ask? If you guessed Easter, you would be correct. I remember having a discussion with Andrew trying to figure out how many eggs I had hid for him. I thought it was twelve and he had only found eleven. I couldn't even rely on the number of plastic eggs that came in a package, because I had used some random eggs from the previous years.

So I found number 12 tonight while I was hiding one of Andrew's Christmas gifts. I guess my mind always thinks of the same hiding spots!

Ladies + Cody Baking Night

As I mentioned last year, one of the holiday traditions that I've come to appreciate more and more each year is baking with a group of wonderful friends that I met while working at Monster. As our lives get busier each year, which on the plus side means we have more to celebrate, I love the fact that we're able to make time to spend a day baking with each other. This goes beyond a mere cookie swap - we bake most of the treats on site while catching up on lives and helping one another out. This year was made even more special with the addition of a little helper, Cody. I can remember when his Mom's belly was 9 (!) months full on the same baking night two years ago.

Everyone pitched in to help me unwrap candy cane and regular milk chocolate kisses:


Cody joined in on the action:


And showed remarkable restraint by not eating a single one! Although, Kelli attributed this to the fact that he probably didn't realize that the kisses were chocolate. :)

As a reward, he was given one of Z's delicious chocolate chunk cookies:

Um, three guesses on how much he liked the cookie:

Before you think that I've devoted most of this post to Cody (it does mention baking in the title) - here are some of the things we made.

Z's famous chocolate chip and chocolate chunk cookies. She also did a batch with white chocolate chips and heath bar bits - yum!

Trays of Heather's oreo truffle balls, before they were drizzled with white chocolate:

My contribution - chocolate cookies with candy cane kisses and peanut butter cookies with milk chocolate kisses - we had a few mishaps since white chocolate melts more quickly than milk chocolate! Problem solved by putting the candy cane kisses in the freezer for a few minutes before topping cookies hot out of the oven:

Z was pretty as a picture in an apron:

Then it was time to introduce Heather and Kevin's (who had just arrived home) babies Daphne and Clyde to Cody, after Cody had literally babbled about "puppies" all afternoon:

I realize this picture makes it look like Daphne was grabbing Cody but they both were really gentle with him, nuzzling his arm and giving him kisses:

Cody loved interacting with the dogs from the safety of his mama's arms:

A group shot at the end of another long baking session. Joy of joys, I got to hold Cody all day and for the picture (how cute is that hat?)

I can't wait until next year's baking session (which will be year five!). Hopefully, I'll be able to host it if we have our own place and a nice kitchen!

Why I Shop Online...

I met up with Jen for a day of shopping on Saturday. It took me over twenty minutes to find a parking space in one of the garages, and this was even though I was deliberately trying to park in a "undesirable" space that was further away from the mall.

Traffic leading into one of the many parking garages at the Natick Collection (formerly the Natick mall before it went upscale) at around 2 p.m.:

Traffic still backed up over three hours later:

The most aggravating part? I walked out empty handed. Some stores were just too packed to deal with - we'd walk in, take one look and walk right out. Plus, I like being able to search for coupons when I buy things online.

It's Beginning To Look Like Christmas...

Normal and non-lazy people would post a picture of their own Christmas tree here.




But this gorgeous tree actually belongs to Andrew's parents.


We haven't put up a tree of our own. Partly, it's laziness. However, I think part of it is being dispirited in the sense that we had pictured decorating a new place for the holidays and had come so close to that. Since our place is a little bah humbug right now, it was nice to see this sight waiting for us on Friday night.


We had Andrew's work Christmas dinner on the Cape with his bosses and coworkers, and ended up spending the night in Plymouth. It's nights like that where I really notice how many stars are in the sky. The sky was unbelievably clear on the Cape, and with little light pollution, you could see ALL the stars, including my favorite constellation, Orion. And, we saw a shooting star! I can't remember the last time I saw a shooting star but that second-long burst of light gave us a definitive thrill.


I tried to take a picture, but as you can see, that idea didn't work. You'll have to take my word for it.

Ten Months Out

Yikes! We're ten months out from our wedding.

My big wedding-related task to get accomplished for the month? Picking a florist.

I've met with one already and will be meeting with another next week, and I'm confident that between the two, I'll find the right florist with the style that I'm looking for. It's crazy to see a floral proposal breaking down the crazy amounts of money being spent on flowers.

The pictures that have caught my eye so far:

I love the fullness of the flowers and the shape of bouquet:


I am seriously digging this bouquet from Petalena Flowers, the vendor I'm meeting with next week - it's got the textures and range of colors (although not the same colors) that I'm looking for:



Also from Petalena: I heart ranunculus and I would love to work in fiddleheads:



And I know I will be have bright green flowers appearing in some shape or another:

Baby Bowl

Football fans everywhere were thrilled when the bowl match ups were announced a few days ago.


Anyone that knows me well knows that I'm kind of meh about football. I love the atmosphere and the tailgating and I will even give up a perfect fall day to cheer on my alma mater, BC in Alumni Stadium, but as for the game itself - I find it rather boring compared to sports like soccer, tennis and hockey.


So why I am devoting a blog post to bowl games? There's a particularly intriguing match-up this year. And I will freely admit that Andrew had a part in influencing this post.


The Penn State Nittany Lions, Andrew's alma mater (sidebar: what the heck is a Nittany lion and what makes it different from other lions - Andrew's never explained this to my satisfaction) will be facing the LSU Tigers in the Capital One bowl in Orlando on New Year's Day.


I'm not too concerned about the players on the field. What I'm getting a kick out of will be the fans at home who will be cheering on their teams.


Proud parents Jeanne and Mike brought Marie Elizabeth into world as a LSU fan - she had no choice but to be a baby tiger, considering that her parents met while they were attending LSU. Clearly, they were taking no chances in teaching her who to root for.


And in the opposing corner, we have the adorable Cameron Evon, son of one of Andrew's college friends Eric and his wife Jen - just look at those eyes and long lashes trying to seduce you into joining his team:


Marie expresses her opinion of Penn State while sporting a LSU bib - take that Penn State bib! (Seriously, how cute are those cheeks!)



Cameron gets serious in his defense of the Lions and widens his eyes just a tad bit more for the full
"Blue Steel" look:



Marie tells Cameron she can eat him for breakfast, just like her LSU shoes - prepare to be blinded by purple and gold:

Andrew's favorite picture of Cameron - he tells me that Cameron is simply ending the argument by pumping his baby fist in support of Penn State:

Some may have seen through my flimsy excuse to show off pictures of our friends' cute kids but all I know is that it'll be tough to pick the team to win on New Year's.

So I'll end this post with a little help from Adriana, daughter of Kelly, one of my old college roommates:

Go BC! They'll face the USC Trojans in the Emerald Bowl on December 26: