:: Baking - lemon crinkle cookies

I needed to bring some food to a get-together with 

some friends so I decided to make some lemon cookies that I found here on pinterest.

They were delicious!

Lemon Crinkle Cookies
Makes 2-3 dozen

Ingredients:
½ cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
¼ teaspoons salt
¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoons baking soda
1-½ cup all-purpose flour
½ cups powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

*If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

Lauren Brennan; laurenslatest.com

I'll be linking to these parties here.

Baking: chocolate chip cookie preparedness

Okay.

Is anyone else addicted to chocolate chip cookies like I am?

I better not be the only one.

The other day when I was making them, I thought it'd be so much easier

if I already had all of the dry ingredients in plastic ziplock bags.

That way, if I get a craving for these delicious cookies,

I'd just have to whip out the bag and then just add the wet ingredients.

{the hubster thinks this is an amazing idea too.}

I'm sure this isn't a new idea to all of you out there. Maybe you've been doing this for years. I don't know. But it seriously only took 5 minutes before they were on the pan ready to be baked. Yum.

I didn't have to deal with a huge mess . . . at that moment. Of course, you'll need to refill the bags, but that can be done another day. Another day that you don't have cookie cravings. {but really, when does that happen?}

Wow. This post is really making me hungry. Hungry for my chocolate chip cookies.

Happy Tuesday!

Baking Obsession: Chocolate Zucchini Cookies

We have been enjoying our garden so much this spring/summer.

And we can hardly believe that it hasn't died on us. It's our first one and we're pretty impressed with ourselves (half of them started by seeds). So far we have 4 pumpkins, have had 6 yellow squash, a ton of green tomatoes ready to ripen, strawberries, 7 good sized cucumbers, and have had some amazingly large zucchini. We've had zucchini growing out of our ears. And they're huge! So we've been steaming them for dinner, tried a recipe for zucchini lasagna, shredding and freezing them, zucchini cake, and I even tried this delicious recipe that I found on my cousin's recipe blog here. Yum. Try it out. You can thank me later. (if you like pumpkin choc. chip cookies . . . you'll love these)

Chocolate Zucchini Cookies

1/2 c. butter

1 c. sugar

-mix until light and fluffy

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 c. grated zucchini

-add into above mixture

2 c. flour

2 T. cocoa

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 tsp. cloves

1 tsp. baking soda

-mix in separate bowl and then add to creamed mixture and mix in

-stir in 1 c. of chocolate chips

- bake at 350 for 10-11 min.

And delight in the yumminess!!!!