Easy Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies

The goal this month is to use what I have on hand, and I'm doing my best to stick to it, even when that means cooking for others. It's my turn to bring dessert for our bible study group- 8 adults and 5 kids. What's in the pantry that I can share?

1 box chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 C oil
1 C chocolate chips

Mix first 3 ingredients together, then stir in chocolate chips. Form into balls and flatten. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Let cool before removing from baking sheet. Makes about 4 dozen.

Notes: The recipe I had found called for 2 cups of chocolate chips, but the 1 1/2 cups I used seemed like too much, and I was afraid the cookies weren't going to hold together. This is a very oily dough.

The result: I made chocolate cookies from a cookie mix a while back and was VERY disappointed- they were tasteless! These, on the other hand are chocolatey and moist (but not cakey) and really tasty cookies. I will be making them again. Bonus? cake mix can usually be gotten for free or almost-free with combined coupons and sales at the grocery store.

Yes, they tasted as good as they look.

Old-fashioned Christmas

I was given a cookbook a while back by my mother or aunt or someone... The 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cookbook. It's by Fannie Farmer, and, as the story goes, my grandmother learned to cook by its pages. Well, I hadn't given it much thought- I had plenty of other cookbooks, and the INTERNET, so I hadn't cracked it open. While preparing ideas for Christmas, though, I thought a good old-fashioned gingerbread cookie would be fun to make. I looked for a gingerbread cookie recipe in the cookbook and found out the wonder (and challenge!) of the old book.

The cookbook isn't an updated version of an old recipe collection, like my Joy of Cooking cookbook- it is a word-for-word reprint of the Cooking-School Cookbook straight out of 1896, and even has sections that are more like an old textbook than a cookbook. All the recipes assume you're cooking over a fire. Lard is a common ingredient. No oven temperatures are given, and very few cooking times. Like I said, a challenge!
Here are the two recipes I tried; I'll copy what was printed in the cookbook, and, in italics, what I did:

Soft Molasses Cookies

1 C molasses - I had this on hand. So far so good.
1/2 C shortening, butter & lard, mixed. - Um, I don't keep lard around, exactly. I used 1/4 C each of butter & shortening.
1 Tbsp ginger - I didn't know whether this meant "fresh" or "dried" ginger, so I used a scant tablespoon of dried ground ginger.
1 Tbsp soda - Baking soda. Check.
2 Tbsp warm milk - In a very modern way, I heated the milk in the microwave.
2 C bread flour - I just had all-purpose flour on hand.

Heat molasses to boiling point, add shortening, ginger, soda dissolved in warm milk, and flour. (Invite your kids in the kitchen to watch this one. Apparently hot molasses + baking soda = cool chemical reaction) Chill thoroughly (Because of poor planning on my part, my dough was in the fridge for a week. I didn't tell those who ate the cookies that.) Toss one-fourth of the mixture on a floured board and roll as thinly as possible ; shape with a small round cutter, first dipped in flour. (I rolled to about 1/8" thickness, and used shaped cutters, not round ones. What fun are gingerbread CIRCLES when you can have gingerbread men?) Place near together on a buttered sheet and bake in a moderate oven. (What? no temperature? No time? "Moderate" means 350 degrees, and, I'm not sure I got the time right. My cookies weren't crisp, some were floppy-ish, and I don't know what they were "supposed to" be like. And I didn't write down how long I let them go. We'll say 8 minutes. And 'buttered sheet'? I modernized that & sprayed the cookie sheet with nonstick spray.) Gather up trimmings and roll with another portion of dough. During rolling, the bowl containing the mixture should be kept in a cool place, or it will be necessary to add more flour to the dough, which makes the cookies hard rather than crisp and short. (The 'crisp and short' comment is why I think I make not have cooked the cookies long enough.)

These were good gingerbread cookies- chewy and not crisp, as I mentioned. I let one cookie sheet crisp up & decided I preferred them chewy :) They had a good, dark color and a good flavor. Somehow, I've mysteriously lost my picture of the results. This is very disappointing.

Moving on... I tried one more (similar) recipe from the Fannie Farmer cookbook- this time, gingerbread muffins.

