Rocky Road Cookies

These were so good. So sweet, but so good. Kind of like the GoT finale I made them for.

Rocky Road Cookies

Ingredients
3 cups powdered sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened)
1/4 tsp salt
3 large egg whites
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2.5 oz sliced almonds (I used slivered because that's what I had)
1 cup mini marshmallows

Equipment
large bowl, baking sheet, parchment paper, oven, MUSCLES, freezer

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, mix up your powdered sugar and cocoa. Whisk in the salt. Add the egg whites and vanilla; stir until combined. Stir in chocolate chips and almonds. (This is where the muscle comes in... it's a thick batter.) Spoon small mounds onto parchment paper and top with a few marshmallows (press them in a little to make sure they don't tumble off). Stick them in the freezer for a few minutes to prevent too much spreading when they bake. Put on a baking sheet (I didn't think it was a good idea to freeze the baking sheet itself) and bake about 12 minutes (until marshmallows are toasted like in the photo). Let them cool a few minutes on the pan before transferring to wire rack.

Yields
2 dozen cookies

Total time
about 30 minutes (I baked two batches, so about 10 minutes prep, and about 10 minutes for each batch to bake)

Cleanup rating 3/5
Chocolate everywhere. Powdered sugar more everywhere.

Difficulty rating 6/10
I'm not kidding about stirring that batter... it's thick. Don't be lazy about it, though; you want evenly distributed bits. And someone save you if you think whisking your wet ingredients in is a good idea. Your whisk will pick up all of the batter and be rendered useless.

Flavor rating 8/10
Really sweet but really yummy. Kind of sticky.

Adjustability: medium
Don't like almonds? Use pecans, or walnuts, or no nuts at all. Try mixing some marshmallows into the batter. Try cinnamon chips or butterscotch chips or caramel bits or toffee chips. I know rocky road has a specific definition but I've always thought of it as the "everything bagel" of desserts.

Make it with...
Nothing; it's a cookie. Our dinner was burgers and hot dogs on the grill with veggies. This seemed like an appropriately casual dessert for the occasion.

Maple Cookies

Happy Fathers' Day, everyone!

You know what I love about making cookies as gifts for people? I get to taste test them.

My dad loves a good maple bar, so when I ran across a maple cookie recipe on Pinterest, I thought they might make a good gift for him.

Maple Cookies

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar

Equipment
oven, mixer, baking sheet, cooling rack

Instructions
In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Add the egg, syrup, and vanilla; mix until combined. Add soda, salt, and flour; mix until combined. Refrigerate for about an hour. Preheat oven to 350 F. Put sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into 1" balls and flatten slightly; dip one side in sugar and set on greased baking sheets (sugar-side up). Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Yields
2 dozen cookies

Total time
90 minutes (a few minutes to mix everything, 1 hour to refrigerate, a few minutes to roll into balls, 10 minutes each for two batches to bake)

Cleanup rating 2/5
As long as you can manage to not get syrup everywhere while you're measuring, this is only as messy as a basic sugar cookie (simple enough to get the batter off the bowl and beaters, throw your measuring implements in the dishwasher, you're done).

Difficulty rating 3/10
The hardest part is creaming the butter and sugar, which is so easy.

Flavor rating 6/10
They're pretty good. They don't have a strong flavor (which I prefer, personally) but they're nice. I used light brown sugar, so that probably makes a difference.

Adjustability: low
I don't know what I could do to change this recipe. Maybe some kind of frosting to make it sweeter, or throw some walnuts in there?

Make it with...
Nothing, they're cookies. If I were a coffee drinker, I might think they go well with coffee... I'm not sure.

Just Two Cookies

Last night, I was poking around the kitchen looking for a snack. I found nothing that interested me, but I opened the cabinet and realized that I could make a snack, because I had all the makings of basic baked goods (because of all the cookies and cakes and such I've been making lately). So I switched to poking around on the internet to look for "small batch cookie recipes" and I was not disappointed.

(No, those aren't on the usual big plates; it's on the little tiny plate.)

Just Two Cookies

Ingredients 

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp (packed) brown sugar

1 Tbsp sugar

pinch of sea salt

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/4 cup flour

1 Tbsp (heaped) chocolate chips

1 Tbsp (heaped) butterscotch chips

Equipment
small baking sheet, oven

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F. If you want a softer cookie, line your baking sheet with parchment paper. Grease the pan if you prefer crisper cookies. In a microwave-safe bowl, soften your butter. Add sugars, salt, and vanilla to butter and mix by hand. Add egg yolk and stir until combined. Add baking soda and flour and stir until combined. Stir in the chocolate and butterscotch chips. Split into two and set on baking sheet a few inches apart. Bake about 8 minutes. Cool for a few minutes before enjoying.

