Cookies & Milk, Anyone?

Who doesn't love a good chocolate cookie? I know I sure do. Cookies are good and chocolate makes them even better.

I hadn't done any baking in quite a while, which is quite unlike me, so I though I'd remedy that by baking these tasty treats. It wasn't long before the house was filled with the yummy smell of chocolate. 

Chocolate Brownie Cookies
original recipe via Pure & Yummy

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

19oz chocolate chips

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 eggs

1 1/3 cups sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

Directions:

1. Melt butter and half of the chocolate chips in a pot stirring constantly until butter and chocolate is completely melted.

2. Beat eggs, sugar, and vanilla in an electric mixer. Gradually add the flour, baking powder, and salt until combined. Add the chocolate mixture, then the remaining chocolate chips.

3. Scoop dough onto greased baking sheets at 350°F for ten minutes. Let cool five minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Christmas Link-up: Foods & Tasty Treats

Week three is here! It's hard to believe it's only two weeks till Christmas is here. Today week three of a Very Merry Christmas Link-up begins, but remember, you can still join any of the themes trough the end of the month. Themes that have already started: Christmas Decor and Christmas Lights
(If your new, or would like more info about the link up, you can visit, this post.)

Week 3 - Christmas Foods & Tasty Treats

There are so many tasty things made this time of year: cookies, gingerbread houses, candy canes, and my personal favorite, eggnog. Mmmm, my mouth is watering! If you bake something yourself, you could share the recipe as well! Anything that is edible will work for this weeks theme. And remember, composition is an important key to getting a great food shot.

*Update* The linky doesn't seem to be working, so please leave your link in the comments.

Joining is easy. Just put together a post with a photo(s) that fit with this weeks theme, Christmas Lights, add my Christmas Link Up button, and come back here and add your post to the linky. Remember to post a link to the post, not your main blog address. Also, go ahead and check out all the other posts that are linked up. That's what makes this fun!

<center><a href="http://sereinasphotography.blogspot.com/search/label/VMCL%202011" target="_blank"><img alt="Very Merry Christmas Link-up" src="http://i992.photobucket.com/albums/af49/sereinalovesvintage/Blog/VMCL2011Button.png"/></a></center>

Cranberries + White Chocolate + Oats

For Thanksgiving, we bought a big bag of cranberries from Costco for cranberry sauce. We had tons left over, so I searched the internet for baked goods with cranberries in them, and came up with these cookies. They're pretty much oatmeal cookies with cranberries and I also added white chocolate chips.

The recipe called for dried cranberries, but just used the fresh ones. They taste really good, but the cranberries were a little sour. Next time I'll add some sugar, or something.

I found the recipe on the Food Network website.

I shot these photos out in the cold on our back deck. I plugged in the lights inside and brought them out on the deck, a few feet from the cookies, to get some nice bokeh.

Oatmeal Cookies

Although I've baked snickerdoodle, chocolate snowballs, and chocolate chip cookies many, many times, I rarely make oatmeal cookies. I love anything with oats in it, though, and I really love oatmeal cookies. 

I don't like to add any thing like nuts or raisins in them. For me, plain is the way to go!

I used the recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It's a great, simple oatmeal cookie recipe, which is just what I like. And as usual, I substituted the all-purpose flower for whole wheat flower.

Project 52: Week 38

{38/52}

Aren't these candy corn cookies cute? When I ran across the recipe, I knew I wanted to make them this fall. I used whole wheat flour, like I usually do, so the colors aren't as bright, but more natural looking. I think they actually look quite nice that way. They're really easy to make, so I'll most likely be baking some more soon. The recipe can be found at Land O'Lakes.

Project 52: Week 35

{35/52}

I did some baking on Wednesday and made these yummy coffee cake muffins. I've modified the recipe a bit, cutting down on the sugar and using plain yogurt instead of sour cream. Below is my modified recipe and long with a link to the original.

Original recipe from Martha Stewart

Muffins:

1 stick butter, softened

1 3/4 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup plain yogurt

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

Streusel Topping:

1/3 cup brown sugar, packed

1/3 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1teaspoon ground cinnamon

3-4 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces


Directions:

1. Streussel Topping: Combine brown sugar, flour, salt, and cinnamon. Cut in the butter.

2. Preheat oven to 350°F and grease a muffin tin with cooking spray.

3. Combine together yogurt, butter, sugar, and vanilla until well mixed. Add the eggs and mix together. Add the flour, baking powder, and baking soda and stir just till combined.

4. Fill the muffin tins about 1/3 of the way with the batter, then sprinkle some of the streussel topping on top. Then add another 1/3 of batter on top, and sprinkle with streussel topping again.

5. Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. 

