Recipe: Chocolate Chip Rumchata Cookies

 

I made this recipe because I had a large bottle of Rumchata, and after realizing each shot (i.e. about one fluid ounce) has 140 calories, I figured I shouldn't make drinking it a habit. Instead, I'd made cookies with it, which I already knew would be loaded with calories!

I found this recipe on the Savory Simple blog; it was one of the few Rumchata recipes I could actually find. Let me tell you: these cookies were a PAIN to make. But we'll get to that after you've read the recipe (I hate how most blog posts make you scroll forever to finally get to the information you really want!). 

Ingredients

•          16 ounces all-purpose flour (approx. 3.5 cups, but please use scale)
•          1 tsp. baking powder
•          1.5 tsp. kosher salt
•          2 tsp. ground cinnamon
•          11 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
•          12 ounces granulated sugar (1.75 cups)
•          2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
•          2 large eggs
•          ½ cup + 2 tbl. Rumchata liquor
•          6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped coarsely

Instructions

1. Line two (2) baking sheets with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 350° F.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together.

3. In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, then turn the speed to low. Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the Rumchata. Then slowly add the flour mixture. Add the bittersweet chocolate last, mixing until just combined.

4. Use a 2-tablespoon scoop to portion out the cookies onto the prepared baking sheets. Chill for 15 minutes, then bake for 10-13 minutes, or until they look just slightly underdone (they’ll set as they cool). Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Now before I get into how annoying these cookies were to make, I should say that I was not cooking in my regular kitchen. My parents and I were at their condo on Hilton Head Island, so I wasn't equipped like I normally would be. I had neither parchment paper nor a stand mixer. I used a silicone mat on one cookie sheet, but since I only had one, I used PAM on the other. I also discovered in baking these cookies that the oven temperature is inaccurate, which means the cookies didn't bake as fast because this oven wasn't really 350°.*

So the odds were stacked against me is all I'm saying. Then the steps and other information in this recipe were ridiculous, too. First of all, for measuring out the flour, who the hell uses a food scale, other than those on a serious diet or the contestants on the Great British Baking Show? And why are these ingredients listed in ounces? I had to Google how many sticks of butter equals 11 ounces (it's 2.75 sticks, in case you were wondering). This recipe also assumes you have fancy baking scoops to portion out the cookies (I used an overflowing tablespoon, which ended up being way too big.). AND chilling the dough? Come on! Who has time for that! Then I'm stuck waiting for the dough to chill, scooping it on the sheets, putting it back in the fridge, and repeating the process as the cookies came out of the oven. Ugh. 

AND because of the low-temp oven, these cookies took a long time to bake. The recipe says 10-13 minutes, and in the full blog post, the Savory Simple author claims that at 13 minutes the cookies are at the crunchy stage. Bullshit. At 13 minutes my cookies were still doughy in the center and falling apart as I tried to get a spatula under them to transfer them to the wire rack. 15 minutes worked if I only had six cookies on a sheet. But with ~12 cookies on the sheet, even 20 minutes was barely enough to get some color on these cookies. 

Now I will say, after all this belly-aching, that the cookies taste amazing. I used milk chocolate chips (that my mom got for free from Target with her online order. Now that's customer service!), so the cookies were even sweeter. They really do have the Rumchata flavor, so if you like this liquor, you'll definitely enjoy these cookies. They're like cinnamon-y chocolate chip cookies. And since I think regular chocolate chip cookies are boring, I certainly prefer these! But I'll probably never make them again. I'll just enjoy them at the end of 2020...

*After I baked these cookies, my mom baked some oatmeal cookies with a recipe that said to bake them for 10 minutes at 350°. Hers ended up looking quite brown and overdone. So now I'm thinking this oven is on the fritz...

Recipe: Banana Oat Muffins

When my parents go on vacation, they always overbuy groceries. Like, there are only three of us, and one of us is only here for a week. And yet we have four different kinds of bread, a million beverages (alcoholic and innocent), and a fridge that can barely close. 

