Our friend Tom not only gifted us with a fantastic (and fantasically heavy) new cookbook, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt In Your Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich
We’ve only started to delve into all of the deliciousness promised in this cookbook, but even just on these cookies alone I highly recommend it! Click on the cookbook below to go to amazon and check it out in greater detail!
[Tags: cookies, recipe, cookbook, baking, ginger]
Had the urge to bake cookies today!
I used this basic Thumbdrop Cookie Recipe but swapped out the almond extract for two teaspoons of lemon extract, and filled the cookies with blackberry jam.
They’re very tasty, and imagine they’d be really nice with ‘afternoon tea’ or the like, as they are somewhat delicate in flavor with that burst of berry. Happy Friday!
[Tags: cookies, dessert, baking, photo, recipe]
Last week I made soft and chewy peanut butter cookies, with chocolate chips. They came out SO good. If you want to try an alternative to the more traditional crunchier type peanut butter cookies – this’ll do ya.
I started with an online recipe and made a few small tweaks, as usual. Here’s the recipe (which you can also find in our official recipe files by clicking here)…..
Chewy Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup smooth or chunky peanut butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
2 tablespoons water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups chocolate chips or chunks
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In medium size bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
In large bowl, combine butter, peanut butter, brown and white sugar until creamy.
Add eggs. Stir well.
Stir in the corn syrup, water, and vanilla. Gradually stir in the flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.
Place loaded teaspoons of the dough on ungreased cookie sheets. Even when the dough is soft these cookies do not spread, so if you want your cookies a little flatter, pat each teaspoon of cookie dough down into a flatter cookie shape before baking. You can leave each drop of dough as is if you want them a little bumpier and irregular.
Bake each sheet of cookies for 9 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. After baking, cool for 1 minute on the cookie sheet, then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Mmmm… cookies……
[Tags: recipe, baking, food, cookies, recipe]
I have been baking quite a bit for the holidays this year, and the other day decided to make some cookies that I hadn’t made in a LONG while – Cinnamon Twists! They’re a little more time intensive and messy than other cookies, more of a pastry in some ways, but they’re also not as sweet and go really well as a classy side to hot beverages. And they look fancy:
The Cinnamon Twists Recipe is already in our recipes online – give it a go if you’re up for a bite of tasty cinnamon sugar pastry-cookieness.
[Tags: cookies, recipe, baking, cooking, food]
In the New York City area they are called Black & Whites and have chocolate and vanilla icing on them, but in upstate New York, where I am from, they are called Half Moon Cookies and have more of a traditional frosting than a hard icing.
Anyway, I’ve adjusted the recipe we have on our site, which originally came from the New York CookBook. Basically, the changes are… instead of 2.5 cups of cake flour and 2.5 cups of all purpose flour, I found that 4 cups of cake flour and 1 cup of all purpose flour make for a much lighter cookie, but still with excellent consistency. They were just too dense and heavy before with so much of the regular flour.
Also, instead of the 20-30 minutes of cooking time, I suggest 12-15 minutes MAX. I don’t even know where they got 20-30 minutes – if I left them in that long at the suggested temperature they’d be dark and crispy, and not in a good way. 12 minutes at 375 in our oven works just fine.
You can find the new recipe here and below as well.
Half Moon Cookies
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
4 large eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon lemon extract
4 cups cake flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 375. Butter two baking sheets and set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine the sugar and butter and mix by machine or hand until fluffy. Add the eggs, milk, and vanilla and lemon extracts and mix until smooth.
In a medium bowl, combine the flours, baking powder and salt and stir until mixed. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in batches, stirring well to combine. Using a soup spoon, drop spoonfuls of the dough 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the edges begin to brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely.
Note: Frost flat side of cookie, half in chocolate, half in vanilla – can use your favorite frosting recipes, although some prefer more of a glaze or icing than a frosting.
Oh, and that photo of the Half Moon Cookies up there is an older photo. I did make a successful batch a day ago, but just as I was mixing all the dry ingredients we lost power for a few hours. It was after 8 p.m. when we got power back, and by the time the cookies were mixed and baked and ready for frosting I was really tired so I only did chocolate frosting on them – LOL – making them, effectively, just new moon cookies, I suppose. So that’s why I didn’t take new photos – but they came out just perfect with the recipe adjustments – deliciousness!
[Tags: recipe, baking, cooking, food, cookies]
Okay, not exactly inverse, but it made for a decent post title! I took the basic recipe we have for Chocolate Chip Cookies but used chocolate pudding and a mix of white and semi-sweet chocolate chips instead….
Excellently tasty, and a nice change from the usual!
[Tags: recipe, baking, cookies, chocolate, photo]
It’s holiday time, so I’m starting to pull out recipes I usually only make this time of year. (For no other reason except that it’s nice to have some recipes for special occasions.) I started with Cherry Cookies, since I haven’t made those in a LONG time, and they look so darn festive – covered in chopped walnuts with a cherry in the center!
See? Festive! And here is the recipe if you want to make them yourself. Have at!
[Tags: recipe, food, cookies, christmas, cherries]
Some other exotic foods our previously mentioned globetrotting friend bestowed upon us involved specialties from Spain, including Spanish sausages, and breadsticks:
And these delicate square cookies made by nuns:
The sausage had a fantastic flavor and texture, the bread sticks were excellently crunchy, and the ‘nun cookies’ finished things off with a sort of fig-newtony type flair, but with a fruit that was lighter in color and taste. We ate them all like a snack, and washed them down with a bottle of fruity white wine, which complimented things well. All around it was a night of fantastic food tastery!
[Tags: food, Spain, sausage, cookies]
This is another one of those food photos that I took a while ago and haven’t blogged until now, as you might be able to tell, since these are CHRISTMAS cookies – hah!
Anyway… my mom never made normal sugar cookies, we always made Jello Cookie cutouts instead, which always had great flavor AND color. And these are the (raspberry flavored) Jello cookies we had over the holidays:
And here is the Jello Cookies recipe so you can play along at home! Oh, and I used a little extra jello powder instead of colored sugar on top of the cookies to give them a bit of darker accent color.
[Tags: food, recipe, cookies, photo]
