Chocolate Chip Cookies (with Cinnamon)

After yesterday's blueberry debacle, I wanted even more to bring something to work to share.

Even with the safest of cookies -- chocolate chip -- I still do not feel comfortable. I've come to this realization after batches and batches of them, and it is perhaps due to my reluctance to measure ingredients -- ironic, as I am an engineer. Perhaps I am too used to cooking, which requires much less accuracy.

But! These certainly came out better than the blueberry mess.

Cream:

1/2 c. butter

1/2 c. granulated sugar

1/2 c. brown sugar

and then mix in:

1 egg

1 tsp cinnamon

sprinkle salt

dollop of cinnamon

The cinnamon, I think, is what makes these interesting.

Dissolve:

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp hot water

and stir in. Then add:

1 1/2 c. flour

and then stir in:

more than 1/2 c. chocolate chips

handful of chopped walnuts

and bake in spoonfuls for 10-14 minutes at 375 degrees. When they came out, I added a sprinkle of raw sugar for visual appeal.

We will see tomorrow, in the public eye, how they fare.

Blueberry Cookies?

Sime's friend Talka has quickly made a beloved impression on me, somehow. She came to stay for two days for an interview, and she accidentally left blueberries in our refrigerator.

I wanted to bake for my coworkers....so against my engineering judgment I decided to attempt a blueberry cookie. Many people have posted recipes, but the idea did not seem feasible.

Bean came in and thought the lumps were chocolate; and said he would make me into a chocolate chip cookie.

So I let him pour some in.

And just as I was beginning to think they might, somehow, turn out alright --

let's just say.....these did not bake well.

I have come to the realization that fruit goes wonderfully in cakes, pies, biscuits, and alcoholic drinks. It does not hold up to a cookie's necessary soft-and-crisp texture; the beautiful juiciness that a fresh fruit contains simply forces the cookie to give way to a nameless clump.

Needless to say, I shall not be bringing these into work tomorrow...

St. Patty's Eve

I don't know why I love St. Patty's so; perhaps it's the idea of music and revelry enjoyed by even the stingiest of misers.....but -- it's nearly upon us!

I enjoyed a St. Patty's Eve cocktail of:

2 oz Irish cream

1 oz vanilla vodka

on ice. A wondrous companion for poking about the kitchen (if I do say).

Being in a festive mood, I made some Irish Cream cookies to bring into work.

Cream:

1/2 c. butter

3/4 c. sugar

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 c. Irish cream liquor

1 egg

Add:

2 c. flour

sprinkle salt

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

And let this refrigerate for at least two hours, while you run to the store and dye your hair and whatnot.

To wile away the time while this chilled, and to satisfy my forever longing, I made up this recipe:

IRISH SODA BREAD:

1/2 c. flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp powder

1 sprinkle salt

1 sprinkle baking powder

1/3 c. buttermilk (1/3 c. + dash lemon juice or vinegar)

Spoonful melted butter

1/4 c. raisins?

I know that I did not follow the recipe precisely; and so it is that I do not know if I will enjoy the concoction I conjured up for tomorrow's meal...will it be as I remembered? Will it give me a sense of good will and home?

Nevertheless, here is lunch for tomorrow:

The frosting for the cookies is as follows:

- mound confectioner's sugar

- dash Irish cream

- dash milk

and then add one or the other until it's a frosting consistency. I regret my lack of ability to be more specific, but you see.....you have to play baking by ear. It's the only way to do it!

Reunion

A series of pictures from our college reunion, which involved friends, spicy (sort of) food, alcohol, and rock band.

Inluding:

1. Rum & Merlot Sangria (Boodle)

2. Cinnamon & cocoa coookies -- more of an appetizer than a dessert... (Boodle)

3. Spicy rice with so many wonderful vegetables -- and disgusting fake meat, for Bethers' sake (Ry)

4. Delicious from-scratch cornbread (Bethers)

Everything was satisfying, and the gathering was quite nice, even with the snow-laden traffic and buggers on the highway.

Can we do it again?

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Throughout the day, the urge to bake (especially for others) had cropped up to an unhealthy degree. At around 6 PM I began...and halfway through, lost steam entirely. I normally relish pootling about by my lonesome in the kitchen, but today was the end of an exhausting weekend, and it felt like midnight before it had even arrived at dinner time (needless to say, dinner was cookies).

