Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Kitchen Tip Tuesday



With dinner(roast, carrots, and potatoes) in the crockpot....


I set out today to get some baking done to stock my freezer for the hotter days of summer! All this week we are to have temps below average(in the high 60s/low 70s) so it makes for great baking weather! Do not have to run the a/c like crazy and my freezer gets stocked.

I also set out today that I would take pics of my adventure and come here and tell you all about it. Basically I was going to brag about what I accomplished today! Well I accomplished making a double batch of chocolate chip cookies with milk and semi-sweet chips in them. I made bars and cookies. And after they were all cooked, I realized that I forgot the vanilla extract!! UGH!
Despite my forgetting the vanilla extract in the chocolate chip cookies, I pressed on in my baking endeavor and made a double batch of oatmeal scotchies usually I just do a single batch so I was being extra careful to measure each ingredient twice. I got the mixing all done, added the vanilla extract and the butterscotch chips and started using my scoop to get cookies on the sheets to put in the oven that was heated up already from the chocolate chip cookies. I got my first sheet of oatmeal scotchies out of the oven and realized that something wasn't right because they were flat! You can see in the picture below that they look paper thin! So while I put in two more sheets of cookies to bake(my first mistake), I started going back thru the recipe and remembering what I had done to see if I missed something in the recipe. As the second sheet of cookies was finishing up with the same paper thinness. The light bulb went off in my head....I had only put in enough oatmeal(3 cups) for one batch of cookies rather than enough for 2 batches(6 cups)!

So for my last two sheets of not yet baked oatmeal scotchies, I put the balls of cookies back into the mixing bowl and put 1 cup of oatmeal in the dough and mixed it up and the picture below shows the result! They are better in that they are thicker but they still could have used more oatmeal in them.

The funny part of all this is that I didn't even have my kids helping me with the baking like I normally do!! I decided they could just play and stay out of my way for awhile.

So my tips from this adventure....
  1. Make sure you double check yourself BEFORE you bake anything, esp. cookies!
  2. If you are going to double a recipe it might help to write down the amounts of each item so before you start putting the recipe together so that you can check the items off as you go so you know what you have put in the bowl and what still needs to be added!

For more kitchen tips, resources or ideas; head over to Tammy's Recipes! Today she is giving tips on how to make an omelet! Hummm...going to have to try her tips!

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

So do they turn out better when you have the kids help? I do the same thing sometimes. I am trying to hard to get it done.

Sonshine said...

The kids will help me count and they also keep me on track. Also, when they help me I say how many of an ingredient we need out loud! Today, I was just trying to hard to get 'em done that I ended up being careless.

The end products are edible but they could be better. :)

Kirstin said...

My oldest made cookies yesterday. She's getting really good at making things on her own, and this recipe was one we'd used before. But for some reason this time they were extremely dry. So either she used too much dry ingredients, or not enough wet. She said she followed the recipe perfectly, so I need to check the recipe...I've been in the process of retyping all my recipes so I may have made a boo boo. They were still good, just a bit on the dry side.

Gill - That British Woman said...

great minds think alike, I have a cookie recipe on my blog today!!!

Anonymous said...

They look absolutely yummy! Hey, I have weblink Wednesday up if you "feel the pull" to participate :)

Have a great night.

Valerie

http://homeschoolblogger.com/socalval

Anonymous said...

OK, what is that spiky gray thing in the middle of that crock pot?

Sonshine said...

E,

"that spiky gray thing" is the top of the roast which has chopped onions on the top of it. :)