cure to the blues: gooey chocolate chip cookies

These are my favorite cookies and the best recipe ever. I got it from my friend Michelle so I call them Michelle's chocolate chip cookies and they always make me happy. I have so many memories associated with chocolate chip cookies. Me and my friends (Liz and Michelle, hey girls) have spent many nights in making chocolate chip cookies, listening to music, and being funny. My favorite memory had to be when we were all dancing to Jonas Brothers a few years ago or maybe it was last year, whenever it was time flies (haha oh jonas), in Michelle's kitchen. This was pre disney ate their souls days. Fun times. Anyways, the point is that chocolate chip cookies are my cure to getting rid of the blues or I guess for me, anxiety.
I think what I have learned that I love a lot with baking are the memories behind a certain dessert. It is not just one memory but a vast amount of memories. There are so many times in my life where I eat a certain food and it reminds me of another time in my life when that food was significant, even the smallest way, to a event or moment. Those moments when you re-eat a food and look back on the good times make me feel so infinite.
I find that I am looking back on memories a lot lately but there are so very few great ones being made currently. These cookies made me remember and smile wide.

I hope that all made sense. I go to camp in 2 days so there won't be any baking for a while.

Vanilla Cupcakes

I experimented with different types of vanilla cupcakes. I added chocolate chips to half the batter and then orange juice to one to see how it would taste. I frosted with cream cheese frosting. The best cream cheese frosting I've ever met. My house was really hot so it sort of melted a little bit but I finally found a cream cheese frosting that I liked that I could actually pipe with. Now if only I can find a vanilla frosting that I like that will let me pipe.

Listening to: This is my suitcase

Saffron Pistachio Ice Cream

First off let me say that I haven't abandoned my blog. I was sick for about 2 weeks then I went out of town for a weekend. I came home and was exhausted. Here I am, back at it again.
So I went to California for a wedding and they had the prettiest cake. I just want to show a picture of it cause I loved it. It was very simple, and when I went to look at it there were some other people and they were asking questions about the cake that I could actually answer. Guess all the baking and reading I do pays off.


When I bought my red kitchen aid stand mixer I got a free ice cream maker attachment. It isn't as great as the ice cream maker I have but it was fun to do. It was hard to set up but after figuring it out with no help from the directions it gave. With the old ice cream maker we had we use to make Iranian ice cream all the time. This seemed like a great time to do that again. This ice cream is made with the basic ingredients for ice cream: sugar and whole milk. I found a great Paula Deen recipe that also used vanilla pudding mix and evaporated milk. With that I added saffron, rose water, and pistachios. A little goes a long long way and with saffron and pistachios being as expensive as they are that rule is a very good thing.


Saffron Pistachio Ice Cream:
2 cups of whole milk (don't think 1% or 2% will work because it won't)
1 cup of sugar (I used about 3/4 c because that is all we had left and it was still great)
1 pkg of french vanilla instant pudding
12 oz can of evaporated milk
saffron and rose water to taste
1/4 cup of pistachios, grounded (grounded that they are little pieces but not so much that they are a powder)