Milk & Cookies

I love heath bars. These cookies have been on my to-bake list for about 6 weeks and I just haven’t gotten around to them what with the holidays. My plan was to just try putting heath bar chunks into toll house cookies instead of chocolate chips and see what happened. When I saw my family over the holidays it turns out my aunt Sally already makes cookies just like that! (She also makes about 30 dozen cookies every Christmas so she’s an expert.)

Heath bars shed their skin once a year

So I went out and bought a 12 oz. bag of mini heath bars. This turned out to actually be much cheaper than buying several full-sized heath bars but I feel a little bad about all the excess packaging! Then I chopped each mini heath bar individually into 12 chunks. Now that I think about it, I probably could have used the food processor, but the chopping didn’t seem so bad with terrible reality TV going on in the background (The Bachelor: On the wings of love). This resulted in about 2 1/2 cups of heath bar chunks.

Then I followed the Toll House cookie recipe (the one on the yellow bag!):

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 1/2 cups Heath bar chunks

This dough was really smooth. Since it's really not any different from regular cookie dough, I'm guessing it's because of the extra hour the butter had to soften while I chopped each Heath bar individually.

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, and salt). Cream butter and sugar in a separate bowl, then add vanilla and eggs and mix. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix. Finally, add the Heath bar chunks and mix.

Put spoonfuls of dough onto a baking sheet and bake 10 minutes.

From the top they look less appetizing because the Heath bar chunks don't "pop" like regular chocolate chips. From the bottom I think they look pretty cool.

Well, I really liked these cookies but I think I like regular chocolate chip cookies better. No offense to Heath, but I think the chocolate used on Heath bars is not as high quality as the usual Nestle semi-sweet morsels I use in choco chip cookies. On the other hand… TOFFEEEEEEEEE. Maybe next time I’ll go half choco chips, half Heath bar chunks!

I was inspired to make these cookies because there’s this place I sometimes go to on campus to get hot chocolate, and they have these very chocolatey cookies with green mint M&M’s. Somehow I always eye these cookies but never buy them. Sorry cookies, for always being my second choice!

Today I honor these second-place cookies by trying to reproduce them. Sadly, things didn’t work out as planned. I couldn’t find mint M&M’s! I had to substitute mint chips. Well… the switcheroo served me well because I think they turned out great!

I basically followed a “Chewy White Chocolate Chocolate cookie” recipe (found here), but replaced the white chocolate chips with a 2:1 mix of mint chips and regular chocolate chips. You guys all know how I feel about white chocolate… grrr. But this recipe was fixed right up with mint chips!

Here’s the recipe:

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 1 1/4 cups cocoa powder
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 2 tsps. baking soda
• 1 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 1/3 cups mint chips
• 2/3 cup chocolate chips

The directions go like pretty much any other cookie you make… cream butter and sugar, then add eggs, then mix dry ingredients together and combine them with the butter-egg-sugar mixture. Finally, add the chips and mix. Ho hum. Except, oh wait, you replace about a cup of flour with 1 1/4 cups of cocoa powder! Holy cow! Okay, so here’s the thing. When I started adding the dry ingredients to the creamy ingredients things didn’t really seem right. It seemed too dry and tough. I was pretty concerned that I had done something wrong, but everything turned out fine in the end (minus some sore mixing muscles). So don’t sweat it.

Set oven to 350 degrees and bake about 10 minutes (I did about 13 minutes but my cookies were quite large). Let cool on tray for longer than usual, maybe another 10 minutes, before moving to a wire rack. These guys are pretty smushable.

Professional Cookie Image courtesy of Donald Chan

Well, we have been in Switzerland since Friday. Interlaken had been having beautiful weather with temperatures in the 70s! (That’s about 20 C for you Europeans). That is, until we got here… now it is in the 40s, or about 4 C. Well, it has made our high altitude hikes very scenic and also cold, requiring lots of hot chocolate when we get back. Here is how we make up for all those calories we burnt while hiking… making a whole batch of cookies without our coworkers to share them!

Well, we have been in Switzerland since Friday. Interlaken had been having beautiful weather with temperatures in the 70s! (That’s about 20 C for you Europeans). That is, until we got here… now it is in the 40s, or about 4 C. And even colder at the higher altitudes. Well, it has made our hikes very scenic and also cold, requiring lots of hot chocolate and cookies when we get back. Here is how we make up for all those calories we burnt while hiking… making a whole batch of cookies without our coworkers to share them!

