cookie madness: nyo sugar cookies

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On my quest to find the perfect cookie for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, I read a lot of recipes.  A lot.

So many recipes that I had to ban myself from reading anymore recipes.  And then I read more.  And banned myself again.  And again.

And then I was grabbing something from the pantry and noticed this recipe hanging inconspicuously from a bottle of vegetable oil.  I didn’t mean to read the recipe, it just happened.  All on its own.  Out of my control.

Next thing I knew all of the ingredients were on the counter and then… by then I was too far in.  There was no turning back.

These are like sugar cookies, but so much better.  So, so much better.  The secret?  Brown sugar.

Brown sugar cookies.  So simple.  So sweet.  So delicious.

Even Boyfriend who thinks that sugar cookies are “a waste of a cookie” loved these.  Amazing what a difference brown sugar makes.  Just look at how soft and chewy they are.

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You’re drooling, I know.

It’s ok.  I won’t tell.  Just go into the kitchen and make these cookies.  Like, now.

Brown Sugar Cookies

[ Printable Recipe ]

  • 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
  • 1/2 cup butter
  • 1 1/4 cups firmly packed brown sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt

 

  1. Heat oven to 350ºF

 

  1. In a medium bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt.  In a large mixing bowl, beat shortening and butter until creamy.  Add brown sugar, egg and  vanilla, continue to beat until light and fluffy.  Mix in flour, baking soda and salt.

 

  1. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart onto cookie sheet.  (I chilled my dough and then flattened it slightly before baking).

 

  1. Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until golden brown (I kept mine closer to 12).  Cool on baking sheet on a wire rack 10 minutes, then transfer to cooling rack to finish cooling completely.

 

[ Adapted from the tag hanging on my bottle of Crisco ]

cookie madness: oreo snowflake cookies

 

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These cookies are for all you Oreo lovers out there. Sure you could always make your own Oreos, but why not just make some cookies and shove some crushed Oreos inside? Plus, these particular cookies only need 7 cookies-worth of crumbs, which means it’s a great way to use up the last of the box… or the perfect excuse to buy a new box and have plenty of… a-hem… “leftovers”.

I kicked this batch up a notch and finished off my bag of Birthday Cake Oreos (see the colorful sprinkles??), but you could really use any sandwich cookie. Like, Nutter Butters perhaps?

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A couple of things about the original recipe that I would (or did) change. The original recipe called for baking at 325°F but I found that temperature to be less than cooperative, so I kicked the oven up to 350°F and they baked perfectly. Note that they will only be ever-so-lightly browned on the bottoms. They’ll still be rather pale, but they’re baked, trust me. 🙂 I also thought there was probably a bit too much flour in the recipe. When I make them next time, I think I will reduce the flour by at least 1/4 cup.

Oreo Snowflake Cookies

[ Printable Recipe ]

  • 1 cup butter
  • 3 oz mascarpone cheese
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 1/4 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 7 Oreo cookies, crushed

Preheat oven to 350°F. Crush 7 Oreo cookies (I put them in a Ziploc bag and then use my rolling pin to release some stress beat them senseless. Carefully, though, since the bags sometimes like to break when I do that).

In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and mascarpone cheese until whipped (about 3 minutes).

Slowly beat in the sugar until light and fluffy, about two minutes more. Then beat in the egg yolk and vanilla until incorporated.

Add the flour and mix on low until just incorporated. Stir in crushed Oreo cookies.

Scoop cookie dough by the tablespoon onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake at for 12-15 minutes. They will still be pale, just every so slightly golden brown along the bottoms. Remove pan to a cooling rack and cool cookies on the pan 10 minutes or until cooled.
[ Adapted from Kevin & Amanda ]

 

You may also like these recipes:

faux-reos

 oreo cheesecake cookies

 s'more cookies

COOKIE MADNESS: Easy Pudding Cookies

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Well, it happened.  I’ve fallen victim to that evil thing known as the “common cold”.  Or, as I’ve been referring to it, a “commercial cold”… you know, like they show in the commercials.  Where some poor soul is like  sneeze, sneeze, blow nose, sniffle… I almost never get sick so I didn’t even know that was a real thing.  I thought it was just a dramatic take on the common cold.  I should have known better, the TV would never lie to me!

