Break 'n Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies: The Homemade Kind

I pretty much feel like a failure as a hostess if I don't have chocolate chip cookies to serve after a lunch. They just end a meal that well. But I also hate not being fully present with people at a meal because I am so busy baking.

Problem: I am opposed to store-bought dough due to my baking snobbery.

Solution: Make the dough into balls ahead of time, and pop 'em in the oven during lunch.

This go-round I prepped dough one weekend, froze it, and pulled it out the next weekend when I was hosting a girls retreat at the lake. The dough balls were still a little frozen, so it made the cookies more fat than flat (I'm convinced they turn out differently every time depending on temperatures), which was beautimous.

Because seriously, warm cookies out of the oven make everyone happy.... and they make people love you extra, too.


How To Make Homemade Break 'n Bake
1. Make Tollhouse Cookie Dough.
2. Roll into balls. You can also refrigerate the dough before making balls.
3. Lay dough balls in a single layer in a gallon Ziploc bag.
4. Put the bag in the freezer.
4. Defrost when you are close to read for cookie time.
5. When it's cookie time, bake 'em up!

How to Reheat Pizza

You're probably thinking, "No duh, you reheat pizza in the oven." But do you it this way?

1. Put pizza in the oven before you turn it on.

2. Then preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

3. Right when the oven beeps or otherwise notifies you that it has preheated, the pizza should be at the perfect temperature with a nice, crisp crust.

Note: This tip assumes you like pizza reheated like most of the world. If you are in my club, where we prefer it fresh or else cold, then this post is not for you. I do reheat pizza for the rest of the the population out there.

Bonus: Reheat the pie of a pizza that comes from DeVinci's in Homewood (pictured)—best tasting, most filling meal of pizza slice I've ever had. Really not much compares with it except Mellow Mushroom's grainy, spring water dough crust.

Do you have any pizza leftovers tips?

How-To: Savory Palmiers

Palmiers, or elephant ears (or glutus maximi--what we thought they looked most like), are pastries typically filled with powdered sugar, but this Barefoot Contessa recipe is Mediterranean savory. Basically, it's pesto, feta, sundried tomatoes, and pine nuts in puffed pastry.

There were lots of folding steps that the recipe made a little unclear, so my friend Laura (who makes a lovely hand model!) and I documented our experimentation with recipe. The result: crispy, delicious, fancy-looking hors d'oeuvres.

(Transparency statement: This was the pretty picture from our second batch; the first batch I baked at 350 degrees instead of 400, which made them not-so-crispy. Whoops.)

First, roll out a sheet of puff pastry into anapproximately 9x11-inch rectangle. If you don't have a rolling pin (as was the case at our cabin in the woods), use a wine bottle. We didn't even take the label off, and it worked fine. Just beware of the skinnier neck making your rolling slightly uneven.

Then, spread onto the pastry dough tastiness--pesto then feta, toasted pine nuts, and chopped sundried tomatoes-- 1/8 cup of each.

Now the folding fun begins.

Fold 1: Starting with the short ends, fold each side toward the center until the folded edges almost touch.

Fold 2: Again, fold each side toward the center until the edges almost touch.

And fold some more.

Fold 3: Fold one side over the other and press lightly.

Then, what you don't see in the picture is that you must wrap the the roll in parchment paper and chill it for 45 minutes. Preparing a night in advance when you are not starving would be a good idea. THEN, you slice them like cinnamon rolls into 1/4-inch -thick slices (translation: very thin).

Finally, stick them in the oven to get crisp-- 14 minutes at 400 degrees. We lined our pan with foil to make for easy cleanup.

The End. See top of post for a reminder of the beauty of the final product.