Milk & Cookies

Dry ingredients

For the past few years, my friends Sarah and Harley have had completely opposing winter schedules from Jason and I. They live on the east coast and this year flew to the west coast for Christmas. Meanwhile, we’re living on the west coast and flew to the east coast for Christmas. Various combinations of travel schedules have foiled Christmas hanging-out for the past few years. Fortunately this year we overlapped for a full day, which we spent making rum balls and gingerbread cookies, eating thai food, listening to Christmas music, and playing Apples to Apples. Fun!

Gosling's

There’s a special place in my heart for my own family’s Christmas traditions of course, but having spent a large part of my teenage years at Sarah’s house, there is a special place in my heart for her family’s traditions too. In particular, I have Christmasey memories of caroling parties and rum balls, my first experience with delicious yet alcoholic desserts.

This recipe comes from Sarah’s father, who recommends not driving after consuming a few of these.

All mixed together. It looks delicious in person but the camera is not too flattering.

Recipe:

• 2 cups of Vanilla wafers – crumbed real fine.
• 1 cup of walnuts if you like ‘em (we did!)
• 1 cup confectionary sugar (1.5 cups if you leave out the nuts – we didn’t)
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder (4 if you leave out the nuts or if you want a real chocolate flavor – okay… you know I want a real chocolate flavor)
• 2 tablespoons of corn syrup
• 1/2 cup of dark rum or brandy (we used Gosling’s dark rum)

Zoe and Sarah making batter into balls

The best thing about these cookies, according to Sarah, is that they are made out of other cookies! Here’s how you make them: In a food processor, process the Nilla wafers into fine crumbles. Then process the nuts. Add the confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder. Add the corn syrup and rum and stir together until homogeneous. Finally, form the batter into balls and roll in confectioner’s sugar. Refrigerate overnight, then enjoy! We didn’t have time to refrigerate them overnight, but a couple hours seemed to be enough.

Then, don’t drive! Ride a reindeer instead!

Completed rum balls, and one of Santa's reindeer

Last night we went to a fabulous cookie party. Everyone brought 3 dozen cookies, there was tasting, voting, and trading, and we all left with a nice variety of cookies. Mmmm. It’s pretty much like a regular party but with rules and voting which makes it more fun plus adds an extra incentive to make the cookies really good.

We brought Chocolate Mint Chip cookies. Well, all of our training/blogging over the past 9 months paid off because our cookies won the “Best Looking” category and tied for “Best Tasting”!

This was truly a team effort; I pioneered the Chocolate Mint Chip recipe a few weeks ago but yesterday Jason improved them with a new strategy. Instead of putting lumps of dough on the cookie sheet, roll the dough into balls (we call this the “Smooth Ball Strategy”). When they come out of the oven they look beautifully smooth with cracks instead of kind of lumpy like the original cookies did. We couldn’t have won “Best Looking” without this strategy! We’d also like to thank our oven, Reynold’s for selling parchment paper, and our coworkers for being our guinea pigs.

Compare the two strategies below:

without the "Smooth Ball Strategy"

with the "Smooth Ball Strategy"

with a professional photographer

Yes, the results are clear. Besides looking at these cookies through the lens of a professional photographer, the best thing you can do to make these cookies look great is to use the “Smooth Ball Strategy”.

Here’s some more pictures from the cookie party:

The spread, complete with pencils and paper for voting!

Lacey oatmeal cookies, which were a contender in all three categories! ("Most Creative", "Best Tasting", and "Best Looking")

Stained Glass cookies - the colored parts are melted Jolly Ranchers and you can see right through them! These got my vote for "Best Looking"

Cranberry White Chocolate Macadamia Oatmeal cookies - came close in "Best Tasting"

Sandies, winner in the "Best Tasting" category

Peanut butter kisses (aka "Nipples") and Snickerdoodles. The Nipples were a favorite and were almost gone by the time we went to divvy them up and take them home.

Careful consideration before voting

Anthony wins "Most Creative" with his Peanut Butter and Jelly cookies

I humbly accept the award for "Best Looking", followed by a 10 minute acceptance speech.

Veronica wins "Best Tasting" with her Sandies

In the end everyone won because we all took home a pile of cookies like this.

This recipe comes to us from Heide (Jason’s mom) who got it from Wilma, a family friend. I’ve never made fudge before so of course I did a quick literature search first and found that a very similar recipe is also attributed to Paula Deen here. (And of course we all trust Paula Deen after we’ve seen what she can do with macaroni and cheese wrapped in bacon, breaded, and fried… well, use your own judgement here.)

I love getting rid of leftovers so I was very happy to include the marshmallows which we had left over from the Icebox Smores rather than leaving them in the pantry to turn into one giant stale marshmallow. Of course, later I remembered that I don’t love the flavor of marshmallows that much. I think some people love the flavor, some people don’t, and some people don’t notice it. For me, I like marshmallows in small doses or cooked over a fire, but I’ve never liked them mixed into things like my ice cream or granola bars. Some people (like my husband) LOVE marshmallows in things. He would probably put them in his macaroni and cheese if he weren’t already in a very committed relationship with his current secret mac ‘n cheese recipe. Well, even with my non-favorite marshmallow flavor, I think these turned out very good.

The recipe and instructions are very easy!

• 2/3 cup evaporated milk (or 5 oz. can)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 1/2 teasp salt
• 2 cups mini marshmallows
• 12 oz semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup walnuts optional – I didn’t include this

Directions:

Mix and heat on the stove: sugar, salt, evaporated milk, and butter. Bring to a gentle boil and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add chocolate chips and stir until melted. Finally, add the vanilla and marshmallows and stir some more until you have a consistent texture.

I had a hard time stirring in the marshmallows because it looked so beautiful and swirly while they were only halfway mixed! Maybe next time I’ll leave them swirly but for my first attempt I wanted to follow the recipe.

Gourmet Smores? ... yes.

Super easy, no bake cookies! And see how fancy they look? These are some time consuming cookies to make, but honestly, most of that time is your refrigerator doing the work. It’s really only a little time up front and then some more time on the back end (if you plan on wrapping them up). Overall these are some of the easiest cookies I have made, and they’re already on my top 5 favorite list.

cookie credit: Joy the Baker (yet again)

Without further adu:

INGREDIENTS (makes 18-24 cookies)

• 1 box of graham crackers (14 oz)
• 3 handfuls of mini marshmallows
• 3 sticks and 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup light corn syrup
• pinch of salt

DIRECTIONS

Get out a large bowl and crumble the graham crackers into it. Break them into medium sized peices (about 1/8 of a cracker). Then toss in 2 handfuls of marshmallows. Set this bowl aside for now.

In a medium sauce pan, combine the butter, cocoa powder, corn syrup, and a pinch of salt. Warm it on the stove until all of the ingredients are melted and mixed smooth. Now turn off the heat and let it cool for a few minutes.

While waiting, prepare a 9 x 13 pan with a parchment paper to line it. When the time is up, pour the chocolate into the bowl with the crackers and marshmallows. Stir this mixture up until all the graham crackers are coated in chocolate. Then pour it all into the pan. Spread the dough around and press it down with your fingers using a second piece of parchment paper. Once its well spread out, sprinkle another handful of marshmallows on the top and press them in.

Now you should have a flat tray full of cookie mash. Set it aside for 30 minutes before placing the tray in the fridge for at least a few hours (preferably over night). Once cooled, cut the cookies into bars and serve them up.

Keep any uneaten cookies individually wrapped in the fridge.

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