My Winning State Fair Chocolate Cookies

Hello Everyone,

Ok here they are, I finally got a chance to sit down and just blog! I know some of you have been asking me for this recipe for a while and I’m sorry I’m late in posting it.

Chocolate Cookies:

8-ounces semi-sweet chocolate, I use Baker’s Chocolate

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tbsp. baking cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Melt the 8-onces of chocolate in a microwave safe bowl or in a bowl over some barley simmering water. Keep slightly warm. In a mixing bowl cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time until mixed in,  add the melted chocolate and stir until smooth. Add the cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Add the flour and mix just until combined and stir in the chocolate chips, do not over mix. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto a lightly sprayed baking sheets about 2 inches apart, as they will spread out and bake at 350 for 10-11 minutes. Watch them they can burn very easily!! I hope you all enjoy this recipes! Let me know!!! 🙂

 Amanda 🙂

 

State Fair

Hello everyone,

As some of you may already know I did pretty well in the state fair. I won Best In Show for my chocolate drop cookies. There are 12 categories for the drop cookies, and there were A LOT of cookies entered. I won a lot of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in my yeast breads, quick breads and muffins. I also won the Idaho Wheat Growers award that’s $50!!! They only gave out 2 of those award’s!! I’ll try to post my winning chocolate cookie recipe in the next couple of days.  At first when I got to the fair I didn’t think I won anything. Several years ago I won the Sweepstakes award 4 times in a row. How you win this award depends on the number of entries you have that have placed. Even though I had 61 entries I didn’t win that award this year, I was hoping I would… Well I’ll just have to try for next year! I think if I make several cakes and a lot of the candies I could win next year. I am going to work on my decorated cakes throughout the year and store them, I can make them out of cake dummies and boxes they will stay fine. The first one I want to work on is my gingerbread house. I saw one in Wilton’s recent yearbook that I would like to make. As far the other’s I don’t know yet, just have to think about that later. Next week I have the Saco baking cocoa contest and the Fleishman’s yeast bread contest. In all the years I have entered these competition’s I always place 4th or 5th and only the first 3 winner’s get prize money. I hope I can at least place in the top 3 this year. I don’t know if it’s my presentation or how I write the recipes, I type them so they are clear to read. I am making my chocolate orange cake for the Saco contest and the theme is Having A Ball. I have no clue yet how I am going to decorate this one. Any idea’s on this one??? I’ll give anyone full credit on my blog if I pick your idea.. The bread contest I already have idea’s for, one is a whole grain bread contest only the 1st place get’s the prize money. I won 2nd the last time in this and no money darn it.. 😦 The theme is Bake for the Cure (for breast cancer). My grandma Shirley is a breast cancer survivor, so I’m going to make something that honors her fight against breast cancer. I am thinking of making strawberry rolls, you know like cinnamon rolls but with strawberry filling. I know what bread recipe I’m using,  but haven’t decided on the strawberry filling. I think it will have to be jam or preserves, I would like to make a strawberry curd, but I need to find a recipe for it. It will all be pink fabric and roses for my display. The whole grains bread contest I am making my cinnamon bread and using a basket lined with pink fabric and some satin pink bows. It’s going to be a pink explosion. I like the line Sally Field said in Steele Magnolias, while she was having her hair done before her daughter’s wedding, It looks like the whole church was hosed down with Pepto Bismal!! That’s what all the displays will look like at the fair for sure pink, pink, and more pink!!! LOL!!!

Please pray that my health will get better, I am still very anemic. I have had a heavy period for 5 weeks now, I feel very sleepy all the time. A normal iron level is 50 and mine is 15, I don’t know if the pills have helped yet… Also my fevers have returned, they haven’t been as high as last year when all this stuff started. It’s been between 99.5 and 100.4, so I hope they will go back down. I am having a CT done again sometime to check on the lesions on my lungs. I’ll just have to wait and see…

