Milk & 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

I can has cheezburger?

I really owe this recipe to my soccer teammate Corby.  He made little cheeseburger cookies like this for one of our soccer bbq’s a couple of years ago, and I have never forgotten them.  Don’t they just look amazing?  Anyways, in tribute to the usual culinary treats associated with the 4th o’ July, this week’s treat is fresh off of the grill.

These cookies are great for a few reasons.  First, did I mention that they look amazing?  Second, they require no cooking. Third, they taste surprisingly good for a cookie mash-up.  So go make some already!

INGREDIENTS (makes 20 burgerz)

• 40 Nilla Wafers
• 20 Grasshoppers (or thin mints)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup coconut flakes
• 1 tblspn sesame seeds
• 1/4 cup vanilla frosting
• Red, Yellow, Green food coloring

DIRECTIONS

Start off by setting up your buns (aka the nilla wafers). Put half of them face up and half of them face down in two separate areas. The face up ones will be the tops. Bust open the egg and keep just the whites in a bowl. Using a small brush (or a papertowel all folded up if you don’t have one), coat the tops of the top buns with the egg whites. This will make them temporarily sticky. Before they have a chance to dry, sprinkle the sesame seeds on top, and press them down to set them. Set these buns aside to dry.

Now take your coconut flakes and shake them around in a baggie with a couple drops of green food coloring. The goal is for them to look like little shredded lettuce. Set these aside for now also.

In another bowl mix your vanilla frosting with a few drops of red food coloring and about 4X as many drops of yellow. Feel free to tweak the color to your desired cheese coloring. This frosting will act as both cheese on the burger, as well as the glue that holds the various pieces together. Once this is mixed up, grab your first grasshopper and put a dab of frosting on the bottom. The goal is to put enough to hold the bottom bun on, but not enough that the frosting visibly squirts out the sides. Press the grasshopper onto the bottom bun. Now add a much thicker layer of frosting on top of the grasshopper. This will be the cheese and it should be enough to be visible once the top bun is put on. Sprinkle some of the green coconut onto the cheese. Lastly, before you put the top bun on, add another small glue dollop onto the bottom of the top bun and press it into place. Repeat this assembly line for all of your cheezburgers.

Where is the cow this week? Who eats cheeseburgers with a glass of milk?

First batch, ready to go!

This week, once again there were issues with the cookie poll. I even got rid of the old version and installed a newer *better* plug-in, but now it appears that most people can not vote at all, and are just stuck indefinitely with a loading graphic. I’m sorry. At this point I am not sure what to do, because I have tried many different approaches to fixing this issue, and I am just about out of ideas. Perhaps it just wasn’t meant to be.

This week’s cookies come from a couple different sources. It is really a mash-up recipe combining a handful of different recipes from all over the internet. The directions below will be for a single batch (about 30 cookies), even though I made a double batch (which was a large mistake on my part).

Ingredients

• 8 oz (1 pkg) cream cheese
• 3/4 cup butter
• 1 egg
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tspn baking soda

Directions

I think these cookies are probably very easy to make. I managed to make it very hard on myself by doing a double recipe when my mixing bowl and electric mixer were just not big enough to handle the task. In the end I did a lot of mixing by hand, but I think that can be avoided by not being an idiot. Here are some more tips to make these cookies much easier:

1. Soften the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds before mixing it in.
2. Soften the cream cheese by letting it sit out for an hour or so before making the cookies.

Ok, to make the dough start by combining the butter, sugar, and eggs in the mixer. Blend them up until they are nice and fluffy. You can optionally add the cream cheese into the mixer now, but I chose not to for reasons I will point out later. Now, melt down 1/2 of the chocolate chips in either a double boiler, or by microwaving them in a plastic bowl for 30 seconds at a time and stirring until they are fully melted. Mix this melted chocolate into the dough. Now add in the flour, baking soda, and remaining chocolate chips. At this point the dough should be pretty thick and gooey. Now add in the cream cheese and mix it sparingly. The goal here is to try to obtain a marbled look, where the cream cheese leaves streaks in the cookie. Now stick the dough in the fridge for a bit to let it thicken up (this will make the cookies softer in the end).

Get the oven preheated to 375°F, and prepare some baking sheets with parchment paper. Start plopping down tablespoon sized balls of dough about 2″ apart on your sheet. I was managing 12 cookies per batch. Let them bake for 8-10 minutes. As usual, let them cool off for a bit before moving them to a tupperware, serving tray, or your mouth (recommended). If you want some really fancy cookies, save a little bit of the melted chocolate until the end and drizzle it on top of the cookies.

Moo!

My mom never smiles in pictures, except when flødebollers are involved.

My mom looooooves flødebollers. Her family lived in Denmark for 2 years when she was a kid, and apparently the Danes are crazy about flødebollers. Did you know that the average Dane eats 50 per year (according to Wikipedia)? Anyways, a couple years back my uncle Steve made homemade flødebollers from this recipe, making my mom crazy with sugary delight and setting high expectations for baked good at family gatherings for the next few decades.

So of course I wanted to try making them myself! Although, once I saw the recipe I started thinking maybe it would just be easier to fly to Denmark and buy flødebollers than to actually make them… Here’s a picture of my mom and my aunt doing just that.

Eat me.

The flødebollers consist of a cookie base with a mountain of meringue/marshmallow on top, covered in chocolate. Here’s the recipe. It makes 25 flødebollers.

For the base:

• 1 1/4 cups flour
• 3 1/2 ounces butter
• 5 tablespoons sugar

Combine ingredients and roll out dough. Cut 2 1/2 ” circles from the dough and bake on parchment paper for 10 minutes at 400 degrees. I had a hard time getting them to roll out without sticking to everything… oh well.

My vintage avocado green mixer worked fabulously.

For the filling:

• 6 egg whites
• 1/2 – 3/4 cup sugar

Whip egg whites until stiff peaks form. I had never actually done this before but it turns out that these days anyone with an internet connection can be a good baker. I found very detailed instructions on how to most optimally whip egg whites here. I kept waiting for stiff peaks to form, but I never saw them. I was wondering what would cause stiff peaks to form randomly at the surface, seemingly defying the laws of physics… well it turns out you are supposed to take the beaters out of the egg whites and see if the egg whites “hanging” from the bottom of the beaters form stiff peaks even once they’re turned sideways. OOOOOOH, that makes so much more sense. Here are my beautiful egg whites in my vintage avocado green mixer (is there any other type of avocado green mixer?). They don’t actually look like stiff peaks exactly, but it seemed to work out well in the end.

Naked flødebollers

Chocolate coating:

• 12 oz. chocolate chips

Pipe the filling onto the bases, and bake for 5 minutes at 400 degrees. Meanwhile, start the chocolate melting on a double boiler. Once the chocolate is melted, remove it from the stove. Paint the baked flødebollers with a melted chocolate coating (dipping did not work very well for me). Here’s a helpful tip: even though it takes a little while to get the chocolate melted, once it’s melted it won’t solidify for a while, especially in a warm kitchen, so as soon as it’s melted you can take the chocolate off the heat. You’ll be getting melted chocolate all over your hands while you do this, so better to let it cool a little and not burn yourself.