Milk & Cookies

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 did end up making those brownies I mentioned after I finally picked up some eggs. I made them from scratch, using Baker’s chocolate (100% cacao). This is the way we made brownies when I was a kid, and I always was kind of a snob about it! I didn’t like brownies from a mix as they were usually too cakey. Now, I have to say… the mixes are getting pretty good. Everyone who used mixes thought I was crazy for making brownies from scratch instead of the easy way. Actually, making them from scratch is incredibly easy but you don’t have to tell people that…

I just followed the recipe on the Baker’s chocolate box (“One Bowl Brownies”):

• 4 squares Baker’s unsweetened chocolate
• 3/4 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Melt chocolate and butter – the recipe says to microwave it and that’s what I always did as a kid, but our only large microwaveable bowl is currently full of cat food. So I used a double boiler instead which is just as easy. Then stir in sugar. Then eggs and vanilla. And finally the flour.

Grease a 13″x9″ pan. If you’re smart, line it with aluminum foil so you don’t have to wash the pan! Even so, you have to grease the foil. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake 30-35 minutes.

These came out pretty good, nice and fudgy, but I think I have been spoiled by great chocolate. I actually think the brownies from the Ghirardelli mix may be better than these from scratch! Heresy! I think it just comes down to the quality of the chocolate. All 100% cacao is not created equal…

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!

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

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.