A few years ago, I bought the Martha Stewart Cookies cookbook. I bought it mostly because the pictures are amazing, and make me want to eat the cookies right off the page. The index is my favorite part; complete with a mini-photo of each type of cookie in the book, with its recipe’s page number. I’m a very visual person, and often have a hard time using cookbooks that don’t have pictures of the food (if I can’t see it, how will I know if it will work? Obviously, a picture tells me that the dish will taste great…). This book suckered me into buying it, even though there are no vegan recipes and I was vegan at the time. I altered some of the recipes to make them vegan and they were fine. But now I’m not vegan anymore (I know, I talk about this all the time…Sorry), and I made these cookies using real butter and real eggs like the recipe calls for and dang. They were good!

I can never make a recipe as is, I have to have at least one alteration and make my own version. I used this Martha original recipe, but added generous sprinkles (maybe two or three) of cloves and nutmeg to the batter. The cookies came out chewy in the middle, crisp on the outside, and deliciously spicy. Martha recommends adding raisins, toffee bits, or chocolate chunks. I opted for chocolate chips. Yum!

Warning: This recipe makes a ton of cookies! My friends were over one night and we ate a lot of fresh-out-of-the-oven cookies for dessert, I ate some in the following days at home, I brought a bucket of them to school to share with other teachers, and there were enough left over to freeze for a rainy day. It’s not raining right now, but hey, I might just go dig one out of the freezer right now…What better way to start out the day?

Yum.

Do I need to say more?

Just head on over to SimplyRecipes to make these Heath Bar-filled delicious cookies. The only change we made was to substitute brown sugar for half of the white sugar, to create a more caramel-like treat. We used the Trader Joe’s versions of Heath Bars (they came in a little tub like other candies), but I don’t think that made much of a difference in taste. The dough is delicious, but the soft-gooey-warm-right-out-of-the-oven-cookie is incredible.

Martha suggests using room temperature butter, but I have heard that if you melt the butter (and then cool it to room temperature), you will get a chewier cookie. I don’t know if that’s true because I didn’t do a controlled experiment in this case but I did try melting the butter, and I liked the results. Otherwise this is Martha’s recipe exactly, and makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Ingredients:

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, melted and then cooled
½ cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp. coarse salt
2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Melt butter in a saucepan and let cool while you whisk together the flour and baking soda in a bowl. Put butter and sugars in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Reduce speed to low. Add salt, vanilla, and eggs; mix until well blended, about 1 minute. Mix in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop heaping tablespoons of dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges turn golden but centers are still soft, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks; let cool completely. Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment in airtight containers at room temperature up to 1 week.

We found this recipe about a week ago here, and have made 3 batches since. They are too good to stop sharing with friends, or to stop eating them ourselves. They’ve been taken to numerous events, and everyone gobbles them up immediately, asking for more. One friend said he came to our housewarming party just because he heard we would have these cookies here (I think/hope he came to warm our house, too). These cookies are gluten-free, but not vegan. They have whipped egg whites which makes a crunchy outer layer around a gooey middle (like a dense flourless cake filling). Make these cookies with caution: they are fudgy, crispy, and unstoppably delicious.

]]> http://thatsonetoughcookie.com/2011/12/23/chocolate-crinkle-cookies-aka-brownie-bites/feed/ 0 Tessa _MG_4353 _MG_4326 http://thatsonetoughcookie.com/2011/02/05/ive-got-my-eye-on-you/ http://thatsonetoughcookie.com/2011/02/05/ive-got-my-eye-on-you/#comments Sat, 05 Feb 2011 20:24:16 +0000 Tessa http://thatsonetoughcookie.com/?p=1637 ]]> What do you get when you add your chocolate-loving housemate’s birthday, a request for Raspberry Blackout Cake with Cream Cheese Icing, and an only-sometimes-functioning-oven? Add into the mix an emergency run to the nearest TJ’s for dark chocolate chips, an extra pair of hands for rolling, and a lot of freezer space?

Cake Balls!

Now, I will tell you honestly that Cake Balls are delicious and worth the time spent making them no matter whether you’re whipping them up from scratch for the sole purpose of eating a perfectly crunchy outer shell with moist soft cake inside, or if you’re problem-solving a baked cake that wouldn’t detach from the pan like I was. Cake Balls are bite-sized, tasty, cute no matter how they are decorated, and pretty hip right now. Why not?

However fun these birthday desserts were, I am so glad our new oven is being delivered today! No more baking “disasters”!

These cookies went so well with the Lavender Coconut Agave Ice Cream I made, that it was slightly ridiculous. We ate them all in one sitting! Mmm. And these cookies couldn’t be easier. In fact, the rich, toasty hazelnut and honey-infused batter is so easy to whip up, you can make them in only five minutes. And if you’re pressed for time, you don’t even really have to bake them, because they are so great raw. So, all it takes is five minutes to mix up the batter, and then however long it takes you to eat them (should really be only a few minutes, if you have a group of hungry party guests). Instant happiness!

Feel free to sub the honey for agave, although you might want to cut down the amount just a tiny bit depending on how sweet you want the cookies to be.

