Writer's Block...

Sorry I've been absent, I'm suffering a bit lately from writer's block. We're not doing anything very exciting or news worthy. We went to a wedding last weekend and spent time with family. But other than that we're pretty lame. We have no exciting plans for Independence Day and it feels like we live in Seattle with all the rain we're getting. Hopefully there will be some excitement (and sunshine) in our lives to share soon!

Lemon Cookies

A couple weekends ago Alex and I made cookies for a wedding reception and we made some awesome lemon cookies, courtesy of our friend Lori's recipe. Don't worry it's not top secret or very difficult so with no further ado:

                                                                 Iced Lemon Cookies

Cookie ingredients:

2 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup softened butter

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 Tbsp. finely zested lemon rind 

Icing:

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

1 Tbsp.finely zested lemon rind

1 cup powdered sugar

Cookies:

First, mix butter on high until fluffy, then add sugar and egg. Continue mixing on medium while adding vanilla and lemon rind. 

In a separate bowl, mix together dry ingredients (you could sift them, but that takes a sifter and extra time). 

Mixing on a low speed, slowly add the flour mixture to the creamy/sugary mixture until well blended. Gather the dough into a ball and refrigerate for a bit (the original recipe said one hour, but who's that patient?).

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. 

Remove the dough from the fridge and scoop little dough balls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. You can flatten the dough balls with a glass (dip the glass into a bit of sugar between cookies to reduce the stickiness).  The flatter the cookie the crispier it will be. 

Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges are golden. Let cool and then ice. 

Icing:

Juice 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, zest 1 tablespoon of lemon rind and then mix in one cup of powdered sugar. Mix until it is well blended. Spread on the cookies after they've cooled. You can pipe the icing onto the cookies, glaze the cookies or just ribbon it over the cookies so they're not super icing-y. 

I made about 30 cookies and they were medium sized. 

Happy Baking! 

Baker's note:

I have no idea how long this recipe took from start to finish. While the dough was chilling before I preheated our oven, I had to clean the oven. Because, last time I used the oven I spilled bacon grease/bits all over which made our house very smokey and smelly, so I didn't want to repeat that fiasco...

What a whirlwind!

We've had a crazy, busy, whirlwind week around here! 

Last weekend we were pummeled by a wind storm. There were tornado's in the area but gratefully we were just hit with some crazy straight line winds. Our neighborhood and area of town was hit the hardest. Trees were uprooted, bent in half, on top of houses, in houses and across roads. It was not a pretty sight. We lost power Friday night and it finally came back on around 10 pm Sunday. We tried to make the best of it, so we did what all American's (should) do- we headed to a Cardinal's game, which they won handily! We grilled out a lot and Moose got to go on a lot of walks. Our house was completely spared of all tree and wind damage. We picked up some limbs, sticks and leaves and called it good. We were very fortunate.

We used our Unity candle for light all weekend

Cardinal's Game- Thanks Mom & Dad and Linda & Wayne for the  tickets!
It was a great game!

This limb barely missed Alex' s car! 

The joys of home ownership!

This is an image of some tree damage in our neighborhood. 

The work week went well and on Thursday I got to bake 3 dozen lemon cookies for a friend's wedding reception. They had milk & cookies instead of cake and asked for some help with the baking. Of course I volunteered for lemon cookies, because I love lemon anything. However, I didn't have a lemon cookie recipe. Oops...but, Wednesday night my friend Lori gave me a recipe to use and it was amazing!! I'll post it later. It took a little zesting and squeezing, but well worth it. The wedding was beautiful and the reception was a lof of fun! The milk & cookies were fantastic and a good change of pace for a reception dessert. 

Congratulations Jon and Amy!

We rarely take any pictures of us while we look nice, so this was our attempt at the self timer. Alex wasn't very cooperative, so this is the best we got. Most of the other pictures are pretty cheesy.

Finally, today was my friend Paige's bridal shower. Paige and I have been friends for as long as I can remember. It's so exciting watching my friends begin to get engaged and married and I'm so excited for them all as they begin this adventure. Alex and I were the first of our friends to get married so we get to sit back and relax, remembering all too well the eager anticipation and sometimes stress of wedding planning. Paige's shower was thrown by her lovely bridesmaids and they did a fantastic job! Everything was very well thought out and executed. The food was delicious,  the games were cleaver and the company was second to none. I really enjoyed getting to catch up with some girlfriends.

Best Wishes Paige! I'm so excited for you!

Hopefully this week is more relaxing and less eventful! 

What have you been up to?

Strawberry-Banana Bread Goodness!

As of late I have very little time to cook...or energy. But after a long weekend of catching up on sleep and being lazy ie: letting my mom do all the cooking (thanks Mom) I decided to bake! I found a strawberry banana bread recipe on Pinterest and decided that my black banana's didn't have to go in the trash. 

I modified the recipe a little. I didn't use anything organic and I didn't have plain yogurt so I substituted strawberry and I wasn't about to buy unrefined granulated sugar but, everything turned out great!

Yum!

Ingredients (The Abby Modified Version)

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 3 1/2 overripe medium-sized bananas, peeled & mashed 
• 2 Tbsp plain yogurt (I used whipped Strawberry)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup chopped and hulled strawberries- *quick fun fact-you can hull a strawberry with a straw after you cut the leaves off!

Directions

Preheat oven to 325°F. Butter, oil, or spray a 9 x 5 inch loaf pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a medium bowl using a handheld electric mixer) beat together the sugar and eggs on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.

On low speed, slowly drizzle in the oil. Add in the mashed bananas, yogurt, and vanilla extract; mix on low speed just until combined.

Using a rubber spatula, fold in the flour mixture and chopped strawberries just until dry ingredients are fully moistened (no flour streaks should be visible).

Pour batter in the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 1 hour, or until golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then finish cooling on a wire rack.

Nutritional Information Per Serving (1/12th of the loaf): 222.1 calories

Original recipe, directions and nutritional info from http://www.healthyfoodforliving.com/strawberry-banana-bread/