Shorty Makes Shortbread

I have talked ad nauseam on this vanity project about my love of chocolate.  Generally, I prefer brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and any other baked good where the flour, tofu egg substitute, and sugar are simply a platform for chocolate, which is why I had yet to make shortbread before last weekend. I was the kid that begged my mom to forget about ordering a box of each Girl Scout cookie and skip the shortbread cookies for an extra box of thin mints!

But last weekend I decided I needed to bite the bullet and try the whole shortbread thing…it really helped that this shortbread cookie recipe called for an overflowing teaspoon of chocolate ganache in the middle.  This is another Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar recipe and per usual it was delicious! I brought these as a snack for poker night—I mean what poker night is complete without a little shortbread and ganache—wait, what? You don’t get it? You must not play poker the classy way like we do! The cookies were a hit and I have yet to hear from Grandma Min that they are a “little rich” so that means the shortbread did its job in balancing out the rich chocolate ganache!

I also made my second attempt at sourdough bread last weekend and it turned out much better than the first.  I used this recipe and followed my Aunt’s advice of scoring the top of the bread and baking it with a pan of water on the bottom rack of the oven.  The bread was much more bread-like this time—light and fluffy in the middle with a crunchy crust!

In other news, I found dairy-free mini chocolate chips at the grocery store and it’s a four day weekend so you all will have another blog post to look forward to very soon (wow my life is exciting)!

Mama You're the Queen of My Heart

Has anyone else thought about how strange that Boyz II Men song is?  I never thought about it until right now (that it's stuck in my head)! But it came into my head because yesterday was Mother’s Day and I love my Mama!! My Mom is the best (and yes you have read this on fifty other blogs in the past two days…but really she is the best)!  She has always been there for me and I feel so lucky to have her as a mother. I am so blessed to have a lot of moms in my life—one mom, one step-mom, two grandmas, and wonderful aunts! I am so thankful to have these great women in my life and the way that they all mother inspires me to want to be like them in the future!

Speaking of imaginary future children (who needs a husband!??!), I will be “the BEST mom ever” (this should be said like Monica from Friends when she wants Phoebe’s grandmother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe) because I will make my kids some rockin’ baked goods! As a present to my Mom, who always says something nice about my baked goods and inflates my ego, I decided to make vanilla bean cupcakes with chocolate ganache, and get this…they were heart-shaped (another inspiration for the title of this post).

I bought a cast-iron heart shaped muffin pan at a rummage sale for $3 and was a little disappointed that I would have no real reason to use it until Valentine’s Day and then Mother’s Day came along! These cupcakes looked like the perfect recipe to make into little hearts and the ganache was thin enough that it didn’t take away from the cute heart shape like a big layer of icing might.  The cupcakes were adorable (and all vegan)! Why is it that when something is this cute, you just want to eat more of it? Is that just me?