Whatever Floats Your Boat

Jr. Taste-testers chose their selections from the middle :)

A couple weeks ago, I found a new food blog that has a ton of great ideas. Being in a bit of a meal-planning rut, I turned back to my old habit of scouring cookbooks and food blogs for things that my whole family could enjoy, with a few meals just for J and I thrown in. When I stumbled across this blog, it was from a link about a recipe that I can't even recall now, but what I did recall was this gem: Root Beer Float Cookies from Heat Oven to 350. Having ice cream on the brain lately, I was intrigued. Root beer floats are a classic summer treat for my family from the time I can remember so how could a little butter and sugar added into the mix not make it perfection?

Root Beer concentrate and white chocolate team up in this twist on the classic chocolate chip cookie. The recipe makes a pretty good-sized batch, coming in at five dozen pretty generously sized cookies, so it's perfect for sharing with your neighbors or freezing for future afternoon playdates.

It was suggested that these would make pretty phenomenal ice cream sandwiches, and I just happened to have some vanilla frozen yogurt from last night's dinner playdate leftover, so I had to test the theory for myself. I don't usually like white chocolate, but in these cookies they really work for that creamy sweetness of a float. I think vanilla ice cream would be great, but the tart frozen yogurt made it so the cookies weren't overwhelmingly sweet, which they kind of are when eaten on their own. Which could be a good thing in itself; built-in portion control!

...and baby makes 5. (what's with Mr. H crossing his eyes in pictures lately?)

Since I was in baking mode, I also used a chunk of the giant zucchini we got from our neighbor last night to make the Orange-scented Zucchini Bread from Our Best Bites. The same neighbor that gave us the zucchini gave me the cookbook (of the same name as the blog) as a birthday gift, so she'll be getting one of the loaves, and I'll freeze the other for my fam when they stay the night this weekend.

J took the kids up to the mountains on this glorious day so that I could have the house to myself, which I desperately need to clean and organize. So, why all the baking? Because there are few chores I like less than cleaning the bathroom and the longer I bake and blog, the longer I'm not cleaning a toilet. That's just how I roll. I guess I've procrastinated long enough-off to my date with Little Bowl Blue!