FND Family at the Beach!

“I’M NOT A COW“!!! One of the many ridiculous things said by the FND crew as a few of us took to the beach this weekend for some fun in the sun. For those of us that went to high school together, summer trips to the beach have been happening since we were little teenagers whose parents had to drive us.

We had such a great time yesterday — buying some taffy, searching for fabulous fudge (we found it and it might be the best.fudge.ever.)

Hope and Steven are doing a performance on Friday and we got a sneak peek of what they’ll be doing and it sounded great. The groups of people around us seemed to enjoy it too, thanking us for the music as we were leaving 🙂

We took lots of fantastically silly pictures too! I’ll post a few here, but to see the rest you should check out our Facebook page (run by Mary) by clicking here or looking over to the right of the screen and clicking the handy-dandy little widget. See how easy we make it for you?! There are also a couple of wonderful cookie recipes near the bottom of this post that you should try out — both are super easy and absolutely delicious. Just to tease you, here’s a snapshot of those tasty treats.

Cookie Plate

Don’t scroll too fast to get to those recipes, friends. You wouldn’t want to miss the shots of the FND crew being absolutely ridiculous, would you?

Knee twins!

Struggle

Paparazzi shot

The cutest.

See? Told you it would be worth it. And now you’re being rewarded with the recipes 🙂

Chewy Peppermint Cookies

Via

So I got this recipe from Eat, Live, Run which, if you couldn’t tell from previous posts, is one of my favourite blogs to go to for recipes. I’ve made a lot of the dishes Jenna posted and I love them all; this one is no different, super delicious. She drizzled hers with with white chocolate and they look gorgeous (and probably taste fantastic). I didn’t, but that’s a long, silly story (basically I’m kind of a dummy). Anyway, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 2 sticks butter, softened
• 1 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. peppermint extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp. instant coffee
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups white chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, then add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add peppermint extract.
3. In another bowl, whisk together the coffee, cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt. Add to wet ingredients and fold in chocolate chips.
4. Drop tablespoons of dough onto lined sheet trays and bake for 12 minutes. Let cool completely.
5. {If you aren’t silly like me, do this step!} Melt white chocolate chips in the microwave (stirring after each 30 second interval) and scoop into a small plastic bag. Snip off end and drizzle cooled cookies with white chocolate.

Peppermint Mocha Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies: 

Mary requested that I make the cookies I made for our ‘Back to School’ dinner (Taylor calls them the best ever which I’m not sure is true, but I appreciate the thought :)). Because I love you guys, here’s the recipe again.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 2 tsp. hot water
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt and cream of tartar. Stir in flour and chocolate chips. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
3. Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Happy eating, everyone!

Tagged: beach, best friends, cannon beach, chocolate chip cookies, food, friends, fudge, music, oregon coast, peppermint mocha cookies, summer trips, taffy