Posts from the ‘Cookies’ Category

Apr 11

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies Update

As you may remember, I was refrigerating a portion of the dough from this recipe to do my own refrigeration test on it, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. I believe that letting the dough rest in the refrigerator for 36 hours is recommended, but I decided to bake them about 6 hours earlier!

I lowered the oven temperature to 350F, instead of 375F, and also needed to bake them about 3-4 minutes longer. What I first noticed about the cookies that had been refrigerated is that they actually stayed puffier, even after cooling.

At first, I thought the taste result would be inconclusive. But, I had eaten a semi-warm cookie (I personally think that these cookies taste better when they are at room temperature). I waited until they had cooled down to room temperature and I did a side-by-side comparison test with the non-refrigerated cookies. I personally thought that the taste of the cookies that had been refrigerated was richer and deeper and even more of that browned butter taste came through. They were also a bit chewier, and of course, puffier than the dough that had not been refrigerated.

In the end I decided that the refrigerated cookie dough cookies were slightly better than the non-refrigerated ones. It wasn’t a huge difference, and I don’t think I could wait that long to bake the chocolate chip cookies each time I made up the dough. I wouldn’t even have noticed a difference, I don’t think, if I hadn’t eaten them side-by-side.

I can tell you with certainty, however, that this new Cook’s Illustrated recipe for Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies will now be my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Apr 9

7 Comments

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

When it comes to chocolate chip cookies, I like them chewy and gooey and warm. Out of all the chocolate chip cookies I’ve personally baked (both on this blog and off), Alton Brown’s The Chewy has been my favorite. Read more

Mar 27

6 Comments

M&M's Ice Cream Sandwich Cookies

I was planning on making ice cream cupcakes soon, but my daughter said she preferred ice cream cookies. I decided to make the cookies first, and the cupcakes another day.

I used an M&M’s cookie recipe in a 12-year-old M&M’s cookbook that I got for free way back when (although I realize the same recipe is also available on the back of the M&M’s Mini Baking Bits bag).

Red’s Ultimate M&M’s Cookies
Adapted from Red’s Favorite Recipes
Makes around 3 dozen

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 12-ounce package M&M’s Chocolate Mini Baking Bits

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy; beat in egg and vanilla. In medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt; blend into creamed mixture. Stir in M&M’s. Drop by heaping tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10-13 minutes or until edges are lightly browned and centers are still soft. Do not overbake.

Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; cool completely on wire racks.

After the cookies cooled down, I put the cookies in the freezer and took out the vanilla ice cream to soften it. I thought that putting the cookies in the freezer beforehand to harden them up would make them easier to work with, so they wouldn’t crumble.

After the ice cream was soft enough to spread, I put a couple spoonfuls on one cookie and smooshed another cookie on top, using a knife to scrape off excess ice cream around the edges.

When that was done, I froze the ice cream sandwich cookies again to harden up the ice cream (and of course, put the rest of the ice cream back in the freezer!). Once they were completely frozen, I wrapped them individually in saran wrap and stuck them in a Ziploc freezer bag.

They’re pretty good, but not entirely what I was expecting. I wanted a chewier cookie, but these ended up a little crunchy. I wonder if chilling the dough would have helped? I made two different sizes; bigger ones for the adults, and smaller ones for the kids!

I might try these again sometime, but with a chocolate chip cookie.

Mar 16

5 Comments

Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies

This is a cookie for the peanut butter lover. It was just a touch too much peanut butter in one bite for me, but I will admit that these cookies are very tasty. And very full of peanut butter.

I originally saw the recipe for peanut butter sandwich cookies in the new The Taste of Home Cookbook. I did not use the recipe for the cookies (because it called for butter-flavored shortening, which I don’t have any of because I don’t like shortening), but I did use the recipe for the filling.

The old-fashioned peanut butter cookie recipe comes from A Chow Life, who is a self-confessed peanut butter lover. I divided the recipe in half and ended up with 16 sandwich cookies.

The filling recipe… I also cut this recipe in half and ended up with enough filling to fill the 16 sandwich cookies, plus two or three tablespoons extra. I’m posting the full recipe here.

Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie Filling
Adapted from The Taste of Home Cookbook

Ingredients
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
3 cups confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 -6 tablespoons milk

Method
In a large mixing bowl, beat the peanut butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract and enough milk to achieve spreading consistency. Spread filling on half of the cookies and top with another cookie.

Note, I’m keeping my sandwich cookies refrigerated because of the milk in the filling.

Mar 2

2 Comments

Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Running short on sweets, I had to think of something to bake today. There has been a recipe on the back of every single Ocean Spray Craisins bag I have gotten recently that has really held my interest. The oatmeal cranberry white chocolate chunk cookies.

Don’t be fooled by this average-looking cookie with an incredibly long name. They are super easy to make, and taste absolutely incredible. They became an instant family favorite within just 30 minutes out of the oven.

