Cookie Cake Recipe

I promised this recipe many days ago, but the second time I made the recipe it was a little..off? So I’ve been doing some experimenting and tweaking, and this is the best I’ve come up with so far!

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

1/2 c butter

1/2c granulated sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar (tightly packed)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1/4tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt (omit if using salted butter, which I wouldn’t recommend)

3/4 c semi-sweet mini chips (use 1/2 c if you’re not chocolate obsessed)

Preheat oven to 350F. Coat cookie cake pan (9×13)* with cooking spray.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars, then add the egg and vanilla and mix well.

In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Gradually add to the butter and sugar mixture, mixing until just combined.

Stir in the chocolate chips.

Spread dough into prepared pan with spatula. (or, more likely, your hand. It speeds the process up)

Bake 15-18mins, or until lightly golden brown. (My oven runs hot, if yours doesn’t I could see it taking u to 20 minutes if you like a harder cookie)

Cool on rack for at least 10 minutes, then remove from pan.

*My cookie cake pan is heart shaped, but said it holds any recipe that would fit a 9×13 inch baking pan.

Let cool completely, then decorate as you please.

Enjoy! If anyone makes the recipe, get back to me with results! I’m still playing around with it.

-Mel

Feeling Festive: Cookie Cake

One of Johnny and my favorite, less than gourmet desserts, is cookie cake. We’ve been known to, more than once, indulge ourselves in entire personal sized Great American Cookies cake’s for special occasions, even if that occasion had already included a meal and even a previous dessert. So, when our 16 month anniversary and Valentine’s Day coincided, it seemed only natural to celebrate with a homemade cookie cake.

The cookie cake came out of the oven moist, perfectly cooked, soft and delicious looking.

Unfortunately, then I moved it in an effort to find the perfect decorating surface, then I moved it again, and then it broke. It broke on more than one side. The break might have ended up for the best, as it took any stress from trying to frost the cake perfectly away, making the process more fun, and making the cake that much easier to tear apart and dig in to…the evening before the occasion which was supposed to be celebrated.

It was gone in less than 24 hours. Alls well that ends well.

-Mel

Feeling Festive: Halloween Nutella Smooches

Johnny reminded me of my lack of updating. I apologize, I’ve just been quite drained of energy recently.

These cookies quickly fixed that problem. I’ll be on a sugar high for at least a week due to overconsumption of these addicting little morsels.

I adapted this recipe from Giada De Laurentis’ Chocolate-Hazelnut Smooches. The original recipe produces a thin, crunchy cookie, and I personally prefer those of the thick and chewy nature. So, by “adapted” I mean I cut the amount of baking soda in half, added an extra heaping spoonful of Nutella, and shaved a few minutes off the baking time.

This would be a fun recipe to let your rugrats help with, and even more fun to partake in.

Chocolate-Hazelnut Smooches
adapted from Giada De Laurentis’ Everday Italian

1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chocolate hazelnut spread + an extra tablespoon-ish
1/2 cup butter, softened (1 stick)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup orange sprinkles, or orange sugar
1 (9-ounce) package of chocolate candy kisses, unwrapped

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In another medium bowl, place the chocolate hazelnut spread, butter, and both sugars. Using a hand mixer, cream the ingredients together, about 3 minutes. Add the
egg and vanilla and blend until incorporated. Stir in the dry ingredients, just until incorporated.

Shape the cookie dough into walnut-sized balls. Rolls the balls in the orange sprinkles or orange sugar, pressing to adhere. Place the cookies on a heavy cookie sheet about 4 inches apart. Bake for 7 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven. Quickly place a chocolate kiss in the middle of each cookie. Return the cookies to the oven and bake for another 2-3 minutes. Cool the cookies on a wire rack.

Happy Halloween!

-Mel

Death by Chocolate Cookies

I had my regularly scheduled dental appointment today, and the woman responsible for whirling the gritty tasting stuff onto my teeth kept drilling me (no pun intended) with questions as to what I planned to do with my future. When I told her I was no longer sure as to what my major would be, she asked: “Well, if you could do anything for the rest of your life, what would it be?” I replied “Brafking coofkies, all dayf eferydayf”. Give me a break, she had two gloved hands wedged between my jaws.

Roughly translated- I could bake cookies all day, every day. I could probably even bake cookies in my sleep (or in lieu of sleeping, as I’ve been doing recently). Basically that anecdote was a poor segway into saying “I’ve been baking a lot of cookies; as well as trying to find and invent winner recipes.”

I found said “winner recipe” last night on a quest to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Oh, don’t think I’ve quit the quest just yet, but these (from Epicurious) are unbelievably delicious. I cut the recipe in half, even with the funky part about using 1 3/4 tbsp of an egg- I used 1 tbsp. I also added some milk chocolate chips quickly to the top of a few as they came out of the oven, because I love milk chocolate in just about anything.

