Disappearing Blondies

The weather is back to being miserable on Long Island, cloudy and humid, without even a glimpse of the summer sun. After seeing these blondies posted on Lovin’ From the Oven, I knew exactly what I wanted to bake. Blondies are perfect for a quick snack, and make for a delicious dessert, served warm with caramel and some vanilla ice cream. They have all of the yummy chocolate chip cookie taste but are so much easier to deal with.

Disappearing Blondies

With dark chocolate Godiva bar behind it, mmm...

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups All-purpose flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick of butter
1/2 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Cream the butter, shortening, and sugars in a bowl, and add in the eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl and gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture until just combined. Add a tablespoon or so of flour to the chocolate chips or until coated, this keeps them from all sinking to  the bottom of the blondies. Add the flour coated chocolate chips to the dough, and be sure to take a test spoonful (or two.. or more!) from the dough to make sure it’s tasting good. (; Spread the batter/ dough in a 9 x 13 pan, I used a glass pan, so I didn’t grease it, but if you’re using a metal pan, you’ll probably want to. Smooth out the batter in the pan, and cook in the oven for 40 minutes or until the top is shiny and cracked and a knife inserted comes out clean.

These blondies turned out so chewy and delicious- they’re all gone not even 24 hours later, which is why I’ve named them the dissapearing blondies. With moving into the apartment coming up sooner and sooner, I’ve been picking up kitchen supplies here and there to prepare. I bought myself a pastry blender (yay!) from Macy’s the other day, as well as some glasses and silverware from Ikea. I’m going to make good use of my pastry blender soon, most likely making my white chocolate raspberry cookie bars that everyone seems to love so much, so be on the lookout for that recipe.

Intro/ Super Quick and Yummy Biscuits

This blog has esentially been just sitting around gathering dust, but thanks to the incessant prodding of my mother, I’ve decided to start putting up some of my favorite recipes and things that I’ve been baking as I’m making them.

Today was a gorgeous day, finally into the 70′s and sunny, like a mid-June day should be, unlike the cold foggy, rainy day that we had yesterday. After winning $20 from a scratch ticket at the grocery store, I decided to buy a big carton of red strawberries. I first thought of making a tart with chocolate custard, and Joanna wanted it done right then, so I attempted to make one in a tiny span of time before I headed to work last night. After an incident with broken puff pastry and my custard not setting, I decided to just make some sweet biscuits and have strawberry shortcake with lunch today. (:

mm (:

Quick Biscuits

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
3 tsp. sugar + extra sugar for rolling out
1/2 cup vegetable shortening (substitute with butter, if desired)
2/3 cup milk (and maybe a splash more)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees Farenheit. Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl, then cut in shortening with a pastry blender. Right now I’m without a pastry blender, so I just used a rubber spatula to cut up the shortening into small pieces. Blend until there are only pea sized chunks left. Add in the milk and stir until a loosely held together ball of dough is formed, adding more milk if necessary. Turn the falling apart mixture onto a counter dusted with granulated sugar (or flour, for a more savory biscuit) and knead up to ten times until the dough is holding itself together and not very sticky anymore. Roll out the dough to about 1/2 inch thick, and cut out rounds with a cutter or use the top of a glass coated with flour (like I did).  Place the biscuits on a lightly greased baking sheet and cook for 8-10 minutes or until browned to your liking. This recipe made almost exactly 9 biscuits for me, but your yield depends on how big you’re cutting them and how thick the dough is rolled out to.

Enjoy them with some fresh strawberries and whipped cream on top, or butter and honey along with dinner. The prep and cooking maybe took me 15 minutes all together, including cleaning all of the dishes, so these are a great option to make for dinner, or even breakfast sandwiches in the morning, they turned out really flaky and fluffy, and were awesome right out of the oven.

Anyways, I’m glad to have the first post out of the way, and maybe I’ll put up some other recipes I’ve made recently, though I’m not sure if I have very good pictures of them. I’m going to go outside and enjoy the beautiful weather that we’re having here now, and refresh myself after working until 3am last night. (:

Happy baking, everyone!