My Current Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe | Sunday Baking

 Hi lovely reader! Happy Fall! It's kind of hard to believe that October is here but I'm ready to embrace it. The mornings and evening have started to get cooler where I am, pumpkins are popping up in front of the stores, my Instagram feed is filling up with cosy recipes, and it's great! 

    Today I wanted to share what I can confidently say is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I have ever made. My mom who is quite the cookie critic is also in agreement so you know it's good! I found this recipe on @smallkitchensweets Instagram and had to give it a try. His page is full of beautiful photos of delicious sweets and teasers of recipes to come on his website. (Spencer, if you ever read this, we want more!) He posted a week ago that he is working on a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe and I am praying that we get to see it because if it's anything like these chocolate chip cookies it will be AMAZING! 

As he notes on his blog, his NY Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is inspired by the famous Levain Cookie. The one thing I did differently was that instead of making eight giant cookies, I kept mine on the smaller side while still following all of the steps and they turned out great! I will post the basics of the recipe below but I highly encourage you to check out his post on these cookies because it is full of great tips and tricks to get them to turn out perfectly.

INGREDIENTS:

• 226 grams / 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 150 grams / 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 100 grams / 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt + flaky salt for the top 
• 420 - 480 grams / 3 - 3 1/3 cup All Purpose flour *see tips in post
• 360 grams / 2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
• 180 grams / 1 (ish) cup walnut halves *optional

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F / 200 C and place a rack in the middle of the oven. Remove butter from fridge. Allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, add slightly softened butter and sugars together. Cream ingredients for 1 minute on high speed. Scrape down the sides of your mixer.
3. With mixer on low speed, add eggs one at a time and mix until combined.
4. Turn the mixer off and add the 420 g of the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Pulse the mixer until just mixed.
5. Add chocolate chips and walnut halves if you are using them. If you decide not to add the walnuts, add more chocolate chips or add 40 grams of extra flour. If the chocolate chips don’t combine completely, knead the dough a slightly to incorporate.
6. Divide dough into 8 pieces, about 6 oz. each. If making smaller, adjust baking time accordingly. 
7. Roughly shape each piece of dough into a ball. They should be rustic looking, do not flatten! Place each ball of dough onto a sheet tray and transfer to the freezer. Freeze for about 30-45 minutes. They should be quite firm. You will bake the cookies from frozen!
8. Bake 6 cookies at a time for 13-15  minutes. Rotate the tray halfway through the bake . The cookies will be *quite* golden on the top and bottom but gooey on the inside. Don’t overbake, they will continue to cook on the tray.
9. If you want to add flaky salt to the top, now is the time! Sprinkle over the top right when they come out of the oven!
10. Let the cookies cool for 15 minutes before serving.

The actual best! Sharing is caring and I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did! Xx

Spooky Sweet Treats | Pumpkin Shaped Sugar Cookies

Hi lovely reader! Happy Hallo-weekend! Fall is in full swing here, the leaves have changed colors and the temperatures are starting to drop. I wore my first heavy coat today and am ready for sweater weather! Today I wanted to share a fun and festive treat with you that is a Halloween tradition for me. My mom and I have baked these cute pumpkin cookies for as long as I can remember. They are super simple, quick, and fun to decorate. Perfect for a last minute addition to an upcoming Halloween party or special treat for yourself or trick or treaters!

Note that this recipe makes vanilla sugar cookies, they are pumpkin shaped, not pumpkin flavored:)

You will need:
-1 cup of butter
-1 cup of sugar
-1 large egg
-2 teaspoons of baking powder
-1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
-3 cups of flower
-pumpkin mold tray or pumpkin shaped cookie cutters
-Orange food coloring (optional)
-Cooking spray
-Icing, sugar, or candy to decorate your pumpkins

First preheat your oven to 400 degrees. In a bowl, cream your butter and sugar with an electric mixer and then beat in the vanilla. 

After that add the baking powder and then the flour, one cup at a time, mixing after each cup. Once you have added the flour, the dough will become stiff and is ready to be shaped into the molds or rolled out if you are using a cookie cutter. Be sure to grease your molds with cooking spray before placing the dough in them. You can also knead food coloring into your dough at this point if you want to make your pumpkins orange. 

Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes (mine tend to be done closer to 10 min), cool, and remove from the pan. Then repeat the process, being sure to grease your pans each time. 

After the cookies have completely cooled, you are ready to decorate. This year I used an orange icing pen for the eyes, nose, and mouth and then poured yellow sugar over them to give a glowing sparkly effect. I then used chocolate icing and green sugar for the stem.

Enjoy!

Do you have any favorite Halloween treats? Xx

Cheeky Quote Tuesday

Flashback to Fall | iPhone Snaps | Blogmas 2015

Hiya lovely reader! Happy Blogmas Day 2! With winter on its way, I thought it would be good to wrap up fall with a final set of iPhone snaps. 

Wedding Cake, crushed Oreos, and strawberries = Orange Leaf go-to

Got adventurous 

Starbucks to accompany studying 

I want all the Christmas decorations from Target! 

Cranberry Bagel with Cranberry Cream Cheese

Collars and Curls 

Sweet treats at Nordstrom 

The BEST slippers ever 

Chocolate covered Oreos for Turkey day! 

