Hello friends!
We’ve made it here together!
I’ve been in The Bakehouse kitchen this week testing recipes for the site (so much cake!) and recipes for a big writing project I get to share with you this fall. I thought I knew chocolate chip cookies (and I do) but I tested my little heart out this week to make the best of the best, the most clear recipe, the most chocolate filled. I’ve found that the best chocolate ‘chips’ for cookies are these Guittard Baking Wafers and there’s no going back.
I’m also trying to add some color to my bedroom and I’ve been sitting with paint swatches across my dining room table all week. Decisions will be made, I’m fairly sure.
There’s lots of promise in this week. Chocolate, color, and cakes. Lots of reading too. The offering this week is below. Take what you’d like. Also be sure to take a rest today and eat as many french fries as you’d like. Make your own dreams come true, you know?
• 24 hours inside San Francisco’s homeless crisis. With more than 8,000 homeless people in the city, this feels desperate and debilitating with small glints of hope. (San Francisco Chronicle)
• This week’s long read is more from California. Gone: Decades of greed, neglect, corruption, and bad politics led to last year’s Paradise fire, the worst in California history. It should never have happened. It will happen again. (The California Sunday Magazine)
• It feels like there’s a necessary reckoning or at least a questioning taking place and I think it’s important. And no, you won’t ever find me at CrimeCon: Victim’s, Families, and America’s Thirst for True-Crime Stories. (The Washington Post Magazine)
• Leaving this here for anyone who needs it: Quit Your Terrible Job. (New York Times)
• We’ve explored homelessness and now we’re transitioning to open-house gazing. Life is full of all things and I found sweetness here: Finding myself in strangers’ homes. (Curbed)
• This is wild and highly motivating: This college dropout was bedridden for 11 years. Then he invented a surgery and cured himself. (CNN)
• Part of my morning routine is putting on a podcast while I make coffee and get ready for my day. Here are two I enjoyed very much this week: Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations: The Best Relationship Advice and One Part Plant Podcast: Making Space For Difference. (Stitcher and Jessica Murnane)
• I don’t play tag, b*tch I’ve been it. Lizzo’s Tiny Desk Concert is everything we need. And I did go down a bit of a Tiny Desk rabbit hole and this is still one of my favorites: Joseph. Burn the white flag. (NPR)
• Billie Eilish and the triumph of weird – I loved this, every bit. (Rolling Stone)
• If you’re also in your 30’s, this list will serve as a reminder of how grateful we are to not have to listen to Smash Mouth anymore: 40 Best Singles of 1999. (The Ringer)
• This week was my assistant Sydney’s birthday which was exactly the excuse I needed to make Everybody’s Birthday Cake. This time I made the cake with browned butter, sour cream instead of buttermilk, and whipped cream instead of chocolate frosting. Let’s call it the summer version! (Joy the Baker)
• This really is the most flattering summer dress I’ve found: Cotton Weave Picnic Dress. It’s definitely something comfortable and casual enough to sit on a blanket in the grass in. And the cotton is such that it won’t be a wrinkle mess. (Everlane)
• I took a really honest look in the mirror this week and found myself simultaneously dialing the dermatologist. Your girl (that’s me) is aging so we’re back on our retinols and we’re going strong with the best sunscreen in the game: EltaMD. (Amazon)
• Here’s what we’re not going to subscribe to: licking our cats. Tron would claw my very face off. An Offbeat Approach to Bonding With Cats. (The Atlantic)
I’m so thankful you’re here.
Enjoy the day!
My love to you,
xo Joy
Rosalind
Hi Joy!! I look forward to your Let It Be Sunday posts every week! I just love love the photos you take of the many dishes and treats you make!! I haven’t tried to make any as of yet but I wanted to ask because of the cookie batter with the chocolate wafers up top if you would post the recipe? Looking forward to many more posts and recipes to come! Thanks for sharing every week!!
Jenna
Tiny. Desk. Concerts. Thank you, JOY!
You introduced me to them back with the Joseph set.
Ok, so I’ve only seen that one and a couple others and then this one. Lizzo is the best. The baby… haha!
Love your Let it be Sunday posts. If I can’t read them on Sunday, I read them on Monday or Tuesday…
Have a lovely day, mkay? x
Tina
Casually backing up your Elta suggestion (my fave) with a suggestion to support a small, family-owned business out of Omaha, NE, instead of Amazon: lovelyskin.com! They have great customer service and always lots of deals.
Kristen
I adapted your 3-layer yellow cake recipe to make a 4-layer raspberry/lime checkerboard cake for my twin girls’ second birthday party and it turned out better than I could have imagined! Thank you for the great recipe! (This is not related to this post but I wasn’t sure how else to tell you and I wanted to share my appreciation!)
Sasha
That sounds just delightful! I found a checkerboard cake kit at a thrift store when my girls were little and we had so much fun making those cakes. Happy happy memories.
Nel
It’s time for me to cook I guess !
Christina
I’ve never commented here before, but I’ve been reading your Sunday posts for years and I adore them (last year around this time, btw, I made your peanut butter cake recipe for my own birthday and it was awesome). I just wanted to say that I am one of those people who needed to read the ” Quit Your Terrible Job” article, as that is EXACTLY what I’m agonizing/debating over doing next week for my mental and physical health. ARGHHH this is hard and awful and scares me to death but thank you for the EXTREMELY timely reminder, I really needed it.
Rena
I’m convinced you finally found the very best recipe for chocolate cookies!
xx from Bavaria/Germany, Rena
http://www.dressedwithsoul.com
Julia
Gone resonated with me to the point of tears. It also serves to explain to others what this fire really was about. NOT about brush around people’s homes as my brother back in Michigan quoted fairly ignorantly to me.
I received a call the from my friend the night of the Camp fire
She was fleeing
The fear in her voice was palpable
We texted for the next few weeks/months as she struggled to find a place to spend a night, a week, a month
Grungy motel rooms, a generously donated cabin on a walnut grove, a RV she purchased that the roof blew off as soon as it got on the highway
Thank u for this link. I’m going to educate my brother who does not understand these things
My friend finally found a place for in Southern Oregon. Her quote to me “I must say if that if you own nothing, moving is a joy-it took me all of 15 minutes”. She found some small positive in a tragic situation. She and her dog are making a new life w no forest, n flood plain and some normalcy.
Samantha
Have a beautiful sunday!
Kathy K
Is there a specific chocolate chip cookie recipe you like best to go with the wafers? It looks like that one pictured has some sea salt.
pepperpie
What a perfect photo for National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! Wafers instead of chips- genius.
Allison
LMFAO my 8 year old daughter just discovered All Star and it is on repeat in my car and phone!!! Help!
joythebaker
Bless – motherhood is hard!
Sandy
What is it about the chocolate wafers that make you like them so much?
joythebaker
Oh that’s a great question I’ll add to the post! First, they’re better quality chocolate than chips. And I love how thin and wide they are, giving more evenly dispersed chocolate per cookie!
Sandy
awesome – thank you!!
Rebecca
The Best Relationship Advice – Such wisdom. Encouraging. Empowering.
Thanks for sharing this gem.
loves to ride
what are those wonderful pastries at the top of the page?
joythebaker
They’re chocolate chip cookie dough.