My family stuff hasn’t gotten any better… I am not going to speak to my brother, not until he says he’s sorry. Which is unlikely he’ll ever say that. He doesn’t like confrontation and doesn’t like being told he’s wrong with anything. He’s a lot like my mother she does the same thing. The Lord took that fear away from me a long time ago, I say how I feel, and what I think of a situation. Some people like it other’s don’t, well to those of you who don’t you can suck dirt for a I care!!! My brother chose to be friends with the man who raped me and until that changes nothing will change between us. I also think my brother doesn’t like me because I like his ex-wife better than I do him. At least she’ll talk to us and let us spend time with my niece’s and nephew he won’t. He uses his kids to get back at the family. His excuse is always that they are busy with school or sports stuff. My brother is a liar and he uses people to get what he wants from them. One of these days he’s going to need some of us again and we won’t be there to help… He treats the rest of my family expect my mom the same way. My mom refuses to see any of it, to her Dave does nothing wrong. He has always been her favorite, my dad’s favorite is my sister. They always put me in charge when they were gone, so if something went wrong when I was a kid I was held responsible. I would ask why am I in trouble when they did the bad thing?? They would say well you’re the oldest and your responsible… I thought that sucked… Also the problem with my brother is that in his whole life everything came easy for him, from school, friends, and girlfriends. The divorce from his wife is the only thing he has ever faced that was hard. When my dad wanted him to help us finish building our house he didn’t want to, he wanted to play football instead. So as soon as he turned 18 he ran away from home in the middle of the night. My mom came upstairs to my room and asked me if I knew where he was and I said no, she said all his clothes are gone! Well we found out later what he had done. One set of grandparents told him he needed to go home and work this out, but he refused and the other grandparent’s let him stay with them. That didn’t sit to well with my parent’s. We also found out that the creep who raped me helped him… One of these days that creep that raped me will mess up and they will all see that I’m not crazy, I just hope he doesn’t do anything to my niece.. He is a rapist, a peeping tom, and he is addicted to porn.

Well enough of my ranting for now…

Amanda

 

What a Life I have…

Hello everyone,

I am still baking some fair entries today, just some cookies today and tomorrow I’ll be baking some bread. Still don’t know how many I have made yet. I haven’t kept track! LOL!!!

I have been dealing with a family member that has betrayed me this past week. I was so angry with him that (it’s my brother) I said some pretty nasty words to him, I just texted them to him. This is hard for me to write down, I have debated on whether or not I wanted to write about this. I think I need to so that other people know that they are not the only one’s to go through what I did. Several years ago I was drugged and raped by someone I considered like a brother to me. We had went to school together and he lived in hour home with my parents and brother and sister for a couple of years. At first when I told my parent’s about it they accused me of being a liar, and so did another family member. My parent’s convinced me that I dreamed it all up and I thought I was crazy. This went on for several years, until I met my husband. With his support and love I was able to confront my parents about this and they believe me now. When I told my grandparents they believed me and my grandfather would kill him if he came around again. The problem is that my brother added my rapist again as his Facebook page. I tried talking to him about it, because I wanted to know why he would do such a thing to me. I am deeply hurt by this. Plus I am scared for my niece, she is a young developing lady and I am scared that he will hurt her to. This person has hurt not only me, but someone else I know.  I have written to her mother my brother’s ex about this as well. I hope we can do something about this. I told everyone I have nothing to gain by telling them this other than being shut out by my brother who doesn’t believe me. By the way he is the asshole I was talking about! I can’t send my rapist to prison either, because the statue of limitations is 5 years and this happened in the summer of 98. I feel so hopeless about this situation, I don’t know what else to do. Most of my family won’t or are not willing to help, they think my brother and I need to work this out on our own, but how can I when he betrays me like this and won’t talk to me. He has blocked me on Facebook and on his cell phone. I am very angry with him. When he got divorced from his ex, Ray and I did a lot of free babysitting and did what we could to help him through it. We have also made a lot of special birthday parties and fathers day parties for him and his kids. We do that for all our family, I haven’t this past year because I was so sick. I just feel hopeless about this right now, and I needed to vent. 

Until next time..

Amanda

 

Fair Fever!!!

Hello everyone,

I am still baking thing’s for the state fair. I don’t know how many entries I am up to. I will be working on them until Monday night. My husband say’s honey the freezer is getting full!!! I just laugh and say I know! A lot of the stuff I make on Monday won’t or can’t be frozen anyway. I double wrap my entries and then wrap them in freezer paper. I’m sure some of you are wondering what does she do with all the leftovers?? Well I have learned over the years how to cut recipes in half so that instead of making 12 muffins I get 6 muffins, I do that with all the stuff I make. Then when I am done I put the leftovers on tray’s and send them with my husband to his office. They love my stuff there. I used to give stuff to my family, but I stopped because they seem to get tired of it. I’ll post more about all this on Tuesday, that’s when I have to take my entries in.

