Milk & Cookies

Can you smell the fresh baked cookies?

This is one of the simplest recipes I have tried yet. There are only 5 ingredients! Yet somehow they ended up being one of the most difficult cookies to make. Don’t let that throw you off though… these cookies are worth it. Once again, this recipe is comes from Joy the Baker (you will soon realize this is a running theme), and once again, the cookies are delicious.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients (makes about 24 cookies)

1 cup 100% Natural Peanut Butter
(I used creamy)
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tspn. baking soda
(I made a double batch)

Directions

Mix the peanut butter and the two types of sugars in a large mixing bowl. Sounds simple? Well its not. These ingredients simply do not like to be mixed. I mixed them as well as I could for about 2 minutes, but they turned into a crumbly sticky mess. Maybe the next step will help?

Add the egg and baking soda and mix for another 2 minutes. I was hoping that the egg would help make this mixture turn into more of a dough, but it didn’t.  The end result was thick and very crumbly. My mixer was struggling just to keep turning. Oh well, faith in Joy the Baker kept me going.

Preheat your oven to 250°F and get a baking tray ready with some parchment paper.

Form the “dough” into balls about 1″ in diameter. Do not be discouraged by the doughs lack of effort. If you just commit to getting your hands in there, the dough ends up being fairly mold-able. Also, I found that when it comes time to place them on the tray and mush them with a fork, they are very happy to break apart into many pieces. To minimize this, I started making little disks instead of balls. This way the fork doesn’t need to be pressed down quite as deep and the cookie holds its shape better. You should be able to get 12-15 cookies on a standard cookie tray.

Bake the cookies for 8-9 minutes. I tried going for 10 minutes and felt that the cookies were just a bit too well done. The next batch came out a bit early and they were soft and chewy and just perfect. The cookies will harden a bit after you take them out of the oven, so let them sit for a few minutes before you move them.

In the end, I think these cookies were worth the extra effort. As an optional upgrade you can try placing some chocolate on the top of each cookie before you bake it.

See? Even the cow wants to eat it.

This week was my turn for cookies, but the beginning of the week was pretty tiring and I never had a really inspiring cookie idea. So I re-used a recipe that I had tried a month or two ago: cherry chocolate oatmeal cookies. The recipe is from Joy the Baker. I modified it because I don’t believe in white chocolate, so I just used regular chocolate. I also don’t believe in only putting 1 cup of chocolate chips in cookies. That is definitely not enough chocolate. So I put 1 1/2 cups. Believe me, I wanted to put a whole bag, but I thought with the cherries that would probably be too much. I managed to hold back.

The great thing about these cookies is that they are “healthy”. That is, I have no idea what the nutritional information is, but the fact that they have oatmeal in them is enough for me to consider them a breakfast food. Baking cookies every week is really adding up, we constantly have leftovers at home. So if I can eat them for breakfast, that helps a lot.

Anyways, onto the cookies. Here’s the recipe.

• 8 oz unsalted butter
• 1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups old fashioned oats
• 1 cup dried cherries
• 1 1/2 cup chocolate chips

You know the drill. These cookies are much like any others. Preheat oven to 350 C. Cream sugar into butter. Add vanilla and eggs, mix. Stir in dry ingredients (mix them together first – flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon). Mix in oats, cherries, and chocolate chips. Bake 10-12 minutes or until the tops look brown.

Ta-da!

These cookies were definitely better the second time around. The first time I made a few mistakes. One was failing to mix everything in well enough. The first time around, there was a bit of batter at the bottom that didn’t really get enough oats mixed in. Without the oats, the batter doesn’t hold together very well and then kind of caramelizes, so there were some cookies with funny brown splotches on them. Actually, I still thought these parts tasted okay… Second mistake was using very large dried cherries. Different brands come in different sizes. The second time around I used smaller cherries, and I think the result was much better. A very large dried cherry kind of overwhelms your taste buds. I think I also put more chocolate chips in this time, but I’m not sure. In case you couldn’t guess… more chocolate means better cookies in my opinion. Yum.

Blackberry Heaven

Overview

Zoe and I have been making cookies every week for a few months now. It is a tradition formed out of necessity, hunger, and desire for something to look forward to on an otherwise boring day… Thursday.

For my first entry on Milk & Cookies, we are featuring these fruit filled delights.  The recipe originates from allrecipes.com, but was tweaked ever so slightly.  The fresh blackberry on top is also a new addition, and one that I would highly recommend.  Now, on with the baking…

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tspns. vanilla extract
• 1/2 tspn. salt
• 1/2 cup blackberry preserves
• 1 cup fresh blackberries

Directions

First things first, we will need to mix up the dough.  It’s good to soften the butter before mixing it with the sugar, and I like to just plop my butter sticks into a microwave safe bowl and nuke them for about 15 seconds.  Put the butter, sugar and eggs into a large mixing bowl and cream together.  This should take about 1 minute with some beaters, or until your arm gets too tired to keep going if you are doing it manually.  Add the vanilla and salt and mix them in.

To complete the dough, mix in the flour about 1/2 a cup at a time.  Once the dough is soft and workable, put it in the refrigerator for about an hour.

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 °F.  Scoop out some dough and roll it into a ball about 1 inch in diameter.  If you powder your hands with some extra flour, this step will be much easier.

Place the cookie ball on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. As you make more cookie balls try to space them a few inches apart on all sides.  I was able to make 15 cookies on each cookie tray in a 3 x 5 grid.

Use your finger or thumb to make a well in the center of each cookie.  If any cracks form in the edges of the dough you can either leave them or pinch them shut.  Make sure that any cracks aren’t too deep or the filling will spill out and mess up your cookie.

Fill the holes with preserves.  I have found that the easiest way to do this is to spoon the jam into a ziplock bag.  Squish it around a bit to soften it.  Then cut the bottom corner of the bag off to create a little nozzle.  Now you can neatly squeeze the jam out and feel like a real gourmet pastry chef!

Bake each tray for 8-10 minutes in the preheated oven.  The cookies will get a slight browning along the bottom and the jam will just start to bubble.  These cookies are very easy to over cook so be vigilant!  As soon as you pull them out, plop a fresh blackberry into the center and let the cookies cool.  Since I was making a large batch of them, I just threw each tray into the fridge for about 15 minutes before removing the cookies.

Well, there you have it…. the first Cookie Blog entry!  Hope you enjoy making and eating these cookies.  Don’t forget your ever important side-kick… a nice cold glass of milk.

First cookie blog post!  Soon I will finish ironing out the theme and get some content on here.  Lots of recipies of tasty cookies…  Also, plenty of glorious pictures.