I don’t know if this is proper etiquette, if it’s a cultural thing or what, but I’ve always been told you should never go to someone’s house empty handed. Although it’s not something I expect people to do when they come to my house I’ve been trying to practice this more. I just think it’s nice!
So I went to a friend’s house this past weekend. There was yummy food, giggling kids, and COOKIES! I brought the cookies. I wanted to make something for the grown-ups so I made cinnamon sugar biscotti and for the kids – what else but chocolate chip cookies!
Sidebar – we call ourselves grown-ups, but we really don’t act and feel like grown-ups. My parents are grown-ups…not me!
Back to the biscotti. I generally get most of my recipes from allrecipes.com and tweak them to my own taste. I’ve wanted to try to make biscotti for a while now and it seemed easy from what I’ve seen Alexis Stewart (love her!) do so I went searching for a recipe that I liked. Alexis’ biscotti is always very fancy and includes nuts and fruits and such. While I think I would like that I wanted to do something simple so I found this recipe and followed it!
Dry ingredients…
Wet ingredients…
Dry and wet together…
Rolled up and flattened on the cookie sheet…
Slicing…
In the oven after getting a shower of cinnamon sugar for a second bake…
Cooling…
Ready to be packaged up…
Now on to the chocolate chips. I’ve been trying different chocolate chip recipes for a while. I haven’t found one that I really enjoyed until now. This recipe that I found has been the best so far. I didn’t add the nuts in this time because I didn’t have any on hand, but I will add them in next time – I’m sure it will make them outstanding!
Ready to cream the butter and sugars – I didn’t have enough dark brown sugar so I mixed it with light brown. The recipe didn’t specify, but I prefer dark brown. Anyway look at the cool visual effect I got with that…
Starting to bake in the oven…
Look over to the right in that picture. I had so much dough that I decided to make some cookie bars using a tart dish for the fancy little edging. They looked cute, but I didn’t like the way they tasted. Isn’t that odd? The shape changed the taste! Anyway – I had a total of 33 cookies plus the bar cookies so this recipe probably makes about 45 cookies!
Cooling…
Both batches packaged up pretty for the hostess…
And the ones that stayed home…
It’s fine to pick up a bottle of wine to bring or a nice houseplant, but I prefer bringing something homemade.
What do you bring when you go to someone’s house?
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Looks yummy! I need to try this. You mentioned a web-site on your comment to The Nester. It was Holl@life but I cant find it. Would you send me the actual address. You sounded like it was a great sire and I would like to check it out. Thank you!
Hi Julie! I’m actually just about to write a post about Holly’s blog! The address is http://www.inthefunlane.com . Be warned…you will get hooked. I’m making my way through her archives now.
Ooops! I forgot to answer your question! I usually ask if there is something I can bring to compliment what they are making if we are having dinner. SOmetimes I bring a bottle of wine or make cookies. Im getting in to making crafts lately so I might bring something crafty next time.
Great idea about bringing something crafty!