I found a fun ongoing project that I decided to participate in for the first time this month. It's called Cookie Carnival and it's run by Kate over at the blog Clean Plate Club. She picks a recipe once a month, and all the participants make it and post the results.

This month's recipe was Martha Stewart's Pink Grapefruit Sandwich Cookies. I'm not a fan of grapefruit, but that's the whole point of this - to try something new and interesting. The recipe can be found here.

( The process... )

These are a pretty cookie, but I don't think they taste anything like grapefruit. They just tasted like a regular sugar cookie, only extremely sweet. They were too sweet for my husband, which is really saying something! Also, the filling wasn't that great. For one thing, I don't think it needed the honey. Not only did it add extra sweetness that wasn't needed, but it made the texture very goopy. As you can see in the picture below, it started oozing out of the cookies after just a couple minutes as I was trying to get a good picture. I had to keep the cookies refrigerated, which made them hard to bite into.

I wouldn't make this cookie again, but it was a fun way to spend an afternoon, and I'm looking forward to next month's.

I am a faithful reader of Missypedia. She posts great recipes with beautiful pictures. The other day she posted a recipe for The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies EVAR, and I just had to try them.

I usually use the Crisco sticks recipe when I make chocolate chip cookies, but lately I've been dissatisfied with the results. They seem to puff up and don't get very brown. The pictures on Missy's site were exactly what I've been wanting my cookies to look like.

I had planned on waiting until we got back from vacation to try them, but today I was just hanging out and doing laundry, plus I had all the ingredients, so I decided to give them a try.

Oh. My. God.

Missy wasn't kidding when she said best EVAR. This is my new recipe. Chris and the girls loved them, too. I'm not going to post the recipe since it's already in Missy's blog, but here are some pictures to drool over. I followed the recipe to the letter, except I melted the butter in the microwave and used vanilla paste instead of extract.

We'll start with the ingredients:



( And move on to the yummy parts... )

I do love to bake, and it always makes my family happy when I bake chocolate chip cookies. They're so easy to make, and so quick that it's almost instant gratification. After the dough is put together (really only about 5-10 minutes), then it's only about 12-15 minutes from oven to mouth.

I use the recipe on the Crisco sticks package; I haven't found another chocolate chip cookie recipe that we like as much. I don't deviate from the basic dough recipe except that I use vanilla paste instead of extract. It really does make a difference, I think. It's more expensive than extract, but definitely worth it.

I also use the basic dough recipe for adding ingredients other than chocolate chips, such as peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, dried cranberries, dried blueberries, toffee chips, etc. You're only limited by your imagination!

( Recipe and pictures this way... )