Chocolate Munchies

This has been another long week, minimizing the time I have to bake for the blog. Fortunately, I finished my homework early and felt the urge to bake. My buddy for today's bake was someone that I hold very close to my heart. Someone that I barely had the chance to meet in person. Someone whose life was taken unfairly and prematurely 19 years ago to date due to Tongue Cancer. This someone is my father. And though he couldn't be there with me physically, I knew he was there in spirit, ensuring the success of these next cookies.

They were called Chocolate Munchies

These delicious-looking specimen brought back horrible memories of the failed Chocolate-Covered Macaroons, which, if you read before, were also drizzled with chocolate. Thankfully, the rating of these cookies was only level 1. The process was pretty simple. MESSY AS FETCH. But simple. This was, however, one of the few times I get to use Cocoa Powder. Now, I don't know what you're experience with this misleading product is, but I've decided that cocoa powder is not as delicious as it sounds. In fact, it's quite bitter and not tasty...not like a crushed chocolate bar which is what I was kinda hoping for when I purchased it. What I have learned however, is that cocoa powder is meant to taste bitter, counteracting the sweetness typically found in cookies. So, with that in mind I prepared the batter.

The batter was different tasting, not quite something you would want over the actual cookie, mostly because of the cocoa powder. I moved on, saving the opportunity to contract salmonella for a later bake. Then I put them in the oven.

Burn-wise, they came out perfectly (golden brown isn't quite the term as they are already chocolatey brown cookies...but yeah, perfect). While they were baking, I remade the double boiler used for the macaroons (a plate on a boiling pot of water). After removing them from the pan, I drizzled them and understood immediately that this is why the cocoa powder was added, to counteract the drizzled chocolate (which actually tasted good).

MMMMMmmm. They were pretty good. Again, I am not a big fan of cocoa powder still, even with the other chocolate. So overall, I would say that these were about 6.5 /10, especially because of the mess.

RIP (4.24.91)

LOVE YOU DAD

RIP (4.26.99)

LOVE YOU JACORI

Frosted Butter Cookies

First, I would like to say sorry for such a lengthy time between cookie posts. Its been a crazy week, until, of course Friday night, when I did something that has changed my view of Luigi's at the beach and pizza forever. My room mate, Kevin, and I decided to do their massive pizza challenge where it is up to two of you to eat one of their entire 30" pizzas. It seemed doable at first, and it started out well until I was at the last few bites of my fourth piece. It was at this point that where my gag reflex kicked in and WOULD NOT let me eat any more of the cheese. I tried changing it up with Parmesan cheese and peppers, but the cheesy taste of the once-delicious Luigi's Pizza was too much...Together, we were unable to finish the pizza :( and I ended up puking (in the bathroom thank God, and not on the table like I had for the Iron Man Challenge at the Broken Yolk). The experience was great...and I would have to rate my performance overall as a 7.5/10

NOW ON TO TODAYS COOKIE!

These beautiful cookies are named Frosted Butter Cookies. This, I believe, is the THIRD recipe we've followed to completion! YAY! So, the beginning of the cookie baking went just as expected, nothing exciting, nothing horribly wrong. Basic mixing and stuff. Then I had to let them chill, and afterwards I had to do one of my least favorite things regarding the baking of cookies...rolling them out and cutting them. Now, normally, this is all fine and dandy, but when you are lacking a rolling pin and the correctly sized cookie cutter, it takes away from the once homely cutting out of cookies. The things I used to roll them out kept getting stuck, the dough, in general, was very sticky and wet, and it was just a long, difficult process without the right equipment. Eventually, however, I was able to get them all cut out and into the oven.

DANGIT!! For the first time this year, I OVERCOOKED one of the trays. To me, this is blasphemous. NO COOKIE SHOULD EVER BE BURNED!! So, I saw this batch as a failure, but luckily, the other pan was fine and the rest of the cookies turned out great. Next, I had to melt the raspberry preserves (hidden in the middle of the cookies), and put it on. Finally, with the help of my friend Anthony, I was able to make frosting (which was just confectioner's sugar and water...WHO KNEW? ) and place the cherries on top. They turned out beautifully and as you can see, pretty similar to the picture. Overall rating (lowered b/c of the rolling and cutting out, sorry, it just really bothered me) 8/10.

Strawberry (Raspberry) Cinnamon Cookies

To attract more attention to the blog, I decided to change it up a bit and start having SEXY LADIES on the blog. This is to ensure more male viewers lol. So, to begin a series of Buddy-bakes, I had my friend Sara over for this delicious-looking cookie. They are called Strawberry Cinnamon Cookies. BUT, as usual, there was something that we did not like and want in the recipe or something that we simply did not have (the strawberry preserves) so we decided to replace it with that already -purchased Raspberry preserves that I had bought for another cookie recipe I have yet to try out.

