Posts Tagged ‘cookie’

My friend JenTastic is just an incredible person.  She’s funny, smart, snarky, a great mom, crafty in a non-negative way. When we get together we laugh a lot, act goofy, laugh at things on the Interwebs and sometimes we make up code words to talk about the people around us in an inconspicuous way.

I’d been thinking about making her a cookie for a while but she has some pretty specific flavor restrictions (keep reading) so I knew that if I was going to make her a cookie, it would have to live up to her JenTastic-ness.

She’s a smidge picky about what she looks for in a cookie. For example, this is a direct quote from a text about cookies:

JenTastic: No citrus. Chewy not crispy.  Caramel is good if it’s soft, but it can’t be hard. No raisins, no cranberries. In fact, no fruit. No marshmallows. No toffee. No coconut. No mint.

Me: *chirp chirp* Noted. 

A while later (not too long, because now I was really challenged,  I thought about a conversation we had had about a donut that she loves. She calls it “The Nutty” and it’s a cake donut dipped in glaze and covered in chopped peanuts.  It’s a very hard donut to find.  It’s made by a big donut chain, but many of the locations don’t carry it.  I’ve had it and I like it because I love peanuts and of course that made it easier for me to recreate it.  So looooong story short, I decided I was going to make her a cookie inspired by this donut she loves so she could have that flavor whenever she wanted it.

The JenTastic

2 sticks butter (unsalted)
3/4c sugar
3/4c brown sugar (I make my own using 3/4c sugar and2t molasses)
1t vanilla
2 eggs
2 1/2c all purpose flour
1t salt
1t baking soda
1 12oz bag of peanut butter chips

1 egg  plus 1/2 c water- beaten together
2 cups of roasted, lightly salted peanuts, finely chopped (food processor or chopper, just don’t over chop!)

• Cream together butter and sugars until fluffy
• Add in eggs, one at a time until incorproated
• Mix in vanilla
• Combine dry ingredients and mix well.
• Add the dry ingredients to the sugar mixture in three parts.  Mix thoroughly after each addition.
• Mix in the peanut butter chips
• Roll dough into balls about the size of  walnut.

• Dip dough balls into the egg wash and roll in peanuts

• Place dough balls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
• Bake at 350 for 13 minutes. If you prefer a crispier cookie, bake an additional 2 minutes.
• Cool for a few minutes and move to a cooling rack until completely cooled.

Store in an airtight container. Cookies will stay fresh for a few days.

I love pumpkin.  Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin muffins. I have a pumpkin and sage pasta recipe that’s awesome.  Weird that I’ve never made a pumpkin cookie before.  That all changed today.

Oatmeal cookies seem to be my downfall lately. I can’t find the right balance between the flour and the oatmeal.  They are turning out so doughy and gummy.  I THINK I have figured out the perfect ration: 2:1 oatmeal to flour.

Oatmeal Pumpkin White Chocolate Cookie AKA The Fall Fling, which is a mouthful. (HAH I’m so funny!)

2 sticks butter (unsalted)
3/4c sugar
3/4c brown sugar (I make my own using 3/4c sugar and2t molasses)
1t vanilla
2 eggs
1c pumpkin
1 1/2c all purpose flour
3C old fashioned oats
1t cinnamon
1/4t ginger
1/4t nutmeg
pinch of ground cloves
1t salt
1t baking soda
1 bag of white chocolate chips

• Cream together butter and sugars until fluffy
• Add in eggs, one at a time until incorproated
• Mix in vanilla
• Combine dry ingredients and mix well.
• Alternately add the pumpkin and dry ingredients until well combined.  (Dough will be moist)
• Mix in the white chocolate chips
• Drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
• Bake at 350 for 14-16 minutes.
• Cool for a few minutes and move to a cooling rack until completely cooled.
• Store in an airtight container. Cookies will stay fresh for a few days.

I freeze cookie dough as often as I can.  Form into dough balls and freeze overnight on a parchment paper covered cookie sheet and cover with tinfoil. The next day I’ll put them in portion sized sandwich baggies (3-5 cookies).

