Tag Archives: cookies

Around and A Round Recipe

Round things look good in twos.

dish rag rag

A Pair of Dish Cloths.

They taste good in twos too.

omnom

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Too good not to share.

My New Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

You’ll want your hand mixer for this one – it’s tough to get the flour incorporated with a spoon. We’ve made these two times in the past two weeks.

1/2 c. unsalted butter or Earth Balance
1/2 c. sugar
1 t. vanilla
3/4 c. and 3 T. all-purpose flour
1/8 t. baking powder
1/2 c. chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 300F.

Beat up the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla and beat some more. Put in the flour and baking powder and beat patiently. At first you’ll think it’s going to be a crumbly mess, but stick with it. Everything will come together. Stir in the chocolate chips (with a spoon).

Divide the dough into 6-8 golf ball size balls. Arrange on a cookie sheet and gently squish with your hand (Ellie’s favorite part after eating all the chocolate chips) to about 1/2″ thick. I like to sprinkle the tops with kosher salt.

Bake them for 30-40 minutes until golden brown and delicious on the edges. Let them cool on a wire rack.

These are crispy cookies made for dunking.

Peanut Butter Cooksees

Can you make a good peanut butter cookie without breaking an egg?

hash marks and everything

Yup. I personally ate half a dozen to be sure.

The Best Peanut Butter Cookies
(real recipe can be found here)

1 1/4 c. firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 c. peanut butter (we used regular old PB, not ‘natural’)
1/2 c. Earth Balance (butter is probably fine)
2 T. of vanilla (yes, that’s TABLESPOONS – but it works)

Put all that in a bowl and mix it up well. Add

1 heaping T. unsweetened applesauce

and mix again. In goes

1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 t. baking soda
3/4 t. salt

Stir until it’s all incorporated. Drop in big spoonfuls (I used my 2 T. scoop) onto a cookie sheet (I use parchment paper on mine) and do the traditional criss-cross thing with a fork.

Bake at 375F about 10 minutes until the edges are turning golden brown. Watch that you don’t over bake – they’ll still be tasty, but will require milk for dunking.

I would have gotten 32 cookies with my medium scoop, but we sampled a lot of dough.

Mighty Fine Cookie

cookie stack

Three out of three Iveys agree: Faux Thin Mints are a mighty fine cookie.

The recipe (which I saw on Craft) was posted at A Billion Tastes and Tunes. Our only change was to add a little powdered sugar to the glaze and make sandwich cookies instead. In theory, sandwich cookies will store better (they are stackable) and not as messy to eat. In theory. The cookies have a great tender crispy texture that is hard to beat.

Faux Thin Mints

Cookie Ingredients:
1 cup Earth Balance or butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 T. cornstarch mixed with 2 T. cold water
1 t. vanilla extract
1 1/2 t. peppermint extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt

Frosting Ingredients:
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (there’s no dairy in Ghirardelli‘s)
1 t. vegetable oil
2 t. peppermint extract
powdered sugar to thicken (we used about 1/4 cup)

Directions:
Mix the cornstarch and water and set aside.

Mix margarine and sugar together until well-mixed and fluffy (I used a fork).

Add cornstarch mess and extracts and mix until smooth and consistent.

Add flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Mix until just combined (try not to over-mix, it breaks the baking powder). It’s stiff, but it’s worth it. So persevere.

Divide the dough in half. Put one half on a sheet of wax paper or plastic wrap. Roll it into about a 10 inch log, wrap it up in the wax paper and put it in the ‘fridge for about two hours until firm. If you are in a hurry, the freezer for an hour will work too. Do the same for the second half of the dough.

Preheat your oven to 350. Pull out out the dough, unwrap it and slice it into rounds a little thicker than 1/4″. Spread them out on a cookie sheet – they don’t need a lot of room since they don’t spread much.

Bake about 12 minutes. The cookies should look a little dry on top but still be soft enough to get a dent when you poke them accidentally. Let them cool a few minutes on the cookie sheet before moving them to a wire rack to cool all the way.

While they are cooling, make your filling. Put the chocolate chips and oil in a microwave safe bowl and heat in 30 second increments until the chocolate chips are melty and the mess can be stirred until smooth. Mix in the peppermint extract (if your bowl is still warm, it shouldn’t seize). Stir enough powdered sugar to make the mixture spreadable and a little fluffy.

Using a dinner knife, spread the frosting over the bottom of one cookie. Stick another cookie (bottoms in for prettiness) on top. Repeat until all the cookies are sandwiches or eaten.

Speaking of Cookies. My sister is hosting a Virtual Cookie Swap! With PRIZES! Take a look and share a recipe. I need more cookie recipes.

Baking

I don’t just want to replace the butter with some kind of butter substitute. For one thing, most margarines still contain dairy and for another, most of margarines have whatever kind of hydrogenated is bad for humanity. I want to add recipes to my repertoire that don’t rely on dairy at all.

That means vegan. Stay with me here: if there wasn’t vegan food that tasted good, only true martyrs would stay vegan very long. So I checked Veganomicon out of my library.* And then I made Chewy Chocolate Raspberry Cookies.

chocolateraspberrycookie

So. Good.

Try them. You’ll be shocked by the dense chocolaty goodness. SHOCKED.

Put the oven on 350F and put this stuff in a bowl and mix it up:

  • 1/2 c. raspberry preserves (we used blackberry freezer jam: the freezer is full of it since the blackberries did really well last summer)
  • 1 c. sugar
  • 1/3 c. canola oil
  • 1 t. vanilla (we left out the 1 t. of almond extract: blech)

The next ingredients are supposed to be sifted in another bowl. That was too fancy for us. Dump in and mix up:

  • 1/2 c. + 2 T. cocoa powder
  • 1 1/2 c. AP flour
  • 3/4 t. baking soda
  • 1/2 t. salt (that’s double what it called for: chocolate requires salt)

The dough is really thick, so you either need some upper body strength or willing toddler hands to get it all combined. Then we used the scoop and smush method (medium ice cream scoop and the bottom of a glass) to arrange them on a parchment lined baking sheet. They don’t spread much so you can do a lot at one time. Ellie sprinkled kosher salt on top. If you missed it: chocolate requires salt.
Bake them 10 minutes. They’ll get dry and cracked on top. If you don’t want oval cookies, wait a minute before you move them to a cooling rack. They taste just as good oval.

Next, eat them all in two days. Ellie and I did this and we are not ashamed. If you want to negate the lack of dairy: 2 cookies + microwave for 12 seconds + vanilla ice cream = swoon. The goal for 2010 is to reduce, not eliminate.

*I am just as surprised as you are. And it was at my personal branch.