Oatmeal Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
View printable PDF
Adapted from Ocean Spray brand Craisins

Ingredients:
2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 6-ounce package Ocean Spray® Craisins® Original Sweetened Dried Cranberries
2/3 cup white chocolate chunks or chips

Method:
Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Using an electric mixer, beat butter or margarine and sugar together in a medium mixing bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs, mixing well. Combine oats, flour, baking soda and salt in a separate mixing bowl. Add to butter mixture in several additions, mixing well after each addition. Stir in sweetened dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on wire rack.

Makes approximately 2 1/2 dozen cookies.

I love how the moistness of the cookies make the dried cranberries softer, and fresh from the oven the white chocolate is yummy and gooey (I used a Ghirardelli white chocolate bar). This is a cookie with a soft inside and a crunchy outside. I was really surprised at how delicious these are; we’ll definitely be making these again!

Feb 27

Shortbread Cookies

I thought it was a huge coincidence that the very day I had planned on making shortbread cookies, Cakespy posted a Salute To Shortbread! My mom’s birthday is early next week and she likes shortbread. I thought it’d be a nice treat for her to have some homemade shortbread cookies, so I chose the Classic Shortbread recipe from Martha Stewart’s COOKIES book.

I didn’t have a 10″ fluted tart pan, or any 10″ pan whatsoever, so I did something a little different; I lightly pressed the dough into the bottoms of my mini bundt cake pan. The pan has 12 mini bundt cake molds in it.

They turned out pretty cute! They’re very delicate and very buttery. With the first batch to go in the bundt pan, I forgot to refrigerate the dough. When I tasted a cookie from that batch after I took them out of the oven, I didn’t like it one bit. I was quite disappointed, but the rest of the batches I kept the dough refrigerated. Oddly enough, I liked the cookies with the refrigerated dough. I don’t know what the refrigeration changed about the taste of the cookie, but I’d just like to remind everyone, don’t forget to refrigerate the dough!

Classic Shortbread
View printable PDF recipe
Adapted from Martha Stewart’s COOKIES book
makes 8 wedges

2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature, plus more for the pan
3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar

Preheat oven to 300 degrees, with rack in upper third of oven. Sift flour and salt into a bowl; set aside. Put butter into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium-high speed until light and fluffy – 3 to 5 minutes. Gradually add sugar; beat until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes.

Reduce speed to low. Add flour to mixture all at once; mix until just combined.

Butter a 10 inch round springform pan or cake pan. Using plastic wrap, press dough evenly into pan. With plastic on dough, refrigerate 20 minutes.

Cut dough into 8 wedges with a paring knife. Using a wooden skewer, prick all over at 1/4 inch intervals.

Bake until golden brown and firm in center, about 1 hour. Transfer pan to a wire rack. Re-cut shortbread into wedges; let cool completely in pan.

Feb 5

2 Comments

Happy World Nutella Day

As if you didn’t already know, today is World Nutella Day. I suggest you start celebrating and eat some Nutella! We have!

That is my 3 1/2-year-old daughter enjoying this once-in-a-blue-moon treat straight from the jar.

I also want to point everyone in the direction of my Nutella recipes here at The Sweetest Kitchen; namely my peanut butter & Nutella swirl cookies:

my Nutella coffee frosting:

and my Nutella cupcake that was worthy enough to be posted on Cupcakes Take The Cake:

So what are you waiting for? Go celebrate World Nutella Day!

See Ms Adventures In Italy, Bleeding Espresso and World Nutella Day for more information.

Jan 2

2 Comments

No Bake Cookies

Due to our recent oven failure, I cannot bake anything at all until the heating element is replaced. But I needed something sweet to eat, so I chose the chocolate peanut butter no-bake cookie. I hadn’t eaten one of these since I was in about third grade at my babysitter’s house, so I was thinking that the taste of these would bring back many memories, and they did!

The chewy, chocolatey, peanut buttery taste of these cookies instantly brought back memories with the very first bite. They were super easy to make too, so I’m not sure why I’ve never made these before. Definitely these were the quickest cookies I’ve ever made!

I halved the recipe from the original and ended up with about 2 dozen, maybe a few more.

No Bake Cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups old fashioned or quick cooking oats

Method:
In a heavy saucepan bring to a boil, the sugar, cocoa, butter and milk. Let boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly, then add peanut butter, vanilla and oatmeal. On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the tablespoonfuls, until cooled and hardened, about an hour.

They, of course, remain soft and pliable and chewy; which is not exactly like a normal baked cookie. But they are quite tasty and I would make these again say, if I wanted a super quick sweet treat or if the oven didn’t work…

Dec 16

3 Comments

Snickerdoodles

How To Eat A Cupcake’s recent post on snickerdoodles rekindled my love of said cookie. They used to be my favorite cookie to choose at the cookie bakery when my mom and I would go out shopping at the mall. I’ve made a variety of different snickerdoodle recipes and none could really compare to the ones from the bakery that I remember, although they were all quite nice.