In a bowl, mix:

close to 4 cups flour

~ 2 tsp baking soda

~ 1 tsp salt

In separate bowl, cream:

1 1/2 c. butter, softened

1 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. white sugar

3 eggs

some vanilla extract

some chocolate extract

Add the flour mix to this. Then add, chopped:

2 full Lindt 90% dark chocolate bars

At the request of many recipes, I let the eggs come to room temperature beforehand, but the difference this might have made was impossible to determine, as so many other liberties were taken with measurements.

Halfway through I had to whisk to the store, under Paige's direction. Mulled wine caused mulled confusion in the making of the batter, and we were out of butter. In the end, they turned out okay -- nothing special as cookies go.

The goal, though, was to make ice cream sandwiches. Earlier today Bean and I had bought a quart of maple walnut from our beloved Jake's in Nashua. The hot cookie + cold ice cream caused some meltage, but stowing them back in the freezer remedied this problem in no time at all.

Gingerbread House in the Eave-ning

I bought all this candy and spent hours constructing this pitiful thing in a sad attempt to sate an indescribable itchiness I was feeling. It didn't really work, but it was still fun. The structure was made out of a sugar cookie recipe altered slightly to include chocolate extract and cinnamon. The frosting was powdered sugar + milk, and the candies were many. The structural integrity of the cookies was called into question many times, and many grams of sugar were consumed, but at least I got to make a little girl the slightest bit happy for a moment.

Brownie Cookies

Mother is the Town Clerk for Hubbardston, and today she had to be at work from 6 AM to 10 PM, presiding over the local elections and counting the ballots with her volunteer help. Earlier she had complained about the lack of chocolatey desserts available in the house, so it was Bee's idea to make her something to ease her pain. We couldn't decide between brownies and cookies, so I decided to attempt cookies out of a Betty Crocker boxed brownie mix. They didn't turn out terrible, but regular cookies seem to be more pleasing.

The ingredients were (assembled somewhat randomly):

1 box brownie mix

1 stick of butter (softened)

bloop of vanilla extract

1 large egg (farm fresh!)

1 c. flour

1/2 c. sugar

~1/2 c. vegetable oil (when the dough proved unbearably dry)

a bunch of walnuts

a bunch of white chocolate chips

These had to bake for longer than a normal chocolate chip cookie. In the end they were kind of crispy, like chocolate crackers, but with a melt-in-the-mouth quality. Very different from the generally desired soft cookie, but I suppose if it's your thang...

There was a rainstorm during the baking process, and these freshly-baked cookies got splotched with rainbows in a most pleasing fashion.

Cookies en Masse

Moth asked me to make several batches of cookies for her meeting tomorrow night. Busy busy busy; strangely enjoyable.

1. chocolate chip

2. snickerdoodles

3. sugar cookies rolled in green

Ice Cream Cups?

Hannah forced me to make these with her. She had a pie craving, but we had nothing to fill it with, so we attempted to make cookie dough cups in a muffin tin to fill with ice cream.

The recipe was the generic cookie dough recipe from below (using Ghirardelli chips) but with these additions by Hannah:

few teaspoons cinnamon

maybe 1/2 c. Nesquik powder

~ 1 tbsp honey

some milk to moisten

and we had to add one more egg to make up for the added solids. They didn't bake so well, but they came out tasting like chocolatey chip cookies. The muffin cups, though, stuck perilously to the dough, and only the most patient of people could remove one; so the rest of the dough was made into normal cookies. No one has eaten them yet, though -- they look slightly terrifying and blobular.

Huge Cookies

Having the urge to use up the Ghirardelli chocolate chips from Nana's truffles, I made these cookies, and in doing so finally veered away from my tendency to make tiny blobular shaped morsels. For these, I took about golf-ball sized lumps and flattened them out before baking, and they came out like any you'd see in a delicious bakery.

Slight variation in the ingredients, too. Cream:

1/2 c. softened butter

1 1/2 c. white sugar

1 tsp vanilla

and beat in

2 eggs

and mix in, all at once:

2 1/4 c. flour

1 package vanilla instant breakfast mix (a stray)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

sprinkle salt

and then

1 milk chocolate bar from Bean; chopped

~3/4 c. Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips

They were very popular, because big cookies look far more appealing than tids. I sent three home to Moth; she should be receiving them shortly. For Mother's Day, perhaps? :D

Pig Cookies

These cookies were supper one night; I got out of class at 10 PM and didn't feel like making real food. Consequently, of course, too many were consumed by me...

