And many cookies were made.....

There is the assortment of cookies that I took to work this past Monday. Over the weekend my family and I made all of these treats. I helped with the making of many (except for the peanut butter and chocolate fudge which were made by my brother). I don't have pictures of every cookie, but here is a quick run down of what was made.

Cinnamon/Cherry Swirl Chip Cookies: Top of right side tray: My aunt made these before the rest of us made it to her house so I'm not sure of the name of these cookies or what all went in them, but they look nice and tasted good.

Peanut Butter Cookies (with Hershey's Kisses): The batter for these was also already made by the time we arrived, they followed the standard recipe.

Chocolate Graham Walnut Scotchies: Bottom of right tray: There were supposed to be oatmeal pecan scotchies, but after I already started making the batter I found out that my aunt did not have any oatmeal. After looking through her supplies I found a box of chocolate teddy grahams and figured that I could use those. I ground them up and put them in to replace the oats. Then since I had already changed the recipe and a lot of walnuts had already been chopped, I opted to use walnuts instead of pecans. Other than those changes, I pretty much followed the recipe. The chocolate flavor is very mild, the main flavor you taste is butterscotch.

Sugar Cutouts: My brother made the dough for these cookies a few weeks ago and froze it. It thawed nicely and was easy to roll out. My mom and grandmother did about all of the work on these, I only made the icing. I found a nice royal icing recipe but it was too thick so we thinned it down. Then that was a little thick too so we thinned it more. We shouldn't have thinned the second time, the icing on those cookies didn't get totally firm and were still sticky. That's something I will have to remember for next time.

Chocolate Raspberry Cream Cookies: The top right side of the right tray: I don't know where my mom got these baking chips from, but apparently Hershey's makes a raspberry cream filled chocolate baking bit. We just followed the recipe on the back of the package for these ones. Here is the recipe off Hershey's site. We went with the chocolate cookie variety. The cookie itself is alright but the texture is sort of dry; however, as soon as your tongue hits one of the raspberry cream bites you'll love it.

Fudge: As I mentioned before those were made by my brother. He's always been the one to make it, so I don't even try.

Peppermint Patties: These are hard to see, but they are in the upper middle next to the sugar cookies. These are a lot like the York peppermint pattie, but homemade. I mixed together baking powder, evaporated milk, and peppermint extract to make a dough. I rolled the dough into small disks and let them dry for a few hours. Once they were dry I melted some dark chocolate and shortening. I dipped the dried peppermint disks into the chocolate and set them on wax paper to dry. They have a nice flavor, the peppermint isn't too strong and the flavor of the chocolate comes through quite well.

Baklava: I saved this one for last. Every year we make baklava, my family is not Greek (or even remotely from that area of the world), but somehow making baklava became a family tradition. As usual we make 2 big trays and this year was no exception. However, we mixed things up a little this year and made 2 different types of baklava. We made one batch with walnuts and a lemon sugar syrup glaze and the other batch was made with pecans and a honey based glaze. If you only tried one of the batches I'm certain that you would enjoy it; however if you try them both, the pecan batch was the better of the two. Another interesting thing I wanted to mention about this year's baklava was that the philo dough (the very thin sheets of dough that make up the top and bottom of the baklava) came from the import store at the West Side Market. Up until now we had been using the stuff in the grocery store but had a difficult time with it last year since they changed the size of the sheets. While looking around the market one day earlier this year I saw the philo dough and made a note to go back and buy it from there. That was one of the best decisions I could make. The sheets held together quite well and didn't dry out easily. They were also much more affordable than that of at the grocery store.

Well, that's it for now. This coming weekend I have plans to make some candy type treats. I'll post more on that soon. If you have any questions about any of the cookies shown in this post, please leave a comment or drop me an email.

Annual Cookie Making Day

For the past few years my family and I have been getting together sometime before Christmas to spend part of a day making a bunch of cookies. This year there were actually two cookie days but I missed the first one since I was making periogis (which I really enjoyed); I was determined to be at the second party. As usual we had the party at my Aunt's house since she has a large kitchen with a double oven.

We typically have a few ideas of what will be made with each person bringing the ingredients they would need for what they would like to make. My brother had been on a big sugar cookie kick earlier this week and he brought some already chilled dough which was a major time saver. I had planned on making the carrot cake cookies again (but this time as a double batch with carrot cake and spice cake mixed together). My cousin and her fiance were to make the chocolate chip cookies and my mom had got together the ingredients for the baklava, molasses cookies, and the no-bakes.