Why am I telling you this?  Because I’m running on very little sleep, have been up since 2:30 am, and am writing this at the wee hour of 4:00 am… without my glasses, because I didn’t want to turn on a light on my way out of the bedroom.

So I’m sure this particular post will not be winning any literary medals (to say the least).  I’m sure a more responsible party wouldn’t be writing their post at 4:00 am on the morning they plan to post it, but let’s just not talk about that.

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These cookies use the magic of pudding to stay nice and chewy.  For these cookies, I used butterscotch pudding, but I’m more excited for all the other flavors you could make.  You could use any flavor of pudding you want to make an infinite number of flavor combinations. I used butterscotch and chocolate, in a throwback to my chewy butterscotch bars, I immediately regretted not adding marshmallows.  WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME??

Oh hey, with Christmas rapidly approaching, any of you Instagramers out there, go ahead and follow @wee_eats and tag your own cookie pictures with #cookiemadness for a chance to be included in my Christmas Cookie recipe roundup!

Pudding Cookies

[ Printable Recipe ]

  • 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 small (3.9 oz) package instant pudding (I used butterscotch)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 2 cups mix-ins of your choice (I used a mix of butterscotch chips and chocolate chips)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F and line a baking sheet with parchment

2. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl.  Set aside.

3. In a large bowl or a stand mixer, beat butter and sugars until light and fluffly.  Add dry pudding mix and beat until well-mixed, then add the eggs and vanilla extract.  Add the flour in two additions, mixing until just incorporated.   Stir in your mix-ins.

4. Scoop by tablespoons onto baking sheets.  Mine didn’t spread much (possibly because I left them in the fridge too long and the pudding mix may have had too much time to pudding-ify) so I ended up gently smooshing the tops flat to avoid scoop-shaped cookies.  So my note to you is opposite of what I do with most of my cookies – DO NOT CHILL the dough.  Bake these right after mixing.  Maybe bake only a couple of cookies in the first batch (one smooshed and one not smooshed) to see if smooshing will be necessary.

5.  Bake 10 – 12 minutes until edges are just lightly browned.  Cool on baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack to cool completely.  (I cool mine on the sheet until the oven beeps for the next batch to go in, but that’s because I swap between two baking sheets).

You may also like:

butterscotch bars

oreo snowflake cookies

no bake cookies

Thursday Things

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Thanksgiving has come and gone (just like the pie above) and it is likely that I will be in a permanent food coma until the end of the year.  I realize some of you may still be detoxing, so please forgive me for all the sugar-talk that your eyes are about to ingest.

As many of you know, I have signed up for the GREAT FOOD BLOGGER COOKIE SWAP.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I still have no idea what cookie I am going to send.  I only know that I must send it by Wednesday, the 5th.  So, if you got me as your match… I will be equally as surprised as you are.  Well, only a few days less so.

So with December (the month of Christmas Cookies) rapidly approaching, and having to bake and research cookies anyway for the cookie swap, Wee Eats is going to enter a cookie vortex and the month of December will officially be deemed COOKIE-EMBER.

No wait, that doesn’t sound right.

DE-COOKIE-ER… no… ok.  I give up.  Let’s just call it what it is COOKIE MADNESS!

Very similar to space madness, but with cookies instead.

Do you love my chincy logo?  I just learned how to make it.  Like 3 minutes ago.  Don’t hate.  It’s a beautiful 3-minute logo.  (I think I may already be suffering from a little “cookie madness”… oops?)

Whatever.  Don’t lie.  You love it.  If you think you don’t you’re just lying to yourself.

