Holiday Cookies!

Happy New Year!
I am sharing the cookies that we made this holiday season and there will be a recipe link with each one, but be warned that it may or may not be the one we used... But I will try to publish the one closest to what we baked!

Turtles

 These are so tasty and easy to make. Some people think that they are called turtles because they kind of look like turtles, but I think it is because they taste like the turtle topping on pies, cakes and other sweets... It could be a combination of the both :-)

Buckeyes

 These are also delicious... they are what I would imagine Bon Bons dipped in chocolate would taste like. Only they are a bit more peanut butter-y! These were a bit tricky to dip in chocolate. In the end what worked best was using a fork to dip them instead of a tooth pick, but I am pretty sure it's whatever works for you.

Chocolate cupcakes with ganache

This one was probably my favorite. It's a chocolate cupcake with ganache in it. You make the ganache and put it in the fridge and let it set. Then you make the chocolate cupcake batter, pour about half in, then roll the some of the ganache (which in it's cold state is called truffle) into a ball to about the size of a buckeye, plop it in the cupcake and cover it the rest of the way with more cupcake batter. Next, bake it like a regular cupcake. The topping for this already magnificent cupcake is a nice raspberry frosting.

And with the extra cold ganache, we made Truffles!

We had a similar problem as we did with the buckeyes (hard to dip!)...these are the prettiest two.

Sugar cookies and icing

 

These were probably the most fun to make, I really enjoyed decorating them (I think my brother did too!) For the record, these taste pretty great too.

  Milk chocolate cookies
 We also made these... I won't go into great detail because these are in two other blog posts of mine (can you tell they are a favorite?)

Meringues 
It amazes me how light these are! They've been dehydrated by the oven, yet they are not dry tasting (you know, when you need water or milk after you eat something... that is my general description of dry). These are little wonders :-)

Chocolate No Bake Cookies
Finally...we have no bake cookies. They are peanut butter, oatmeal and chocolate... they kinda taste like a oat-y Reese's cup, just with a touch more chocolate.

 Hope you have a great new year!

Chocolate chip cookies

My Brother got braces this week... and naturally he isn't going to be allowed to eat certain foods. So over the weekend before he got his braces, we had a cookie party of sorts. We made Milk Chocolate Cookies (which I have previously blogged about) and  Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

I realized before I made the Chocolate Chip Cookies that everyone has they favorite chocolate chip recipe, but I don't think I realized just how many recipes were out there. There are recipes that say to freeze the dough for 24 to 48 hours, to make it more of a soft chewy cookie, and there were others that called for more butter to make them nice and crunchy. In the end I found this article The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes It is a really awesome article that has a whole bucket load of chocolate chip cookie recipes, from classic chocolate chip cookie recipes (which differ from soft and chewy to crunchy) to the more experimental chocolate chip cookie recipe (like bacon chocolate chip cookies and a egg-less chocolate chip cookies).

The recipe I chose was The Best Soft Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Youll Ever Make Pinky Swear

Guess what kind of chocolate chips we used? These cool new ones that Mom found. They are Hersey's baking melts. What is cool about them is when the cookies are warm the shell of the chocolate chips are almost hard and then when you take a bite the chocolate chips were all melted and gorgeous looking, the only problem with them is since they are bigger chips they did  not mix consistently into the dough, which caused  some of the cookie dough to not get any chocolate chips in them :-/and other areas to have too many chips.

I am pretty sure that the cookies were in the oven too long because they weren't as chewy as the recipe promised. I noticed that after 5 minutes in the oven they started to get soupy looking, which caused them to flatten out. I think this lead them to being not as soft and chewy.

They still tasted good, but if you put this cookie on a plate next to the Milk Chocolate Cookie and asked me to choose, I'd most probably go for the Milk Chocolate one. Maybe it's because they're chocolate on chocolate, or maybe because they are chewy or maybe it is just because I find the dough of any classic chocolate chip cookie to be kinda dull. 

Einstein

Overall this recipe was a 3 (so-so).

Milk-Chocolate cookies

What it looked like outside

What do you do when it looks like this outside? Why, you read a good book (sometimes more than one) or bake some cookies! In my case, I did both!  After I was done with my school work I read. And then my Brother and I baked some cookies...

These  lovely little guys go by the name of Milk-Chocolate Cookies. We found this recipe in Mom's favorite cookie cookbook, Martha Stewart's Cookie Cookbook  
http://www.amazon.com/Martha-Stewarts-Cookies-Treats-Share/dp/0307394549/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1379860730&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=martha+steart%27s+cookie+cookbook 
and we gave it a shot...

Einstein and the cookie. He kept looking at me like " Why are you putting this here?"

Thoughts...It went good. A couple things to note though. Once all the ingredients have been mixed into the batter, let the batter sit for a minute or two. This will help when you're spooning it onto the cookie sheet, that way the batter is not as runny. Another thing to note, is when the recipe says to put parchment paper onto the cookie sheet... DO IT! Or else when you are using the spatula to get them off of the cookie sheet, they will look like this...and this is with a non-stick cookie sheet.

Of course this doesn't effect the taste, it just makes them fun to eat and look just a tad silly!

The taste test - drum roll please! These cookies are chewy and chocolatey, which is one of the best combinations you could possibly come up with. Sometimes the top will come off as if it is a shell on top of the slightly gooey bottom.... What a fun little cookie!

One thing to note is when they start to crackle on the top and you can see inside a bit, they are ready to take out of the oven.

On a scale of 1 to 5, I just might say these were a 5 (the highest my scale will go!)