Honey Lavender Hazelnut Cookies Ingredients:

2 cups hazelnut flour (you can grind up whole hazelnuts if you need to)
1 cup honey, or 3/4 cup agave
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 tsp. dried lavender

Preheat the oven to 350º F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Combine the hazelnut flour, honey/agave, salt, vanilla, and lavender in a large bowl. Mix until smooth (you can do this by hand or in a food processor).
Eat raw, or roll the dough into 3/4-inch balls and place on pan. Lightly press the down so they get a little flatter.
Bake until firm to the touch, about 20 minutes.

For a gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan decadent birthday celebration, we sandwiched these cookies around homemade Lavender Coconut Agave Ice Cream. Couldn’t have been better; except that I made a second batch of cookies! I whipped up some Honey Lavender Hazelnut Cookies to mix-and-match ice cream sandwich flavors with. Stay tuned for that new recipe, coming soon!

Ps. Becky, this post is for you. Thanks for being my #1 fan, and motivating me to update!

So, when Marika visited me in California last month, she brought the recipe with her. I hadn’t had a chance to make them until a few days ago, when Talia and I wanted to whip up some goodies. They are so easy and fast to make – and don’t require specific fancy ingredients! You can use whatever kinds of nuts you have in your house, or leave out the carob chips, or substitute another liquid sweetener (honey instead of brown rice syrup?), or adapt them to whatever your preferences are. Make sure to eat a lot of the batter before baking them, just because.

Carob Date-Nut Cookies Ingredients:

1 cup rolled oats
1 2/3 cup pecans (can substitute walnuts)
1 1/3 cup brown rice flour
1 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
6 Tblsp. olive oil
1/3 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup maple syrup
1 cup pitted dates (soaked in hot water for 15 minutes, then drained)
1 cup grain-sweetened carob chips

Preheat your oven to 350º F.
Bake the oats and pecans on a baking pan for 10 minutes.
Food process the rice flour and half of the oats till they are thoroughly combined and finely ground. Add half of the toasted pecans to the food processor and grind to a fine meal. Add the rest of the oats and pecans, as well as the cinnamon and nutmeg, and pulse once or twice (leaving some whole oats and chunks of nut).
Mix the wet ingredients together, and add to the dry. Fold in the dates. Pulse in the food processor till fairly smooth.
By hand, stir in the carob chips. If the nuts and oats were still warm when you added them to the batter, the carob chips may melt and be incorporated into the batter – if not, they will stay whole and you will get lovely chunks of carob in each bite of delicious cookie!
Drop tablespoons of the batter onto lightly greased cookie sheets, and top each cookie with a whole pecan.
Bake for 15-18 minutes, until browned around the edges.

Rosemary Lemon Cookie Ingredients:

1 cup Earth Balance margarine, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg’s worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer, blended till frothy
1 tsp. vanilla
1 Tbsp. fresh rosemary, finely chopped
2 tsp. finely grated lemon zest
2 1/4 cups flour
1/4 cup almond milk (for brushing)

Beat the Earth Balance and sugar together in a stand mixer or with a spoon until pale, light and fluffy. Add the egg replacer and vanilla and mix until well blended. Add the rosemary, lemon zest, and flour and mix well.

Divide the dough in half and shape them into logs and place on a piece of parchment paper. roll the logs about 1 1/2″ in diameter. Chill in the fridge or freezer for at least an hour (more is fine).

Preheat the oven to 375º F. take the logs out of the fridge, brush with almond milk and roll in sugar. Cut the logs into 1/4″ slices and place on a parchment covered baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Cool on a wire rack before eating.

My mouth has been watering basically since the exact moment on May 24, 2008, when Dayna posted this recipe on her blog. The page has been bookmarked on my toolbar for as long as I can remember. Why haven’t I made these Whoopie Pie confections until now? I have no idea. They are incredible. The spicy ginger and molasses flavors in the cakey cookies are perfectly paired with the sweet orange blossom aroma of the fluffy icing sandwiched in between. This last week was very busy at school; besides all the normal teaching and homework to do, we had to complete a high-stakes standardized state assessment teaching unit deployed by the State of California for all teaching credential students. In the middle of this crazy week was a dearly beloved and inspiring professor’s birthday, and since I wanted to bring her a treat and wanted to give everyone going through such a draining experience, I added baking cookies to my ever expanding To Do List. This happened to be the one thing that I actually wanted to do. So, of course baking took priority over reading and writing and processing, and I jumped at the opportunity to bake this recipe I’d been waiting to try forever. This was truly what I was looking for: something fruity and different, off the radar of traditional birthday baking surprises and a definite pick-me-up for the rest of us.

Notes from baking: My cookies are not as lightly colored as Dayna’s (I think because I used blackstrap molasses), and I added a little extra orange blossom water to pump up the intensity of the flavors. The cookie batter is more like a cake batter than I would have expected, and you definitely have to scoop the batter with a spoon and dollop it onto your pan. After baking, the cookies have a soft pliable consistency, more like a muffin or cupcake-top than I would have expected – but I’ve also never had a real Whoopie Pie and I think this is what it’s supposed to be like. I personally enjoyed the overall fluffy and melt-in-your-mouth experience of eating them!

If you want to pack the cookies and take them anywhere with you: don’t layer the cookies! Or, if you must, put sheets of wax or parchment paper in between the layers, because these cookies get sticky and smushy and while they still taste delicious, their cute sandwich and easy eatability disappears quickly as they turn into one giant cakey-frostingy-decadent mush. That you might have to eat with a fork, instead of your fingers. That certainly didn’t stop us from devouring the cookies quickly, but word to the wise: bring napkins!