We started around 11 and baked until about 3. Everything went smoothly with only a few cookies getting over-browned and some slightly mashed during the transfer from baking sheet to cooling rack.

What puzzled me the most is that there were 5 cookie sheets (if not more), and I basically only had one to work with. My brother and cousin took the other sheets for their cookies. So, as usual, I was stuck with one cookie sheet and my Silpat.

So the run down of what we made and quantities were about:
Sugar Cookies, 8 dozen
Chocolate Chip, 6 dozen
Molasses, 4 dozen
Carrot Cake, 4 dozen
No-Bake, 3 dozen
Baklava, 12 dozen pieces (between the 3 batches we made)

Everything came out really well and everyone got a lot to take back with them. I brought most of mine into work to share and everyone has been enjoying them. If you want to know the recipe for any of the above, send me an email or post a comment and I will get you the info.

Merry Christmas everyone!

And it became Fruitcake Biscotti...

The original plan was to make fruit cake cookies. I didn't have a recipe for fruit cake cookies and my plan was use a basic cookie base and add some fruit and nuts to it. The results are shown on the left side of the above image. Once the cookies were deemed a failure, I attempted to salvage the leftover dough and make biscotti. This almost worked, but then I overbaked the biscotti. The general comments from the people who have ate the biscotti say that the flavor is really good but they are way too dry.

I'm not too happy about how this turned out and I questioned if I should post it or not. In the end I think its important to admit your mistakes and learn from them. I'm not giving up the fruit cake cookie and will try again. Or maybe I will just try to perfect the fruit cake biscotti instead.

Pistachio Biscotti

Since we had our Holiday Lunch outing yesterday at the Cheesecake Factory, I decided that today's cookie would have to be something not as sweet as the previous two days. I was looking around the Food Network site and came across the recipe for Pistachio Biscotti. It looked simple enough and I decided to give it a shot.

I haven't made biscotti in a while but from what I remember they were easy to make and really well liked. This batch of biscotti went the same way.

Making biscotti is almost the same as making cookies except instead of shaping the individual pieces before baking you bake a long log (for lack of a better term) of dough. After its done baking you have to let the log cool for a bit then you cut it into the individual servings. These slices are then laid back onto the cookie sheet and baked again. In the end you have a very dry cookie that's great for dipping in coffee.

Everyone enjoyed these biscotti and they went quickly. I will probably try to alter the recipe by using different nuts and maybe adding dried fruit in the future.

Red Velvet Bites

The week of sweet treats continues. Today's treat is what I am calling Red Velvet Bites. They are basically everything you love about a red velvet cake, in the form of a cookie. The recipe starts with a red velvet cake mix (its the theme I'm going with right now) that is made into a cookie batter with eggs, oil, and butter, and for an extra kick, I added some semi-sweet baking chocolate.

When I came up with the plan to make these cookies, I was going to roll the dough into balls and coat them with powdered sugar before baking (so that they would have a crackled top); but while making the dough I realized that I didn't have any gloves and I was not about to roll these by hand (my hands would have been stained for days). So instead I baked them as a drop cookie and coated them with powdered sugar afterwards.

They give a bit of a surprise on the first bite since most people do not expect a chocolate taste from a red and white cookie. They are unique and fun for the holiday.

Carrot Cake Cookies

Last night I decided that I should make some more cookies and I have been thinking about how I could another cake mix. I searched through my cupboards and found that I had a couple carrot cake mixes (along with a red velvet and a spice cake mix). The abundance of carrot cake mix persuaded me to make carrot cake cookies.

The recipe was very simple, 1 stick of butter (softened, really softened), 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts, and 1 carrot cake mix. I mixed them all together in the stand mixer (I would not try this by hand since the dough is pretty stiff). I spooned the dough onto the cookie sheet in about teaspoon sized globs and baked them for approximately 12 minutes at 350 degrees C. Once out of the oven I transferred them to a cooling rack. Once fully cooled I iced the cookies with cream cheese icing. And that was it.

They are interesting little cookies. Eating one is like having a couple bites of carrot cake. I don't know if I will be making these again (it depends on the feedback I get from my coworkers). However, I think I might try to make something with that Red Velvet cake. I'll be sure to post what I come up with.

