Best Ever Cookies :)

I will admit now that I have a love affair with Cookies. I bake and bake, and eat and eat. Not many guys will say that they like to bake cookies, not many know how–but when my sweet tooth is begging for a sweet, soft, unhealthy treat I know exactly what to do….Bake!

Chocolate Chip—

1 cup of Butter, soft
1 cup of Brown Sugar, tightly packed
1 cup of White Sugar
3 eggs, well beaten
2 tsp Almond extract (or Vanilla)
3 cups of flower
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1 12 ounce bag of Chocolate Chips (about 2.5 cups) 
OPTIONAL: Substitute 6 ounces of chocolate chips for 2 cups of 7-grain cereal or oatmeal….then you can say your cookies are healthy

Preheat oven to 350 degrees farenhiet. Get a good strong wooden spoon, preferably one with a short handle. DO NOT use a mixer, the dough is very thick and the mixer might have trouble with it (although you can try if you want).

Step 1: Cream together the soft butter and the sugars. When you are done the sugars should be fairly evenly distributed through the butter. This takes about a minute of mixing.

Step 2: Add the well-beaten eggs and the Almond/Vanilla extract to the mixture and mix it together well. Your mixture will be brown and somewhat runny (a bit like cake batter).

Step 3: Add the baking soda and salt–continue to mix the ingredients well. Begin to add flower mixing in one cup at a time. Make sure that each cup is level. When it is well mixed if the dough seems really sticky add another half cup of flower. If not all the dough sticks together really well that is OK, as long as it sticks together when you try to roll it into a ball….if it will not stick together no matter how hard you try you can try to salvage your cookies by mixing in an egg, half a cup of brown sugar, half a cup of white sugar, and a teaspoon of baking soda that is already mixed together. Then mix that in and begin adding flower in half-cup increments until you have thick dough that is not very sticky, but will still stick together when rolled into balls.

Step 4: Add the Chocolated Chips and/or (or not) the grain. Mix it through the dough as well as you can, using your hands if neccesary. 

Step 5: Make the dough into teaspoon sized balls (about an inch and a half in diameter) and place onto an ungreased cookie sheet at least 2 inches apart. Bake at 350 for 8 to 10 minutes. Be sure to check the cookies every so often, some ovens bake hotter than others. Normally the first batch of cookies on a pan will require the most baking time, the rest will come a bit quicker since the pan is hot. When the cookies come out of the oven let them cool for a few minutes, then pat the top with a towell or spatuala until they flatten slightly. Depending on how many samples you take and how large you like your cookies this should yeild about 6 batches of 12 cookies. Best enjoyed with a big glass of milk.

 

Molasses Cookies–

2 eggs
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of shorting
6 Tbs. of Molasses
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
4 tsp Almond (or Vanilla) extract
5 tsp Baking Soda dissolved into 2 Tbs of Water
4 cups of flour

Step 1: Preheat your oven to 325 degrees farenheit. Grease 2 large cookie sheets with olive oil, butter, margerin, or shortning. DO NOT use Pam. It might have a cool name, but the bottoms of your cookies will not bake right if you use it.

Step 2: In a large bowl beat your eggs until they become fluffy. Add your sugar and shortning and beat well. Make sure that the cups of sugar and shortning are level cups. If you add too much shortning your cookies will have an off flavor.

Step 3: Add the Molasses, Cinnimon, Almond (or Vannila) extract, and Salt. Continue to mix until the mixture is even and there are no thick chunks of shortning or spices. Be careful with the Cinnamon, if you add too much you will need to double the recipe (not the Cinnamon or salt), or live with gross coookies.

Step 4: Add the baking soda and water that is mixed together. Stir the mixture into the bowl so that it is evenly distributed and you cannot see any water sitting on the surface. The dough will take on an odd texture and the suface will be pocketed with holes–do not be concerned. If you don’t see many holes that is ok too, you most likely just mixed it really well.

Step 5: Add the flour in half cup increments. When the dough is ready it will not be sticky, but you should be able to easily roll it into balls. Sometimes this will take and extra half-cup of flour, and sometimes it will take a half-cup less than is called for.

Step 6: Bake in the oven for 8-12 minutes at 325. Roll the dough into balls 2 inches in diameter (about the width of a table-spoon). The first cookies on a pan will take longer to bake than the rest. When you take out the cookies let them cool for a couple of minutes, then take a towell and pat the top so that they flatten slightly.

Pictures to come soon for the molasses cookies along with a sugar cookie recipe……yummy.

Sunset

I went hunting with my mother, father, and sister yesterday–it was very fun……My sister was constantly handing him bullets (shoot with the pink one daddy!), and I was sitting there waiting for the light to get good. I was rewarded with a fantastic sunset though, so here are some pics!

Wonderful Day

The light was great the other day and I was able to get some fantastic photos of the flowers in our garden. I was lucky enough to get some nice warm back lighting in many of my shots from the cement on our house. I hope that you enjoy them!

Soon I will be posting my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe with pictures–it’s yummy!

First Blog Post with Word

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That’s right, I am typing right now in Microsoft Word, and if you are reading this I also uploaded this straight from word without even going onto wordpress to put it on the web. Pretty nifty if you ask me. I have been a little bit sluggish in the past weeks, so I am going to start off by posting a couple of pictures. This was taken yesterday in my parents garden, I loved the color of this cool weed (It is no longer pink, just a dead yellow).

Today was really the first day that I could feel a “bite” in the air, it is getting into the mid 60s in the afternoon, but almost down to freezing at night. I have been hating the last months temperatures 85 to 90 degrees in the Fall, what’s up with that? When we moved to our new house we did not have AC, we still don’t except for a few Window AC units, I jokingly said that at least I would have AC in school. I bet you can guess what I found out the first day of school….that’s right, no AC.

I forgot how much I love office 07, writing this is a good reminder.

Lately I have been browsing around the web looking at different photographer’s blogs and websites, trying to see what it is that I like. The image to the left is an example of my work that has been inspired by others; instead of viewing a website for my inspiration I found an issue of Outdoor Photographer that featured a woman who did abstract flower photography—the results were very interesting and impressive. She mainly used extension toobs and a 50mm macro for her images. I used a 50mm non-macro. The plant was pretty big so my choice of lens was not a problem. I hot wide open at f/1.8 to blur everything bit one part of the plant. My goal was to render the pink part OOF (out of focus) and diffused. I did not toy with saturation, just boosted contrast and adjusted the exposure.

 

The smaller image is a reshoot from earlier in the month. I was attempting to frame the dry stalks that came from off the top of the corn against a dark background with the colors in the sunset.

Right now I am watching the Utah Jazz play the Phoenix Suns—it is a ho hum game, so I won’t talk any more about it.

Tomorrow I am going to take a peek at the duck pond I think, get some pictures of ducks (like there is anything else there .

The other image is also from yesterdays “photoshoot”. I thought that it turned out pretty well….

By the way, you need to check out Rebecca Mudrick’s photo blog (darlingart.wordpress.com or overexposed.typepad.com), she is a photographic genius. I just completed reading more than 100 of her blog posts on the typepad account—she is a great photographer and knows how to entertain people with her writing.

I just so want to make the writing on this post align well with the bottom of the pictures, but it ain’t happening.

 

 

Hello world!

I like the title that WordPress automatically chooses for your first post, so I’m going to go with it….This is going to be my photography blog for my website (www.freewebs.com/evansphoto). Hope you enjoy it, becuase I will be updating with real posts soon!