I made two batches of the following recipe, but to one I added a bag of Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips, which Bean had purchased to make muffins with (HA!).

Cream:

3/4 c. butter, softened

1 c. sugar

Add:

2 eggs

1/2 tsp vanilla

And then:

2 1/2 c. flour

1 tsp baking powder

a sprinkle of salt

The plain sugar cookies were allowed to cool for about an hour, which made them very easy to roll out and shape with the pig-and-man cookie cutters which I pilfered so long ago from my parent's house. Less than 24 hours later, all of the chocolate chip cookies are long gone, and a few lonely pigs linger on the kitchen counter.

Brush-Burning

The Brush-Burning is a "party" my family has every year in which we invite over a bunch of people, lay out a spread of sardines-cheese-crackers-coffee, and spend all day pretending to pull brush into piles and burn it. Then we go inside for a giant potluck, and play music for hours into the night. It is a joyous time, at least for me; I drove all the way home from Troy to attend the festivities, in fact. For potluck I brought this salad, which just had:

rotini

olive oil

feta cheese

basil

parsley

steamed asparagus

And then I experimented with these strange-tasting cookies, in an attempt to clear some shit out of my refrigerator:

1 c. flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 c. butter

3/4 c. sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 c. rolled oats

1 c. apple

1/2 c. walnuts

1/2 c. chocolate-covered espresso beans

a few tsp. of Godiva cocoa powder

Prepare as usual, and bake at 350 for 15 or so minutes. They came out slightly spongy and strange, and with a lot of flavors vying for attention. I kind of liked them, though!

Never Too Many Cookies.

Simon and I spend a pathetically high percentage of our time at Jeremy / Sean / Jesse's house. Yesterday Jesse complained that all of our cookies and cake were gone (mostly because of him), and that he was out of snacks. So when I got back from class at 10 freaking PM, we made two batches of cookies:

1. Cinnamon-Sugar

1 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. white sugar

1 c. butter, softened

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 c. flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1. Blend sugar and butter; blend in eggs and vanilla.

2. Mix in the rest, form into balls, and roll in:

some sugar

some cinnamon

The recipe required baking at 300 degrees for 20 minutes, but I followed the same procedure as the next batch, which was:

2. Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 c. peanut butter

1/4 c. butter, softened

1/4 c. white sugar

1/4 c. packed brown sugar

1/2 egg (ha!)

1 1/2 tbsp milk

1/2 tsp vanilla

~1 c. flour

sprinkle of baking powder

sprinkle of salt

Cookie recipes always require such tedious mixing order, but specific instructions aren't really my thang, so I just mixed up the sugars and butter, then added egg + milk + vanilla, and finally all the dry ingredients. I'm convinced you'd get the same end result if you poured it all in a bowl simultaneously and shook it up (a hypothesis that has yet to be tested).

So! Bean mixed up the cinnamon cookies; I did the peanut butter, and they all came together for a sugar-filled serenade. The crowd seemed to approve.

We tried to bake.

Bean made Nigella Lawson's Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins, and I attempted to use up some ingredients that I will otherwise never get rid of.

So! We embarked on a simultaneous baking adventure.

For mine, I used a sugar cookie recipe and added in some shit. The final recipe was as follows:

3/4 cup butter

1 1/4 cups brown sugar, packed

1 egg

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp milk

1 tbsp vanilla

1 cup flour

1 package instant pistachio pudding mix

3/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 bar chopped white chocolate

1/2 cup dried cranberries

For chocolate, I used the rest of the bar Hannah had brought back as a souvenir from her trip to Israel.

First, cream butter and sugar, and then add in milk and vanilla until it's fluffy. Then blend in the beaten egg, and then the dry ingredients. Finally, stir in the cranberries and white chocolate.

Bake on greased sheet at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Bean's came out delicious, and he put mint-chocolate on the top of half of them for a nice flavor. But! Mine were flat and undercooked. I combined the first batch into a meal, and the second batch into one giant cookie, and even though at least half of it got eaten by various household members, it was still considered a failure (it is important to consider the fact that Jesse will eat anything).