Yields
2 cookies

Total time
15 minutes (preheating while mixing, then baking)

Cleanup rating 2/5
It's great to not have a mixer and mixing bowl and spatula and all that to clean... just a small bowl (like a salad bowl) and the fork I used to mix.

Difficulty rating 3/10
Sure, you have to be able to separate a yolk out of the egg, and mix thoroughly, and whatnot.

Flavor rating 4/10
I've got to stop using those damn butterscotch chips. They're just too ridiculously sweet. I would recommend going back to what the original recipe said: 2 Tbsp chocolate chips, no butterscotch.

Adjustability: medium
You could add different things: nuts, other chips, caramel bits, etc.

Make it with...
Nothing, it's just a cookie. I guess if you're into milk, you'd probably like that with them.

Accidental Cookies

So, remember how I was making a ton of Mothers' Day cookies? Well, I screwed up the dough for the raspberry cookies (I forgot to add the sugar... thank goodness I tasted the dough before folding in the raspberries!). I tried to go back and add the sugar and re-mix it, but it turned into a firm dough ball that would not take raspberries well. So I saved it until later, and made these "accidental" cookies! Then I decided that they needed a little something... so I made a lime icing.

Accidental Cookies with Lime Icing

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, not softened, cubed

2/3 cup heavy whipping cream

lime juice (about 2 Tbsp? I didn't measure)

powdered sugar (about 1/2 cup? I didn't measure)

Equipment

baking sheet, parchment paper, mixer, oven

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix flour and baking powder together. Add butter and knead together by hand. You should get a crumbly mixture. Add the heavy cream and mix thoroughly (with a spoon should be fine). Add the sugar (if you want to be exactly like me, swear loudly about forgetting to add the sugar in the first place). Knead really thoroughly until all the sugar is incorporated. Pinch off small balls of dough and place on parchment-paper-lined baking sheet. Bake about 15 minutes. Let them cool thoroughly on a cooling rack. Mix lime juice and powdered sugar, adjusting amounts until you have the consistency of icing you want. Drizzle over cookies.

Yields

I got about 2 dozen cookies

Total time

Hard to tell, since I made these around making the raspberry cookies, but probably about 30 minutes including 15 minutes baking time.

Cleanup rating 2/5

Any time I'm working with powdered sugar will be no lower than a 2/5. But the dough is really clean, because it's a firm ball of dough instead of a crumbly mess.

Difficulty rating 5/10

Kneading by hand is a pain in the butt. Especially since I did it twice in a row (this batch, then doing it correctly for the raspberry cookies). And getting the icing consistency right is tricky.

Flavor rating 6/10

Birk says the cookies have a biscuit-y feel/flavor, and I don't disagree. But I like them, and it means they aren't too sweet. The lime icing is pretty tart, and I like that too. I feel like this recipe has some tweaking in its future.

Happy Mothers' Day!

I made cookies for my various moms for Mothers' Day (and two of their birthdays, too)!

For my mom, I made walnut butter balls.

For my stepmom, I made gluten-free chocolate cookies.

And for my mother-in-law, I reprised the raspberry-lime cookies, but I used lemon juice like the original recipe said to, instead of lime.

Top left: gluten-free chocolate cookies.
Top right: raspberry-lemon cookies.
Bottom left: walnut butter balls.
Bottom right: For Birk's birthday, peanut butter Kiss cookies.

Happy Mothers' Day!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cookies

These are the cookies I made for my stepmom! She's gluten-free, and she loves chocolate, so I jumped on this recipe when I found it.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter (softened)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup butterscotch chips

Equipment

oven, baking sheets, parchment paper, cooling racks, mixer

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix together butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Add egg and vanilla; mix thoroughly. Combine baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder, and mix into wet batter (be careful not to make chocolate clouds that choke you). Stir in the chocolate and butterscotch chips. They will expand while baking, so give them some room on the parchment-lined baking sheet (about 1-1.5" should do). Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Yields

I got about 15 cookies out of it, but they were pretty big cookies.

Total time

A little under 30 minutes.

Cleanup rating 3/5

Chocolate everywhere. Delicious batter that I know I shouldn't lick off the spoon and beaters and bowl because it has raw egg, but yummy anyway. Definitely an instance of "clean immediately or regret it."

