(Inside A Black Apple)

I Think I Love You

These chocolate chip cookies, that is.

I wanted to make them a few times (just to be certain the first perfect batch wasn't a fluke) before I pronounced them "The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe".

I've now baked these cookies from AllRecipes 4 times this month, and they have turned out perfectly. every. time.

 

They are my ideal chocolate chip cookie: chewy and soft-ish but not underbaked (and so good with big walnuts, white chocolate, macadamia nuts, anything thrown in). The low cooking temp (325) is genius, because it allows thorough cooking to the center while not over-browning the bottoms. And, as with my favorite brownies, the melted butter makes them so easy.

If you've been following ye olde blogge here for a while, you know I'm always searching for the perfected version of classic things (brownies, vanilla cake, etc). And since I make C.C.C.'s (chocolate chip cookies) often, and I've experimented with tons of recipes (the original Toll House recipe included) with mixed results, I'm so happy to finally be able to check them off the list.
Another perfect-to-me recipe: found!

I hope the week is off to a nice start for everyone. See you soon!

New Anytime Valentines in the shop!

UPDATE: The Valentines are not sold out - they're in the shop...never fear! I wasn't able to add more to Etsy until this afternoon.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Valentines for Anytime!

I say that love notes are for 12 months out of the year.

I revamped the Anytime Valentines for 2010 and created a set of 18 vintage school-days-style cards (like Black Apple-ish versions of the ones you'd exchange with classmates). I love those Valentines, and I wanted so badly to create something similar. I remember excitedly reading ones from the special someones of 3rd grade, certain that the "You're #1" with a picture of a GI Joe really meant something - not that the kid's mom had probably just dutifully written a name at random. What a thrill! 

Designing this set, I knew they had to be petite, and they had to have neat vintage-style packaging. The inserts echo a package of erasers I have from the 60's that has this perfect, simple red band at the top. The backing cards are sweet peppermint stripes.

They are offset printed on 2"x4" smooth, matte notecards with a small "to/from" area and fancy red scalloped edging on the back (leaving room for inside jokes and loving declarations).

I recommend these for:

-Slipping into someone's wallet
-Leaving in somebody's work space/laptop
-Enclosing in lunches for little ones
-Including in bigger letters as a little extra surprise

Little Things: Petite Thank You Cards

My new "Thank You" enclosures are back from the printers, and I am very happy.

So happy that I am extra, extra glad I also had this item for the shop up my sleeve:

Little ten-packs of "Thank You Kindly" cards, newly available in the shop! The Black Apple has never offered official Thank You notes before, so I'm very excited about this.

This is a set of 10 petite folded notecards and envelopes, each measuring in at a dainty 3.5"x5" (when folded).

The cards are offset printed with soy inks out-of-house on heavy, 100% recycled stock, which has a sophisticated satin finish. Each set arrives complete with 10 simple, pretty, perfectly-matching matching white envelopes. 

I love the size of these (Josiah likened them to a cassette tape). I've already issued some of my Christmas notes of gratitude on them, and I'm certain I will be squirrelling away a hefty stack to keep all to myself.

Happy Tuesday & See you soon!

Little Things: Contents of Two Little Girl Lockets

For Christmas, both Ms. Sadie and Ms. Delia (Amy's older two mini-chickens) received deluxe Fancy Wearables lockets from me.

I'm just smitten with those girls (and their rad little sister, too), and yet another reason to adore them is that pretty much immediately after opening their gifts, they wanted to draw little portraits to tuck in their lockets. No time for waiting to get home...for mom to print out mini-photos...no!

And tiny drawn portraits are so much cooler, anyway.

Forgive the crazily shake-y photos -- they were taken late in the December Portland afternoon (a terrible time for picture taking). I hope you'll get the general idea of how dear they are.

And since I'm posting little things right now, it would be remiss not to mention these walnuts with heart-shaped hearts (to be made into candles by Sarah). I love naturally occurring heart shapes - noticing one is like a random little kiss on the cheek. I used to always try to photograph them when I saw them. In fact, I think the last one I remember documenting was a perfectly heart-shaped fillet on a chicken sandwich. Thinking about it in hindsight, the weirdness of that chicken sandwich photo might've been what put me off the heart-shaped documentation forever.