How did you end your fall? Xx

Halloween | TBT

Hello lovely reader! November is here and it's almost the weekend! It's crazy that in just a few short weeks, turkey and stuffing and all things Thanksgiving will be occurring. In honor of tbt or "Throwback Thursday", I wanted to share some pics from last weekend. I was super festive and enjoyed every minute of it, from going to a pumpkin patch to navigating through a corn maze with friends, I had a great Halloween weekend! 

On Friday night I went to the cutest pumpkin patch I've ever seen! It was super quaint and the perfect place to take some fall pics! 

Just a little snack before the Halloween activities got started. I hadn't had fruit snacks in forever and it definitely took me back to grade school. 

Our apartment has been decorated since the first weekend in October...the spider web lights are my favorite 

A little Halloween OOTD. I was kind of in love my look for the day, especially my cranberry lip! I see the Revlon "Just Bitten Kissable" lip stain in the shade 005. 

Consumed by corn

Indoor s'mores because the outdoors didn't want to cooperate. 

What did you do on Halloween? Xx

Crisp Air and Crunching Leaves | Autumn Tag

Hiya lovely reader! Happy Fall!!! I love this time of year, so what better way to celebrate than with an autumnal tag? Enjoy!

Favorite thing about Autumn?

Everything! The crispness, the fashion, the makeup looks, pumpkin flavored treats, and the beautiful colors in the trees.

Favorite drink? 

Okay, I don't drink coffee so I'm not a "Pumpkin Spice Latte" fanatic. I drink water, and only water. Call me unoriginal or maybe you'll call me original, depends on your "pumpkin spice views" really.

Favorite candle?

For this time of year the candle I love to burn is a s'mores scented one that my friend gave me from Yankee Candle. (I made the mistake of getting on the Yankee Candle website to try and find a link and oh my, they have so many amazing sounding autumnal related candles) I love a lot of the scents that come with this time of year, vanilla, apple cinnamon, spiced pumpkin, I could go on.

Go to moisturizer?

Soap and Glory "The Righteous Butter"! The last two years, my hands have tended to become dryer when the weather starts to get cooler (adult life probz..). I love this moisturizer though, it smells greater and with it being a body butter its thick and leave my hands feeling instantly softer. It's also not super greasy or sticky feeling after applying it, personally I hate feeling like I have lotion on my hands. So overall I would highly recommend this, the packaging is also so cute of course.

Go to colours for the eyes?

Natural and warm tones, champagne, browns, auburns, dark purple for the outer corners.

Favorite outfit to wear?

Skinny jeans, a cozy chunky sweater, black or brown chelsea boots, an army green jacket...perfect!

Favorite place to be?

If it's not to chilly and a sunny day, outside, walking around downtown, looking at cute little shops, hearing the leaves crunch beneath my feet. At night, cozied up in my pajamas, on the couch with a blanket, my laptop or a good movie, and with friends. 

What is your favorite thing about fall? Xx

Pumpkin Bars | Healthy Living

Hey there lovely readers! With fall in full swing comes pumpkin flavored everything! So of course I want to make and eat every pumpkiny (not a word but I just made it one) recipe that I see. I saw this one on Popsugar and it caught my eye, particularly because it is only 70 calories per bar!! I gave them a go last weekend and was very pleased with the results. They aren't super sweet but are very very moist and delicious. So if you're looking for a healthy festive treat this fall, try this recipe out! 

Popsugars lovely enticing mouth watering pic:)

This is what mine looked like:)

What fall recipes are you loving? Let me know in the comments. Xx

Autumn Bucket List 2014

Hiya lovely reader! Happy October! Autumn is about to be in full swing and I am so ready! Fall is one of my favorite times of year. I love the fashion and how pretty all the trees look!

I saw a post on Free People's blog where they made a bucket list of things to do this fall so I thought I'd do one myself!  

Do you have a fall bucket list? If so feel free to leave a link in the description, I'd love to read it! Xx

Winter is nearly here!

You know it's nearly winter when everyone starts flaunting their fuzzy socks on Instagram, Youtubers start posting their cozy sweater filled hauls, and everything Christmas goes on sale in all the shops (ok so maybe that last one wasn't the best example seeing as some stores put their Christmas stuff out mid October) but anyway you get my point, winter is nearly upon us! It's almost impossible for me to grasp that November is nearly over. 

I am even starting to feel behind due to the fact that I don't have all my Christmas gifts planned out and it's not even December yet! Kind of ridiculous? I think so! Think about it though 33 days until Christmas doesn't sound that bad, but how about less than 5 weeks until Christmas.....wait what?!? See, now you understand my slight panic (or maybe you don't). Christmas/winter is by far my favorite time of the year so I'm hoping to have many blog posts to share my joy with you! I'm thinking hauls, outfit ideas (maybe with myself actually in the pictures OoOoOo), some DIYS, present ideas, and pic of Christmassy wintery things that I see whilst out and about. So let's enjoy these last few days of fall and prepare ourselves to jump into winter with our cute hats and gloves on and our cheeks nice and rosy! Xx

It's only fair that I show you some of my cozy socks, lambs and cupcakes, what's not to love?

Cheeky Quote Tuesday

Halloween

So tomorrow is Halloween! I thought it would be nice and festive to share some pictures with links to tutorials for cool pumpkin ideas. Also, if you need any last minute costume ideas check out ASOS Halloween ! They have costume ideas and great video tutorials! So, enjoy and have a happy, safe, spooky, Halloween!

Mason Jars

Glitter Pumpkins

Donut Pumpkins