she says i'm much too thin, she asks me if i'm sick

IMG_7778, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

Remember that healthy eating kick? I’m still totally on it, but I am not made of stone.

These cookies are – according to Smells Like Dessert – the absolute Holy Grail of chocolate chip cookies. I’m not entirely sure I agree – they’re good, but they’re not so good that I’m going to quit on my trusty family recipe. (They are also HUGE. Like, ENORMOUS. I can see why the recipe calls for making them so large, because they are a lot softer having been baked like that, but. This definitely makes giant, Starbucks-sized cookies, and one is more than enough.)

I also did something a bit weird with this recipe, which may be why I didn’t love them quite as passionately as the original blogger. When I went to start baking, I discovered that my brown sugar was hopelessly hard and unusable, so I tried a substitution gleaned from the internet: one cup of white sugar and a quarter cup of molasses to replace one cup of brown sugar. It worked out – the texture of the cookies is perfect, and they’re not too sweet – but there is a bit of a molasses-y aftertaste. I don’t mind it, really? But it definitely changed the character of the cookies.

Song of the Entry: Jack’s Mannequin – Holiday From Real

get back up, shake off all the dust

IMG_7759, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

Cupcakes!

Banana-Cardamom Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, if we’re being fancy and descriptive about it. And oh my god, are they good. The cupcakes themselves are from the recipe here, found via foodgawker. They’re not what I’m used to making – the batter was really firm and almost cookie-dough-ish, as opposed to the more liquid cupcake batter I’ve made with other recipes in the past. It turned out wonderfully, though, and I have it on good authority from several people that the cupcakes are delicious.

The frosting is – well, we’ll call it chocolate buttercream, it’s sort of “the best I could do icing-wise with what I had in my kitchen,” but it’s made of cocoa and butter and icing sugar in proportions that worked out okay.

Song of the Entry: Plain White T’s – Big Bad World

she likes the godsmack and i like agent orange

IMG_7753, originally uploaded by pirateygoodness.

I’ve been in a bit of a baking mood lately, because I have so many exams this week, and I started these. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to find out what they are, but I’ll give you a hint – they made my apartment smell amazing.

Song of the Entry: Bowling For Soup – Girl All The Bad Guys Want