We had bought a big bunch of bananas, and I think we had only used one, and that was in pancakes. They were already getting brown dots, so we had to do something with them. I looked up online that one cup of mashed bananas is roughly three medium-sized bananas, so I thought I'd bake something to use some of them up.

I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com. While it's not a great recipe (it doesn't even tell you to preheat the oven!), I had all of the necessary ingredients, and with three steps, it looked pretty easy.

Ingredients

•          1.5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
•          1 cup rolled oats
•          ½ cup white sugar
•          2 tsp. baking powder
•          1 tsp. baking soda
•          ½ tsp. salt
•          1 egg
•          ¾ cup milk
•          1/3 cup vegetable oil
•          ½ tsp. vanilla extract
•          1 cup mashed bananas

Directions

1. Combine flour, oats, sugar, baking powder, soda, and salt.

2. In a large bowl, beat the egg lightly. Stir in the milk, oil, and vanilla. Add the mashed banana, and combine thoroughly. Stir the flour mixture into the banana mixture until just combined. Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper bake cups, and divide the batter among them.

3. Bake at 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) for 18 to 20 minutes.

I did accidentally forget the baking soda, so my muffins may not have risen as much as they should have. They're pretty dense (and the extra banana I used probably didn't help). I also didn't have any of the paper liners for the muffin tins, so I just used vegetable oil and rubbed that in the tins (which worked fine). The muffins were very light in color; I'm not sure if that was an oven issue, but I kept them in there for more than 20 minutes and they remained blonde. They definitely taste better if you pop them in the microwave for 10 seconds before eating them. So not my best work, but not horrible either.

Book Review: Mindy Kaling's "Why Not Me?"

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Earlier during the quarantine, I read Mindy Kaling's first book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? I realize I was late to the party on that book as well as this one, but better late than never! If you'd like to read my review of her first book, you can find that here. 

Now I've read her second but very similar book, Why Not Me? Here are my thoughts which I have previously posted to Goodreads.*

I first learned about Mindy Kaling not from her work in TV, but from the fact that she was a Dartmouth alumna like me. The parts in her books when she writes about our alma mater are some of my favorites. In this book, she describes her experiences with her sorority (we were not in the same one, but we were both part of local sororities, so there's that), and one of my favorite quotes was when she described the school as "an academic institution located in lawless rural New Hampshire where, when you arrive, you are given a flask of moonshine and a box of fireworks and simply told: 'Go to town.'" Clearly not true, but also not completely inaccurate...

But I also learned that I have many more things in common with Mindy:

• We both think weddings are mandatory fun and that honeymoons are really just fuck trips that couples expect other people to pay for.
• We agree that spending time nursing a break-up is something you do in your 20's, not your 30's; we've got better things to do.
• We both want the same things in a man: honesty, maturity, patience, financial security (for himself!). Although she did mention something about an enormous penis. Whether it was in jest or not, I do not know, but I myself am terrified of huge penises. No thank you.
• She was also a Latin nerd in high school. Hello, certamens!
• We both want to be good role models for other (younger) women.

But it wasn't just these gems of similarity that I enjoyed in this book. She also made some wonderfully thought-provoking comments:

• "Confidence is like respect: you have to earn it." As a confident woman who demands respect, I never really thought about it like this. I contribute my confidence to the way my parents raised me, always telling me I was smart, beautiful, and could do anything I wanted. And I believed them. But I did work hard in school, and my good grades added to my confidence, so in that way, yes, confidence is something you earn through hard work. Respect is the same way: you must respect yourself and others before they respect you. Although I will say, earning respect from a man is nearly impossible...Perhaps it's because they have yet to respect themselves? Or are terrible insecure? Or both?

• "Some people really feel uncomfortable around women who don't hate themselves." This kind of goes along with the first quote. Our society is built around white men, and therefore any of us who are not white men are expected to feel inferior and hate ourselves. And when we don't, the whole system goes out of whack. Men don't know what to think about a confident woman because their worldview tells them that women SHOULD hate themselves; women who hate themselves are uncomfortable around confident women because misery loves company. You can't win.

