Milk & Cookies

Narrator: You’re NEVER going to BELIEVE the TWIST! Coming up on Milk & Cookies!

[cut to commercial]

Narrator:  And NOW, back to Milk & Cookies.  Tonight, we’ve got a twist you’re NEVER going to BELIEVE!

[Diary room]

Derek, investment banker: What?? Holy [beep]!

Sherriann, professional hang glider:  Oh my God, when they told us the twist, I was just like… Oh my God.

Narrator: Stay tuned for more Milk & Cookies!

[Flashy image & swooping sound]

[cut to commercial]

Anyways… there’s a big twist on this week’s cookie blog. You’d never believe it if I hadn’t been hyping it all week long. Okay… are you ready? [cut to commercial] Okay… are you ready? This week’s cookie blog is about muffins. That’s right, all along you thought this was a blog about cookies and now I’ve pulled the rug out from under your feet!

I’ve made muffins before and they usually come out okay, or fine, or pretty good. But these ones are awesome. I’ve always wanted to make muffins that taste like they came from a café, and these ones finally do! Of course, they have no health benefits whatsoever and barely qualify as a breakfast food. Whatever. Apparently café operators don’t worry about these things so neither do I.

Ingredients

I mostly followed a recipe I found on Recipezaar and then changed it slightly to make it better. Basically I just added a little more sugar and baking powder. My friend Harley was telling me that you’re supposed to use nice fresh baking powder to make muffin recipes turn out right, rather than the stuff that’s been in the back of your cupboard for months. My baking powder has been in my cupboard a while… but I figured instead of buying new stuff I would just add more baking powder to the recipe. Ta da. Nice and fluffy.

Here’s the stats (makes 15 muffins):

• 2 cups flour
• 1/3 cup light-brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips (~12 oz or 2 cups)

Ready to go in the oven

Preheat oven to 400 F. Place muffin papers in muffin tin. In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients (flour, sugars, baking powder, salt) In a plastic bowl, microwave butter until melted. Add milk, eggs, and vanilla to melted butter and stir. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Add chocolate chips and stir a little more. Spoon batter into muffin cup, filling each cup between 3/4 and all the way full. Sprinkle sugar across the tops. Bake ~15 minutes.

If you’ve ever made muffins before, you know they tell you that the less you stir the better. But isn’t there some minimum amount of stirring that just has to be done or else the things don’t mix together? Some of it depends on the spoon (use a big one!). My own personal rule is to absolutely positively never stir more than 25 stirs after mixing wet and dry ingredients. It’s generally pretty easy to stay under 25. But someday maybe a real muffin expert will tell me how you get everything stirred together in 5 stirs or less. Crazy.

Actually this picture is from this weekend's batch not tonight's so I was able to photograph them in natural light. Beautiful, huh?

Anyways, ponder these things while you wait the 15 minutes. Then take out the muffins & let them cool on a cooling rack. Or eat them. They are best straight out of the oven. Enjoy! Or rather, since I’m the one with a bunch of warm muffins in my kitchen, Yum!

P.S. While the second batch is baking, you can ponder why reality TV shows repeat the exact same thing before and after a commercial break. After a week of filming 24 hours a day on multiple cameras, do they not have enough material? Do they think we won’t notice?

blah blah blah... more cookies

No insights, no gimmicks, nothing fancy what-so-ever. Also, I am late posting this. Not my best job so far. Whatever… the cookies turned out really good so what more do you expect? Just eat…

These cookies come from Average Betty, who did a much better job capturing these cookies on film than I did. In fact, I am pretty embarrassed… maybe you should just read the recipe from there instead.

The results of this week’s baking experiment are below:

INGREDIENTS (makes ~4 dozen cookies)

• 3/4 cup salted butter (1 1/2 sticks)
• 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar (lightly packed)
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 2 cups roasted, salted macadamia nuts (chopped)

DIRECTIONS

In a large mixing bowl beat together the softened butter and the sugar on medium speed until it is fluffy and smooth. Then add in the vanilla extract, salt, and baking soda and mix it a bit more until it is evenly blended. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides and add the eggs. Beat on medium until it is creamy.

Lastly, add the white chocolate chips and fold/mix them in. Once this is done, you are going to want to cool the dough down considerably. Either give them 24 hours in the fridge, or put them in the freezer for 1 hour. Make sure the dough is covered with an air tight seal.

When you are ready to bake the cookies preheat the oven to 300°F and prepare a couple of baking trays with parchment paper. Now, chop the macadamia nuts. Just put them in a food processor and chop chop until they are a good size for sprinkling on top of cookies.

Start making little ~1 tsp. sized balls of dough. Take each ball and press it into the bowl of macadamia nuts. The goal is to coat the top half of the dough in nut chunks and even get some pressed into the dough. Then place the dough on the baking tray with the nut-side up.

Once your tray is covered in little dough bowls bake them on the top rack for 12 minutes. That’s it. Easy, delicious, cookies.

1.0 Title

Boston Cream Pie Cookies

2.0 Purpose

Boston Cream Pie Cookies are cookies that are designed to taste delicious and remind the eater of boston cream pie.

3.0 Scope

This document provides the procedure for making Boston Cream Pie Cookies.