Difficulty rating 5/10

Not hard, but there is skill and patience required when baking cookies. Mixing, measuring carefully, fully incorporating ingredients... it might help to know that I use a hand mixer, so it's a tiny bit trickier than using a stand mixer.

Flavor rating 3/10

Disappointment. I hope my stepmom liked them more than I did. They are INCREDIBLY sweet. And I have an insane sweet tooth... but this is ridiculous. I washed down a bite with some Coke and it made the Coke taste bland like water. Still, though... chocolate. So it's not like a 1 or 2.

Additional note: The original recipe called for white chocolate chips instead of butterscotch ones, and mentioned that you can also add 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (which I had, leftover from Mom's walnut butter balls, but I was fairly certain that my stepmom and I agree that nuts are great but they don't belong in our baked goods).

Walnut Butter Balls

Happy Mothers' Day! I made cookies for my mothers this year... a different kind for each mother, according to their tastes.

For my mom, I made Walnut Butter Balls. The criteria for Mom were (1) I had to be able to mail it across the country without too much damage; (2) she likes nuts in her cookies/brownies/whatnot; (3) preferably no chocolate (only because it would melt in the mail, not because she doesn't like it).

While I was making them, I thought they smelled kind of like Christmas... and they look kind of like snowballs! Maybe they just remind me of rum balls (without rum) but I think these will get a repeat around Christmas.

The original recipe is from here.

Walnut Butter Balls

Ingredients
1 stick of butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
another 1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup flour
1 cup chopped walnuts
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

Equipment
oven, parchment paper, baking sheet, cooling rack, mixer

Instructions
Soften your butter in a large bowl (I let it sit out for about 30 minutes). Preheat oven to 350. Add 1/2 cup powdered sugar to butter and beat with mixer until creamy. (Beware of sugar clouds.) Add flour, walnuts, salt, and vanilla and beat until incorporated. It will be pretty crumbly. Take tiny handfuls of batter and squeeze it together to get the air out. Squeeze into balls and set on parchment-paper-lined baking sheet. You don't need to give them a lot of room; they won't expand much. Bake 15-20 minutes. They'll be pale but firm (not squishy). Let them cool on the pan for a few minutes. Put about 1 cup powdered sugar in a bowl. While the cookies are still warm, roll them around in the sugar to coat them and set them on the cooling rack. Once you've done all the cookies, start again from the beginning and roll each one a second time.

Yields
I probably got about 20 cookies.

Total time
Prep + baking + sugar coating = about 30 minutes. Plus 30 minutes for butter softening, so about an hour.

Cleanup rating 2/5
Powdered sugar everywhere. Other than that, you just have a mixing bowl to clean (put parchment paper under your cooling rack to catch all that powdered sugar).

Difficulty rating 5/10
Not the easiest cookies to make, but certainly not difficult, either. It takes some patience and attention to mix the butter and sugar properly (and without making it sugar-snow all over the kitchen). And making the balls takes a little talent and a little patience. Otherwise, not too difficult.

Flavor rating 7/10
Birk loved them. I'm typing this up before Mom gets them so I don't know yet what she thinks of them. I thought they were pretty good, but I'm not a nutty cookie person, so they aren't my favorite. But they're good.

Bonus photo: cookies pre-sugaring.

Sweet Palmiers

Palmiers have lots of names in French: palm trees (palmiers), French hearts (coeurs de France), elephant ears, shoe-soles... but they're usually just palmiers. And if you use frozen puff pastry, they're stupidly easy to make. We had a last-minute "oh no, one of our best employees is moving and his last day is tomorrow" situation at work, so we wrangled up some people to bring cookies and ice cream and chips and dip and drinks so we could give him a proper send-off. I made these.

Palmiers (cinnamon-sugar)

Ingredients

frozen puff pastry

sugar

cinnamon

1 egg white per 2 sheets of puff pastry

Equipment

oven, parchment paper, baking sheet, basting brush

Instructions

Thaw your puff pastry according to package directions. (Mine said 40 minutes.) Preheat oven to 400 F. Unfold the puff pastry and brush with egg white. Sprinkle liberally with cinnamon and sugar. Roll the right and left sides toward the center (to make the curly shape you see in the photo). Turn the log over, brush with egg white, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Turn it back over, brush with egg white, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. Use a sharp knife and slice the log into ~1/4-inch slices, trying your best to keep the curly shape. Lay the slices on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet (give them enough space to expand a little bit). Sprinkle each liberally with more sugar. (I never said these were good for you.) Bake for 12-15 minutes. Cool on a cooling rack.