• "Entitlement in and of itself isn't so bad." While I 100% concede that I am a privileged, white woman and some of my entitlement comes from that, not all of it does. Entitlement means feeling like you deserve something. And there have been times when I have felt entitled because of my hard work, which is the kind that Mindy is saying isn't so bad. After I graduated from Dartmouth with several internship experiences, I refused to accept another internship: I felt entitled to have a job. And I waited it out and I got a great job. I have quit a job without giving notice because I felt entitled to work in a non-toxic work environment where I can do my job without being micromanaged, because I KNOW I can do the work. So Mindy and I are on the same page about it being okay to feel entitled as long as you've put in the hard work to make sure you really deserve what you want.

Anyway, that is a very long review saying how much I like Mindy Kaling and this book!

*I love the Goodreads app/website. It's a great way to track books that you would like to read as well as review ones you've already finished. AND now that the year is coming to a close, Goodreads gave me stats on my reading! Thus far in 2020, I have read 23 books, which means more than 7,000 pages! One of the silver linings of this pandemic means more time for reading, which is never a bad thing.

Recipe: Pumpkin Peanut Butter Cookies

 

#NoFilter (Just kidding!)

Okay, I didn't actually make these, but my mom did! She was planning to make the same peanut butter cookies she always makes, but I told her, "You don't just have to use your recipe cards to bake something. You have the entire internet at your fingertips!" So I found this recipe (from the Simply Joy blog) so we could continue to use up the big can of pureed pumpkin we had already opened.  

Ingredients

·         3 cups all-purpose flour

·         1 teaspoon baking soda

·         1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

·         1/2 teaspoon salt

·         3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

·         12 tablespoon unsalted butter room temperature

·         1 cup granulated sugar

·         1 cup light brown sugar, packed

·         1 egg yolk, room temperature

·         1 teaspoon vanilla

·         1/2 cup pumpkin puree

Instructions

·         Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

·         In a medium bowl whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, and ground cinnamon.

·         In a large bowl, beat together the butter and peanut butter until smooth.

·         Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar and beat until the batter is light and fluffy (between 3 to 6 minutes).

·         Add in the pumpkin, egg yolk, and vanilla extract. Beat until just combined.

·         Add in the flour mixture and beat on low until it is integrated, turning up the hand mixer and beating until just fully combined.

·         Using a cookie scoop, create one-inch balls. Place on cookie sheet, approximately two inches apart, and using a fork push down one way and then turn the fork pushing down the other way making a hatch mark pattern.

·         Bake for 12 minutes, rotating halfway through. The edges of the cookies should be golden brown.

My mom didn't make the fork marks on the cookies. She just did drop cookies instead, which taste just as good! And she didn't rotate the cookies when they were baking. While this can be a good idea if you already know your oven doesn't cook evenly, every time you open the oven door, you release heat and the oven has to heat back up again, so that's not very efficient or good for baking, either. 

These are very yummy if you like soft, peanut butter cookies!

Recipe: Pumpkin-Oatmeal Muffins

NOPE, I'm not done with the pumpkin recipes yet! I opened a really big can of pureed pumpkin, so I'm going to keep making recipes until it's all gone. I found this recipe on the Eating Well website. I thought since muffins are slightly healthier than cookies or cake, I'd give this a go. And there are only three instructions: how could I mess this up?

Ingredients

• 3.5 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
• 1.5 cups reduced-fat milk
• 1 cup unseasoned pumpkin puree
• ½ cup light brown sugar
• 1.5 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. pumpkin pie spice
• ¾ tsp. salt
•  2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• ½ cup chopped pecans

Directions

Step 1: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Stir oats, milk, pumpkin, brown sugar, vanilla, baking powder, pumpkin pie spice, salt and eggs together in a large bowl until fully incorporated.

Step 2: Lightly coat a 12-cup muffin tin with cooking spray. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups, filling each almost to the top. Sprinkle evenly with pecans.

Step 3: Bake the muffins until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then transfer to wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.