I wanted to make How To Eat A Cupcake’s version, which she got from allrecipes.com, but I didn’t have any shortening on hand. However, there was a snickerdoodle recipe in Martha Stewart’s Cookies book for which I had all the ingredients.

And did they measure up? They sure did; they may be the best snickerdoodle recipe I’ve tried to date. They are perfect. I didn’t make my cookies as large as recommended in the cookbook; I made mine slightly smaller and ended up with exactly 37 cookies of the perfect size for me. My daughter helped to roll the dough in the cinnamon and sugar, which she was really proud of. She’s calling them “snickerpanoodles”!

Martha Stewart’s Cookies book does not say that no part of the book may be reproduced, so I feel comfortable with posting the recipe here. This recipe is not on the Martha Stewart website.

Snickerdoodles
Makes 1 1/2 dozen cookies

Ingredients
* 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt (I used 1/4 teaspoon table salt)
* 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
* 1 1/2 cups, plus 2 tablespoons sugar
* 2 large eggs
* 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Put butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture.

Stir together cinnamon and remaining 2 tablespoons sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into twenty 1 3/4-inch balls; roll in cinnamon sugar. Space 3 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden brown, 12-15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment paper in airtight containers at room temperature up to 3 days.

Since I made my cookies smaller, I baked for a slightly shorter time. I timed the oven for 5 minutes, then rotated my cookie sheet (because things facing the back of my oven brown quicker) and baked for another 5 minutes. They were perfect with each batch; I have to keep remembering what Alton Brown said during his chocolate chip cookie show; that if the cookies look done in the oven, then they are too done, so you should take your cookies out before they look done!

Oct 8

2 Comments

Pumpkin Spritz Cookies

Wanting to do something Autumn-like, I pulled out my cookie press, mixed up a batch of spritz cookies and pressed them out in the shape of pumpkins.

I added a touch of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger for an Autumn-like taste; this added a bit of spice to the basic spritz cookie recipe. The icing is simply a mix of powdered sugar and water (and food coloring, of course).

Classic Spritz Cookies

Ingredients
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla (I added about 1/8 teaspoon more)
7 ounces all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ginger

Method
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. In a large bowl, beat butter on medium speed of an electric mixer until creamy. Add sugar, egg and vanilla; beat well. Slowly add flour, along with spices; mix well. Dough will be soft; do not refrigerate.

Fill cookie press with dough, press onto ungreased cookie sheet 1 inch apart. Decorate with sprinkles or colored sugar if desired. Note – I stuck my cookie sheet in the freezer before pressing the dough onto it to help the dough stick better.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until firm, but not brown. Cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet; remove to wire rack to cool. Repeat with remaining dough. Decorate with icing when cookies are completely cool.

* I got 2-3 dozen pumpkin shaped cookies with this recipe (I can’t remember how many exactly there were before we started eating them!)

Aug 29

Peanut Butter & Nutella Cookies, Continued

We have yet another cookie for you this week. This must be cookie week at The Sweetest Kitchen! Don’t worry, I should have a cupcake for you next week.

Now, I’ve already made a peanut butter and Nutella cookie, but I thought I’d try to make a cookie that is half peanut butter, half Nutella. I knew this would be tricky, but I gave it a shot anyway.

I used peanut butter and Nutella cookie, but I cut the recipe in half to make one half with smooth peanut butter and the other half with Nutella instead of peanut butter.

This is one of my creations, the peanut butter half has chopped up peanuts in it and the Nutella half has semi-sweet chocolate chips in it.

I also made a plain half and half cookie, but the photo above looked nicer, with the peanuts in it.

Now this one was really tricky to do with the peanut butter cookie dough, since this dough isn’t actually meant to do this sort of thing with. I took a handful of peanut butter dough, placed it on a pastry mat, flattened it, then took a handful of Nutella dough, flattened it, then put the Nutella dough on top of the peanut butter dough and gently smooshed it together. I refrigerated it for another 15 minutes or so. I used the pastry mat to help roll the dough into a log shape without breaking the dough (though it did break here and there). I then buttered a sharp knife (so the dough wouldn’t stick to it) and sliced the log into a little less than 1/4-inch slices. I had to reshape the slices into circles after I put them on the cookie sheet.

What I learned, at least using this particular recipe, is that the Nutella part of the cookie took longer to bake and ended up crunchier than the peanut butter part. It was a little difficult to get the Nutella and peanut butter to stick together and they tended to fall apart “at the seam” while eating. The taste of Nutella and peanut butter wasn’t as strong as if you had eaten it raw, so I was a little disappointed about that, but all in all, it was a pretty good cookie.

And a quick FYI, in my Nutella and peanut butter cookie search, I found this very nice looking Nutella cookie recipe that I’ll have to try soon.