friday love

Friday is here!! What a week!!

This week......

I had really planned on writing a post on how much I loved Girl Scout Cookies.

but....

turns out, they are not as I remember.... Cara asked the question, " Have my standards gotten higher, or are Girl Scout cookies really not as good as they used to be?"

The Samoa was not even worth my time.....what IS that thing?

And while I loved the flavor of the Thin Mint, I felt like I was eating something dipped in fake chocolate and coated in wax. Oh wait, I was.

So I had to make up for it. I found this recipe by Heidi (love her blog) and got to work.

mix. roll. cut.

(i don't have a small round cookie cutter, so I used a baby bottle lid that I found in my drawer....perfect!)

bake. cool. dip.

Recipe by Heidi on 101 Cookbooks.

Chocolate Wafers:
8 ounces butter, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar,
1 teaspoon natural vanilla extract
1 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour

Chocolate Peppermint Coating:
1 pound good quality semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
natural peppermint oil to taste

Preheat your oven to 350. Racks in the middle zone.

Make the cookie dough: In a mixer cream the butter until it is light and fluffy. Add the powdered sugar and cream some more, scraping the sides of the bowl a couple times if necessary. Stir in the vanilla extract and then the salt and cocoa powder. Mix until the cocoa powder is integrated and the batter is smooth and creamy, sort of like a thick frosting. Add the whole wheat pastry flour and mix just until the batter is no longer dusty looking, it might still be a bit crumbly, and that's o.k. You don't want to over mix and end up with tough cookies.

Turn the dough out onto a counter, gather it into a ball, and kneed it just once or twice to bring it together into once nice, smooth mass. Place the ball of dough into a large plastic bag and flatten it into a disk roughly 3/4-inch thick. Place the dough in the freezer for 20 minutes to chill. (don't over chill--I left mine in for about an hour and it was hard as a rock!)

Rollout and bake: Remove the dough from the freezer and roll it out really thin, remember how thin Thin Mints are? That's how thin you need your dough, about 1/8-inch. You can either roll it out between two sheets of plastic, or dust your counter and rolling pin with a bit of flour and do it that way. Stamp out cookies using a 1 1/2-inch cutter. Place cookies on a parchment-lined baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool completely on a baking rack if you've got one.

Make the peppermint coating:
While the cookies are in the oven you can get the coating ready. Slowly melt the chocolate (double boiler if you are fancy, I do it slowly and carefully in the microwave), stirring occasionally until it is glossy and smooth. Stir in the peppermint extract. If you think the chocolate needs a bit more peppermint kick, add more extract a drop or two at a time - but don't go overboard.

Finishing the cookies: You are going to coat the cookies one at a time and then gently set them on a parchment-lined baking sheet to set. Drop one cookie into the chocolate and (using a fork) carefully make sure it gets fully coated. Lift the cookie out of the chocolate with the fork and bang the fork on the side of the pan to drain any extra chocolate off the cookie. You are after a thin, even coating of chocolate. Place on the aforementioned prepared baking sheet, and repeat for the rest of the cookies. Place the cookies in the refrigerator or freezer to set. They will set at room temperature, it just takes much longer, and I prefer them straight out of the freezer anyways ;)

Make 3 or 4 dozen cookies. (1/2 batch was plenty for us!)

The verdict: Good. Really good. Not quite a thin mint. Thin mints have a definite "crisp" to them. These didn't. But the chocolate on the outside was REAL chocolate, and I made mine thicker than a real thin mint....mmm...and perfect out of the freezer.

Would I make them again? If I want a cookie, I'm going to make a real cookie. I think these would be really good mixed with a plate of assorted treats (like at Christmas.)

I could tell you every week how much I love my little adventures in thrifting.....

I really do.

All this for $5something.

I have fallen in love with this house (found here) and determined to live there some day.

Please check out my new friend Coco and her pretty little blog Roost.

Her photos are so pretty and simple, and her recipes are mouthwatering....you will love it over there!

making a whole wheat buttermilk tarragon loaf.

What is not to love about this video? It's silly, cute, makes me think that maybe I really could dance in a music video someday, and totally reconfirms that I would really like to be Zooey Deschanel for a day.

Happy Weekend!! I LOVE that we get one extra hour of daylight this weekend....HOORAY!!!

What did you love about this week???