2-Layer Bars (there are really only 2 layers)

Before I get into the review, I want to comment on the name of this treat. I found this recipe on the Kraft Food's site and it was named "4 layer bars." But in reality, there are only 2 layers. There is the base layer and a layer of marshmallows, m&m's, and peanuts. Apparently Kraft thought that 4 layer bars sounded more impressive (which it does, but its not really accurate).

Anyway, back to the review.

If you have read my other posts, you know about my love for boxed cake mix. This recipe uses a yellow cake mix for the base layer. An egg and 1 stick of melted butter are added to the cake mix, its all stirred up and poured into a 9 x 13 pan and baked. Once the base layer is done, marshmallows, m&m's, and peanuts are poured over the top and its baked another few minutes to melt the marshmallows.

And that's it. It is super easy. Everyone at work enjoyed them, so they must be good.

If you try to make this, I do have one suggestion. When you go to cut the bars, spray some nonstick cooking spray on the knife, otherwise the marshmallow sticks and makes a big mess.

Sour Cream Chocolate Chip Cookies

Yesterday I was in the mood to make some cookies so I went searching around the Kraft website. I found this recipe which had ingredients that I had on hand. I was surprised to see a cookie recipe that used sour cream so I decided to give it a try.

I didn't have any issues with the recipe and the cookies came out great. The cookies are really moist and soft (thanks to the sour cream). The picture on the Kraft page shows lots of nuts and chocolate chips popping out of the cookies which leads me to believe that they put extra in those ones. I followed the recipe and you can see from the picture that they are not overly chocolately. I think I will add extra chocolate chips next time.

My family is planning a cookie party the weekend before Christmas and I will be making these again. I will post an update to let everyone know how the second batch turns out.

Pumpkin Pie Bars

I know that I said that I was not going to be making pumpkin stuff for a while but the Thanksgiving holiday inspired me to give this recipe a try. It came from the most recent Kraft Food and Family Magazine. The recipe is here. I think that there might be an error in the recipe however. If you only bake it for the required 25 minutes the inner portions of the pan do not get cooked. A baking time of 45 minutes is more appropriate.

I will also admit to making a mistake in my bars. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup of sugar (1/4 goes in the top and bottom mixture and 1/2 goes in the middle). I didn't read far enough ahead and put all 3/4 in the top and bottom mixture. To make up for this I only put a 1/4 cup of sugar in the middle. Other than being a little on the sweet side I do not think that it caused any real trouble.

It wasn't a hard recipe to follow and it didn't use any pre-made ingredients (which is often the case with this magazine). With baking time included it took about an hour and a half from start to finish which isn't too bad. I think if I would make this again I would make the bottom a little thinner and add that to the top. I think that would make a more even bar.

Pumpkin Cookies

Continuing on the pumpkin-fest, presented today are pumpkin cookies. The batch actually made 3 dozen cookies but I took the photo while the rest were still in the oven. I got this recipe from the Libby Company who makes the canned pumpkin. At some point last year I requested their pumpkin mini-cookbook and dug it out last night to get this recipe. The whole process took about an hour since I only have one cookie sheet and one silpat (**christmas gift hint**), but I was talking on the telephone a majority of that time so it didn't seem as long.

The cookies are sweet but not overly so. I brought them into work this morning and shared them with my coworkers. One said that they reminded her of a scone and the more I think about it, I agree. These cookies are pretty similar in flavor the pumpkin scones at Starbucks.

I expected a recipe from the Libby cookbook to turn out well and these met that expectation. This recipe is a definite keeper.

Peach Cookie Cobbler

I've been waiting to make this dessert for a while now. My original plan was to make individual cobblers in my onion soup bowls (these are the same shape and size as mine but a different color), but I saw that they were not oven safe. So instead I made the cobbler in an 8"x8" dish.

The thing that makes this cobbler unique and simple is that the topping is ready-made sugar cookie dough. If you wanted to make it even easier you could use canned fruit. I cooked down 2 bags of frozen peaches with a little sugar until the peaches were warmed through and a slight syrup had formed. The peaches were poured into the baking the dish and I rolled out the dough so it would cover the top of the dish. All that was left was to put the dough on top of the peaches and put the dish in the oven. I think it took about 40 minutes to bake (I kept checking until the top was golden brown.)

I served the cobbler with whipped topping but ice cream would make a great compliment as well.