I didn’t bake for Ronald McDonald house on Friday, and I feel bad about that. I really wanted to go there. For the last 3-4 weeks I have been having a lot of pain needle like stabbing pain and I couldn’t figure out why. I went to see my Dr. on Monday and she said it was because of my iron being so low. The normal level is 50 she said and mine is clear down to 15, she said that’s why I’m hurting so bad. I am taking the iron pills she gave me and today is the first day that I haven’t been in pain all day. I was having a hard time driving as well, my feet started to feel like they were going numb. It was really scary to drive to the Dr. office the other day with my feet feeling like that. This is why I didn’t go to Ronald McDonald house, and it takes about 45 minutes to get there from my house and there is always a lot of traffic. I have to keep taking these pills because there is only 1 other thing the Dr. can give me and that would be a blood transfusion and I really don’t want that!!!

Well I better go for now, I just wanted to give you all an update on everything.

Have a great day!!

Amanda 🙂

 

Sunday

Hello everyone,

Not much going on with us, we are boring people!!! LOL!! I have made 19 bake items for the state fair. Just quick breads, muffins, ect.. I’m not making any cake, decorated cakes, candy, or any of the theme stuff. I just don’t have the energy to make any of them, plus I don’t have a van to transport them in. We used to have a van, but about 2 years ago my husband wrecked it. He was on his way to work (during early morning rush hour) and the 2nd car in front of him crashed into a car then it caused 4 cars total to be wrecked. He did get cited for being to close to the car in front of him. I’m just happy he wasn’t hurt!!! So we just have 2 cars now, which for us it works out fine. I can’t work anywhere yet, and even if I look there just isn’t much out there in jobs..  

I am still sick, I stopped taking the iron pills today. Shhh, don’t tell my husband, he’ll throw a fit. It’s a good thing I’m seeing my Dr. tomorrow, I need to talk to her about it. I’m not feeling like I was the last 2 days. I felt like I was moving in slow motion and I was dizzy and felt just really bizarre. It was a not fun!!!

My nieces birthday was the 1st and I wanted to make a cake for her, but she’s getting to the point where she doesn’t seem to want them anymore.  Does anyone else out there know of kids like this??? I would have been happy to get a pretty decorated cake for my birthday, anytime!!! Well someday she’ll change. I can only hope I guess… 

I’m not able to bake for the Ronald McDonald house on Friday, with the way I’m feeling I just don’t feel good about driving that far. Plus I don’t have the energy to get up that early. My sleep pattern is way off, another thing to talk to my Dr. about. Hmmm…

I wish I had some recipe to post, but I just haven’t felt like making anything complicated.

I hope everyone out there in cyberspace is doing well!!

Until next time 🙂

Amanda

 

And another day..

Hello everyone,

Not much has changed here with us. I have been sick all week. I started taking some iron pills that my Dr. prescribed and I think they are making me sick. I feel really slow and lethargic, it’s not fun feeling this way I hope it passes soon…

I am trying to make some thing’s for the state fair it’s starts in a couple of weeks. So far all I have done is bran muffins and zucchini bread. I wanted to make a decorated cake, but I’m not going to make it. I hope to get my but out and go to the store later. I’ll keep you updated on how many thing’s I’m baking.  How much do you think I’ll bake? I am aiming for a high number, anyone what to guess???

I am baking for Ronald McDonald house next week and I hope I feel better by then….

Well until next time..

Amanda 🙂

 

Sigh….

Hello everyone,

I’m glad the fair is over for another year. It was a good year for the fair, their numbers were up. It seemed to me like a lot of people came through. The hoopla over that black and white cake lasted all through the fair and after. We were told by the decorator that she was sending someone to pick the cake up on Monday, but it got to be 6:45pm and no one showed up. So my clever husband looked up the last name on his blackberry and we found it after calling 3 different people!! The person I talked to was very nice and asked how she placed, and I told them 4th and she won the people’s choice award on Saturday. Which I thought was great, because it was a beautiful cake it just did have everything made on the cake. The judges deduct points for that. The person said they would call her and find out if they were coming if they didn’t they would come and get it. Well 5  minutes later the cake decorator herself called me all hysterical, don’t throw away my cake!!! I don’t see what the problem here is I told the lady ( my supervisor) that I would send someone Monday but I had a small stroke (heat stroke) and I can’t pick up the cake what are your hours in the office and so on.  I couldn’t get in a word hardly at all, she was so pissy. I know from experience what it’s like to be sick, and I try not to treat people that way. She also hung up on me when I tried to tell her she won the people’s choice award, she was flat-out rude!!! I hope she doesn’t enter next year, it wouldn’t hurt my feeling’s at all!!!

 In case you’re wondering yes I’m pissed off right now, some other family member is being an asshole and right now I want nothing to do with them. I know I need to forgive but that’s too much to ask of me right now.

Sorry no recipes for a while, I just have been to tired from all the fair stuff and other stuff. I hope everyone out there in cyberspace is having a better day than I am…

Amanda..