Milk & Cookies

I just tried these cookies again to see if I could make them look better. Well, they look perfect! I set my oven to 275 (50 degrees below the recommended 325. Naughty oven.) and was very, very careful not to let the dough warm up at all before putting them in the oven. There was the 2 minutes required to chop the cookie logs and then they either went straight into the oven or back into the fridge to wait for their turn. Beautiful!

cookies in their natural habitat

I’ve decided from now on I’ll try to bake on weekends. We used to bake on Wednesdays because Thursday was Cookie Day at Jason’s work, but that is no longer. I have more free time on weekends to bake, plus then I can photograph in natural light! Much, much better.

And since I seem to be favoring one cat in the photos, here’s another:

Ewok looking out the window

I made cookies for my qual committee. I knew it wouldn’t affect their decision, but I thought maybe it would put them in a better mood so they would be nice to me! (They were). I offered them the cookies and one of my committee members said, “Ooh, cookies. Are we allowed to eat them or is there some rule against that?” (I think there might be).

My advisor said, “Oh, it’s fine, Zoe makes cookies for us all the time.” (It’s true). Sweet, my advisor’s got my back.

These cookies are called “World Peace Cookies”, aka, if everyone ate them we could finally have world peace. Perfect for a blustery Wednesday afternoon qual exam.

Here’s where I found the recipe: http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/01/in-which-world-peace-eludes-me/

Mix the flour, cocoa, and baking soda together with a fork (or sift it… okay, you’re supposed to sift it but I didn’t.)

Using your stand mixer, beat the butter until it’s nicely creamy. Add the sugars, salt, and vanilla extract and beat for 2 more minutes.

Pour in the dry ingredients and mix just until the flour disappears into the dough.

Add the chocolate chunks and mix a little more.

Work the dough into two logs, each 1 1/2″ in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or overnight.

It was tough to get a good photo of the logs before slicing.

…Wait 3 hours. I used this time to make another batch of cookies – regular chocolate chip cookies – in case these didn’t work out. Wouldn’t want my committee members eating gross cookies! Baking also distracted me from my exam…

Slice the logs into 1/2″ thick slices. The recipe is very detailed and notes that your cookies might crumble a bit during this step. Mine did, but it was okay.

A lucky uncrumbled cookie.

Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes at 325 degrees F. Again, the recipe was detailed here and absolutely correct. It says your cookies will not look or feel done at this point, and mine didn’t. Take them out anyway! Basically, they are very limp at this stage but as they cool down they will harden. There are no eggs in this recipe so underbaking isn’t really an issue.

Once they cool, you can test them! I have to say, mine did not look like the pictures on the internet say they’re supposed to look. But they tasted great. It seemed like mine expanded/melted more and also developed some holes in them, like they had bubbled during baking. Maybe my oven was too hot? We don’t have an oven thermometer but I have always estimated that my oven runs 25 degrees hot and adjust accordingly. I use this correction because it seems to lead to the right bake time for most recipes. These cookies seem extra sensitive to temperature so maybe my oven is off by more than that. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t sift… I should probably sift.

Funny looking cookies.

Well, this was almost 3 months ago but just writing out this post is making me hungry! Maybe I should bake some more cookies today… In fact, I’m inspired to make a second attempt at these to get them to look right.

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!

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?