Category: cookies

Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Cookies – Secret Recipe Club

Chocolate chip cookies are chocolate chip cookies, until you make them with dark chocolate and sprinkle sea salt on top.  Then, as they say, they go from drab…to fab.  (Ugh, that just annoyed myself!)

I don’t know much about Sara from Cupcake Muffin, but I do know she’s pretty adventurous in the kitchen.  She uses exotic-sounding ingredients like kabocha squash, lamb sausage, and cardamom pods, and her recipes are completely mouth-watering.

The reason I love Secret Recipe Club time because not only do I get to find new blogs to be inspired by, but it’s so fun to flip through my assigned blog and pick out what I’m going to make that month.  I was going to make Sara’s Spicy Pumpkin Wontons, but then I spied these cookies and knew I needed to make them.  I forgot the oats, but it wound up being a happy mistake.  The cookies were flat, but chewy and wonderful regardless.

Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Cookies
Adapted from Cupcake Muffin

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup whole wheat flour
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • a pinch of sea salt
  • 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 1/2 cup white sugar
  • Scant 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 eggs
  • 10 oz dark chocolate (I used Hershey’s Special Dark), chopped
  • sea salt, to finish
Directions:
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment.
  2. Whisk together the flours, baking soda, and salt.
  3. Cream together the butter, both sugars, and vanilla.  Beat in the eggs.
  4. Stir in the flour mixture, then stir in the chocolate.
  5. Using a 1 Tbsp cookie scoop, scoop dough onto parchment paper lined cookie sheet.  Sprinkle each mound with a bit of sea salt.
  6. Bake until edges are browned but centers are still soft, about 8 minutes.  Remove from the oven, let rest on the cookie sheet for a few minutes, and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

You can find this recipe and many more at these parties and at Today’s Creative Blog.

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Rolo Cookies

The other night (pre-Halloween so we didn’t have a bunch of junk food hanging around), my husband and I really wanted something chocolatey for dessert, but I had run out of frozen cookie dough and it was fairly late so I didn’t want to get out the mixer and make a mess with flour, sugar, etc.  I saw a bag of Rolos and a box of devil’s food cake mix in our pantry and remembered I had something on Pinterest about cake mix cookies with Rolos in them.  30 minutes later, we had our dessert (my son was already in bed so I couldn’t recruit him to help unwrap all those Rolos or it would have been even faster).

I originally found this recipe on Buns in my Oven (one of my faves), and the ingredients and directions couldn’t have been easier, so it was a no-brainer that I’d make these.  Mine didn’t turn out nice and flat like hers did, but a light press with the spatula when it came out of the oven fixed that situation.

These are delicious warm (but not straight out of the oven…the caramel will burn your tongue.  Ahem.) or just room temperature.  In fact, I think I preferred room temperature because that allowed the caramel to go back to it’s chewy state, rather than the creamy state when it was hot out of the oven.

Karly made hers a bit smaller than mine, but that’s because I misread the directions.  She said to make the ball HALF the size of a golf ball.  I made mine a full golf ball size.  That’s okay, big cookies rule, even if it’s by accident.

Ingredients
Recipe found on Buns in my Oven
  • 1 box Devil’s Food cake mix
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • Rolo candies, unwrapped
Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper (only the best invention EVER).
  2. Mix together the cake mix, eggs, and oil. Grab a piece of dough about the size of a golf ball and roll it into a ball. Smoosh it flat, place a Rolo in the center, and then close the dough around the Rolo. Repeat until all of the dough is used.
  3. Bake for about 9 minutes. 
  4. If your cookies are still in ball form, flatten them slightly with a spatula.  Let sit on the cookie sheet for 3 minutes, and then transfer to a cooling rack.
Makes 24 cookies.

You can find this recipe and more at these parties, and at Food Trip Friday and Today’s Creative Blog.

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Double Doozies

When I found out we were having overnight guests the other night, I knew I wanted to make them something special that I had recently seen on Buns in My Oven.  I’d never had brown sugar chocolate chip cookies before, and combining that with chocolate buttercream frosting…it just seemed magical. 