I did not use pecans, but otherwise I followed this recipe pretty closely. And since I was baking at my parents' house, my mom has a real cookie scoop that made it so much easier to fill the muffin tins! In the end, I'd say these muffins are okay. They are a little bland (this could be because the brown sugar was clumpy and some muffins may have been much sweeter while others left without). The texture is a little mushy, though this shouldn't be a surprise, since mixing oats and milk is the basics for making oatmeal. I think adding some craisins, and definitely some banana, could have enhanced the sweetness, therefore making them taste better. BUT if the idea is that these muffins are healthy, they certainly taste like it.

Here are my other pumpkin recipes from this fall in case you're looking for a true dessert to try:

Pumpkin Roll

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

Pumpkin Caramel Cupcakes

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

Movie Review: Cats

Since HBO was running a special this week, I was able to watch the movie Cats for free! I already knew what I was in for: I saw the musical at the Kennedy Center last fall (read that blog post here), so I knew it was going to be a wack-a-doodle show full on nonsensical songs. 

So rather than tell you about the story (of which there isn't much), I'll just share my quick thoughts:

Pros (the much shorter list of the two)

-I appreciate that they included real dancers. I knew a lot of celebrities were in the film, so I didn't think I'd see actual ballet dancers and the like. But Francesca Hayward, Robert Fairchild, and Steven McRae are all professional dancers/singers/actors. Good for them! This definitely added a level of legitimacy to the movie that I was not expecting. 

Image found here

-Speaking of celebrities, Taylor Swift did not disappoint. She's a born performer, and I thought she did a great job. Too bad she only has one number!

-Rebel Wilson is great comedic relief. This show is already ridiculous, so why not make it even funnier, especially to make fun of the thing itself? I love when she jokes about suspecting that one of the male cats has been neutered since he can sing the high notes. HA!

-James Corden wasn't as funny, but I did like part of his song. Watch it below:

Just watch from 1:15-1:50 for the funniest bit!

-While the CGI is totally weird (see more on that below), I did like that the movie could include ear and tail movements. Cats emote a lot of their feelings through their ears and tails, and I liked seeing that portrayed in the film. 

Cons

-The cats in this show always look weird, because they're humans pretending to be cats that really don't look anything like real cats. Examples include:

• Why do the female characters have boobs? They're supposed to be cats, not humans! And since all of this is CGI, couldn't you edit them to look less... bodacious? They're cats!
• Cats' tails are not prehensile like a monkey's. They cannot wrap around and hold onto things, nor do they curl up at the end like a little snail shell. 
• Male calico cats, like Mungojerrie, are almost nonexistent. Nearly 100% of calico cats are female due to genetics. 
• Some of the cats wear clothes and/or shoes. Some don't, so does that mean they're naked?
• How small are these cats? Throughout the film, they look very tiny, especially when walking on the railroad tracks (see a video here, starting at 2:24). Is it that hard to estimate the actual perspective and size of a cat?

-If you thought human faces on cat bodies was strange, it's even worse on mice and cockroaches:

Image found here

Image found here

-I don't remember the part about Macavity kidnapping other cats, and there's a new song for the cat named Victoria. This show is already bonkers. Don't change things unless they are going to help this story make sense!

Here's the new song, "Beautiful Ghosts," in case you're interested:

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-Why are Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in this movie?! Actors of their caliber, winners of Golden Globe and Tony awards, shouldn't have to stoop so low...

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-During Jason Derulo's "Rum Tum Tugger" song, the female cats are looking up at him with big doe eyes, while a white liquid is spilled everywhere... I feel like I just got a quick snap-shot of a porn BJ scene. See what I'm talking about at 3:33 in this video:

-I was disappointed by Jennifer Hudson's version of "Memories" (Don't @ me). She is a phenomenal singer, so I was really expecting to be blown away. But she didn't enunciate the words, and so many of them were whispered to the point of being inaudible. It didn't get me shivers like Keri René Fuller's singing did when I saw the show live:

This movie won SIX Razzie Awards; for those of you who do not know, all Razzies are for worst-anything, so not only to be nominated for nine of these awards but to win six (including worst picture, director, supporting actor, supporting actress, screenplay, and screen combo)?! That pretty sums up this movie and why you should not watch it. 