Initial thoughts:
Wow this cookie smelled GREAT while cooking!  The texture appears to be perfect, but the pumpkin did add a lot of moistness.  Its a soft cookie and I baked them f0r 13 minutes.  I would try going 14 or 15 next batch to give it a little crunch.  I rarely say this because I have a huge sweet tooth, but this first batch was too sweet.  It called for 1c each of white and brown sugars.  In the recipe above, I’ve already cut it back to 3/4c each. It’s possible I may cut the white sugar to 1/2, but I won’t know until after the second test batch.

It certainly smells like Fall in my kitchen today!

My intention was to call this cookie The Temptation because the ingredients in it are so darn tempting, but then I tasted it and this spectacular cookie may “fix” all of my sweet and salty snack cravings.  Soooo I’m unsure of what to call it.  Read this post and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to do a taste test, then chime in on the name choice.  (A savvy candy bar aficionado will notice that this cookie has a lot of similarities to the Take 5 candy bar…which may be my favorite candy.)

Test Batch #1

1 stick unsalted butter – softened
1/2 c coconut oil
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 c creamy peanut butter
1 t vanilla extract
2 1/2 c all purpose flour
1/2 t baking powder
1 1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 cup salted peanuts, chopped finely in food processor
1c semi-sweet chocolate chips
1c peanut butter chips
1 c caramel bits (they come in a bag of easy to melt pieces)
1c pretzels, broken into pieces (I used Snyder Snaps)

Cream together the butter and coconut oil.  Add in the sugars and continue creaming until light and fluffy.  Mix in vanilla extract. Add in the eggs one at a time until well incorporated. Add in peanut butter.  Give it all good mix, scraping the bowl to make sure all items are blended.  Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and add into the butter sugar peanut buttery goodness a little at a time.  Don’t overmix it though!

Now here’s where your mixer or your arms are going to get a good workout.  Mix in the chopped peanuts, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, caramel bits and pretzel pieces.  Whew did you get all that?

You know by now, that I roll out ALL of my cookie doughs and throw them in freezer until they are frozen.  Then I put them in freezer baggies in groups of 3 or 6 so I can make just a few cookies at a time if I want.

Look at this beautiful cookie!

Bake at 375 for 11 minutes.  Cool on a baking rack. Enjoy with a glass of milk.

Let’s look at that ball of dough again!

You can see the peanuts, pretzel pieces and chocolate chips.  (The other ingredients are there too, they’re just hiding!)

Notes:  Initial results are pretty delicious. It may be a tad dry and I’ll need to think of a solution, but I need to taste them at room temperature. I ate one hot from the oven, and it was deeeelish!  I have a few people taste testing and I can’t wait to see what they have to say.

Check out this cute guy sticking out his caramel tongue.

Oh, in case you were wondering….this cookie was inspired by my friend DL who’s also a little nutty.

This particular cookie may be the most sophisticated of the ones I’ve whipped up so far.  It also has had two very different test batches, both of which were delicious.  The flavor profile of this cookie has orange, dark chocolate and pecans. It’s called The Hug because it feels like getting a big bear hug when you take a bite.

The Hug – test batch #1

• 1 c unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 c granulated sugar
• 3/4 c packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1t vanilla
• zest AND juice of one orange
• 2 1/4 c all-purpose flour
• 1t baking soda
• 1t salt
• 1 Hershey’s Special Dark jumbo bar, chopped finely
• 1/2 c finely chopped pecans

1. Cream butter and sugars together.
2. Add eggs one at a time until fully incorporated
3. Mix in vanilla and orange zest.
4. Sift together flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder and add into the wet ingredients in small batches until well combined.
5. Stir in chocolate and pecan pieces.
6. Roll into balls and bake for 10-12 minutes.

Here’s a picture of the dough for this batch. You can see it has a lighter color and larger chocolate and pecan pieces plus all that yummy, fragrant, delicious orange zest.