Little Things: A Golden Jackalope

Here is my tiny new friend I mentioned a few posts back.

He's just so neat...I'm still amazed that he was out there somewhere, waiting for Josiah to find him in his Christmas shopping travels. I think a new jackalope-themed painting should be on the list in my next series.

Also, on the oh-my-goodness-what-can-I-do front, Hillary and Stephen Colbert (two excellent advisors) both mentioned this neat, easy way to contribute to the Red Cross Haitian Relief efforts: you can text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross. Or, if you, like me, are never quite sure that you've used the text messaging feature correctly, you can donate here.

Happy weekend to you!

Little Things: Clever Cookies

We are still in the quiet, easing-in-to-the-new-year phase. It's so nice! I want it to last forever. I'm looking around, baking more, poking in books, sketching, making up stories.

In this quiet time, I realized that I'm accumulating a running list in my head of small things I want to make small posts about. One is this Japanese candy/cookie that my friend sent me recently, called "Yan Yan" (it's sold on Amazon, which is where that link goes).

I had never had them before, but Yan Yan is essentially a packet of stick-shaped cookies with a little bowl of icing for the cookies - and both the cookies and icing were pretty tasty.

The real charm, though, is in the fantastically random and adorable sayings printed on each cookie.

 

I think that "Squirrel________Your Best Friend" & "Fox_________ Beware Of Lies" are my favorites. But the randomness of "Panda________Go For More" is pretty good, too.

And the moral of the story is: (unsurprisingly) I couldn't bear to eat them!

Luckily, there were some broken cookies that came to the rescue, so I at least I know what they taste like.

Thank You Kindly

Since it's the new year and all, I've been freshening up the Black Apple shop odds & ends. It is kind of scary how much this sort of work still delights me! So far, I've got a new shop banner up, two kinds of new shipping labels on the way, and a new order enclosure I created up last week.

It will be the new postcard "thank you" that is included with all of our orders:

I just love 'em! I'm going to be watching the porch for that package every day til' it's here.

I've been doing a bunch of work for the book with gouache, and I hadn't since art school. But I really do like it, persnickety a medium as it is, so I used it when I painted the card the other day.

Totally unrelated, but last night we saw the long-awaited Dr. Parnassus! I loved the look of so much of it, and I was thrilled with how much fantastic Waits-age there was (I hadn't wanted to get my hopes up too much, because I feared it might be one of those things where his appearance is hyped up, but he's only really in the movie for 2 minutes). He was wonderful - a reason to see the movie for certain. Also, their collapsing stage contraption from the first half of the film is one of the most beautiful things I've ever laid eyes on. Like an ornate Victorian paper theater, but enormous...and with glittering actors and a whole grove of paper trees. And speaking of paper theaters, one of those makes an appearance, too (but much later). There were so many beautiful sights, costumes, and details, it was well worth getting through some of the "wacky" parts that I associate with Mr. Gilliam but didn't love so much.

Happy weekend & see you soon!

Excellent Presents, etc.

Hello to the new year and hello to you!

We are back on the West coast, putting the everyday things back together, recovering from the East coast colds we picked up, and generally being quiet.

But the quiet time over the past couple days means I've been able to spend some time happily perusing the little pile of Christmas gifts I received from Josiah before we left for our trip Southward. I didn't get to spend much time with them before we were off to our flight. And, dang. I just keep marveling at how lucky I am to have such a thoughtful mister who knows me so well. (He got an antique straight-razor, new and awesome headphones, some sartorial gifts, and a pile of books and DVDs-I hope he is as giddy as I am)!

 

The man presented me with a tiny golden jackalope for goodness sakes.

And this book, this, this, and this. And some Richard Scarry books to boot.
I'm knee-deep in books to read and look at for a while, and I need to update my Amazon sidebar on the double!

Goodbye to 2009, and thank you for being good to me (broken ankles and such aside).
Hello, 2010 - I am really having a hard time getting used to writing you on checks.