cookie challenge week 8 - Snickerdoodles

I have been having a hankering for some soft, freshly baked snickerdoodles. I just love them when they are soft. . . not so much when they get hard and crumbly. While looking for some recipes to make for Lisa's baby shower, I stumbled across this recipe and it just made my mouth water! I had already baked up some frozen dough for Jon's lunch (he had requested those S'more cookies I made in June) and so I needed a good excuse to whip up a batch. It didn't take too long for a good reason to do some baking to arrive. Breaunna, a young lady I used to mentor when she was a junior higher, is starting college. Today she moves into her dorm at Fresno State and I thought she would love some freshly baked cookies to welcome her into college life. I am so excited for her and see how her walk with God will grow as she lives in the dorms and digs into Fresno State life.

You can find the recipe here.

CC - Week 7: Chocolate Ginger Cookies

Okay, so yes, baking seems to be the trend of posts lately, so once again, I apologize if you are wanting to see some new projects (they will come. . . I just don't want to unveil them yet!). I found this recipe online the other day and let me tell you . . . they are scrumptious. This cookie is a combination of gingersnaps and chocolate chip cookies and they don't even have eggs in them! That, my friends, made my husband very, VERY happy (for those of you who haven't heard, he can't stand the little guys!). This recipe is a Four Seasons Hotel recipe and the cookies are just as rich as the hotel it comes from. I will definitely be keeping this one in my cookie file to make again. . . especially around Christmas! I baked them for about 5-8 minutes on my silpat and they came out perfectly soft, but still held together nicely.

You can find this recipe here.

Cookie Challenge - Week 6

So, it's the end of the month and this week's cookies are using what's left in the cupboards without going to the store. I was researching oatmeal cookies from different baking blogs (because I had plenty of oatmeal in the pantry) and found that the basic Quaker Oat recipe seems to be truly the best. So, what else could I do, but try to make it just a tad better. I used the regular recipe, but plumped the raisins (see note at bottom) and them into melted chocolate (sorry. . . I really needed my chocolate fix this week!) I also really enjoy the taste of cinnamon, so I added about a half teaspoon more to the mix.

You can find the recipe here.

These are dipped in chocolate.

I still had some cookies left and was running out of chocolate to dip it into, so I scooped some into a sandwich bag, cut off the tip and drizzled them with chocolate.

The judge (aka my hubbie) said that the drizzled ones look the best, but the dipped give the choice of chocolate of plain with every bite. For the record, he took one of each. :)

To plump your raisins: Heat water in your teapot. Measure out your raisins in a glass dish. Pour boiling water over raisins to immerse in water. Let stand for a couple of minutes. Drain water and your raisins should be plumped! I will also note that Jon did notice that the raisins were plumper and he liked it!

Cookie Challenge - Week 5

After a week of being home and back in the groove of things (well, almost anyways), I broke down Monday night and baked some cookies. It was so hot that day, but I already had chicken cooking, and these cookies ended up being well worth having the oven on! I had seen a recipe somewhere that used browned butter in their chocolate chip cookies and so I googled it and baked the first recipe that popped up (Twin Tables blog) and made them. And, ohhhh my goodness. . . These were so goooood! The first thing Jon said was, "Oh, good! nothing weird in them!" Little did he know that I took the time to brown my butter before preparing them, therefore they are NOT plain old chocolate chip cookies. Yeah!

I will say that as delicious as these cookies are, they do take a little bit more time to make since the require taking the time to brown the butter. But, please don't let that stop you. . . it's not that hard! In fact, once you do it once, you can actually do other things while the butter is browning and every so often swirling your pan.

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 3/4 sticks)
1/2 cups sugar
3/4 cups packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 1/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Lightly greast two baking sheets or line with parchment paper. Whisk flour and bakign soda together in a medium bowl; set aside.Heat 10 tablespoons butter in a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue to cook, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has a nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes more. Remove from skillet and transfer to a large bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Stir in remaining 4 tablespoons butter until completely melted. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter; whisk until funny incorporated. Stir in egg and yolk. Whisk mixture until no sugar lumps remain, about 30 seconds. Let mixture sit for about 3 minutes, then whisk it for 30 seconds; repeat this process two more times. After about 10 minutes, mixture should be thick, smooth, and shiny. Using a rubber spatula, stir in flour mixture until just combine, about 1 minute. Stir in chocolate chips. Use cookie scoop to place dough on greased cookie sheet, parchment paper, or silpat. Bake cookies, one tray at a time, until cookies are golden brown, still puffy, and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 12 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking. Transfer baking sheet to wire rack; cook cookies completely on baking sheets.