Yields

I used three sheets of puff pastry and got about 36 palmiers out of them, so I'll go with about a dozen palmiers per sheet of puff pastry.

Total time

I baked mine in rounds, so I did three separate bakings... took me about 90 minutes (40 minutes to thaw the pastry, a little prep time, plus 45 minutes baking time, with three rounds of 15 minutes each). If you did just one sheet, it would be about an hour (40 minutes thaw time, 5 minutes prep time, 15 minutes bake time).

Cleanup rating 1/5

So easy. If you can manage not to get sugar and cinnamon everywhere (which is easy-ish, because it's not powdered sugar, and I used Vietnamese cinnamon which is more expensive and therefore I'm more careful with it) you just have to clean the sticky sugary egg white mess off a cutting board (or, if you're smart, throw away a piece of parchment paper).

Difficulty rating 3/10

It's not very hard, but you do have to be careful with timing (I made too many without adjusting timing, so by the time I got to my third sheet of pastry, it was getting sticky because it had been thawing for too long) and without a great knife, it's hard to slice the log nicely. I managed to keep the shape okay, but good tools are necessary to be a good cook (or baker in this case).

Flavor rating 5/10

I was a little underwhelmed. I think Birk was too. But a lot of people at work praised them (and sought me out to do so) so that's probably a good sign.

After thawing the pastry, brushing with egg white,
and sprinkling with cinnamon & sugar.

After rolling it into a curly log.

After slicing. (This was the third batch. Notice the little tails on some
of the slices? That's because it had been thawing a little too long,
and it kept sticking to the knife. It's not a big deal, you can just
stick the tails to the side when you lay them on the baking sheet,
but still... that's not the goal.)

A palmier in my palm. Ha.

Raspberry Lime Cookies

I promised cookies for a party. I made brown sugar cookies last week, intending the same thing, but I missed the gathering, so I ate a lot of the cookies myself. And I'm making the brown sugar cookies again for a work thing next week. So I thought I should probably make something different for tonight! (And I made them early enough that if they turned out badly, I still had time to make... brown sugar cookies.)

Raspberry-Lime Cookies

Ingredients

2 cups fresh raspberries

juice of 1/2 a lime (or 1.5 Tbsp ReaLime)

1.5 Tbsp sugar

another 1/2 cup sugar

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, cubed (not softened)

2/3 cup heavy whipping cream

3/4 powdered sugar

1.5 Tbsp milk

Equipment

oven, cookie sheet, parchment paper, cooling racks, two bowls (one small, one large)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. In a small bowl, combine raspberries, lime juice, and 1.5 Tbsp sugar. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and baking powder. Add the butter and mix together with your hands (it should be a crumbly mixture when you're done). Add cream and mix together. Fold in raspberries (try your best not to smush them, but a little smushing is inevitable). Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and put spoonfuls of batter about 1" apart. Bake for 15 minutes (I left them for another 2 or 3 minutes, but I'd check on them at 15, anyway.) Let them cool on cooling racks. Mix powdered sugar and milk together and drizzle on cooled cookies.

Yields

I got nearly 2 dozen cookies, and a few of my spoonfuls were a little big.

Total time

I had to make two batches (only one rack in the oven right now) so it took an extra 15 minutes, but it takes about 30 minutes overall.

Cleanup rating 4/5

I made a mess... you might make less of a mess. But I got raspberry juice, lime juice, flour, and powdered sugar everywhere. It helped that I put parchment paper under the cooling racks before adding the icing, but there was still quite a mess to clean up.

Difficulty rating 4/10

You need to be able to mix the flour mixture with the butter properly (not too lumpy), not destroy the raspberries, not over- or under-bake them... etc. Plus, you should make sure each spoonful has an appropriate mixture of dough and berries and is cohesive enough to stay a cookie.

Flavor rating 6/10

They're a little tart (possibly because I changed the original recipe I found from lemon juice to lime juice, and I used ReaLime instead of a... real lime) but they're still pretty good. Maybe a little less lime juice, or a little more sugar in the first step?

Lemon Cookies

You know those Pinterest fail blogs? Where people post their attempts at making some Martha-Stewart-looking creation they found on Pinterest and it's this horrible disaster? I thought I had one of those on my hands on Sunday when I was making cookies to take to Audrey's Super Bowl party... but they actually turned out really good. Just not the way they were supposed to. Which is fine.

This is one of those recipes that some people will scoff at, because it involves a pre-packaged cake mix. If you're that kind of person, just move on to the next post; this one will clearly not be for you.

