I combined two of my vices into one delicious baked good: browned butter and Cadbury mini eggs. Mini eggs are my kryptonite. It takes all the willpower in my body to not pick them up at CVS when I am running errands. I was doing so good, and then Friday struck. I did a software update on my iPhone earlier in the week and then Friday morning it just stopped functioning, which meant several hours sprinting (literally) between the Verizon and Apple stores on Boylston Street, only to have no one figure out what the real issue was, resulting in a replacement phone … 3.5 hours later. So when I got back to my desk, my account director Josh was waiting with a handful of kryptonite. All it took was 4 mini eggs in my system and that craving was stronger than ever. You know when the Hulk is just a normal guy hanging out, then all of a sudden something kicks in and he’s all green and veiny and crazy. That’s what Cadbury mini eggs do to me. Not literally, obviously, but the same level of intensity.

So of course Saturday afternoon when I was browsing the aisles of Rite Aid for cookie ideas, I picked up two bags of mini eggs. Oh but Rebecca, this recipe only uses one bag? Why did you get two? You know why I got two. Because I knew 4 eggs at a time, I’d manage to eat almost an entire bag before I even got to baking these bad boys. No regrets though. I didn’t have a sip of alcohol today on Southie St. Patrick’s day, so I ate my calories in the form of mini eggs instead. I think it’s safe to say that this is the last mini egg recipe you’ll be seeing from me this lenten season. But it was well worth it.

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups Cadbury mini eggs
• 1 cup chocolate chips (optional)

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a saucepan over medium heat, brown the butter. Put it in a separate bowl to cool.

Step 2: Put the cooled butter in the mixer and mix well with sugars. Add in vanilla extract, egg, and egg yolk and mix until well incorporated.

Step 3: Sift the flour, baking soda and salt together, and add to the wet mixture.

Step 4: Add in the mini eggs and chocolate chips, and mix on a low speed until evenly incorporated. It’s okay if the eggs get a little crushed up, I personally like it better that way.

Step 5: Line the bottom of an 11×7 baking sheet with parchment paper, or grease well with non-stick spray. Evenly spread the batter in the pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes.

How much do you want to bet I did not let these cool for a half hour before cutting into them? Honestly, these are a sugar coma waiting to happen.

Last week was a bit of a crazy one, so I gladly enjoyed St Patrick’s day from the comfort of my couch today. My Sunday Funday drinking days are long gone. I just can’t bounce back like in my younger days, so I used my elderly status as an excuse to do some cookie experimenting today, and most importantly, finally finish my Lost marathon. Here’s all I am going to say about finally finishing all 6 seasons of Lost. WHAT? I am more Lost than when I started the show. I don’t even want to talk about it because I feel like I will never get it, so I better just move on to some other show. Was I upset when Friday Night Lights ended? Sure. I love all things Tim Riggins. But at least I understood that ending. It’s also making it hard for me to watch all of the coverage on the Malaysian missing flight, which is just so weird, but I keep thinking … maybe they just had to go back to the island. With all the conspiracy theories out there, it’s certainly not the craziest one.

Other fun things from last week. The big 2-9 is approaching in just two weeks. Am I handling the approaching final frontier before the bigger 3-0 maturely and without emotion? Of course not, I’m a girl. I have total ladybrains about turning 29. Remember that Paula Cole song “where have all the cowboys gone?” I seriously feel like “where have all the attractive, financially stable, 28-35 year old men within a 10 mile radius of Boston gone?” I know, I know. Finding that is probably as likely as finding the island from Lost. But for real, where are the dudes who enjoy Sunday cookies and sarcasm? Well, rather than sit in a cube in Woonsocket on my actual birthday waiting for the guy  next to me to microwave his daily fish meal (come on guy, every day you gotta eat that stank fish?) I decided to take my birthday off this year and do something fun. So with the help of my brother and his best friend and funny man Mike, my sister and I are going to NYC for the day on the 31st to see the Jimmy Fallon show. I am pretty friggin excited for that.

I got cleared by the physical therapist last week to play tennis again, which was great, because I was majorly bumming not playing. We crushed another doubles match on Saturday afternoon before all of the local drunkards invaded Southie for the rest of the weekend. I have not moved my car since Friday morning because of the craziness that goes on here. But I can’t really complain about being forced to stay in jeggings all day. Colleen, Caitlan, Lauren and I went to our favorite Local 149 for dinner last night, and of course, I got my hands on some chalk during dinner and Caitlan snapped this shot of me plotting some of our tennis strategies. #ThePerfectServe

And lastly, it was Star Wars movie night at work last Wednesday, so one of the developers bought me some Star Wars cookie cutters and put me in charge of the cookies for the event. You know I love a good challenge. So I made a vanilla bean sugar cookie Monday night, then on Tuesday Colleen and Sarah helped me frost them. What did we learn? Colleen is a closet Star Wars nerd. She knew all of the different names from Star Wars, meanwhile Sarah was frosting some Yodas that looked a little cat-like. Of course, I would be remiss in not giving Skip a shoutout. He commented on my facebook post of the Darth Vader cookies by saying “Rebecca … I am your father .. no literally, I am your father” which got him 11 likes on his comment alone, which he was pretty proud of. The price I pay for having tech savvy parents.

Yoda cookies.

The calm before the storm, where frosted food coloring ended up literally everywhere.

Frosting cookies I am. 

Sarah getting her Yoda on.

Yoda.Pretty proud of  my Darth Vader.

Because I suffer from perfectionism, I had to try my frosting recipe again to get it right since last week it was either too thick or a little runny. So I made some St Patrick’s Day frosted vanilla bean sugar cookies this afternoon to finally get it right. Much better this time.