And if you think it looks like a cookie with chicken pox, you’re also lying to yourself.  Chicken pox are red and those are clearly brown like chocolate chips.

So every week (until we reach Christmas) I will give you a new cookie recipe.  Exciting, right?  Assuming, of course, I don’t go into a sugar coma or diabetic shock before hand.

That might be a big assumption.

IN OTHER NEWS…

Have you seen that Cadbury created chocolate that DOESN’T MELT!  Well, I mean, it melts… eventually, but not until like 104 degrees or something like that.  Honestly, it kinda weirds me out.  Our bodies are what, like 98.6-ish?  Which means when you chew it up it will stay solid?  No melting?  That kind of sorcery is too weird for me!

I’ve also recently discovered the magic of a site called Issuu.  Issuu allows you to publish, or in my case READ, online “magazines” … for free!  Like this lovely magazine from FoodieCrush.  Which I probably shouldn’t have even looked at because now I’m even MORE undecided about which cookie to make for the cookie swap.  WHY MUST YOU HAVE SO MANY COOKIES?!?!  WHYYYY???

Sorry… tangent.

Boyfriend sent me this sandwich recipe, which actually looks relatively delish (and easy!).  So that may be on the menu soon.  Not this week.  I’m pretty sure we are going to eat cookies for every meal this week.  The fish sauce freaks me out a bit though… no way I’m putting three tablespoons of that stuff in there, no sir.

I’ve also really been craving some good tomato soup with grilled cheese, except that’s cold weather food and our highs are still in the 80s.  THE 80’S!!!!  It’s sunny and 80-something degrees out and the neighbors have their Christmas lights up and … and …

I’m sorry.  I’m apparently very unstable today.  Quite unstable indeed.  It’s all this cookie planning.  IT’S DRIVING ME MAD!!

Thursday Things

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COOKIE MADNESS HAS OFFICIALLY BEGUN!!!  So far, I have given you cream cheese stuffed red velvet cookies, with many more to come.  I was thinking one recipe a week, but it might end up being more … might.  There are just so many cookies.

So.  Many.  Cookies.

Speaking of cookies, I’m SO HAPPY that my cookie swap cookies are mailed and I don’t have to worry about that anymore.  After testing several recipes (as you can see above) I ended up sending the very first cookie I thought of anyway. (Isn’t that how it always works?)

At least I got some COOKIE MADNESS posts out of it, right?

Right.

Also, I received my first batch of cookie swap cookies in the mail yesterday! Some absolutely delectable chai snickerdoodles from Leslie of It’s My Kitchen.

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They couldn’t have come at a better time, as BF was following me around asking where all the cookies were, convinced that none were coming.  🙂  She also included an adorable snowflake ornament!  Thank you, Leslie!

Reason 23928437284 that I love Trader Joes…

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DO YOU SEE THIS?!?!  SAN MARZANO TOMATOES FOR $3.99?????  MADNESS!  We have plenty of tomatoes at home, but I still had to grab a few cans of San Marzano just in case they disappear forever by the time I come back because I actually need them…

Now that Thanksgiving and the cookie swap are over, I can relax for about .4 seconds before it’s time to start stressing out about Christmas instead.  🙂

Oh, and those of you who still can’t see my Facebook posts, have you tried this trick yet?  I posted it to Facebook, but obviously if you can’t see my updates, it wasn’t very helpful to you 😉

wee eats

Oh, and I was nominated for some food blog award thing, but their website is medium uncooperative (for me, anyway) but if you want to head over to FriendsEat.com and try to vote for me, go ahead.  You basically just go there, sign in, and click the “love” box next to my name.  Easy peasy, right?

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I don’t think I’m anywhere close to “best food blogger of 2012” but I think it’s adorable and an honor that I am even nominated.  So give some love, spread the love, and spread the word to your friends to make them love me too… or something like that.  😉