I whipped them up in no time, and before long Chris’ cousin and I were licking spoonfuls of buttercream in my kitchen.  Heaven.

There’s really not anything more to say about them except that they were really simple, really delicious, and totally worth making. Houseguests not required.

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Click here for the recipe.
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Hamentashen

This weekend is the Jewish holiday of Purim when we celebrate another one of our triumphs over those who tried to murder or oppress us. Part of the celebration is eating cookies/pastries called “hamentashen,” which are triangular-shaped. They’re modeled after the tri-corner hat the bad guy in our story (Hamen) wore.
Hamentashen are typically filled with fruit jam, prunes, or some sort of weird poppy seed goop. Me, I go for the fruit ones. Although the prune ones are surprisingly delicious.
I’ve never made hamentashen before, and wasn’t sure I really wanted to try but a coworker asked me to make some for her and after looking up a few recipes, I found one I wanted to try.
My first batch were apricot and they turned out delicious but some of them opened up on me. The tutorial kind of scared me off of pushing the dough down enough to close them well, but I got over it for the second batch, and those turned out better.
It’s a very simple recipe, and really not hard to execute, but I found my issue to be rolling out the dough uniformly. Didn’t change the taste at all…just gave them some character.
Go check out the recipe and make some for yourself!
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  • 3 C flour
  • 3 t baking powder
  • 1/2 C sugar
  • 1/4 t salt
  • 3/4 C butter, room temperature
  • 3 eggs
  • your choice of filling (jam, jelly, preserves, chocolate chips, nuts)
  1. Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
  2. Mix in butter and eggs.
  3. Roll out dough and form hamantashen
  4. Bake on a well-greased cookie sheet or on parchment paper for 12-15 minutes at 400 F.

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    Last minute dinner and a Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Most times when we have absolutely no idea what to make for dinner, and we happen to have some defrosted ground turkey laying around, we make a taco mishmosh.

    We take a pound of ground turkey and saute it with some chopped onion and garlic.  Add a can of black beans and some corn (I like the canned stuff with the red and green peppers).  Usually we put a packet or two of taco seasoning in there, but tonight I wanted to see if I could replicate it myself.  I put in a bunch of chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, and salt.  That seemed to do the trick.  It wasn’t quite as delicious as that seasoning packet, but it was an acceptable alternative.

    I put mine in a bowl, top it with some shredded cheddar, and tortilla chips.  Chris adds Catalina dressing and salsa, along with the cheddar and chips.  Carter just eats the chips and cheese and picks at the meat and beans.  He doesn’t bother with the corn…he prefers his straight from the cob.  So snobby.  Regardless of how you top it, it’s a quick, simple, CHEAP way to get dinner on the table.

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    And since I hadn’t baked anything in a few days, cookies were begging to be made.  I pulled a recipe out, but only followed the basic directions and made a bunch of tweaks to it.  Since I didn’t follow it exactly, I’m going to call it my own.  Introducing…A-Little-Bit-Different Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

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    A-Little-Bit-Different Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

    Ingredients

    • 1/2 cup rolled oats, regular or quick
    • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
    • 1/2 tsp salt
    • 1/4 tsp cinnamon
    • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
    • 3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
    • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
    • 2 tsp vanilla extract
    • 1 tsp lemon juice
    • 2 eggs
    • 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
    • 1 1/2 cups peanut butter chips
    • 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

    Instructions

    1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place oats in a food processor or blender and process until finely ground (I used our Magic Bullet). Combine ground oats, flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a medium bowl.
    2. In another bowl, cream butter, sugars, vanilla, and lemon juice using a handheld mixer. Add eggs and beat until fluffy.
    3. Stir the flour mixture into the egg mixture (I used our KitchenAid mixer because I have weak arms), blending well. Add the chips and nuts to the dough and mix well. Scoop 1/4 cup of dough, roll into a ball, and break in half to make two cookies.
    4. Bake until cookies are lightly browned, about 12 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
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    http://www.alittlenosh.net/2010/07/last-minute-dinner-and-delicious-new/

    These cookies may not look like anything special, but grinding the oats really makes them unique.  The lemon juice is supposed to help activate the baking soda, making for a softer, chewier cookie.  Enjoy!