Snickerdoodles

 Everyone loves a good Snickerdoodle cookie. Now that I've finally made them, I'm hearing from everyone that these are their favorite cookies. I have to admit that I was never a huge fan. I think I finally had my first Snickerdoodle a year ago, and it was only a bite. There was no real reason for me to not like them - especially because I'd never had one. But I mean how can anyone not like a good sugar cookie covered in cinnamon and sugar? But I finally cracked and decided to surprise Mike with a batch for his birthday a few weeks ago because, of course, they're his favorite cookie. You know me, I'm not the biggest fan of baking but the recipe I found was super easy. I used a recipe I found online (thanks Sue W.) and it'll probably always be the recipe I use. I've used this recipe once more since then and they came out fabulous yet again so I knew the recipe was worth sharing.

What You'll Need:

1 1/2 C white sugar

1/2 cup butter

1 teaspoon butter (softened)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

2 3/4 all purpose flour

1 teaspoon cream of tarter

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 Tablespoons white sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

What to Do:

1. Start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees.

2. Then, in a large bowl, beat the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and softened butter. If you're fancy and have a nice mixer... well, then I'm jealous. I just use my good, old-fashioned hand mixer which I think is on it's last leg. Anyway. Make sure everything is mixed really well. (Tell me, is this not the best start to any recipe ever??

3. Once it's nice and mixed, add the flour, cream of tarter, baking soda, and salt to the bowl. I've only ever tried the recipe with cream of tarter but reviews I read said that you don't absolutely need it. I now have a little container full of it that have no idea what to do with. Maybe I'll make meringues... or more Snickerdoodles.

4. Mix everything until the dough forms. If you're a rebel and eat raw cookie dough on occasion, you 1) are like me and 2) NEED to try this.

5. Next, in a small bowl you'll want to combine the cinnamon and sugar so you can coat the cookies.This is what makes the Snickerdoodle a Snickerdoodle. So this two step process is essentially the most important. Funny how that works.

6. Get the dough and lightly roll it into balls then roll the balls into the cinnasugar mix. Place them on a non-greased cookie sheet and lightly press them down. Bake them for 8 minutes and immediately place them on a wire rack to cool.

7. ENJOY!

I think another great thing about these cookies is that they bake really quickly so I get to eat sooner! These cookies have definitely changed my mind on Snickerdoodles. They're crispy on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle. I'm thinking about adding these to my Christmas cookie lineup this year and seeing what I can do with making them look more festive. I doubt festivity would matter considering these are (almost) everyone's favorite cookie. I hope you try them and fall in love with them just as much.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles

These are the most awesome little bites of amazing that I have ever had. After I made these I had them in my refrigerator and would just take one out and eat it whenever I felt like it. These should be as common in a refrigerator as butter or eggs. I got the recipe from Love & Olive Oil after seeing the awesome reviews on it. What I like most about this recipe is that it's essentially EDIBLE COOKIE DOUGH! I know for a fact that I'm not the only one that loves eating cookie dough but feels a little guilty eating it raw. I tried a recipe once for an edible raw cookie dough that was made with cream cheese and it was good...but it tasted like cream cheese - not like I was about to bake cookies (which is what my friends and I were looking for). This, folks, is the real deal. I plan on making these again for a girls night, date night, or night in. I absolutely adore these - so I'm sharing them with you!

What You'll Need:

2 1/2 C flour

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 C butter (room temp)

3/4 C of granulated sugar

3/4 C of brown sugar (well packed)

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 C of milk

1 C of mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

dark chocolate for dipping

Start by mixing butter and sugars until they're creamy and then add the milk and vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix your flour, baking soda, and salt then add that to your sugar mixture.

Measure out your chocolate chips and fold those into your batter.

You'll have to let this sit in the refrigerator for an hour-ish, I know, I hated it too. When it's been long enough, or like me, you take them out after about 30 minutes, it's time to roll them into 1" balls and place on a baking sheet lined with wax or parchment paper. You're going to hate me for this to but now you have to put these in the freezer for another 30 minutes.