Recipe notes – Test batch #2 -

These cookies had a delicate yet noticeable orange essence. The orange flavor hit after the first bite was chewed and then it just perfumed the whole cookie.  The dark chocolate chips and larger pieces of pecans packed a much bigger punch and the double zest easily replaced the juice of the orange in the first batch.  I may experiment with adding the zest of one more orange, but that will be the only change I make in this recipe.  This recipe already used more flour so the consistency is a puffier cookie.  The color of this cookie is definitely lighter because of the absence of brown sugar.  You have to check this cookie often when you pass the 11 minute mark because it won’t really turn brown.

I hope you enjoy it!

My new thing is to create cookies for people based on flavor profiles they like. There must be a million cookie recipes on the InterWebs, so I’m not saying that I am the first creator of any of  these cookies, but I don’t go looking for recipes to poach.  I think of ingredients and basic cookie doughs and figure out ratios (mostly due to trial and error and lots of taste testing – thanks family, friends and co-workers!)

Now that that business is taken care of, let’s get back to the story of The Juanifer. I asked my friend Jennifer what kind of flavors she would like in a cookie. She said, “I would like my cookie to have chocolate and peanut butter and no nuts. ”  Ok.  Game on.  Or would that be Cookie On?

This cookie idea was pretty straightforward. The easiest thing would have been to take a peanut butter cookie and add chocolate. I didn’t want to do that. I could have also made a basic chocolate chip cookie dough and included peanut butter in some form.  I didn’t want to do that either.  In the end I decided to make a chocolate oatmeal cookie with peanut butter chips.  I did make two variations which I’ll document here in this discussion. I was in the middle of massive baking the weekend I created this cookie so I didn’t take as many photos during the process.

The Juanifer – Test Batch #1
1 c butter – softened
1c sugar – *
1c brown sugar (I use 1 cup white sugar and 1 1/2T molasses)
1t vanilla
2 eggs
1/3 c cocoa mixed with 2T water to make a slurry *
3 c rolled oats *
2 c flour *
1t salt
1t baking soda
1t baking powder
2 c peanut butter chips (or one 12 oz bag)

Cream together the butter and sugars.
Add eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly.
Add vanilla.
Pour in chocolate slurry mixture. (see note below)
Combine dry ingredients and sift together, or mix with a wisk.
Add dry ingredients into the wet a little at a time.
Finally, stir in the peanut butter chips.
Roll dough into balls (or drop if you wish) and cook for 10-12 minutes.

Recipe Notes from batch one:
I added the water because the cocoa is an additional dry ingredient and I felt the dough would need more moisture. I didn’t do this for the second batch and felt it was needed, so I’m including it in the final recipe.  This resulted in a wetter dough and I had some difficulty rolling the dough balls cleanly.

The Juanifer – Test Batch #2: 

1 c butter – softened
3/4 c sugar
1c brown sugar (I use 1 cup white sugar and 1 1/2T molasses)
1t vanilla
2 eggs
1/3 c cocoa
2 1/2 c rolled oats
2 1/2 c flour
1t salt
1t baking soda
1t baking powder
2 c peanut butter chips (or one 12 oz bag)

Cream together the butter and sugars.
Add eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly.
Add vanilla.
Combine dry ingredients and sift together, or mix with a wisk.
Add dry ingredients into the wet a little at a time.
Finally, stir in the peanut butter chips.
Roll dough into balls (or drop if you wish) and cook for 10-12 minutes.

Recipe Notes from batch two:
This time, I added the cocoa to the dry ingredients and didn’t add the additional liquid.  I found that this dough was a little dry. I also put in equal amounts of oats and flour and found that the cookies had a better visual look and didn’t spread out as much while baking.

Mind you, there was no difference in the taste between the two cookies, so if you prefer batch one, woohoo!  But I’ll be using the ratios of batch two and adding the chocolate slurry from batch one.

Jennifer asked that her cookie be called The Juanifer, so please enjoy!