Cookie #4: Snickerdoodles

Love these cookies.  We have a recipe for Snickerdoodles but they always come out hard as rocks.  Not a fan of the crunch if it breaks your teeth and scratches your gums.  Anyway, I was talking to a friend about it and she recommended this recipe on AllRecipes.com.  It is Snickerdoodles IV.  And they are so good.

Ingredients

• 1 cup shortening
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C).
2. Mix the shortening , sugar, and eggs until creamy. Mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt in another bowl. Blend the wet with the dry ingredients using a wooden spoon until well-blended.
3. Roll the dough into the size of small walnuts.
4. Prepare the cinnamon and sugar mixture by mixing the cinnamon and sugar.
5. Roll the cookie dough into the cinnamon and sugar mixture until coated and place onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 6-10 minutes watching to make sure they don't burn. They should be very lightly brown and still soft looking on top. When they cool, they will crack a little on top.

Cookie #3: Twix cookies

This one's a keeper.  I found it on Pinterest and thought it would be a choc chip cookie without the chips and with the twix but the dough was a little different than your normal cc cookie and I am very happy with low it turned out.  Since making them, I have packaged them up and frozen them before getting any pictures to entice you so I will just borrow the image from the site I found it.  Here's the recipe:

Twix Bar Cookies

2 C plus 2 Tbsp flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

12 Tbsp unsalted butter,melted and cooled until warm

1 C packed brown sugar

1/2 C sugar

1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk

2 tsp vanilla

2 C coarsely chopped Twix Bars

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Chop your Twix bar into 1/4 inch chunks.  Cut each bar in half lengthwise and then chop into 1/4 inch pieces width wise.  In a bowl combine flour, soda and salt.  Set aside.  In your mixer blend butter and sugars together until combined.  Beat in egg, egg yolk and vanilla.  Add in dry ingredients and beat until just combined.  Fold in Twix Bar chunks.  Bake for 13-16 minutes until light golden brown and edges start to harden but center is soft.  Do not overbake.

Because of the caramel in the Twix  they may stick a bit to the cookie sheet so use a spatula to remove.

Cookie Recipe #2- Lemon Drops

Well, I tried out my second cookie hoping that it would be a success and make it onto the party menu and it DID!

They are called Lemon Drops for the very obvious reason that they have lemon drops in them.  The hub was nervous about them but ended up loving them.  He summed them up perfectly calling them lemon-flavored sugar cookies. 

I found the recipe on Your Homebased Mom.  Her glaze looks a little thicker than mine.  My lemon had a lot of juice I guess.  But that will be my only tweek when the party rolls around. 

As a sidenote, making these cookies fell at a very convenient time when our friends throw an Annual Cookie Contest.  They judge your cookies and present winners with a prize.  I took these since I didn't like the idea of eating them all on my own.  Anyway, the judge is not a lemon fan but award these with an Honorable Mention!  I'd say that says it all.

Cookie recipe #1: Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies

My babies will be turning 1 and 2 in November so I thought I'd get started on party planning.  I am planning a Milk and Cookies party so I need to start trying out cookie recipes.  This is my first one and I'm sorry to say it will not be getting an invitation.

The cookies are yummy and I really have to force myself to stop thinking about them so I don't eat them all in one day but they were a little frustrating to put together.  We were fine until assembly.  Hubby and I did it together and we both really struggled with getting the PB filling completely enclosed in the chocolate dough since it was a bit crumbly (maybe our fault and not the recipe) and therefore hard to mold which is exactly what you have to do.  We have a few ugly cookies but overall they turned out fine.

The only reason I won't make them for the party will be to reduce stress.  Maybe another time, Cookie.


And the recipe was found at Pennies on a Platter via Pinterest.

Yield: 2-3 dozen cookies

1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened cocoa
½ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
½ cup granulated sugar (plus more for dipping)
½ cup packed brown sugar
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup creamy peanut butter, divided
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
¾ cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375˚F.

Stir together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

In a large mixing bowl fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the sugar, butter and 1/4 cup of the peanut butter until light and smooth.  Add in the vanilla and egg, beating one at a time to combine.  Gradually stir in the flour mixture.  Set dough aside.

To make the filling, cream together the powdered sugar and remaining 3/4 cup of peanut butter until smooth.

