Archive for the ‘Cookies’ Category
You can never go wrong with a good chocolate chip cookie, and as much as I enjoy making more elaborate baked goods like creme brulees and homemade cinnamon rolls, I will always come back to the classic chocolate chip cookie from time to time. Chocolate chip cookies can be crispy, chewy, cakey or somewhere in between. Regardless of what type of chocolate chip cookie you’re eating, they should always be buttery, packed full of chocolate chips and hopelessly addictive.
I like to call these Really Good Chocolate Chip Cookies because they are exactly that: really good. The cookies get a wonderful flavor from butter, brown sugar and a healthy dose of vanilla extract. A hint of extra salt in the cookie dough gives them their addictive quality (without making them seem salty) and offsets the generous amount of sugar in the cookie dough. They’re tender and chewy, and they stay chewy for several days after baking when stored in an airtight container. These are definitely some of my favorite chocolate chip cookies, and they are always a crowd pleaser.
These are fairly large chocolate chip cookies and I prefer to use fairly large chocolate chips in them for the best results. In this particular batch, I actually used See’s Candies huge Semisweet Chocolate Chips in these. Guittard’s chocolate chips tend to be on the larger side, as well. Alternatively, you can also cut up chocolate bars into coarse chunks and stir those in instead of chocolate chips. I like classic semisweet chips in my cookies, but bittersweet chocolate and even dark chocolate will also make excellent cookies.
+Continue Reading
Macarons are one of my favorite treats to make for special occasions, and they should be one of yours, too. These little french cookies are made with thin meringue shells that have a crisp and chewy texture and they are sandwiched together with flavorful fillings. They’re small, sweet and beautiful to look at. The cookies have a reputation of being difficult to make, largely because the almond-based meringues are delicate when compared to other cookies. That being said, the cookies are not as difficult to make as they might look and with a little patience you can easily make them at home.
Chocolate macarons are one of my favorite flavors. Chocolate shells go with a wide variety of fillings, including Nutella and chocolate ganache, and they can also be paired with a simple buttercream like I’ve used here. The finished cookies have a deep chocolate color and a lovely crisp-chewy texture to them.
The macarons are completely gluten free and start with a paste made with almond flour, cocoa powder and confectioners’ sugar. I make an Italian meringue – a cooked meringue that has a hot sugar syrup poured into beaten egg whites to cook and stabilize them – and fold it into the chocolate paste. This gives the cookies a lot of stability and creates enough bubbles in the batter to make the cookies puff up nicely when they bake. The cookies should be piped onto parchment paper or a silpat in small circles and allowed to set for about 30 minutes before baking. This set-up time allows the surface of the macaron to set and form a kind of “skin” that gives the macarons their signature smooth look.
I’ve given the quantities for this recipe in volume and by weight. I really recommend weighing the ingredients out if you have a kitchen scale because you’re going to get the best results that way. If you don’t have a scale, just be sure not to pack the ingredients down tightly (just as you shouldn’t pack flour down when you measure it) when you measure them because your cookies will be a little on the dense side if you do
+Continue Reading
Biscoff spread is a peanut butter-like spread made of sweet and spicy speculaas cookies. It has a buttery, brown sugar flavor with a hint of gingersnap to it. The spread is growing in popularity and is more and more widely available (it’s sold as Speculoos Cookie Butter at Trader Joe’s). It’s great to spread on graham crackers, put on top of toast, drizzle over hot waffles or simply eat with a spoon. You can also bake with it, using it in recipes where Nutella or peanut butter are featured to add a different flavor.
The recipe for these Biscoff Spread Cookies is similar to my recipe for peanut butter cookies, although I used the brown sugar spread instead of a nut-based one. The cookies have a tender and slightly cakey texture to them, and the brown sugar flavor of the spread comes through well, though they’re not strongly flavored cookies. I rolled mine in sugar before baking to add a little extra sweetness and lend some texture to the exterior of these treats, too. That tender, cakey texture comes from the fact that this is a cookie-based spread, rather than a nut-based one. The speculaas cookies that make up the spread (even though there is a fair amount of fat in the spread) dry out these cookies slightly in a way that Nutella or peanut butter would not. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it just makes the cookies more unique.
These cookies are excellent with coffee and tea, and they keep very well when stored in an airtight container for a few days. Don’t skip the sugar coating when you’re shaping your cookies or the finished product will be a little bit too plain. If you want to dress them up even more, they make great ice cream sandwiches with vanilla or butter pecan ice cream.
+Continue Reading
Biscotti are one of my favorite cookies to make for a couple of reasons. They’re not too difficult to make, they keep extremely well and they always taste better than store bought. I also like being able to put my own flavor twists on biscotti, as the options when you buy them in a store are often quite limited. That isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate a good almond biscotti (probably the most popular base flavor) as much as the next person, just that I like a little variety.
These Coconut Cranberry Biscotti are one of my favorite variations. The cookies use shredded coconut in place of almonds or other nuts that are traditionally included in biscotti, and they are studded with dried cranberries that add a pop of color and sweet-tart flavor. The biscotti have a subtle coconut flavor to them, but it is not overwhelming. They’re not too sweet, so I typically use sweetened shredded coconut in my batches, though unsweetened coconut will work just as well if you tend to have that on hand.
The dough for these cookies is baked in large logs, which are cooled slightly before being sliced and baked a second time. You will need a very sharp knife – either a bread knife or a large chef’s knife – to get a clean cut on your cookies, as the cranberries can get “caught” on a dull blade. Still, the finished cookies will taste good in the end, they’ll just look a little prettier if you sharpen your knives first! The cookies, once baked, will keep very well in an airtight container for at least a week or two. Mine don’t last much longer than that – and I doubt yours will either.
+Continue Reading
There are many kinds of cut-out cookie doughs that you can choose from when you’re setting out to make some festively decorated cookies for Christmas or another holiday occasion. Chocolate doughs, vanilla doughs, gingerbread doughs – you really can’t go wrong with any of them. Some doughs are much easier to work with than others, however, and that is what makes these Classic Christmas Cutout Cookies one of my go-to recipes when I want to bake and decorate cut-out cookies for the holidays!
The cookie dough is firm and very easy to work with. In fact, you don’t need much more than a sprinkling of flour on your work surface when rolling out the chilled cookie dough because it is not very sticky. Since you don’t need much flour to roll out the dough, this also means that you can reroll your scraps once or twice more than most other doughs, as it will not toughen up very much. The finished cookies are buttery and crisp, without being hard, and have a strong note of vanilla to them. They only brown slightly in the oven, leaving you with a very even surface for decorating and a dough that can handle cookie cutters that have a lot of detail to them.
There are many options for decorating these cookies. The dough is not too sweet, so you can load up the cookies with sprinkles if you want to make them easy and colorful. You can also top it with a smear of cream cheese or buttercream icing (not my preference, but a favorite of many kids). I typically make a simple, but thick, confectioners’ sugar glaze and pipe it onto the cookies in a very fine piping bag, making both simple and complex designs. It is easy to make, dries hard and adds just a hint of extra sweetness.
This dough can be made a couple of days ahead of time and stored in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. The baking time will vary slightly depending on how thick you roll out your dough: roll to 1/8-inch for crisper cookies and 1/4-inch for slightly softer ones.
+Continue Reading