Soft Molasses Gingerbread

1 C molasses
1/3 C butter
1 3/4 tsp soda
1/2 C sour milk - That is, buttermilk- add 1 T vinegar to each cup of milk, mix, & set aside until needed.
1 egg
2 C flour
2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp salt

Put butter and molasses in saucepan and cook until boiling point is reached. Remove from fire, add soda. (This is the cool science-experiment-like part again. I made my husband come stir so he could see the results.) and beat vigorously. Then add milk, egg well beaten, and remaining ingredients mixed and sifted. (I got a sifter for Christmas! I could do this part!) Bake fifteen minutes in buttered small tin pans, having pans two-thirds filled with mixture. (Here, she gave me a time but no temperature? I baked the batter at 350 degrees in a greased muffin pan- also a Christmas gift!- for closer to 20 minutes. The recipe made exactly 12 muffins)

I topped the muffins with a simple icing made of powdered sugar & milk. Here's Fannie Farmer's version:

Confectioners' Frosting

2 Tbsp boiling water
Confectioners' sugar
Flavoring

To water add enough sifted sugar to make of right consistency to spread; then add flavoring. Fresh fruit juice may be used in place of boiling water. This is a most satisfactory frosting, and is both easily and quickly made.
I didn't follow these directions at all, I just loved the description and to-the-point instructions. It was cute. What I did: used 2 Tbsp milk and a little vanilla and added a bunch of powdered sugar. Turns out, 2 Tbsp was way too much, and I had a bunch of icing left over after drizzling a little on all the muffins.

What do I now love about this cookbook? I'm an engineer, and the cookbook treats this all as a science to be explored. It gives "scientific explanations" (or what was understood in 1896, anyway) of different cooking & food phenomena, and seems to allow for experimentation around simple short recipes- none longer than a paragraph. The lack of pictures makes it all very exciting and challenging as well- you never know what you're supposed to end up with.

More cookie decorating

This is truly quality family time.

Cookie party

Last weekend, we had a couple friends over from a nearby town. I made lasagna and we talked and played Nintendo games and board games and had a good ol' time. It was much-needed catching up. The sweetest part of the evening? Decorating sugar cookies!





These were all promptly eaten, along with many others.

Today, I'll have my 3- and 5-year-old nephews here, and I hope to decorate gingerbread cookies with them. Hopefully I'll have pictures to post from that, too.

Baking Season!

(The snickerdoodles in the middle of the plate I made. The other cookies were store-bought, because the snickerdoodle recipe made fewer than anticipated.)

I've got cookie tins to give away, and I can't wait to fill them! I'm at a loss- where do I start? What sorts of cookies do I make? The options seem so endless!

What are you baking this year?

Candy Corn Cookies!

I made these cookies last year, but didn't give an explanation as to how, so, here it is, in pictures.

These colorful cookies are based on the Betty Crocker recipe. In the spirit of Irma, I did use the Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix to make the dough. You can make whatever sugar cookie dough you want- I'll skip that step in the recipe- but it's best to pick one that won't spread too much, so the cookies hold their approximately-triangular shape. If you want a from-scratch recipe, look for "cut-out cookie" dough. If you do use the Betty Crocker mix, I left out 2 T worth of butter, and added about a tablespoon & a half's worth of flour.

(Click for larger photos)

Make the dough. Divide dough into three equal balls, and set one aside (this will be the white part of the cookie. Knead yellow food coloring into one ball until desired yellow-ness is reached. Knead orange food coloring (or, as I did, red and yellow) into the third ball, until desired orange-ness is reached. (Caveat on giving food coloring to children) Find a small, rectangular container- a loaf pan, or, as you can see here, a plastic storage container. Line the container with plastic wrap and press the white dough into the bottom. Press the orange dough on top of it, then the yellow. Refrigerate 1-2 hours, until the block is firm. (I refrigerated mine 24 hours, because it was convenient, but this turned out to be too long, and the block got kinda dried out & too hard. Lesson learned.) Another view

Take out & unwrap the block of dough. Slice into 1/4 to 1/3 inch slices- just like you would with a tube of that refrigerator cookie dough. Not that you'd ever buy that stuff, of course.

