It’s been a while since I made this absolutely delectable treat (before Christmas!), but I loved it so much that I needed to share it with you. Although I just finished reading Kris Carr’s absolutely outstanding and inspiring lifestyle book, Crazy Sexy Diet (read it read it read it!) which eschews sugar, dairy and processed foods, I’m having a hard time kicking my long-time habits. Until I get my hands on my boyfriend’s juicer and a basket full of greenery, I’m going to try to my best to use up the bad things in my pantry and fridge. So maybe that yogurt could be put to good use in this dessert? I’ll be posting about Crazy Sexy Diet (and my Kindle!) just as soon as I catch up on some readings..school’s been taking a backseat lately.
But in the meantime, I give you Joy the Baker‘s frozen chocolate chip cookie dough balls. Not only are they the tastiest cookie dough I’ve ever consumed, they’re also safe (no salmonella!) and take about 10 minutes to prepare.
Either click the link above for the recipe (I didn’t change much) or see below for more!
Baking up a storm!!
Ingredients:
1 stick unsalted butter (that’s 1/2 a cup, and FYI I used salted butter..oops!)
1 cup + 2 Tbsp all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup Greek yogurt/applesauce (I used Balkan-style yogurt, which was delicious)
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips, melted for dipping
Cream butter and sugars together. Beat in yogurt and vanilla extract. Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda; add the mixture to the creamed butter/sugar. Once combined, mix in the chocolate chips.
Scoop out little balls onto a baking sheet, put in the freezer for a few hours. I found that the balls never really froze through, just got nice and cold, so I don’t think it matters exactly how long you put them in for. Then you can melt some chocolate chips, dunk the dough balls and put them back in the freezer for a little while. I was too busy eating them to take a picture of that step!
Oh my gosh, I may just have to run into my kitchen imminently and whip these up again!!
Or, alternatively, you could make me some and I could eat them?
{a delicious caramelized red onion and mushroom grilled cheese sandwich}
This week has been full of simple, lovely things. I went back to my beloved yoga class, and my body informed me that it was about time, since I’ve been sore since Tuesday. I had my first column published in an online newspaper (take that, New Years Resolution #17!) and couldn’t stop beaming with pride! I had a much-needed girl’s dinner with a good friend: perogies (with sour cream & caramelized onions), salad (with tomatoes, walnuts, goat cheese and green onions) and delicious wine. We ended the night by making the easiest chocolate chip cookies on earth (and replaced chocolate chips with chopped up Toblerone). I heard my Dad get overjoyed about his Kindle (and got antsy for mine!*), watched more episodes of Modern Family than I care to admit, wished I could do Rihanna’s dance while I walked down the street listening to this song, got all my textbooks and felt alive and on fire in the best possible way. Here are some snapshots from the last week or so.
{two amazing Christmas presents that I am absolutely in love with!}
{my super convenient clip-on iPod that is perfect for mittened-hand control!}
{the first issue of my Vegetarian Time subscription!}
{just a few textbooks – I’m so excited about my subjects this semester!}
{I picked up some beautiful things from the Dollar Store – candles, a vase and two decorative bowls, perfect for entertaining!}
What’s floating your boat this week?
xoxo,
*Expect a Kindle review post as soon as I get my hot little hands on my belated Christmas present!
So. You had a long, luxurious break spent gorging yourself on food, friends and free time. You wasted away the days sleeping in, watching movies and making sandwiches, leaving the mess for someone else to clean up. You had a wonderful, lazy, ridiculous few weeks off.
..Unfortunately, all good things come to an end, and school has presented itself as an inevitability that you are suddenly dreading with every fiber of your being. You have begun your goodbyes: “Goodbye, social life! Sayonara free time! Adios fun!” and begun your hellos: “Hello boring academic reading! Bonjour exhaustion! Ola junk food!”. Suffice to say you’re probably not feeling great about the coming semester. Visions of sugarplums summer vacation are dancing in your head.
Never fear! Your guide to beating the blahs is here!
1. Make it easier for yourself
Photo thanks to cfetcher
Get organized! Pick up some colourful binders, label them and keep your notes filed away where you can easily find them. If possible, take an interesting, easy course. Re-arrange your schedule so that it fits your life: for example, eliminate early classes. Stock your freezer with quick, easy meals like perogies, lasagna, edamame, pizza, burgers, bagels, frozen dinners, etc. Make it easy for you to eat whole, balanced meals instead of skipping them or ordering food (expensive!). Stock up on essentials like toilet paper, paper towels, kleenex, toothpaste, etc, so that you don’t have to always be running to the store for more.
Anything that you can do now, up front, to make it easier for yourself in the long run, I encourage you to do! That way, later on, when you’re running out of energy, time, and any essentials, you’ll be grateful to yourself for having cleared away some of the muck and creating a slightly easier existence.
2. Inject fun into your routine
Photo thanks to mlr
Brighten your note-taking with colourful pens and/or paper. Schedule a study/textbook reading/cooking gourmet food date with a friend once a week. Make time for your personal special activities: turn the computer off one hour earlier and spend the time reading, writing, drawing, dreaming. Take the scenic route to class. Create elaborate meals whenever you have time. Dress up for school. Take a bubble bath instead of a shower. Watch part of a movie every time you finish a reading/assignment. Reward yourself for doing annoying tasks (laundry, dishes, toilet-cleaning?) with candy, a magazine, a new eye shadow, etc. Resolve to wind down with a glass of wine once or twice a week. Listen to music while you’re getting ready in the morning.
I know people who say they just don’t have any time for fun. That’s nonsense! As long as you make a small effort in your day to stop and smell the roses & appreciate the little things, you’ll be happy at the end of every day, rather than burnt out and depressed.
