Kitchen Adventure's

V-Day Flowers

My Valentine's Day actually started on Sunday. I had to work the entire day and the Hubs came in and brought me these flowers.... What a guy!!!!

Then yesterday was our official V-Day "celebration." I came home from work to bake cookies. I'm not a chef, I don't like to cook, and I have never baked anything before.

I googled a ww friendly chocolate chip cookie recipe. I set all of my ingredients out to make sure I had everything and could not, for the life of me, find the flour. Its always in the cabinet next to the stove. I found wheat flour, but not the regular flour you would use for baking. I pulled the whole kitchen apart before calling the hubs to find out where he moved it to. I had to be sneaky and play a game so to not give away the surprise of me actually baking cookies- he knew this was a game- I told him to play nice.

So I asked him 3 questions (yeah- that's pretty tricky of me!)

1. Do you have a red tie and where is it?

2. Do we have flour in the house and where is it?

3. Do we have a screwdriver in the garage because I can't seem to find it!

He answered all of them and then said- DUH- I know you're looking for my red tie!
PERFECT- he fell right into my sneaky trap!!!

I proceeded to get the flour from off the top of the fridge- why did we put it there???? And then, began to attempt to bake. No one warns you how messy the kitchen can actually become when you're trying to do something nice for someone else! So I followed the directions and even tweaked a few things... check out the recipe below:

 Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 2 cups  all-purpose flour
• ½ tsp. baking soda
• ½ tsp. salt
• 12 tbsp. unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 cup granulated sugar ***I substituted 3/4 cup of Splenda
• 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven 325°. Line 1 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. Whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl; set aside. With electric mixer, or by hand, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly combined. Beat in egg, yolk, and vanilla until combined. Add dry ingredients and beat at low-speed just until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
3. Roll dough out with floured rolling pin to the same size as the cookie sheet
4. Bake until cookie cake is light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy (approximately 11-14 minutes). Do not overbake.
5. Use cookie cutter to cut out fun shapes- I used hearts!!!!

I cleaned the kitchen while the cookies baked for 15 minutes. And this is what it looked like before I cut out the heart shapes with the cookie cutter. Success!

They were YUMMY!

The hubs and I loved the cookies. I think I impressed him with my cooking abilities and he asked if this adventure will lead me to try more cooking?? I said no to be on the safe side, but maybe it will. It was actually kind of fun!

*Note-These cookies happen to taste really good with an entire bottle of red wine.

I really did not want to give any gifts so this Friday we are doing "date night" at McFadden's Art Glass.
It's a glass blowing studio where you can make your own art and there's a restaurant next door where you can get food/drinks and make it a date night at the Glass Grill.

I'll let you know how it goes!

I was also suprised to get this watch as a gift (eventhough we said no gifts)... I LOVE IT!