2 Cookies, 1 Bowl

I have seen this recipe for two (yep, just two) chocolate chip cookies bopping around the internets and had to give it a try.

It looked perfect for those times that you really, really want a warm, freshly-baked chocolate chip cookie, but you don't want to mix up a whole batch of dough, which you will inevitably end up eating, either raw or baked. 

Pretty awesome.  One bowl, two cookies, five minutes.  Mmm.  My only comment is that it took my cookies a little bit longer to cook than the recipe called for... maybe because they're pretty big or maybe because my oven is crazy.  Either way, be warned.

                                                                                                                                                

Leftover Cranberry Sauce?

Got leftover cranberry sauce?  If so, make these cranberry crumble bars.  Super easy and quite a big hit at the Thanksgiving party we went to in Jakarta...  they went slowly at first, but at the end of the party, as we were leaving, I had at least 6 people pull me over and tell me they were awesome.  Pretty ringing endorsement.

I used this cranberry crumble bar recipe from the November issue of Martha Stewart Living, which conveniently arrived here in Jakarta the day before Thanksgiving.  The recipe looked pretty easy and delicious, but I had to make a few changes out of necessity:

• First, a 9"x13" pan doesn't fit in my mini oven, so I decided to switch up the pans.  I went with my removeable bottom tart pan so I would end up with pie-shaped bars... I split the dough recipe into 2 and made 2 tarts, each cooked for 30 minutes. 
• I probably used 1 and a half cans of cranberry sauce between the 2 tarts, though.  
• Also, I substituted toasted, slivered almonds for the walnuts, which I couldn't find for some reason (the Real Martha thinks there is a walnut shortage of some sort this year- she says prices of walnuts have skyrocketed of late).

 

S'mores Cookies-The City S'more

In honor of Labor Day and end of summer, Tony and I had some friends over for dinner.  We made the Real Martha's pulled pork and potato salad.  I was looking for an easy, yet summer-y dessert.  I found this recipe on Pinterest (my new obsession).

Quite delicious, but next time I would add more marshmallows for more gooeyness.

UPDATE:  This is Meg.  I tried out Chuck's recipe this weekend- good stuff!  All the chocolatey/marshmallowy goodness of s'mores, but in a pre-made cookie package.  I took Chuck's advice and added much more marshmallow.  I only have large marshmallows, so I cut them up with scissors and wedged probably one and a half between the cookie dough and the graham cracker.  They tried to flop over in the oven, but once you smoosh the whole thing down with the Hershey's, it's all good.

Salty Sesame and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tim says these are the best cookies he's ever had.  

Coming from Tim, who usually says "They're fine," that says a lot.

I bookmarked this recipe the second I saw it on Joy the Baker... salty + sweet?  Yes, please.  The recipe is quirky, but it all comes together amazingly... a basic chocolate chip cookie dough, with the addition of some soy sauce in the place of some of the salt and a sprinkling of black sesame seeds.  Sounds crazy, but you should try it.  So good.

Homemade Honey Graham Crackers (and obligatory s'mores)

Happy 4th of July!!  America... f*ck yeah!  ;-)

This holiday is somewhat of a non-event here in Jakarta, as you can imagine.  But Tim and I tried to celebrate in little ways.  Important ways.  Namely, hot dogs, s'mores and Budweiser.

Turns out both hot dogs and ingredients for s'mores are not the easiest thing to locate.  Sausages, yes.  But regular old American hotdogs?  Not so much.  Eventually we found something close enough, but it still was no Ballpark frank.  Oh well.

S'mores, on the other hand, were even more of a challenge.  Nary a graham cracker in sight and I ended up with some strangely shriveled, but passable Filipino marshmallows.  

Since I couldn't find graham crackers, I decided to make my own, largely inspired by the cover of this month's Martha Stewart Living magazine.  I didn't follow her recipe because I couldn't find whole wheat flour, but instead I largely followed this recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen, substituting 1/2 cup of the AP flour with toasted wheat germ.

A little bit of a pain in the ass to make (have I ever explained how much I hate making rolled cookies?), but ultimately a really good honey and molasses flavor and nice texture.  My rolling and cutting (I just used a square, fluted edge cookie cutter) efforts were not the best, but I only baked about 1/3 of the dough, so I still have a chance to redeem myself. Also, I skipped the cinnamon sugar topping because that's how I like it. The crackers held up to s'more-ification better than store-bought since they weren't perforated- no cracking in half mid-bite:

Peanut Butter Cookies with Peanut M and Ms

We borrowed Mr. Ben's oven this weekend and baked up a storm of cookies... soft peanut butter cookies with peanut M&Ms. 

Pretty good!  Be sure not to let the cookies overbake; take them out of the oven when they look just not quite done and you'll end up with soft and chewy instead of hard and crumbly.

Christmas Cookies

This past weekend, Tim, Ben, Erin and I tried to amp up the Christmas-y feeling here in Jakarta (it's a little limp... I think it's the humidity) by baking some Christmas cookies. 

Tim likes to roll balls between his hands.

But he does not like getting his photo taken.

We made some tried and true favorites:  peanut butter blossoms (I will not tell you how much we paid for the Hershey's kisses. Ridiculous.), chocolate crinkles (I wanted to put these white chocolate/mint Hershey's kisses in these, but they were even more ridiculously expensive and I didn't buy them.), and spicy, chewy ginger cookies.

