Milk & Cookies

We went to a cupcake party! Melissa and Patrick did a really good job. They made everything and all we had to do was put it together. There were yellow, chocolate, and lemon cupcakes. Dulce de leche, whipped cream, buttercream, chocolate ganache and cream cheese frosting. And a TON of different topping options. Mmmmm…

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera to the party, but I took some pictures of our “leftovers” the next day. Here are some pics of some of our favorites.

The fabulous five cupcakes that we brought home as leftovers. Chocolate cake with dulce de leche and chocolate/peanut butter chips, yellow cake with dulce de leche and butterfly sprinkles, chocolate cake with whipped cream and crushed oreos, chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting and decorative sugar, chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and Andes mints bits.

Chocolate cupcake, dulce de leche, chocolate and peanut butter chips on top.

Chocolate cupcake, cream cheese frosting, decorative sugar

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!