cooooooookies!

my parents sent me some moo-lah for my birthday (thanks guys!), and i decided that it needed to be spent frivolously. i was not going to let myself put it towards bills, groceries, metro fare, or anything else that didn't excite me to buy. so, what did i buy? baking accessories :)

mike took me to target, and i got a new baking sheet, a dough scoop (think mini ice cream scoop for mess-free transportation of cookie dough from bowl to cookie sheet), and a new hand mixer (mine died earlier this year - you may remember that meringue tragedy). then later that week, i stopped in borders (they ever-so kindly hooked be up with a 25% off birthday coupon) and picked up martha's new cookbook COOKIES. perfect, right? well that is what i thought, until the brother tried to give me the same book for my birthday! oops. foiled that one. no worries, i have permission to trade it in for a nice pair of shoes (non-pilgrim style, per the brother's orders).
anyway, i was really excited to get my book. i plopped down on the living room floor and poured over the pages for a good hour with pen and post-it note pad in hand. by the end, i had a whole new list of baking accessories, a grocery list for the following week, and five recipes tagged for immediate experimentation. unfortunately, ya'll missed out on my first batch (dark chocolate chip & walnut oatmeal cookies), unless you happened to be at the 402's party on march 29th... they were a big hit, but i forgot to photograph them.

that is beside the point. recipe number two was dark chocolate cherry cookies. sounds delicious, right? well they tasted (all gone by now) as good as they sound. although this was possibly the most expensive recipe i ever attempted to conquer. i mean, $8.00 for 10 oz of dried cherries? seriously? next time i'm going to try the cherry-flavored cranberries ($3.00/bag), i think they'll work - probably not as good, but they'll do the job nonetheless.


i did luck-out with the chocolate chips though. the giant by my apartment slashed the prices on a their entire stock of nestle chocolatier dark chocolate chips. apparently they are discontinuing the flavor, so i stocked up. i figured i could by 5 bags and use them before they go bad. i mean seriously, the way i bake...
in the end, i had about 3 dozen delicious little mounds of joy! mike ate 5 the night i baked them, and dave and raf had their share too. i brought them to work the next day, and let's just say i gain a couple of popularity points from the girls in the office. if only my performance appraisals were based on baking duties as assigned...