pink lemonade cookies a la kelly

Tonight we will host our first dinner guests since moving into the apartment, Todd’s parents!  In preparation, I spent a bit of time in the kitchen yesterday baking up some treats for dessert.  First on the docket, Kelly’s Pink Lemonade Cookies.  When I read her post a few weeks ago I knew that these summery cookies would be perfect for this dinner.

This recipe was easy to follow and only uses 6 ingredients – now that’s my kind of cookie!  If you’d like to try these yummy cookies, the recipe can be found on Laughter, Strength, and Food.

I followed Kelly’s recipe exactly except that I substituted in whole wheat flour because that’s all we have right now.  By the way, if you’re going to substitute in whole wheat for all-purpose flour, you can’t do a cup to cup equivalent.  The easiest conversion I’ve found is this: if the recipe calls for 1 cup of all-purpose you should use 1 cup minus 2 tablespoons of whole wheat flour.  Make sense?  I’ve used this conversion 3 or 4 times and it’s worked great.

Now back to the cookies.  They came out of the oven like this:

And after dressing them up a bit, they looked like this:

I happened to have some pink sugar sprinkles left from a Valentine’s long, long ago and they were the perfect thing to top the cookies with.  Don’t they remind you of candy buttons?

Even those these cookies are for dinner tonight I tried a few with a big glass of pink lemonade and they were so good and refreshing, the perfect summer cookie.

I was going to post about my other baking adventure but this post is getting lengthy so it will have to wait until later on.

Do you have any favorite summertime baked goods?

Did you bake anything tasty this weekend?

follow the clues

Todd is at a Tigers game tonight.  Even though I love going to the games and  I would have loved to go, my work schedule just didn’t leave enough room to get there on time.  Since I’ll be home alone most of the night, I guess Todd didn’t want me to feel left out – I just got home from work and the top of our vase wine decanter was sitting at the top of the stairs.

Intriguing.  I looked on the wine cart.

He surprised me with tulips!  This is only the second time ever that Todd has bought me flowers.  I’m really touched – what a beautiful surprise.

But wait, another note!

Look in the fridge?  Okay!  (Truthfully, that was probably my next step anyway.)

What did I find?

Another surprise?  Wow.  What’s inside you ask?

Cookies!

Wow, I have an awesome husband.  What a sweet surprise – both literally and figuratively.  I’m one lucky girl.  Thanks, Todd!

Now, I’m going to enjoy a cookie quick before heading to yoga then I promise to fill you all in on my weekend in Denver.

What’s the best totally unexpected surprise you’ve ever had?

bake, brunch, pack

This morning I woke up and thought, I’m allowed to eat ice cream again – yay!  Naturally, the only way to celebrate that was by eating ice cream for breakfast.

There were fresh berries and the waffle was whole grain plus, I opted for frozen yogurt so it was a semi-balanced breakfast, right?  Okay, I’m not fooling anyone.  This wasn’t the healthiest start to the day but it sure was delicious.

Actually, before I even had breakfast I mixed up the dough for Toffee Studded Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies a la Lauren from Keep it Sweet.

Here’s the recipe:

1/2 lb (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

a pinch of salt

3 cups of quick or old-fashioned dry oatmeal

1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chunks (I like lots of chocolate so I went to 1 1/2 cups per Lauren’s suggestion)

1/2 cup toffee bits

Directions:

Mix together flours, cinnamon and baking soda.  Set aside.

In large bowl, beat together butter and sugars until creamy.

Beat in eggs and vanilla. 

Make sure to scrape sides of bowl and mix some more.

With mixer on low, carefully add in flour mixture.  

Once all ingredients are well-combined, stir in oats.

Stir in chocolate chunks and toffee bits until well-mixed.

Now, refrigerate your cookie dough for 2 hours or overnight.  This is necessary to avoid flat cookies.

Once you are ready to bake, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. 

Drop heaping tablespoons of dough about 2 inches apart on baking sheets.

Bake in oven for 8-10 minutes or until centers of cookies appear cooked and edges are light golden brown.

These bad boys are delicious!  I love the chunks of chocolate, they always taste so much more substantial than chocolate chips.  If these are decadent enough for you, Lauren also has a recipe for a sandwich version of these cookies with peanut butter frosting.  Sounds pretty tasty, no?

While these cookies were chilling in the fridge, I went to meet my parents for an Easter brunch.

We had a long leisurely meal which was really nice.  I don’t have a meal alone with my parents that often and it was really good to just chat with them.

After brunch my mom came over to help me with packing for the move.  She’s a good person to have around when you need to get things done.  We worked for a few hours and made a lot of progress.  You should see the pile of boxes that are ready to move – not to mention the 3 or 4 trash bags and 3 or 4 more full of donations.  It feels so good to get rid of so many things that I don’t need anymore!

Also, Todd was home by the time I got there so he filled me in on all of his bachelor party shenanigans.  It sounds like they had a great time and it made me really excited for my bachelorette party next weekend in Chicago.

All in all this was a really nice, laid back but productive weekend.  Now only 8 more work days until I’m off for the wedding!  It couldn’t be here soon enough.  I’m ready to be a missus.

P.S.  You have to try Jess’s Hobo Margaritas.  I made one last night and it was so yummy!  I even bought festive cups to drink them out of, delish!

Hope you all had an amazing weekend!

How was your Easter?

Did you celebrate with family today?

blog love

After work the snow had cleared and I was happy to walk out into a beautiful spring day.

I headed over to Biggby Coffee where I had a great meeting with our wedding photographer, Theresa Kemink, talented owner of TAK Photography.  She does such great work and I’m so excited that she’s shooting our big day.  Her photos are amazing but she doesn’t seem to take her self too seriously.  You should really check out her blog, it’s good stuff.

After the meeting I headed to the Funky Buddha for a very sweaty and intense power yoga class.  I definitely sweated out some toxins today although my tummy wasn’t feeling to great because I had a snack beforehand.  Note to self: no matter how much I love chocolate chip cookies and lemonade, they must wait until after hot yoga.

Delicious but dangerous.

Anyways, other than that I was going to write a post about…something but I don’t feel like I have much to say right now.  Thankfully, other bloggers seem to be much more inspired that I am so I’ll refer you to them.

1) Kelly at Laughter, Food and Strength, one of my favorites, posted a recipe for Mini Italian Frittatas today.  I want to make these right now and would if I had the energy, and the eggs.  But honestly, I often think bloggers make things that look delicious but I know that I’ll never make them but these frittatas are going directly to my “to-make” list.  Yum!

2) Jess at In My Healthy Opinion seems to be on the same page as me a lot, it’s kind of strange, actually.  She’s got some great simple goals posted and they’re exactly the things I always mean to work on.  Soon though, soon.  Even better, she’s posted a link to a hilarious site featuring the 65 Sketchiest Easter Bunny photos.  My favorites are numbers 28, 45 and 53.  Hilarious.  Thanks for sharing, Jess!

3) I discovered Girl Meets Life over the weekend and I’m loving it. Her tagline is “celebrating the simple things”, a concept I can definitely get behind.  I get really excited about the little things so I can totally relate.

4) Allie at Live, Laugh, Eat wrote an entire post about pineapple.  Pineapple is hands down my favorite fruit (sorry grapefruit) and I think it makes everything taste better and makes me smile.  Sometimes I overdo it and it gives me canker sores too but I always go back to it.  I respect any blogger who posts all about pineapple, plus she seems great and is darn cute.

In short, thank you other bloggers for being great so I don’t have to be!

What are some of your favorite blogs?

What’s your favorite topic to see covered on other peoples’ blogs?