4.0 Applicable Documents

4.1 Wikipedia

4.2 Dunkin Donuts, maker of Boston Cream donuts

4.3 Muffin Top recipe, on which the cookie portion of this recipe is based

4.4 The Boston Cream Donut Debate

5.0 Definitions & Process Terminology

5.1 Parchment Paper: oven-safe paper that protects baking sheets and saves dish washing.

6.0 Safety

6.1 Burn Hazard. Boston Cream Pie Cookies utilize an oven; baking sheets coming out of the oven can be very hot. Use hand protection. Proceed with caution.

6.2 Stomach Explosion Hazard. These cookies are very rich. I saw it in a movie once so it must be possible.

7.0 Statistical/Process Data

7.1 Bake time

Cookie staff has tested the cookie bake time and determined that a bake time of 8-10 minutes is acceptable. Cookie squishiness increases with decreasing bake time, therefore time your bakes according to your desired outcome.

7.2 Input ingredients

A variety of companies supply vanilla pudding and chocolate frosting, however cookie staff have shown a preference for Jell-O pudding and Duncan Hines chocolate frosting.

8.0 Available Processes, Gases, Process Notes

8.1 Vanilla Pudding

Ingredients:

• 1 package Jell-O vanilla pudding mix
• 2 cups cold milk

8.2 Chocolate Frosting

8.3 Cookie – Similar to the muffin tops described here.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla

9.0 Operating Procedure

9.1 Preheat oven to 325 F

9.2 Assemble Ingredients

9.3 Make vanilla pudding by mixing pudding mix with 2 cups of cold milk. Let chill in refrigerator

9.4 Make cookie batter:

9.4.1 Mix dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

9.4.2 Mix sugar and eggs with electric mixer until well blended.

9.4.3 Add milk, canola oil, and vanilla and mix again.

9.4.4 Add dry ingredients from step 9.3.1 and mix again.

9.4.5 Spoon batter onto parchment-paper-lined cookie sheet. The batter is not very viscous and should expand to 2-3 diameter circles.

9.4.6 Bake batter for 8-10 minutes (see section 7.0)

9.4.7 Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.

9.4.8 Apply a layer of vanilla pudding to half of the cookies. Coat the other half of the cookies with chocolate frosting. Match each pudding-covered cookie with a chocolate-covered cookie to create a cookie/pudding/cookie/frosting multilayer.

9.4.9 Serve with cold milk, if available.

10.0 Troubleshooting Guidelines

10.1 Have you tried turning it off and on again? Is it plugged in?

11.0 Figures & Schematics

Figure 1: Batter expands to 2-3 inch diameter circles

Figure 2: Finished product

Cookies made with love.... and chocolate

I am going to let you in on a little secret. I have a Wednesday night ritual that has completely changed the way I approach my week. Wednesday…. humpday…. the worst day of the week (many will say). I used to hate Wednesdays. Now I look forward to them.

Every Wednesday I come home from work and plug in my Ipod. I find an album that suits my mood (unless I am grumpy) and turn it up… way up. This week it was Radiohead – In Rainbows. I pour myself a glass of scotch… Then I bake.

I think that setting your mind to look forward to something can really change your overall attitude for the better. It turns out that I feel happier, not just on Wednesday, but every day.

The results of this week’s baking experience are below. These cookies were the most recent post on Joy the Baker. Instead of using fruity jam (PB&J cookies), I decided to fill the thumbprints with chocolate. Here is my recipe:

INGREDIENTS (makes ~3 dozen cookies)

• 1 3/4 cups finely ground honey roasted peanuts
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tspn. vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar (optional)
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (or 1 cup jam if you want to make them fruity instead)

DIRECTIONS

First thing to do with these cookies is to crush up the peanuts. Just put them in a food processor and chop chop until they are finely ground. Then mix them up with the flour in a medium bowl. Set this mixture aside.

These cookies are really easy and quick, so you might want to get your oven pre-heating early this time around. Set it to 350°F.

In a large mixing bowl beat together the softened butter and the sugar on medium speed until it is fluffy and smooth. Then add in the vanilla extract and mix it a bit more until it is evenly blended. Then set the mixer speed to low and slowly add in the peanut and flour mixture. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides if needed. Try not to over mix, its ok for the batter to be a little uneven.

Prepare a couple of baking trays with parchment paper. Start making little ~1 Tblsn. sized balls of dough. Just roll the dough around a little bit in your hand and then plop it down on the parchment paper. Then using your pinky (not your thumb) press a narrow hole down the center of the dough. Don’t go all the way through the cookie though, you want a little well for the filling. I did my first batch with my thumb (I mean, they are thumbprint cookies), but this dough spreads more than I expected during baking, so my wells were really shallow. Using your pinkie and going pretty deep will make it work better.

Once your tray is covered in little dough bowls, go ahead and bake them on the top rack for 15 minutes. They won’t look completely cooked at the end, but its ok, they will stiffen up as they cool. Once removed from the oven, let the cookies sit for a couple of minutes and then move them to a cooling rack if you have one. After all of the batches of cookies are complete, dust them with the powdered sugar. (This was my favorite part since I finally got to use our sifter.)

Time to prepare the filling. If chocolate, melt the chocolate chips down in either the microwave using the 15 second – stir – repeat method, or on a double boil on the stove. If you are using Jam, bring it to a boil on the stove or in the microwave. Take your filling and either pipe it into the cookies, or just spoon it in to fill the wells up with delicious. Be careful of lurking spouses during this process… they will often strike when your back is turned and try to eat up all the filling!