One Fantastic Classic

Who doesn't love a warm, fresh chocolate chip cookie? But why not add a little bit of pizazz to them? Add some oatmeal! I have using this recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies for a while now and they are always a hit! Be careful, though. These are hard to stay away from, trust me. 

These are delicious on  any day of the year. I usually make them when I need a quick and easy recipe that will make a lot if I need it to. It's just as easy as the regular chocolate chip recipe, only with a few more ingredients. 

OATMEAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES (✭✭✭✭✭)

You will need:

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

3 1/2 cups flour

1 Tbsp cocoa powder (optional- I like how they taste extra chocolatey!)

2 cups oats

2 cups chocolate chips (I just add the whole bag.)

An electric mixer makes the process a lot easier, by the way. It saves a good amount of time and effort.

Step 1

Just like every other baking recipe, you have to preheat your oven. I set mine on convection at 325º. If your oven does not have a convection setting, set the temperature to 350º.

Step 2

Soften the two sticks of butter. On my microwave it takes about 15 seconds. Don't melt it, just soften it. With liquid butter, the dough will not turn out to be its normal consistency. Cream the butter and two sugars together.

Step 3

Add the vanilla and eggs to the mixture. Make sure you mix well!

Step 4

Add the dry ingredients- salt, baking soda, baking powder, flour, and cocoa powder if you choose to do so. Again, mix well, but not too fast if you are using a mixer. The ingredients will get EVERYWHERE! It's not fun. 

Step 5

Stir in the oats and chocolate chips. Again, don't mix it too quickly. 

Step 6

Use a tablespoon to shape the dough and place the balls on an ungreased cookie sheet. With the tablespoon, the cookies will be sure to stay the same size as you shape them. If you have a cookie dough scooper, you can use that as well.

Step 7

Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes on convection or 10-12 minutes on a regular setting. I like my cookies on the softer side, so I usually cook them for only eight minutes. Setting your oven to convection will cook the cookies more evenly. That way, the bottoms won't burn as easily!

MMMMMM... There's nothing better than warm cookies with a cool glass of milk! Happy baking!

ANOTHER TIP FOR AWESOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES:

I learned that adding instant vanilla pudding to the recipe will make your chocolate chip cookies taste better and look better, too. I've tried this before and it definitely worked! I don't know what that pudding does exactly, but it works wonders. You can find the recipe for these cookies here. 

(Sorry about the quality of these photos. The lighting in our kitchen is a little bit weird. Don't worry, the cookies look a lot better in person.)

Jelly Belly Buddies

Who doesn't love Halloween? It's always fun to go trick-or-treating and see everyone's costumes. All of the little kids seem to be superheroes or princesses, but what's the fun in that? I have decided that I want to be more creative and out-of-the-ordinary with my halloween costumes. It seems like I am always waiting until October to decide what I want to dress up as at the end of the month, so I can be a little bit rushed. But, last year, I found a very cute jellybean costume idea online and it was super easy to make! My friends and I had already decided that we wanted to be something together. Everyone likes jellybeans, right? This was perfect and we ended up putting our own spin on it. When we were out trick-or-treating, a lot of people did not know what we were at first, but once they read our costume (or we explained it to them) we got a lot of compliments!

By the way, it is very hard to sit down because you might pop the balloons. Also, if you do go trick-or-treating in this costume, be careful around trees and crowds of people.

Again, this costume is pretty easy to make. Looking back on it, it probably took us around 15 minutes when we were all working on our own.

Materials for Crafting:
Colorful Balloons - We used regular-sized balloons and only blew them up enough to make them round. Water balloons would work too, we were just in a pinch and couldn't find any.
Clear Trash Bags - Make sure they are big enough to cover the top half of your body. The clearer the bag is, the better you can see the balloons (obviously!).
Ribbon - The ribbon is supposed to be used to tie the bag at the top, but we used it for our hair too.
Permanent Marker - We were originally planning on making a sign with the Jelly Belly logo, but, again, we ran out of time, so we used a Sharpie and wrote directly on the bag. I suggest writing in large, thick letters so people can read it easier.

Have fun!

Inspire Me!

Handmade Charlotte is a great example of what I would love my blog to turn out like. The theme is very similar to mine as well. She includes a variety of do-it-yourself crafts, tasty recipes, and home decor ideas. Her blog includes fun things for kids as well some that are more sophisticated for adults, many of which I would try myself. The crafts and recipes have step-by-step instructions for the reader with visuals to provide extra demonstration. I hope I can incorporate the fun colors and simple layout of this blog, as well as some similar recipes and crafts that will be fun for many different ages.

Uncommon Designs is really similar to Handmade Charlotte, theme wise. They, too, blog a lot about treats and crafts. Their posts, though, relate to the season and the main holidays within those months. Therefore, for any last minute party planners who would like to get creative with their decorations have a place to look. This blog is more complicated than Homemade Charlotte, but includes a lot more variety. For example, their DIY projects are organized into subcategories like no-sew, mason jars, gifts, and so on. That way, you don't have to search through all of the crafts to find what you are looking for. I also like the fact that they have linked pictures at the top of the home page, making it easier to find posts that are for the specific season. I am going to relate my posts and ideas to the current season, as well, and if I get too many posts, I can organize them in a similar way.

Baking Bites is based entirely on cooking. However, the posts are not all recipes. This blog also includes helpful tips for bakers, new kitchen tools to make baking easier, interesting and uncommon ingredients that someone might use, cookbook recommendations, blog recommendations, and reviews on some of the things they have tried already. Baking Bites could be helpful to many people, from hardcore bakers who want to learn new skills or moms who are just looking for a new treat recipe. Again, the overall blog is simple, and fairly easy to navigate. I could use this blog to help improve my own baking skills and help me explain how to make different recipes.



I am very excited to work on this blog. Hopefully, it will end up turning out just as good as these three!