• 1 cup butter: 226 g butter
• 1 1/2 cups sugar : 300 g zucker
• 2 eggs : 2 eier
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract : 1 1/2 tsp vanille-extrakt
• 2 1/4 cups flour : 295 g weissmehl
• 1 tsp baking soda : 1 tsp haus natron
• 1/2 tsp salt : 1/2 tsp salz
• 1 1/2 cups Toblerone chunks : 200 grams Toblerone brocken

Baking in a foreign country is always fun. Most of the ingredients are easy to figure out, for example eggs (not much else looks like eggs) or butter (german: butter). But some are more of a guessing game. For example, baking soda is haus natron… or so we think. The cookies turned out fine so I guess we were right.

So far we haven’t bought any super fancy chocolate, but we got some store brand chocolate which was delicious! In the US I refuse to buy store brand chocolate just on principle. And Toblerone for the cookies of course. Almost everything here is much more expensive than the US, except cheese. You can get a wedge of Brie for about half what it would cost in the states! So we have been chowing down on that. Yum!

Rocky Road? ... nope thats the cookie dough!

I keep running into recipes for “Dark Chocolate”, “Double Chocolate”, “Super Chocolatey”, even “Triple Chocolate” cookies. Well eat this one all you wannabee’s! These are QUADRUPLE chocolate cookies! “Ridiculous!” you say…
yes, ridiculously good!

This recipe is based on a couple of different recipes from the Food Network, America’s Test Kitchen, and AllRecipes.com. It is far enough from them that I will not link to them since this recipe is truly my own.

If you don’t like these cookies… you must be dead already. Go see a doctor immediately.

INGREDIENTS (makes ~3 dozen cookies)

• 16 ounces semisweet chocolate (chopped, chips, or morsels)
• 10 Tbls. (1-1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2 tspn. baking powder
• 1/2 tspn. salt
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tspn. vanilla extract
• 6 oz. white chocolate chunks (or chips) (recommended improvement – 8 to10 oz. instead)
• 6 oz. bittersweet chocolate chips (60-70% cocoa)

DIRECTIONS

Start by (slowly) melting your semi-sweet chocolate in either the microwave or on a double boil on the stove.

In a large mixing bowl beat together the softened butter with the two types of sugar for about 1 minute.

Add the eggs and vanilla and beat for another 45 seconds or so.

Now pour in the melted chocolate and beat again until combined.

Now stir in the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Do not over mix these ingredients, its ok if it isnt completely smooth.

Finally stir in the two types of chocolate chips / chunks. This recipe reflects the actual quantities that I used, and I would recommend adding more white chocolate since it seems to get lost in these cookies. Maybe use 8-10 oz. instead.

Now your dough is complete, you can either start making the cookies now, or refrigerate the dough for a while to let it stiffen up.

Preheat the oven to 350°F and line a couple trays with parchment paper. Start placing tablespoon sized scoops onto the trays with a least an inch of clearance around the dough. Cook each tray for 13-15 min. Let each tray cool for a few minutes before moving the cookies to a cooling rack or tupperware container or (best of all) your mouth.

Cookie Action Shot!

Today is a special day. It marks one of the most frightening and fulfilling days in my life. A day that I will cherish forever, as a moment when I felt completely full of love and completely loved in return. I am talking of course of my wedding day three years ago. Thank you, Zoe, for making me as happy today, as I was when you first entered my life some 8 years ago.

As a special treat for Zoe, this weeks cookies feature an ingredient that I usually shun from being in my cookies. I am talking about nuts. But as all things should be, I compromised, by making sure that the cookies selected this week are also full of rich dark chocolate so that I will also be unable to resist them! I guess this weeks cookies are a match made in heaven.

INGREDIENTS (makes 35-40 cookies)

• 8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, 60%-72% cocoa (chopped)
• 4 Tblsn. butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tspn. espresso powder
• 1 tspn. vanilla extract
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tspn. baking powder
• 1/4 tspn. salt
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts
• 3/4 cup golden raisins

DIRECTIONS

These cookies are very straight forward to make, just like any chocolate cookies. Start off by setting up a double boiler to melt the bittersweet chocolate and the butter together. Be sure to keep the temperature low so not to burn the chocolate. Mix these two together until evenly melted and creamy.

In a separate bowl combine the sugar and eggs. Beat them together until smooth and a bit frothy. Now add the melted chocolate and butter mixture and mix it in. Finally, stir in all of the remaining ingredients.

Refrigerate the dough if you like, to make the cookies a bit softer and chewier, as well as easier to scoop.

Preheat the oven to 325°F and line a couple trays with parchment paper.  Start placing tablespoon sized scoops onto the trays with a least an inch of clearance around the dough.   These cookies will spread a bit, but not as much as many other cookies.  Cook each tray for 11-13 minutes until the tops just start to crack like brownies.