What's Baking?

I have my staples that I make over the holidays. This year, I'm adding a few new things that I've come across.

Chocolate Chunk cookies
I've tried a lot of different "the best" chocolate chip cookie recipes over the years, from traditional to fancy ones like the Jacque Torres gourmet ones. For the texture and taste that I prefer, the Best recipe for me is still Nestle Tollhouse. Thats probably why it took Monica all those tries to get exactly the right one on that famous episode of Friends. 

You can find it on the back of every bag of Nestle Chocolate chips and its also available online. Here is a link for the recipe. I like the artisan look of the chocolate chunks rather than the uniform, traditional look of the chips, so I use those. Just throw in the entire bag. Why have 12 chunks left over? ;)

While I was looking for the link to share, I realized that it was really hard to find, first you have to go through their corporate site, then do a bunch of selections and pull downs. So to make it easier, I've also included a link to their recipe site as a whole. 


Pecan Pie Bars
From the checkout, I impulse bought a holiday baking magazine from Better Homes and Gardens, in it, I found this Pecan Pie Bar recipe. It was sooo incredibly easy and virtually mess free. I don't personally like pecan pie but my Sweet-toothed sister and my hubby love it so I thought I'd try it out. I wonder how well it ships?

It looked so pretty in the pan, I had to shoot a pic of it. It has to cool for awhile and I'm impatient so I'm posting this straight from the pan. I wish you could smell this!

After lunch I cut them and put them in the stand. Of course I had to try one. It was actually good. It was extremely sweet but not overly so and the crust balanced it well. 

Here is a link to the recipe directly from their site: Pecan Pie Bars

Minecrafty

I decided to further fuel my son's addiction to Minecraft by making him a creeper pillow. For those of you who don't know a kid who has been sucked into this, skip this post. Lol. 

I plan on doing a tutorial but until I get that together... Here is the finished product.