3. Fix what’s broken
Photo thanks to daviddoctorrose
Replace that old towel that never dries you off properly. Buy a shoe rack so that it’s easier to find and organize your shoes. Write yourself a reminder to water the plants, take out the garbage, etc, etc. Pick your clothes up off the floor. Move that table that you keep running into. Re-organize your kitchen cabinets so it’s easier to reach the things you use most often. Hang up that picture that’s been leaning against the wall since March. Buy a timer for the oven so that you stop burning things. Re-arrange the furniture so that you feel more zen. Get to class earlier so you don’t get a bad seat.
By ‘broken’ I mean not working. Take a good look at your life, your home, your daily routine, and hone in on the things that annoy you every day. There are most likely several things that bug you on a daily, weekly or occasional basis that only require a few minutes of effort to change. In order to have a successful semester, try tweaking a few things in your life to keep you running smoothly and happily throughout the school year.
4. Make your space beautiful
Photo thanks to missvu
Buy new linens for your bed and make it a cozy, nest-y haven. Keep photos of friends and family around all the time. Clear the clutter off your desk or workspace. Cover the walls with magazine cutouts, photos, murals, collages, artwork. Keep all your favourite things in plain sight. Colour-code your bookshelves. Paint the walls your favourite colours. Hang up a blackboard and write inspirational quotes on it in colourful chalk. Buy scented candles. Have living things: pets, plants, flowers. Always have soft music playing.
Make your house a home, a place where you love to be. Make your bed just for sleeping so that when you cozy down into your fluffy duvet, it feels luxurious and comfy. Light candles, play music, keep beautiful things all around you. When exams roll around, it will be nice to have a special, comfortable place that relaxes and calms you.
5. Cut back on time-wasters
Photo thanks to balakov
One of the things I’ve never understood are people who complain and complain about how exhausted, burnt out and stressed they are, who complain about having absolutely no free time, and who spend several hours a day on facebook. Huh? I don’t get it. Unless your desired use of what little free time you have is to creep people on the internet, than this whole statement doesn’t make sense. The sad part is, I know people who say that no, they have no free time and no, time spent on facebook doesn’t count as free time. Wait, what? So they’d rather be doing activities that they actually enjoy, like reading a novel, riding their bike, hanging out with friends? And they can’t do those things because they don’t have time? But they have time to log into facebook for hours at a time? Confusing.
I’m not exactly a saint on the social media front, and I have logged a good chunk of time on facebook, but I would never claim that I had no time for activities I enjoy. I simply chose to spent that free time online instead of engaged in interesting activities. One of my resolutions for the new year is to cut down on time wasters. Force yourself off of facebook, off of twitter, off your blog reader, stop watching tv shows you don’t even enjoy, quit checking your email 340 times a day, and focus. Force yourself to find other ways to spend that time. Force yourself to do a more mindful activity. It won’t be easy, since your brain would initially prefer to be on autopilot skimming through pictures of that weird kid from high school’s family reunion, but your soul will thank you in the end. Pump up the creativity!
And Breathe Deep!
Find joy in the little things. Always plan so that you have something to look forward to. Put in the work every day so you don’t have to cram at the very end. Spend some time every day re-centering yourself, relaxing, and breathing deep. Work hard, play hard, focus in class (my very best advice to myself, it’s the single best way to spend less time reviewing at the end of the course), don’t procrastinate. Make time for the special things. Get enough sleep and good food. Don’t burn yourself out. Smile.
Since it’s midterm season, I tend to have long days and early nights with very little fun in between. Depressing, ain’t it?? Food, food blogs, cooking, eating: these have all been my moments of fun and delight in amongst the exhaustion. I love being able to surf the internet looking for delicious recipes and then replicating them as best as I can in my own kitchen. I’ve made so many delicious things lately! Chili, hot & sour soup, caramelized onion pizza, chocolate chip cookies, and more. But my favourite thing I’ve made lately? This pie.
Dubbed ‘Dad’s Perfect Sweet Potato Pie‘ by the oh-so-fabulous Joy the Baker, I can tell you right now that it is not a misnomer. It’s a foolproof recipe, and easily the simplest pie I’ve ever made.
Speaking of simple, did you know that you don’t have to roll out pie crust? Oh my gosh. This information was literally life changing. For a girl as obsessed with pie as I am, I could not be happier that the path to pie has gotten shorter and less complicated. I am eternally grateful!
And did I mention the best part? This pie tastes like autumn. Not a joke. It really does. You bite into it and immediately get transported back to your days of jumping in leaves and picking apples (even if you’re like me and those days happened last weekend). I made it for a lovely dinner I was having with my floor fellow from last year and two great friends. We all (myself included) adored it to bits. I have been hoarding the last slice in my fridge for days..muahahaha!
Alrightie. Now you can get the recipe from here, but I’m going to outline some of the steps with photos, for my own amusement. :)
Get your hands on 2 good sized sweet potatoes. This is a photo from after I boiled them and am about to peel away the skin and mash them all up into amazingness.
Note their beautiful texture and colour!
This is once most of the ingredients have been added: cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander, evaporated milk. Please note also that I had to go back to the store to get evaporated milk since instead I bought condensed? What it wrong with me? Don’t yell and scream, I had just been walked home by a decently attractive member of the opposite sex. Maybe I was distracted. Maybe I had other things on my mind.. ;)
Om nom nom nom. Beautiful. When my friends came over on the way to dinner, I invited them all to try the filling. And they did. And it was delicious. Salmonella be damned!
I’ll let Joy take you through the wonders of this pie crust, but let me reiterate: it is so amazing. It is so simple. My life is so great.
Perfect. Puffy. Yummy.
Ay caramba!!
Do yourself a huge favour and make this pie. Then eat it. Lots of it. Three slices. I won’t judge you. No really. :)