To assemble the cookies, spoon a generous tablespoon of chocolate cookie dough and flatten into a circle with your hands.  Scoop a small amount of peanut butter filling mixture and place in the center of the chocolate dough.  Wrap the chocolate dough around the peanut butter filling, pinching ends together to seal.  Roll the cookie in between hands to smooth into a ball.  Roll into a bowl of sugar and place on the cookie sheet.

Use the bottom of a glass to slightly flatten the cookies.  Bake for 7 to 9 minutes.  Do not over bake.  Let cool on wire rack.

Altering a tin and the best cookies ever!

One of my favorite things to do growing up was bake cookies.  It was so rewarding as a child to make something so sweet and delicious especially when you can eat the cookie dough while you wait for the others to bake.  My mom had a Tollhouse cookie tin that she kept all the cookies in and it was such a treat to open the pantry door to find that tin sitting in there filled with cookies.  

Now that I have a family of my own, I wanted something like my mom's tin to hold my cookies and Little Birdie Secrets had exactly what I was looking for.

And please do not underestimate the shortbread cookie recipe on the same tutorial.  Those cookies are a-MAZING!

Cake pops and other sweet treats!

You might've heard of these.  They were all over the place about 2 years ago.  I came across them on Bakerella while planning for a friend's baby shower and thought they were too cute not to make.  Since the shower gave me a perfect excuse to do it I went ahead and made the little cupcakes.  The cupcakes have a lot of steps to them and took a long time to shape and dip.  We put some on sticks and did some without.  I think they turned out perfect but if I ever have the occasion to make them again, I think I'll try something a little different.  Most of the rest of my ideas came from a post at Little Birdie Secrets.

A few ideas for next time:

-Make cake balls instead of cupcakes.  They will take a lot less time to form and dip.  

-Eliminate the stick.  Unless I'm going to wrap them individually to give away, the stick was not necessary and made it difficult to display without buying foam to stick them in.  For a party platter, balls will be much easier to serve.

-Try a different cake/frosting combo.  I found this list on the post at LBS:

• Lemon cake/butter cream frosting with dark chocolate shell
• Strawberry cake/strawberry frosting with white chocolate & dark chocolate drizzle
• German chocolate cake/coconut pecan frosting with milk chocolate shell
• Carrot cake/cream cheese frosting with white chocolate shell
• Chocolate fudge cake/chocolate frosting with milk chocolate shell & white chocolate drizzle
• Vanilla cake/vanilla frosting with dark chocolate shell
• Red velvet cake/cream cheese frosting with milk chocolate shell

Besides cake pops, I have a few other cute treats that would be fun to try or that I have already tried and were fun.  Like this one...


At Easter time, I found this really cute idea to take marshmallows and spread the top with peanut butter, then dip them in chocolate and decorate.  You were supposed to use egg-shaped ones but I couldn't find them so I used normal ones.  (Sorry no picture and I can't find the blog it was on to credit the idea.)  I made them for some friends and now that I've tried it once, I have so many more ideas on how to improve them.  That happens to me a lot.  The first time around is usually a flop (and when I say that all it means is that it wasn't Martha Stewart perfect) and I learn a lot of things as I go.  One of the major things I learned is that your final result only tastes as good as the ingredients you use.  I have used a certain dipping chocolate for a while and it's been fine until I did these marshmallows.  I've learned that when doing candy, you want to use the really good stuff like Ghirardelli.
  

Little Birdie Secrets had this idea that would be even easier to do with marshmallows. 

Cookie pops are such a cute idea that I've been meaning to try for a long time.  Little Birdie Secrets sends you to Parents Magazine but unfortunately the link is outdated when you click on it.  I will try and explain how they did it to the best of my memory but please remember that I read this 2 years ago.  Basically, you take 2 Nilla Wafers and some caramel (I would probably use the candy caramels, like Brach's) or I guess you could do other things like peanut butter or marshmallow creme and make a sandwich cookie sticking the sucker stick in between the wafers.  Then you dip them in chocolate and sprinkle.  I love these!  When I try these, I will probably also leave out the stick only to save money but if you have them on hand, they would be some much cuter.  Don't you think?

Along the lines of cookie pops comes a family favorite.  These are some of the easiest things to throw together.  Jared was in charge of the March Madness prize at work and this was the prize.  You take 2 Ritz crackers and sandwich them with PB.  Then you dip them in vanilla/white chocolate.  We did orange instead for the occasion and melted milk chocolate for the lines.  They are so yummy and so addictive.  I love them!