THE MAGIC:
Slice each of those rectangular slices as shown, in a zig-zag pattern. Candy corn! Some will have white tops, and some will have white tips, and NO ONE WILL NOTICE. Place on a cookie sheet and cook per your cookie dough's directions- though watch them, they're probably smaller than the run-of-the-mill sugar cookies.

Spontaneous Dessert

Typically, we don't eat dessert in this home. If I cook dessert, it is for guests, or for some sort of get-together or event where I will be taking it elsewhere. It is a very rare day when I actually cook a dessert something for just the two of us.

Well, Tuesday was one of those days.

We had come home late from a meeting after dinner and, on our way home, were both wanting to stop for ice cream, but, at the same time, not wanting to spend money. We didn't share these thoughts until we were all the way home, and this is when I decided Something Sweet Shall Be Made.

My dear husband was on the computer, so I resorted to actually opening up ink and paper cookbooks, and came up with The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Bar from In the Kitchen With Mary and Martha: One Dish Wonders. The "One Dish" thing was especially welcome, since it was late and I didn't want a lot to clean up. The recipe looked simple as well, and it was done in no time, with what I had on hand!

1 C butter, melted
1 C brown sugar
1 C sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 C quick rolled oats (I didn't have 2 C on hand... probably more like 1.5 C)
1 (24 oz) package semisweet chocolate chips (I only had about 8 oz of chocolate chips on hand, so I threw in a few dark chocolate chips, and some mini-M&M's for good measure. The dark chocolate was a bad idea. The M&M's were a good idea.)

Grease a 9x13 pan. Mix ingredients in the order given & spread in the pan. (I mixed after each ingredient addition, and after each egg addition,to be safe.) Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes (it took mine 25+ minutes). Cool & cut into squares. Yield: 16 servings (Ha! I cut these into 16 squares, and the pieces, thanks to their sweetness and thickness, were delicious but too much to eat. Cut this into 32 squares, and go back for seconds if you want more.)

The Results?

Cowboy cookies

After my oatmeal cookie experiment earlier, I received an email with the REAL family Cowboy Cookie recipe. I was a bit worried, because it said 'Makes 100 cookies' - luckily that didn't come to be, but it did make a big batch - 55 by my count. Essentially, this is an oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookie that's not too heavy on the oatmeal (Now that I look at it, it's practically the same recipe, doubles, as the previous oatmeal chocolate chip recipe, minus cinnamon. Oh well.). My favorite cowboy approved of the results, so here is the recipe to share with you:

Family Cowboy Cookies
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 c. shortening
1 c. sugar
1 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
2 c. oatmeal
1 6-oz. pkg. chocolate chips
1 c. chopped nuts, raisins, or coconut (opt.)

Sift together first four ingredients. Set aside.

Blend shortening with sugars; add vanilla. Stir in eggs and beat until fluffy. Add flour mixture and remaining ingredients.

Drop onto ungreased cookie sheet (I discovered with the first group I put in that these do NOT spread, so, my normal strategy of forming dough into 1-inch balls created cookies that were 1-inch balls. The rest, I flattened the 1-inch balls into disks with better cookie-shaped results.). Bake at 350 for 8-10 min. (chewy). Up to 15 min. (crisp).

I baked mine for 10 minutes, approximately, and they were crispy on the outside-chewy on the inside right out of the oven, but crisp all over today. Still good, but I might try a lower cooking time next time.

And, yes, this was all done with my handy-dandy wooden spoon.

Oatmeal cookie experiment

For quite a while, I've been wanting to try to make oatmeal cookies. I like the chewy-ness of an oatmeal raisin cookie a lot, and it's one of the basic cookies I'd never tried to make before. I was also itching to bake something since I feel like it's been forever since I've cooked something sweet for fun. And, so, the story:

One of my husband's favorite treats is what his Grandma calls "Cowboy Cookies"- basically, oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies. Because a friend-of-a-friend posted a recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies recently, I thought I'd give it a try.
I mixed up everything as the recipe said, but thought there was quite a lot of flour for what I had in my mind as an "oatmeal cookie". I followed the directions anyway, rolled the cookie into balls, and set the first batch in the oven to cook. They weren't spreading out like I would have expected, so I rolled them into balls then flattened each cookie in the last batch, to give those cookies a head start (I'm SO unscientific when cooking!)

