Posts Tagged ‘cookies’

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!

My brother came over to make cookies at my house.  He asked if we could make gingerbread men and snickerdoodles.  As much as I like cinnamon, I’ve never been a fan of the snickerdoodle because it’s a pretty tame cookie as cookies go. Today, I have become a convert; I really love cinnamon and smelling it cooking completely changed my outlook.  I do admit to liking the snickerdoodle warm more than I like it at room temp, so I may just have to keep rolled snickerdoodle cookie balls in my freezer (Not uncommon, btw)

While we were at the store getting ingredients for the cookie making (and for my soup creation which was documented in another blog post) I thought about making a cookie for my brother.  He doesn’t eat many cookies, so I figured if I was going to make one, it better have all of his favorite things in it.  So I created a cookie called The Jason.  It is a chocolate cookie with chocolate chips, dried cherries and chopped (unsalted) pistachios.  I rinsed off salted pistachios and threw them in the oven to roast for a few minutes.  Depending on how much salty/sweet ratio you like, you could use salted ones.

The cookies also have a pinch of cinnamon in them. I don’t care for the combination of cinnamon and chocolate even though separately they are two of my favorite flavors, but Jason does, so I threw it in.

This is the first attempt at this cookie and I do think some adjustments needed to be made, but not many.  The recipe includes the adjustments, but I haven’t actually tested this a second time.  It mostly just needed more flour (I added 1/4 cup to the recipe) and maybe less choc chips.

I’m sure this particular cookie exists somewhere on the InterWebs, but I did not seek out a recipe. I like to gather ingredients and use what I know about other cookies to create things that taste good. I’m not claiming to be the first inventor of any of the cookies on this blog, but I don’t do a lot of research before I try them.  

Here’s the recipe with pictures and it will be repeated in full without interruptions at the end.

The Jason

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening (you could just double the butter or use full margarine too)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar (I use regular sugar and a 1T of molassess)
• 1t vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2 1/2 cups flour
• 1t baking soda
• 1t salt
• 1/4t cinnamon (you could add more if you really like cinnamon)
• 2 cups chocolate chips (we thought it may be too many chips, so feel free to decrease amount)
• 1 cup pistachios – chopped
• 1 package dried cherries, chopped (approx 1 to 1 1/4 cups, but I’m not positive) I let the cherries soak in hot water for about 2o minutes and then I added about 2T of the cherry water to the dough mixture as I was mixing in flour. I’m not sure it’s needed, tho.

1. Cream together butter and shortening, add sugars and beat until fluffy.
   
2. Add vanilla and eggs one at a time, beating thoroughly after each egg.
   
3. Add cocoa powder and mix completely.
4. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.
5. Add in small batches to the wet ingredients mixing completely. (Add cherry water at this time if you wish)
6. Depending on the strength of your mixer, add in the chocolate chips, dried cherries and pistachios and mix (you may need to mix by hand, but good luck with that)
   
7. I put the dough in the fridge to firm up before I rolled it and I still needed to dust my hands with flour.
   
8. Bake at 350 for 12-14 minutes, watch carefully because you won’t see the cookies browning.  If you like them chewier, take them out sooner or leave them in longer for crunchy cookies.
   
   Here’s my brother enjoying his own personalized cookie.
   
   The Jason

Enjoy The Jason and if you try it, let me know what you think.