Exquisite Turmoil

I don’t think I mentioned it already, but Dan picked me up a KitchenAid on Black Friday for $129 (best husband ever, went out at 4:30 am so we wouldn’t miss the sales!) and I finally got a chance to use it today! I say finally like from Friday to Monday is such a long time which, of course, it isn’t. But still, I’m excited! We were sitting around painting tonight (also of course :p) when the monster children decided to break open the Oreos and tempt me greatly. I managed to abstain until after they went to bed and finally I couldn’t wait any longer. Oreos didn’t seem like they would do the trick, however, so I decided to bake up some fresh chocolate chip cookies. I sent Dan out to the store to pick up a few ingredients (namely the chocolate chips.. can’t have chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips) and got to baking! The KitchenAid is sooo wonderful. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to make cookies from scratch, but the dough is not easy to mix by hand, and my dinky little hand mixer can’t manage it at all. The KitchenAid just powered right through it, however, and mixed up in 30 seconds what would have taken me (or Dan, more likely, since I am lazy) at least five minutes.

In any case, the cookies were delicious, and I’m sending the leftover with Dan to work tomorrow so that he can share them with his friends and I won’t be tempted to eat them all ^_^ For anyone who cares, here is the recipe.

• 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 6 oz chocolate chips (I like bittersweet dark, but milk is fine)
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Preheat the oven to 375.

Mix up the sugars, margarine and shortening in a bowl and beat it until it’s nice and fluffy.. with the KitchenAid I did it on speed 2 for about 45 seconds. Add in the vanilla and the egg and blend it well (speed 4, less than a minute). Add the flour, baking soda and salt and beat (speed 4, two minutes). Toss in the chocolate chips and nuts and blend on the lowest setting for about two seconds.

Roll’em into cute little balls (I don’t know why, but I’ve always preferred to drop cookie dough with my hands rather than a measuring spoon, not that it makes them taste any better) and bake them for 8-10 minutes until they look tasty and delicious. Pull’em out of the oven, let’em sit on the tray for about a minute them scoop them off and enjoy. Technically they should go from the tray to a wire rack to cool some more but I can never resist eating them right away.

Off of the cookie note, I finished painting up the new skink..

Soooo…. which skink do I go with? Oh yeah, lots more pictures of the black skink in the gallery, of course (accessible by the Pictures link listed under ‘Pages’).