I baked this morning, taking advantage of a relatively cool kitchen.

I’m so pleased with how this pie turned out, and I would have loved to have tasted it, but alas, it was not for me: I donated a homemade pie as a prize for our staff Summer Reading Program at the library, and I owed this to the winner. She requested peach, so Mike picked up some beautiful peaches at the Barr St. Market this weekend. I might have to get some more and make another for us.

I also baked some of my ridiculously tasty chocolate chip cookies. I pretty much use the Toll House recipe, but I have made enhancements:

  • Use good unsalted butter.
  • Use good vanilla.
  • Replace one cup of regular flour with one cup of whole wheat flour. (I didn’t let the flour mix quite as long as I usually do, resulting in less gluten production, and thus somewhat flatter cookies than usual, but it still gives ‘em great texture.)
  • Use good chocolate chips — Ghirardelli are my current favorite.
  • Instead of baking the whole batch at once, I only bake one sheet. Then I drop cookie-sized globs onto a sheet with waxed paper on it until the batter’s all gone, and I freeze them. Once they’re hard, they go into a zipper bag and stay in the freezer until we’re in the mood for cookies. Baking them frozen only takes a couple minutes longer than normal.

Hopefully this will eliminate Mike’s sad face when we walk past the cookie aisle at the grocery store.