Once again, AyA Kitchens & Baths is running a contest to send one lucky blogger from anywhere in Canada to Toronto to attend BlogPodium in September. The theme for this year’s contest is to design your ultimate party kitchen. Well, that’s easy enough – my ultimate party kitchen is MY kitchen! It started off looking like this – very 1980s!
And now it looks like this!
This is how we did it:
- Installed pendant lights above the peninsula (Home Depot)
- Granite composite sink in Havana (Kindred)
- Brown mother-of-pearl backsplash tiles (Glazzio Tiles)
- Benjamin Moore HC-173 Edgecomb Grey (cabinets)
- Benjamin Moore OC-1320 Cloud White(trim and light box)
- Sherwin Williams SW7039 Virtual Taupe (walls)
- Brown Cabernet granite countertops
- Talo faucet and soap dispenser (generously provided by Brizo)
- Peninsula inspiration (AyA Kitchens & Baths)
So what makes it the ultimate party kitchen? Good food…
Cupcakes by Sweets By Karen
Good times…
Musician Rémi Boudreau
And most importantly, good friends :-)
Artist Matt LeBlanc and my dog Squirt :-)
And a party isn’t a party without Triple-Threat Chocolate Chip Cookies! I only make them for parties – otherwise, I’d eat them all myself, and that would be a very bad thing!
Triple-Threat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
- 1 cup brown sugar
- ¾ cup white sugar
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 2 tbsp. milk
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- ¾ tsp. salt
- 2 cups oats
- 2 cups (or more) combination of chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and Skor bits
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper or spray with Pam.
- Combine butter, brown sugar, and white sugar in a large bowl with a wooden spoon or in your mixer.
- Add eggs, milk, and vanilla and stir until just combined.
- In a medium sized bowl, combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add to butter & sugar mixture and stir until just combined.
- Add oats and stir until combined.
- Add chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and Skor bits and stir until combined. (If you’re using a mixer, you’ll probably have to stir the chips in by hand, because the cookie dough is pretty thick.)
- Use a dessert spoon to drop cookie dough onto cookie sheets. Leave about 2” between each cookie (cookie dough will spread).
- Put one sheet onto middle rack in oven and bake for about 5 minutes.
- After 5 minutes, turn the sheet 180 degrees and place on upper rack. Put second sheet of cookies onto middle rack and bake both sheets for about 5 minutes (about 10 minutes total cooking time for each sheet). Cookies on top rack are ready when the edges are just barely brown and the center looks slightly unbaked.
- Remove top sheet from oven, turn other sheet 180 degrees and place on upper rack. Continue this rotation until all cookies are baked.
- Let cookies cool on sheet for a few minutes, then carefully remove cookies with spatula and let cool completely on a wire rack.
Makes about 50 cookies, unless you’re a cookie dough fiend like me and eat a few cookie’s worth of dough before all the cookies are baked :-)
So there it is, my ultimate party kitchen and ultimate party food. Fingers crossed I’ll be heading to BlogPodium in September! Thank you AyA Kitchens & Baths for the opportunity :-)
