My Favorite Sweet Treat

I blame it all on my Mom. It was her fabulous chocolate chip cookies that I loved as a child that has now made chocolate chip cookies my all time favorite sweet treat. And no offense to my Mom or her yummy recipe, but I have found another recipe that I am falling head over heals for. It came from Bakerella. Super delicious! If you are like me and crave a good chocolate chip cookie once in awhile, then this is a must try recipe!

2 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chocolate chips

*Preheat oven to 350 degrees
*In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda and salt with a wire whisk and set aside
*With a mixer, beat butter and both sugars until well blended
*Beat in eggs and vanilla
*Add flour mixture in two additions until combined
*Stir in chocolate chips
*Bake 8-10 minutes

Animal Crackers

As mentioned in the previous post, cooking will be a weekly part of our home school. I found this book called Kinder Krunchies at our REACH book sale earlier this summer.

It has simple, healthy cooking activities that I thought would be fun for the kids (ahem - and me!!) Yesterday we did our first recipe.... Animal Crackers. Ours came out more like Animal cracker cakes - don't think we rolled them flat enough. Either way, the kids ate them up and had a blast making them. Isaac and Julia have always enjoyed helping out in the kitchen. Cooking is full of teachable moments... so it's a good fit for us. Here is the recipe if you want to try the same with your kids.....

Grind 1/2 cup oatmeal in the blender
Add 2 t. honey, 1/4 + 1/8 t salt, 3/4 cup flour, and 1/4 t soda
Cut in 1/4 cup butter
Add 4 T buttermilk
Roll very thin and cut with animal cookie cutters.
Bake at 400 degrees until brown (10-12 minutes)

While the "cracker cakes" were baking, Isaac and Julia worked on their journals. Another thing I like about Kinder Krunchies is that it has questions to ask throughout the cooking experience and a reated activity to do at the end. For this recipe, the suggestion was to make up a story about the animal crackers made. Here is what Isaac and Julia came up with.

Isaac's story titled: The Playing of the Animals

Once upon a time there was little snuggle friends. They were all playing, except one was eating. One got a boo boo. The animal accidentally hit the other animal. They were playing with the toy. And the little dinosaur said, "Can you please not do that?" ~The End

Julia's story titled: Atacha (have NO idea where she got that word - she loves to make up her own words!)

Once upon a time a dinosaur bumped into another. They said sorry. They played and played and played and played. Bunny came hopping. The Butterfly bumped into the Dinosaur and she said, "I'm sorry" She flew away. The Bunny hopped away. She went to the field where it was her country. And the Bunny kept looking and looking for her Mom and Dad. And she found her Mom and Dad. She is home. The Butterfly flew off and she found her Mom and Dad. ~The End