Cookie Challenge - Week 4

Today, I made chocolate chip cookies . . . but I didn't use the traditional recipes. Yeah me! Jon has been asking for chocolate chip cookies and I needed something quick and easy to make for our road trip this week and make his belly happy. I also didn't have that much food in the cupboards, so I had to work with what I had. I found this recipe on Epicurious and they taste delicious. It is a pretty basic recipe, but there is some magic going on with the eggs here, so make sure you follow the directions closely. This recipe also for a little more than a bag of chocolate chips. Since, I only had one bag, I added half of my Heath bits bag and a chocolate Hershey Bar broken into pieces. You can find the recipe here.

Cookie Challenge - Week 3

Today the house smelled heavenly. This week's recipe is a taste of deliciousness that comes in bar form. I am not even sure you would consider this recipe a cookie, but since I made them for Jon's lunch . . . they do. This week's recipe is Raspberry Breakfast Bars. They were easy and I only had to buy a bag of frozen raspberries to make them. This recipe comes from the website Smitten Kitchen and she got the recipe from the cookbook Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.

Here's the recipe:

For the crust and crumb:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cups rolled oats
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch pieces

For the raspberry filling:
1/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 pound raspberries, fresh or frozen
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Make the crust and crumb: Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-by-13-inch glass or light-colored metal baking pan. Put a long piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan, letting the parchment extend up the two short sides of the pan and overhang slightly on both ends. (This will make it easy to remove the bars from the pan after they have baked.) Butter the parchment.
Put the flour, brown sugar, oats, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon in a food processor. Pulse in short bursts until combined. Add the butter and pulse until loose crumbs form.
Reserve 1 1/2 cup of the mixture and set aside. (Note: The book suggests you reserve one cup only. My gut told me that was too little, and I upped it. I wanted to make sure the top of the raspberries were mostly covered, at least for packing purposes, and was glad I had changed it.) Pour the rest of the mixture into the prepared pan and use your hans or the back of a large wooden spoon to push the crust into an even layer at the bottom of the pan. The crust should touch the sides of the pan. Bake until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let the crust cool. Keep the oven on while you make the raspberry filling.
Make the raspberry filling: In a medium bowl, whisk the sugar, lemon zest, cinnamon and flour together. Add the raspberries, lemon juice and butter and use your hands to toss gently until the raspberries are evenly coated.
Assemble and bake the bars: Spread the raspberry filling evenly on top of the cooled crust. Sprinkle the reserved crust mixture evenly on top of the filling.
Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, rotating the pan every 15 minutes, until the top is golden brown and the filling starts to bubble around the edges.
Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then cut into squares and serve. The bars can be stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to two days.

Enjoy these! They will work great for both breakfast or a light dessert, snack, or even a potluck! Not to mention they cut beautifully and don't fall apart and so you could wrap them up and give them as a gift.

Cookie Challenge - Week 2

This week, I decided to try S'Mores cookies. I have very fun memories of sitting in front of the campfire as a kid roasting marshmallows for S'mores. So, it didn't take much talking into to make these. These cookies were, by far, one of the best cookies I have every made. They have graham cracker crumbs, chocolate bar chunks, and mini marshmallows all melted together in this scrumptious cookie. Plus, they are not as messy as making the real thing. I found this recipe at the Cookie Madness blog.

Here it is:

3/4 cup unsalted butter, cool room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

1 large egg1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate

1 cup miniature marshmallows

2 Hershey Bars, broken into pieces (or other favorite milk chocolate)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Cream butter and both sugars with an electric mixer; beat in egg and vanilla. Beat in salt and baking soda making sure they are well distributed and free of lumps; stir in the flour, followed by graham cracker crumbs. Stir in chocolate chips.
Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheets, spacing about 3 inches apart. Bake for 9 minutes. Remove and quickly press marshmallows and chocolate into cookies. Return to oven and cook until done (about 3 or 4 more minutes)
Makes about 3 dozen