Project 52: Week 21

This week I baked toaster pastries from scratch for the first time. I followed the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, but made them with whole wheat flour. The cinnamon filling was really tasty and want to try filling them with raspberry or strawberry jelly next time. 

The Whoopie Pie

This weekend I baked a batch of whoopie pies. The cakes and the filling were both quite simple to make and my family really enjoyed them, especially my brother. The recipe can be found here.

According to food historians, Amish women would bake these desserts (known as hucklebucks at the time) and put them in farmers' lunchboxes. When farmers would find the treats in their lunch, they would shout "Whoopie!"
-Wikipedia

Project 52: Week 17

{17/52}

I did a lot of baking this week. It started with the chocolate chip cookies I made, and the rest of the week I've been making things such as focaccia bread, cinnamon bread, whole wheat bread, and some gingersnaps. This recipe makes a really soft cookie and just the right about of ginger. 

Project 52: Week 16

{16/52}

Chocolate chip cookies, baked from scratch, are one of my favorite things. A warm, gooey cookie is the best, but so is the dough!

Project 52: a photo a week

With the new year beginning, quite a lot of people are challenging themselves to do a 365 days or 52 weeks project. Their goal is to grow more in their photography while taking a picture every day for the year or every week. Doing a 365 project is too much for me, but I've decided to take a photo at least once a week. I haven't been taking as many pictures lately as I usually do, so I though this would be a great motivation to go out and find something to photograph. Sometimes I just need a little push. :-) 

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Week 1

If your a fan of Sereina Charise Photography on Facebook, you've some pictures of some super yummy muffins that I made today. The recipe can be found at Aspiring Homemaker.

(Linking up at Simple Days and focus52)

A Sweet Treat

For our New Years Eve movie marathon Friday, I baked some cupcakes to share. There chocolate cupcakes with peppermint JoJo's insides (JoJo's are Trader Joe's brand Oreos). I used my favorite chocolate cake recipe from Hershey's Kitchen, "Perfectly Chocolate" Chocolate Cake. Boy, is it good! On top, I made eggnog frosting. Mmmmm! I also crushed up a couple candy canes and sprinkled them on top.

Cookies!

I love baking and decorations sugar cookies every December. There as fun to make as they are to eat! Chocolate crinkles (we call them chocolate snowballs) and snickerdoodles are some other favorites.

I'm loving the bokeh in the background in this shot.

Christmas lights

I was messing around with the wireless flash and trying some dramatic lighting.

What do you like to bake this time of year?

I Love Baking!

Anyone who has spent enough time around me will know that I love to bake. If I make a batch of muffins, I'll bring some for my friends at our co-op. If there is an event where I need to bring something to share, I always make some of my cookies. Most likely chocolate chip cookies.




There is nothing better than a fresh batch of cookies, baked from scratch, right out of the oven. Nice warm cookies, with chocolate that is sill gooey. And you can't forget tasting some of the dough, before you start putting it on the baking sheets. ;-)


These are some oatmeal cookies I made awhile back. Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.





I like muffins. There simple and easy to make, and you can add just about anything into them. I love chocolate muffins.


A sugar crusted citrus muffin, recipe from the Muffins Galore cookbook.

Then we have cakes, perfect for birthdays, events, or just cause you want one! I love baking cakes from scratch, cause they taste so good! I love messing around with different flavors. Heres some that I've made: orange cake with chocolate frosting, chocolate peppermint Joe-Joe's with egg nogg icing, banana cake with banana frosting.


For breakfast a while back, I made this cinnamon breakfast cake. Recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything.



So, do you like to bake? If so, what's your favorite thing to bake? If you don't, what's your favorite baked good?

The Oatmeal Cookies

First off, Happy July!

Second, I like to bake. Especially cookies. They're easy, fast, and taste delicious.

I'm known for my chocolate chip cookies, but recently I tried making oatmeal cookies. I've baked chocolate chip cookies (or at least helped), for almost as long as I can remember. But I'd never made oatmeal ones. Lets just say those are my new favorite kind of cookie. And maybe... just maybe, even better than chocolate chip cookies. ;)

This one's my favorite shot.

You can find the recipe here.

Vanilla Oat Banana Muffins

For my birthday I got this really great cook book called Muffins Galore. It's filled with dozens of muffin recipes (I've made two or three so far) and can't wait to try more!

The photo is of the vanilla oat muffins. I also added some banana and they turned out quite tasty!

Birthday Cake

The orange cake with chocolate fudge frosting that I made for my birthday.

Chewy Chocolaty Goodness!

Nothing like some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies!

The Muffins

Fresh baked banana chocolate chip muffins. Need I say more?

I know from this angle it looks more like a cookie (especially since there are chocolate chips), but believe me, its a muffin.