In the end, they weren't as oatmeal-y as I expected, and, according to my husband, Cowboy cookies need to be more oatmeal-y. This doesn't mean, however, they weren't delicious. The cinnamon in the chocolate chip cookies was a nice touch.
From Beth:

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 Tbls molasses
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup quick cooking oats (I use regular oats; they work fine)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (6 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips

In a large mixing bowl, cream shortening and sugar. Beat in molasses, egg, and vanilla. Combine the flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt: gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool for 5 minutes before removing to wire rack. Makes ~1 1/2 dozen cookies

So, I was still craving a proper Oatmeal Cookie, and I remembered that a couple weeks back, there was an entry in Make it From Scratch for Cinnamon Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, so I thought I'd give it a try, minus the cinnamon chips. I cut the recipe in half, because I DID already have 2.5 dozen cookies, I didn't need 4 dozen more. Two would be enough.

I mixed up the dough as directed, but I became wary when the first step, which said "Cream butter and sugarS together." There's only one type of sugar in the directions. Was I supposed to be using white sugar too? Or is the plural of sugar a typo? I stuck with the ingredients list and hoped it was a typo... Something I did differently than the directions: I read somewhere that soaking raisins in water for a few minutes before mixing them into a dough- whether a bread, muffin, cookie, whatever- will keep them moist during cooking, rather than drying out and getting chewy. I gave it a try.
I put both cookie sheets of oatmeal raisin cookies in the oven at the same time, and they, like the first batch of the other cookies, didn't really spread out during cooking either. When they cooled, I tasted them, and they were definitely chewy and oatmeal-y - the goal - but I still wonder if there was some sugar missing from the recipe.
From Heather (cut in half by me, without the cinnamon chips):

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
1/2 C butter or margarine, softened
1/2 C packed light brown sugar
1 eggs
3/4 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 C flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1.25 C quick oats
1/2 C raisins (or more)

- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- Cream butter and sugars together. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. Combine flour and baking soda; add to butter mixture beating well. Stir in oats, cinnamon chips and raisins (batter will be stiff)
- Drop by heaping teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack.

Makes about 2 dozen.

For a size comparison, the cookies with raisins are on the left, the chocolate chip cookies are on the right:


So, after making all these yummy cookies, what did I do? A lot of dishes. (Eating them's for an event tomorrow!)

Christmas cookies!

Originally posted at keeping feet on 12/18/06

I haven't been blogging much- it's been a busy time at work and at home. I have made time for one of my favorite holiday traditions, however: cooking cookies!

The first batch (last Wednesday) were traditional gingerbread men with a twist: a coworker was returning from staying home with his new baby after being gone 2 weeks, so I celebrated his return with 'baby gingerbread boys'

I haven't been blogging much- it's been a busy time at work and at home. I have made time for one of my favorite holiday traditions, however: cooking cookies!

The first batch (last Wednesday) were traditional gingerbread men with a twist: a coworker was returning from staying home with his new baby after being gone 2 weeks, so I celebrated his return with 'baby gingerbread boys'

I followed this Epicurious recipe and rolled out the dough, cut the cookies, and decorated them like babies with diapers. I thought it wouldn't be in good taste to include a couple raisins stuck to the back of the diaper, so I left those out :)

Last night, I made cookies for today's small group meeting. I used the "cutout cookies" recipe from the back of the Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix bag (using less butter & more flour than the typical recipe), and I was only moderately pleased- the cookies spread out more than I would have liked & therefore didn't hold their shape. I decorated them after work today and decided they turned out OK. At least they're pretty.

Later this week, I have plans to make snickerdoodles and perhaps chocolate chip cookies for people at work. This may sound terribly unhealthy, but I'm actually not eating many cookies, I'm giving them to other people to eat, so I continue to look slim by comparison (though I am eating my share of cookie dough!)

Next challenge to tackle: a gingerbread house. I've got the icing, some decorations,a and graham crackers. We'll see if it happens.