Thanks to my buddy, the mixing of the ingredients went very quickly, but next we had to do something very new to us...squeeze dough out of a pastry bag...yep! never done that before! So, number 1, we did not have any pastry bags so we tried to use a ziploc bag as is typically used to replace a pastry bag...i think. BUT, the difference is, we were not squeezing out soft frosting or the like...instead, we were trying to squeeze out little, rounded dough pieces. As you might have imagined, this did not work out at all. The dough began to rip the bag almost immediately and basically pushed out little nothingness pieces...SO, we decided against the bag and just made them into drop cookies. We put them on the sheets and pushed in the centers to make a little divot for the raspberry jelly. They came out great! Just the right amount of browning on the bottom of them...I think I speak for the both of us when I say it was really hard to keep from eating them at that point, but we had to...we had to wait until we got the preserves onto them.

We warmed the jelly and put them onto the cookies. As you can see, they ended up looking very, very much like the picture in the book. And let me tell you, they were SO GOOD. The cookie minus the jelly was delicious enough but the combo of the two??? So Good. The cookies were simple too, so their overall rating is going to have to be..................8/10. Thanks so much Sara!! Hope you had as much fun as I did!!

Vanilla Honey Cookies

Yes, weekends mean extra time which can only mean...

more time to bake cookies! So, today I chose to bake a simpler cookie...Vanilla Honey Cookies. There was nothing very special about these as you can probably tell. The recipe basically said, put all the stuff in the bowl at once, mix it up, chill, it, cut it, bake it. I finished them really quick, and I ended up with about 50 of them. The were scrumptious, not the best cookie I've ever eaten, but very simple goodness. So, though this was a short post, I am kind of tired and am going to get some homework done. Thanks for reading!

PS, let me know if you want some lol...got quite a bit of them

Overall rating: 6/10

Sugar Cookies with Pink Filling

As I sit here, listening to Kev-O play guitar, eating my cookie crisp, i reminisce about the most current bake-sesh. These cookies jumped to the top on the list of my favorite cookies to make. I mean, look at them, they look like little sugary hamburgers!! This was going to be my second attempt at a LEVEL 2 Difficulty cookie (the other being the Chocolate Covered Macaroons). Daunting, yes, but impossible? Of course not, so I decided to go for it! The process reminded me of the days when I used to make Christmas cookies with Mom and Dan, whereas we got to roll out the dough and cutout the cookies. The odd thing about these sugar cookies was though, that they did not have any sugar in them before they were baked...just cream, flour, and salt lol. To my inexperienced self, this was odd, but I figured all of the sugar that was added later would make up for it, so I just went with it.

I mixed up the stuff, cooled it, brought them out to bake 30 minutes later, then realized that I had a problem...No Cookie Cutter to make the perfectly rounded shape shown in the picture. Time to improvise!! I looked around for something that was about an inch and a half in diameter. Nothing was that close, so I decided on the bottle cap to the drink I was currently downing. It ended up working out for the better as this produced many small cookies rather than the estimated 12 by the book. I watched them closely in the oven, taking care not to overcook them because the consistency of the cookies was sure to be important as it was basically going to be a vessel for the sugary filling and confectioner's sugar to reach the mouth. They came out great, bland from what I was used to, but very puffy, which was way different from anything I had baked before.

Next came the filling, yet another thing I had never made from scratch before. It was an interesting little mixture, and though I would have preferred a deeper color for my filling, I decided to stick to the recipe.

Then came my favorite part...the combining of the cookies with the filling! Something was oddly satisfying about the assemblage of the cute, little, and sugary sandwiches. As I topped the already amazing cookies with sugar, I reflected on how much fun I had making these cookies. So, because of that, and how freakin' delicious they were, I am going to have to give these cookies an overall rating of...

8.5/10

Brown Sugar Drops

Yep! Todays cookies were very simple! Just all the basic cookie ingredients with a little emphasis on the brown sugar and vanilla extract. This recipe was rated a level 1 (out of 3) on the difficulty scale and it was just that...nothing like the macaroons which, for some reason, only happen to be a 2 on the scale. So, due to lack of good cookie sheets, I decided to minimize the number of times I would be going in and out of the oven. To do this, I made many small cookies, instead of the recipe's teaspoon sized cookies. In doing this, however, I was forced to check the time myself the entire time, so I went for a couple minutes less, pulled them out and BOOM BABY!! The cookies came out perfectly!!! There was a little bit of browning on the bottom though...OH WAIT! THATS PERFECT!! haha so yeah, they came out chewy, tasty, and overall pretty delicious. I personally would have wanted to add some cinnamon or more vanilla, so were these the best cookies ever...no, but for how quickly I baked them, I have to rate them pretty highly. Then again, they definitely weren't very special, so Id have to give them an overall rating of 7/10.

YAY!!