Please, sir, may I have s'mores

Last weekend my sister hosted some cousins of ours from France! I'd never met them, but we became fast friends. What better to bring people together (with a language barriar!) than food! Tom invited everyone to Caseus for their annual BBQ night.

They loved tasting Southern American food. It was all new to them. We had smoked brisket sandwiches, pulled pork burgers, ribs, cole slaw, sugary baked beans, and potato salad. We also had a flight of some local  beers and a bottle of wine from America. To top it all off, we all shared a mason jar filled with strawberry shortcake and a chocolate chip s'mores dessert served with a jar of milk (pictured.)

Awesome Blossoms

I was invited to my friend’s birthday shindig last Sunday and wanted to get him a gift. I don’t have much in the piggy bank, so I baked him some peanut blossoms. I got the idea from a friend of my sister's who had a party the weekend before and baked all the finger food herself (bless her heart!)

I picked up 2 bags of Reece’s peanut butter bells because I figured that’d be tastier than Hershey’s kisses. After we tasted them, boy was I right! I baked them a couple minutes less than it said to increase softness. The chocolate bells melted on the cookie more than I expected, but I like the effect. One thing I didn’t do that I suggest for anyone making this as a gift: Call ahead and ask if he’s allergic to peanuts! Oi…

Mmm me love cookies!

These cookies were made on a whim because I had a canister of 60% cacao powder lying around. I used the Toll House cookie recipe on the back of their bags of chocolate chips, but used chocolate chunks instead of chips and I added 2/3 cup of cacao powder to the mixture. This not only adds a rich, dark color, but it also gives the cookies a flavor that's not too sweet thanks to the high cacao percentage. There are a few things I always change about a classic cookie recipe. I like to add an extra egg yolk, refrigerate the dough for a couple of hours before baking, and bake a few minutes shorter and at a lower temperature than advised (by 5 or 10 degrees.) This creates soft, rich cookies that beg to be eaten in one sitting.