Changes to Moomser

I have decided to rearrange things a little here on Moomser, Moomser Food and Moomser Baby. I’ve decided to group everything under one blog: Moomser (www.moomser.com)

I simply am not organized enough at this point in my life to maintain three separate blogs. I’ll still be writing about the same things, I’ll still be posting recipes and talking about specific child-related concerns, you’ll just find it all under Moomser along with the slightly neurotic ramblings of my sleep deprived brain. And if you’re just interested in recipes or babies you can click up top on Moomser Food and it’ll automatically select only the posts labeled food (recipes and such), or on Moomser Baby for the baby and child stuff. I hope this works for you! Any suggestions are welcome as always.

I will eventually be shutting down the separate moomserfood.blogspot and moomserbaby.blogspot accounts so if you've bookmarked anything you won't find it anymore, but it's all on moomser.com already. (phew! sorry about the confusion!)

Just another Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

I love chocolate chip cookies. Or rather, I love store bought chocolate chip cookies.

Ah, now that all the purists have left my blog with expressions of disgust, let me explain. I’ve made a lot of chocolate chip cookies, but they’re either too crispy, or too soft, or too sweet (that happens a LOT) or, you know, they just make me reach for the Pepperidge Farm. The fact is that there is no such thing as the “perfect chocolate chip cookie”, cause perfect is different for each of us. Anyway, this is a “pretty good chocolate chip cookie recipe”, I’ll probably make it again, it’s not perfect… but it’s good enough.

This is what you need:

150 grams (1cup plus 2 tablespoons) flour

½ tsp baking soda

115grams (8 tbs – 1 stick) unsalted butter softened or straight from fridge but cut into small pieces

100grams (½ cup) white sugar       

120grams (½ cup) brown sugar

2 large eggs

½ tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp cinnamon

1 ½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chip cookies (or chocolate chunks)

½ cups chopped pecans (or walnuts) optional

This is what you do:

Preheat oven to 180°C - 350°F and line cookie sheets with parchment paper, or grease them but this may make your cookies a little richer.

Whisk together flour and baking soda. Beat butter and both sugars on medium speed until fluffy (if your butter is cold will take awhile – over 10 minutes). Add eggs, vanilla and salt and beat until well combined. Stir in the flour and baking soda and beat on low speed until smooth. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts by hand (many recipes say with a wooden spoon, but I used a silicone spatula and didn’t notice any difference.)

Distribute the dough on your cookie sheets leaving quite a bit of space around each dollop so your cookies don’t end up stuck together. You can use a small ice cream scoop or two spoons to make the dough balls. If you use spoons, each ball should be no larger than half a spoon.

Bake at 180°C – 350°F for 8 – 10 minutes (depending on your oven and the size of your dough balls) or until the edges start browning slightly. Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet so they firm up and then transfer to wire rack to cool completely or, you know, get out the milk and start eating!

Easy peasy cream cheese frosting

I use this a lot, so I figured I'd give it it's own post so I don't just keep repeating myself over and over and boring you into a stupor!

This is what you need:

150 – 160 grams Philadelphia cream cheese

40 – 50 grams butter (softened)

120 grams (1 packet – 1 cup) confectioner’s sugar

Depending on what you're frosting you can also add powdered cinnamon or pure vanilla extract, or almond extract. It is also a good base for flavored frostings like chocolate cream cheese frosting.

This is what you do:

Beat together cream cheese and butter until well combined and fluffy (smitten kitchen says to soften cream cheese too, but I find that cold cream cheese makes for a thicker frosting – as suggested by the Joy of Cooking) add vanilla if using.

Sift in sugar (and cinnamon, if using) and beat until well mixed, but don’t over beat cause it’ll get runny.

Try and wait for your cake to cool before frosting….

Healthy Carrot Cake

Sunday the husband wasn’t feeling well so I decided to bake him a carrot cake to cheer him up. This version is loosely adapted from the Joy of Cooking, though I modified it to make it a little healthier and more kid friendly. Luckily for me, my toddler doesn’t like overly sweet cakes so I substituted part of the sugar and part of the oil with applesauce (this also makes it more diet friendly for me!) Carrot cake is so easy to make and so satisfying there’s really no reason not to bake it every week… well, you know, if you’re naturally skinny or have a lot of self-control or can stand to eat it with no icing… I can only get away with it once a month or so but it’s so worth it!

This is what you need:

200 grams (1 ½ cup - 7oz) whole wheat flour (this’ll make it slightly denser than all purpose flour, but it’s still moist thanks to the applesauce)

100 grams (½ cup – 3.5oz) sugar                             

10 grams (1 ½ tsp – 0.35oz.) baking soda     

5grams (1 tsp – 0.2oz.) baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp ground cloves; ½ tsp ground nutmeg; ½ tsp ground allspice

½ tsp salt

½ cup vegetable oil

3 large eggs

200 grams (1 cup – 2oz.) spiced apple sauce

200 grams (2 cups – 4oz.) freshly grated carrots

55 grams (1 cup - 2oz) finely chopped walnuts or pecans (I used the latter) - optional

1 handful golden raisins (if they’re the largish kind chop them up a little bit) - optional

This is what you do:

Preheat your oven to 180°C – 350°F

Mix together all your dry ingredients (follow the list down from flour to salt) in a big bowl.

Add in your wet ingredients (oil, eggs and applesauce) and mix by hand or beat on low speed.

Add in carrots, nuts and raisins and mix by hand.

Butter and flour your round spring-form pan, pour in the mixture right away and spread evenly.

Bake 25 – 30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes then take out of pan. Frost when completely cooled!