We made a mess. And drank some beers.

COOOOOKIES!

The kitties alternated between attacking Tim and innocently napping.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I went to the beach for an early spring ladies' getaway, so I needed to bake a quick sweet treat to bring with me.
These peanut butter and oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips fit the bill: sweet, peanuty, rich, super simple.

Compost Cookies: Meh.

Remember when I made that addictive and delicious crack pie based on the Momofuku Milk Bar delight? I loved the combination of sweet and salty so much, so I decided to take a crack (har har) at making another recipe from the Milk Bar: compost cookies. These cookies looked awesome: a compost-like combination of traditional sweet baking items (chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, etc.) and salty snacks (potato chips, pretzels, etc.). The recipe also uses a funky, non-traditional method for making the batter than involves creaming the butter, sugar and eggs together for over 10 minutes.Sadly, while the unbaked dough was to die for, I can't say I'm super excited about how the cookies came out. The were super flat, despite the fact that I refrigerated the dough as the recipe suggested. They were also super greasy when baked... maybe due to the added grease from the potato chips? Finally, they were just too big... 6 ounces of dough makes a cookie that is literally bigger than the plate I wanted to put it on.

I think I may try the recipe again, and make the following changes in the hopes that the final product lives up to the hype: for my salty snacks, add fewer greasy potato chips and supplement with some pretzels, skip the extra long creaming process, and make the cookies half the size.

Mocha Cookies with White Chocolate Chips

New favorite cookies.
Mocha cookies with white chocolate chips.
Rich and fudgey, with a hint of coffee, chewy in the middle and crisp on the edges.
Yum. The recipe called for instant coffee powder, but I used instant espresso powder. Not sure if it makes a difference... I also threw in a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips in addition to the white chocolate chips, just for shits and giggles.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I couldn't resist buying David Lebovitz's new cookbook, Room For Dessert, since I love both his blog and his ice cream cookbook, The Perfect Scoop. The first recipe I chose to try out was his chocolate chip cookie recipe... the internets tell me that it's as good as, if not better than the NY Times recipe from a couple years ago which is supposed to be "perfect." Both recipes recommend refrigerating the cookie dough for some time before baking the cookies.I made the cookies for a par-tay we had at the house, and didn't get a chance to taste the finished product before they were all gone (snagged by beer drinkers with the munchies), but I can say that after trying some of the dough as I mixed it up, if the finished cookies are half that good, they rock. The dough was super chunky and the toasted nuts (I used half walnuts, half pecans) gave it a rich flavor.

Can't wait to try some of the other recipes from Room for Dessert!

Cookie Extravaganza, Part Deux

A second Christmas cookie extravaganza, this time in preparation for my office's pot-luck Christmas dessert party.

This time I limited myself to two kinds of cookies, both of which were simple drop cookies, since I was cooking on a weeknight:

1. I resurrected the chewy ginger cookies from the first cookie extravaganza since they were so good.

2. I also tried out these peanut butter blossom cookies, although I substituted milk chocolate chips for the requisite Hershey's kisses.

Mmmmmm!

Cookie Extravaganza!

Chuck and I, with the help of Mark and Leah, made about a thousand cookies to put in Christmas tins and hand out to friends. Here are the recipes!

Pecan Tassies: mini pecan pies, made with the tart press that Martha stuck in my stocking one year.

Matcha (Green Tea) Cookies: sugar cookies with green tea powder mixed in.

Turtle Thumbprints: chocolate, pecan and caramel goodness.

Ginger Chewies: gingery soft and chewy cookies with raw sugar on top for crunch.

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats: No photo, but you can imagine...

Chocolate-Dipped Coconut Macaroons: another Ina recipe, dipped in semi-sweet chocolate.

Jam-Filled Cream Cheese Cookies

A Martha Stewart Every Day Food recipe that I can't find online, but that's probably ok because they were a FAIL anyway... they were supposed to look like this (which about 2 of ours did):

But the vast majority of them looked like starfish writhing on the ocean floor as they bleed to death:

Pistachio Refrigerator Cookies

Not sure where Martha got the recipe, but here it is:

2 cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2/3 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
¼ cup finely chopped pistachios
non pareils
green food coloring

Mix dry ingredients. Cream butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla. Beat until smooth. Add dry ingredients and mix.

Using 1 cup of dough, add green food coloring, then add chopped nuts. Shape into a 10” roll. Wrap in waxed paper and freeze for 10 minutes.

Roll remaining dough into a 10x6 rectangle. Place other roll of dough on the rectangle and gently wrap the dough around the nut dough and seal it.

Roll the whole log in nonpareils sprinkled on waxed paper.
Wrap the dough in the waxed paper. Freeze for about 20 minutes. Slice about 1/8” thick. Place about 2” apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 for about 8 to 10 minutes. Makes about 6 dozen.

No-Bake Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chewies

Chuck and I decided to taste-test a cookie we were considering making as part of our Christmas cookie experiment... we thought this one looked good because it combined peanut butter and chocolate and was a no-bake, so we figured we could make it at the same time as another cookie and not have them compete for oven time and space.

This cookie is perfectly easy. Perfect to satisfy a random weeknight chocolate craving, for sure.

Alas, it's not quite perfect for our purposes... not what we were looking for in a Christmas cookie. Too soft in consistency and not pretty enough to stand up to the other, flashier cookies we're planning to make.