A few minutes before you take them out, get your chocolate melted. You can double-boil them or just use these nifty little containers like I do. All you have to do is put in the microwave for a few minutes, then you get perfectly melted chocolate.

This is just a warning from one foodie to another but because the cookie dough is so cold, the chocolate won't coat as smoothly as it would if it were room temp. See what I mean though, they're not very sexy (but I promise the taste isn't affected at all).

After they're covered in chocolate all you have to do is eat them. I recommend the thinnest layer of chocolate you can get because they actually taste better with less. With these, less is more (unless you're eating them...). LOOK! This is what's waiting inside, hidden beneath the wonderful chocolate. Mmmm...

Foodie Love

I didn't cover all of mine with chocolate because I didn't like the way the chocolate was coming out so I only did half. I actually liked the way both came out. Both are completely addicting! Besides waiting for the dang things to cool off and freeze, they're so easy to make. You could easily whip some up and serve them while looking totally sophisticated. Enjoy!

Holiday Cookies- It's Never Too Late

I won't lie it's been a while. Moving to a new city, being on my own, and starting at a new university. I've been meaning to blog- honest I have but it took a cold for me to actually sit down and find things to do. I got a Nikon D3000 for Christmas specifically to feed my love of photography (thank you Michael) :) so I really have been wanting to get back into this. One of the first things I was able to take pictures of was our holiday cookies. I got my camera before Christmas because he knew it would be helpful :) We made 3 different types of cookies- sugar cookies, chocolate crinkles, and classic chocolate chip. We made all 3 at the same time and rotated which ones we cooked (just to mix it up I guess).

Most of the the Ingredients


Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies
We got our recipe from Alton Brown's Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. They are the perfect chocolate chip cookies and I don't know anyone that hasn't liked them.
Mike says the more brown sugar that goes into them, the chewier they'll be so I added about 2 T extra. We also doubled the batch so we yielded around 60 cookies from our batch.

Yes. This actually happened. :)

The Sugar Cookies
I got this recipe from my mom. We've been using the same recipe as long as I could remember. At first the dough seems crumbly but you really have to compress it down. After that, it should be the perfect sugar cookie dough.

I use powdered sugar instead of flour to keep the dough from sticking.

Chocolate Crinkles
These are another favorite of mine. They are a good mix between a cookie and a brownie. You should always let cookie dough chill in the fridge before you bake it but because the chocolate gets melted so the dough is pretty warm.

Push the cookies down a little because they don't flatten much in the oven. I dusted the flattened cookies with powdered sugar when they came out and they were insanely good.

I didn't post the recipes because I'm not sure if people want that info for 3 cookies but I do have them. I hope you like them :)

A Cookie Cake Pie

We must be crazy or in dire need of cavities. This recipe is so simple but be warned- it's incredibly sweet. All we used were ready-to-make desserts so we could throw them together, bake, and eat. This isn't really a recipe, just the play-by-play of our little adventure. The ingredients here are enough to make two Cookie Cake Pies but even we didn't need that much!

Obviously it was a Pillsbury night... no idea how Betty got in there

So we started by laying the (already made) pie crust in the pan, layering the (already made) cookie dough on the bottom to make a layer about 1 inch thick. Then we put that in the oven at 350 for around 7 minutes.

While the crust and cookie were in the oven we started getting everything for the (easy to mix) cake mix. Eggs, oil, and water. It was a piece of cake... (hehehe) Anyway, once it's mixed and the cookie is out just pour enough of the cake mix to fill the rest of the pie tin up.

We put the whole thing in the oven for about 40 minutes. We got worried because it got pretty brown on top pretty quickly and looked wiggly, but it never got much darker and the wiggle went away. While this was cooking we ate the cookie dough. 40 minutes is a long time and we didn't want it to go to waste. What were we suppose to do.

We really had no choice..

 So when the whole thing came out we let it cool for a bit. Mo couldn't wait to put the frosting on so she didn't. We used white vanilla frosting with the sprinkles in them because that was used the confetti cake mix too. When we cut it we found that everything was cooked well. We both make homemade pie crust that is sweeter than what we bought but the less sweet Pillsbury brand worked well with everything else that was so sweet.

Voila!