For more ranting on Cats, check out this hilarious list of 66 questions about the Cats' trailer. Some of those questions match my own!

*All GIFs are from www.giphy.com. 

Recipe: Pumpkin Caramel Cupcakes

Clearly I'm still on my pumpkin baking kick. Before work today, I decided to make pumpkin cupcakes using this recipe from Taste of Home. In general, recipes that use a boxed cake mix are pretty easy (except for when you don't actually follow the recipe, like when I tried to make unicorn cake mix cookies. Read about that disaster here.). This one turned out okay!

Ingredients

Cake

• 1 package yellow cake mix (regular size)
• 1 can (15 oz.) pureed pumpkin
•  2/3 cup water
•  ¼ cup maple syrup
• 3 large eggs, room temperature
• 4 tsp. sugar
• 4 tsp. ground cinnamon
• Dash salt

Topping

•          1 carton (16 oz.) caramel apple dip
•          Chocolate frosting and decorating icing, optional

A few notes from me, as usual. I used regular syrup, not pure maple syrup, so I guess I really just added a lot of high fructose corn syrup to my cupcakes. I also didn't even bother to top the cupcakes. One, they travel more easily and neatly that way (I'll probably take them to my parents' house), and it's just added calories to an already sweet snack (especially because of the high fructose corn syrup). I figure if I share them with anyone, if that person wants to choose a topping on their own, they can do that. The texture is soft, bouncy, and chewy; they're denser than a regular cupcake, which I like. I baked them using my new silicon cupcake liners for the first time, and they worked really nicely! You just turn them inside out and the cupcake pops right out, AND they're dishwasher safe for easy clean-up! 

Just another pumpkin recipe I recommend!

Recipe: Soft Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars

I made a pumpkin roll this weekend (see that blog post here), but I was still in a baking mood. Plus, I had opened a huge can of pureed pumpkin for the first recipe, so I figured I'd use some more of it in another recipe. This time I thought I'd try making pumpkin bars/brownies, and this recipe from the Averie Cooks blog looked yummy and easy (that second part is critical). 

INGREDIENTS

·          1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick), melted

·          1 large egg

·          3/4 cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)

·          1 cup light brown sugar, packed

·          1 tablespoon vanilla extract

·          2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

·          1 teaspoon cinnamon

·          1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

·          1 1/4 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips + 2 tablespoons, for sprinkling

INSTRUCTIONS

1.      Preheat oven to 350°F. Line an 8-by-8-inch baking pan with aluminum foil, spray with cooking spray; set aside.

2.      In a large, microwave-safe bowl melt the butter, about 1 minute on high power.

3.      Wait momentarily before adding the egg so you don’t scramble it. Add the egg, pumpkin, brown sugar, vanilla, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, and whisk until smooth.

4.      Add the flour and stir until just combined, don’t overmix.

5.      Stir in 1 1/4 cups chocolate chips.

6.      Turn batter out into prepared pan, smoothing the top lightly with a spatula.

7.      Evenly sprinkle with 2 tablespoons chocolate chips, smoothly the top lightly with a spatula.

8.      Bake for about 32 to 33 minutes, or until done. A toothpick inserted in the center should come out clean, or with a few moist crumbs, but no batter. The moisture content in pumpkin varies, as do climates and ovens; bake until yours are done.

9.      Allow bars to cool in pan for at least 30 minutes before slicing and serving.

I still had yet to buy more brown sugar, so I just used one cup of regular granulated sugar. I also only put one cup of chocolate chips into the batter; I find that using more than one cup of anything chocolate in a pumpkin recipe means the chocolate will overpower the other flavors. 

These are very soft and chewy, and not too sweet! Honestly, I think I could have even used fewer chocolate chips and they still would be delicious!