And I forgot to take a photo of the finished product. Which just means I'll have to make them again sometime, darn...

Prebaking... the closest I have to a finished photo, sorry.

Lemon Cookies

Ingredients
1 box of lemon cake mix (I believe mine was Lemon Supreme)
2 eggs
2 cups Cool Whip (one 8-oz tub), thawed (mine was in the fridge for a few days, not the freezer)
about 1/2 cup of powdered sugar

Equipment
baking sheet, foil, mixing bowl, oven

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350F. Stir together your cake mix, one of the eggs, and the Cool Whip in a large bowl. Mine turned out really cake-y so I added the second egg. (The original recipe I found only used one egg.) The original recipe also said to roll tablespoonfuls of the batter in powdered sugar. Well, that wasn't happening. See below. It was a total mess. So I finally gave up and instead I put spoonfuls of batter on the greased cookie sheet and sprinkled them with powdered sugar. Bake at 350F for about 10 minutes, until the edges are golden-brown. Let them cool on the sheet for a minute or two, then carefully transfer them to a cooling rack for a few minutes. They will firm up, I promise.

Yields
I made about two dozen cookies, but I also used heaping spoonfuls. You could make more if you made them smaller.

Total time
15 minutes if you don't bother "rolling" and use my method instead: 5 minutes to make the batter, 10 minutes to bake.

Cleanup rating 3/5
There will be powdered sugar everywhere if you try the rolling method. It'll also fall through the grid of your cooling racks, so be ready to wipe up the counter. The original recipe said to use parchment paper but I find that stuff annoying so I used foil, which released the cookies pretty well and kept my baking sheet clean.

Difficulty rating 5/10
You have to actually have some knowledge about baking to judge whether you need that second egg. Stirring the batter was pretty difficult, so you have to put some muscle into it to get it where it needs to be.

Flavor rating 10/10
They're very lemony, so it's not like a "lemon" cookie that is really a sugar cookie with a hint of lemon. These are LEMON cookies. And they made me pretty popular at a party where I didn't know anyone other than the hostess, so that's a good sign, I bet.

Pictured below: The mess of trying to "roll" the batter in powdered sugar.

If you try this and have more success rolling it, send me photos! Especially of the outcome... I'd love to see them turn out "right"!

Brown Sugar Cookies

We've all been snowed in (in Virginia Beach, that means 7") for two and a half days now, so I thought it might be nice to bring some cookies to work tomorrow, to power us through a Friday where we might not otherwise be terribly productive. So I take these out of the oven, put them on the cooling racks, and check my phone... and we're closed tomorrow. But they came out really well!

Brown Sugar Cookies

Ingredients
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt
12 Tbsp (that's a stick and a half) butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups dark brown sugar, packed
2 eggs

Equipment
mixer (I used a hand mixer)
baking sheets
cooling racks (optional but highly recommended)

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 375F. In one bowl, whisk together your flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and salt. In another bowl, beat the butter and brown sugar together until it's creamy. Add one egg, and beat until it's incorporated. Add the flour mixture and beat until it's incorporated, too. If you find that it's too powdery/crumbly to be cookie dough (like I did), add another egg and beat until incorporated. Grease your baking sheets (the original recipe called for parchment paper but I like crispy-bottomed cookies, and that's what I got) and drop heaping spoonfuls of dough about an inch or two apart. Bake for ten minutes.

Yields
I forgot to count before we started eating them, but if memory serves, I made about two dozen cookies.

Total time
30 minutes: 10 minutes to let the butter sit out and get soft; 10 minutes to measure and mix ingredients while the oven heated; 10 minutes to bake the cookies.

Cleanup rating 3/5
Cookie dough is sticky, and it's on a lot of things here: mixer beaters, bowl, spoon, the counter, my hands... Plus I tend to have "poof!" moments when measuring things like flour and just total messes with brown sugar, so the counter needed a complete wipe-down as well. And don't forget cleaning the baking sheets as well. But hey... you can lick the beaters if you aren't mortally afraid of salmonella.

Difficulty rating 4/5
As far as baking goes, this is pretty simple. The trickiest thing would be using the mixer without decorating the walls with cookie dough, followed by making evenly sized drops of dough so everything bakes the same. Not too hard.

Flavor rating 9/10
These are soooo good. They aren't insanely sweet (considering that about 1/3 of their weight must be in sugar) and - because I greased the pans - I got the crispy bottoms I like, but still a soft cookie.