Wednesday, December 15, 2010

There's nothing like homemade cookies, and there's definitely nothing like my homemade cookies made in Europe

Last week I made chocolate chip cookies. Usually making cookies isn't really a big deal, but here for some reason the flour is different in Europe. Like one time I made some brownies with an american recipe, it was for a church carry in. Everyone at my church are amazing cooks! And they always put me to shame. This time I was making one of my husbands favorite childhood desserts. They're called blonde brownies. I was warned about the flour, horrible things would happen if I made an American recipe with German flour, but did I listen? No. So after my brownies cooled I went to cut them. They looked amazing, just like my mother-in-laws. I went to put the knife in, and it was a rock! Solid hard. Not only did I not have anything to bring to church the next day, but my overwhelming thought was, how am I supposed to get this rock hard substance out of my glass baking pan? That's all in the past, long time ago. The church pot luck managed without my amazing contributions. And my husband spent the rest of the week with a chisel getting out what ever he could. (This could explain why he had so much dental problems this past summer.)

So last week, I thought, "It's Christmas, we have to have cookies. And I want chocolate chips, not just any cookies, I want gooey no need to bother chewing chocolate chips, and I'm going to make them with only ingredients that I can get here." So I took a bar of dark chocolate, cut it up into chunks. (not as easy as it sounds) Used all ingredients from here even the dreaded flour. Now my trick this time was I would only bake as many as we could eat that night and the rest of the dough would go in the fridge for later. My husband was reading the Bible with someone in the living room so I didn't have anything else to do, so I sat on the kitchen floor and watched the cookies bake through the glass oven door. I know what your thinking, can this blog get anymore exciting. She is sitting watching cookies bake. (ok i should probably be honest, it's not going to get much more interesting, so just go back to reading facebook updates.) Ok back to the baking cookies, normally when you peek at cookies baking the round balls of dough melt into lovely cookies. Mine were oozing butter. They did flatten out, but they were way bigger and flatter than they should have been. I went to put them on our plates only to have them crumble. So we ate our cookies with a fork. When my husband tried my cookies he was so excited. He couldn't stop saying how excited he was that they were made out of all ingredients from here. They tasted amazing and if you didn't let them cool, which is not a problem for us, they're soft and gooey. And they make your husband say nice things to you.


I know, I know, those look amazing, you want the recipe, but you'll have to beg me for it. I love comments, if you comment maybe I'll tell.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Thoughts on Grace

When I was a child I remember thinking if I can just get better at doing this and get over my sin then someday I'm going to be perfect.

Why hasn't this happened yet? Why is it the older I get the more I need this grace? In fact I'm desperate for it. But that's what makes His gift so amazing. It's value is stronger than the Euro :)...Ok stronger than ever.