These cookies have a perfect texture and chewy factor, and many members of my family enjoyed them for dinner, breakfast, and lunch. I kid you not.

I also mentioned I’ve been trying my hand at inventing my own recipes, and this endeavor produce what I call my “Death by Chocolate” cookies. They definitely came out a favorite with the females, but most males who sampled them said they were a little too rich. Even I must admit, they were pushing the boundaries of too chocolaty. I think it was the mix of dark and semi-sweet chocolate. The dark chocolate chips were super rich and slightly overpowering, so I’ll probably go for only semi-sweet next time. I also may try this again using Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa instead of unsweetened- just to see what happens. Any suggestions for improvements would be greatly appreciated!

Death by Chocolate Cookies

1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup flour (all purpose)
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3 oz (I used unsweetened) cocoa powder
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chunks (I chopped these in half)
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips (Ghiradelli)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy in a large bowl. Beat in the egg and vanilla, mixing until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder. With the mixer on a low setting, gradually add the flour mixture into butter mixture until well combined. Stir in chocolate chunks.
Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets.
Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees F, until just firm around the edges. Cookies will appear moist, don’t let that fool you. Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Makes about 18 cookies (depending on how large you’d like them).

-Mel

Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip Cookies

Melanie has recently learned that good writing is always done in the 3rd person, even if the piece of work is of the autobiographical or informative nature.

So, since she has also recently learned she will probably fail English Comp. 1301 (and subsequently, life itself), her writing will be brief in the rest of this post.

It’s for the reader’s sake, and because a particular professor has made Melanie hate writing (and subsequently, life itself). “It’s”..”itself”..poor writing. Ugh, when will she learn!

Admittedly these cookies aren’t much to look at (recipe here), but just as with human beings “it’s what’s inside that counts!” They had a wonderful texture, and a fudgy, moist center. Melanie also added some semi-sweet chocolate, as simple math requires it.

(peanut butter chips + semi sweet chocolate chunks + Reese’s peanut butter cups = the real OG.)

These cookies came as a direct result of Melanie’s recent inability to sleep. She has decided Rockstar energy drinks contain canned sanity.

Packed and ready for their first big day at the office. They were gone by 11am!

Delicious.
-Mel

P.S. Perhaps this post should be called Chocolate Peanut “Bitter Melanie” Chip Cookies. Hmm.

A New Cookie Standard

As much cooking as I’ve done recently, my first love has always been baking. There really is nothing more relaxing or fulfilling than making a classic batch of chocolate chip cookies, or a pan of warm, chewy brownies.

I was thinking about it this morning, and I couldn’t believe how long it had been since I’d baked even the simplest of treats. I decided to I was in need of a quick return, and today was the perfect Sunday for such an endeavor.

Okay, enough of the BS..

I made, without a doubt, the best cookies ever.

I’m a modest person, truly I am. I’m not one to brag, but this is an accomplishment of such great magnitude, I can’t keep it to myself.

That’s the beauty itself, pictured in front of what I had previously considered to be brilliant achievements in cookie-dom. A God amongst mere mortals, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

It all started innocently enough– I was scouting out a good recipe for my return to baking, and I found many on Cookie Madness Amongst the many delicious sounding recipes, I found one for “S’Mores Cookies” (another good name for these might be “Diet Destroyers”, or “Love Handlers”). I love S’Mores, and haven’t had any since the beginning of the summer. The idea of a s’mores cookie sounded both interesting and fun, so I decided to give it a shot, completely unaware of the nugget of gold I had just uncovered.

It was a pretty standard baking procedure, and throughout the process I was ignorant to the magic occuring before my eyes. After the cookies were set and ready to be baked, I allowed myself to take a small sampling of the dough.

“Oh my goodness.”

Cookie dough is a good thing, no doubt. But this dough brought it to a different level. It was at this point I started to feel like a little kid on Christmas Eve– antsy and excited. While I was anxiously awaiting the end to the first half of the baking process, my mom came in intrigued by the fantastic smell radiating from the kitchen. When she gazed upon them, she said she needed to remove herself in order to keep from globbing them up before they’d finished cooling.

As good as they look, they taste even better. At this point, there aren’t adjectives that describe the extent to which these cookies achieve perfection. I don’t know what else to say, except that I truly don’t mind the 5-6 miles I now need to run– they were well worth it.

S’Mores Cookies

3/4 cup butter — softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate
1 cup (more or less) of marshmallows
2 Hershey Bars, broken into pieces (I used milk chocolate chips in the absence of Hershey’s)

Beat together the margarine and sugars until light and fluffy. Blend in egg and vanilla. Add combined flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking soda and salt. Mix well. Stir in chocolate chips and (if using) other stuff.

Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets about 3 inches apart ..

Bake in pre-heated oven 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 8 minutes. Remove and quickly press marshmallows and chocolate into cookies. Return to oven and cook until done (about 3 or 4 more minutes)

Kudos to the genius behind “Cookie Madness”.
-Mel