Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie (and Minis)

For a coworker's birthday, my husband asked me to make a baked dessert. I asked what kind - cake, brownies, cookies, what does she like? Answer:  "Something sweet." Alrighty then.

Armed with this vague information that eliminated virtually nothing from the spectrum, I took to the pages bookmarked on my internet browser. Finally I saw something that I'd been eyeballing for a while but hadn't had an excuse to make - Cookie Pie.

She calls it a pie because she made it in her pie pan, so I'll call it that too, though it has much more of a cake-like consistency than pie, or cookies, for that matter.

Since I was using self-rising flour instead of all purpose, I omitted the baking soda completely. I had read in the comments that some people had found the pie to be too floury, so I also omitted the extra tablespoon of flour called for. I used dark brown sugar, though I'm not sure which kind she used - the recipe only says "brown sugar", but I figured it was worth making a note. Lastly, I used semi-sweet chocolate chips in lieu of M&Ms.

I baked my pie in a 9-inch pie pan, slightly smaller than what she used. Also, I took some of the batter and put it into four mini brioche tins. Since my pie was going away and I wouldn't be able to sample it, I wanted to have a mini-pie for myself to taste. The other three minis were for my husband and two brothers who also happened to be hanging around.

The batter tasted pretty salty, so I was a little worried putting it into the oven, wondering how it would turn out. Everything baked for twenty minutes and was done.

I ended up worrying for basically nothing. In addition to looking perfect, it tasted great, too. The cookie part was a little less sweet than I'd have preferred, but with so much chocolate, it hardly mattered. Next time I make this recipe I think I'll add more sugar. I didn't find it too floury or buttery, as some people commented on the recipe's page. Also, next time I think I'll just make a bunch of minis and forgo the big pie altogether. I love how cute the little scalloped edges are.

Cake Pops - Birthday

Last time I made cake pops, it was such a fiasco that I pushed all thoughts of cake pops from my mind. Every time I saw pictures of them, no matter how adorable, I resisted the urge to make them myself. However, my brother's birthday is today, and a while ago he informed me that cake pops were what he wanted me to make. I started to refuse, but then figured it had been a while and I've learned a few things since then, so may as well give it another try.

As with last time, I used a boxed cake mix to make my pops. The cake mix called for a cup of water, but my cake pop pan instructions said that for best results, I should substitute milk for water and cut the amount in half. So instead of one cup of water, I used one half-cup of milk. This made my batter thicker and I suspect that's where my problem came from.

Despite coating the pan generously with cooking spray, most of my cake balls broke in half as I opened the pan. I managed to salvage the equivalent of fifteen cake pops.

In order to be able to use the halves, I put melted white chocolate in between them, like a sandwich. There were a few that hadn't broken so I just put them on the sticks, using the melted chocolate as a glue. Then I let them all sit in the refrigerator for a while to set before I decorated them.

That is a Wilton cake pop decorating stand - much better than what I used last time, which was a styrofoam block that tipped over because my pops were too heavy.

This photo is just a close-up so you can see how I glued my cake pop halves together with chocolate.

After they set in the fridge, I started to decorate. I used green and blue food coloring and sprinkles. The finished product, though simple, looked very nice.

Some of the pops that had been glued together with chocolate were too heavy, so they began to come off their sticks when dipped in chocolate. To remedy this, I enlisted the help of my step-daughter. I held the pop together between its stick and a toothpick while she added the sprinkles.

This batch of cake pops, while simpler in design than my last batch, I found to be much more visually appealing - and a lot more fun to make. I think this is because last time I made them I had no idea what I was getting into. The internet made cake pops look so easy and adorable - I didn't know much about what I was doing, what supplies were needed, etc. There are a hundred different problems you can run into making cake pops, and though I've barely scratched the surface of the art of cake-pop making, I feel a lot more prepared. I know now that cake pops aren't as easy as they look and, what's more, I've learned to not let myself lose track of the fun that baking is supposed to be by comparing what I make with the masterpieces produced by others. There will ALWAYS be someone better than me, and that's ok! As long as I love what I'm doing, I will keep doing it.

Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake

For Christmas, I had been planning on making German chocolate cake again, but after making it three times I was a little burnt out on that recipe so I decided to go with something else chocolatey. After a little bit of browsing, I found the perfect thing:  chocolate sour cream Bundt cake, adapted from a Williams-Sonoma recipe.

As always I made a few changes. I used self-rising flour, which didn't seem to make a difference. Also I thought we had more sour cream than we did, so I only used one cup, which is half a cup short of what is called for in the recipe.

Other than that, I followed the recipe closely. I pulled my cake out a few minutes earlier than it suggested because it was done already. (I suspect my oven has a higher temperature than it indicates, but I have yet to test this.)

I actually made this cake on Christmas Eve Eve, and made the ganache on Christmas Eve. It still turned out perfect.

Beautiful, isn't it? And it was delicious. My mom said it "cut like a steak". It was very rich, so some people topped it with whipped cream, but it was great alone, too. A small slice was enough sweetness for the day, that's how rich it was, but don't take that as a  bad thing!

The ganache was great because it was firm enough to keep its lovely drippiness overnight, but it was soft when you bit through it.

I highly recommend this recipe to everyone. Don't let the "sour cream" part disturb you - I hate sour cream and was a little put off by its inclusion in this cake, but you can't taste it at all. In fact, I'm not sure what exactly it does for the recipe, but it was delicious, so I'm not complaining.

Chocolate Marshmallow Penguins

It's late Christmas Eve - actually, being 12:10 a.m., it's technically Christmas - but I wanted to go ahead and post this since my son is asleep and God only knows when the next free moment will occur. This recipe was inspired by something seen on Pinterest.

Obviously, if you read this post's title, you'll notice I used marshmallows instead of strawberries. I did this because not too long ago I made a recipe using strawberries for a family function, and I didn't want to make something that might seem too similar. So, I used marshmallows.

These were simply dipped in melted chocolate, and the faces were drawn on with Wilton edible markers.

 

These were really easy and turned out yummy - not to mention totally adorable. I only used half a bag of marshmallows, so my batch yielded 22 penguins. It took hardly any time at all. The longest part was waiting for the chocolate to set, and even that didn't take long. If you're looking for something that will catch everyone's eye but don't want to put much effort into it, this is the recipe for you!

Apocalypse Cookies

As we all know, the world was supposed to end on December 21 (according to the Mayans), but obviously that didn't happen. Just in case, I made these zombie sugar cookies to celebrate.

I used a different recipe this time, since I am wanting to find one that holds its shape well. This time I used Sweetopia's. I used the same icing recipe from my Christmas cookies, though.

I made a few changes to the recipe. We only had four sticks of unsalted butter so I had to sub one half cup of salted. I'm not sure whether that makes a difference, but oh well. Also, with all the baking that's been going on around here, we ran out of all-purpose flour when I still needed a cup and a half. So I had to borrow a neighbor's, and it turned out to be self-rising. Again, I'm not sure whether this made a difference or not, but I figured I'd make a note of it.

I cut my cookies pretty thick, considerably thicker than the recipe advises, and I know that affected their spreading. My dough yielded thirty three cookies which I split into three batches. My first batch had fifteen cookies on the pan, which I didn't realize was too many until they began to bake. They baked for 16 minutes and afterwards I used a knife to separate them. They still held their shape well, they were just very fat zombies.

My second batch only took 13 minutes, but they were more spread out. My third batch only had six and they took ten minutes. This last batch was the thinnest of them all and they held their shape great.

 

 

To create the "ripped off limb" look, I simply took a knife and severed a leg here and an arm there.

 

These were my favorites. The left one in the bottom row is supposed to have his brain showing. I used a black edible marker to draw the eyes, mouths, and brain squiggles.

 

 

Congratulations on surviving the apocalypse, everyone!

Christmas Cookies

I tend to get ahead of myself when I think about baking. I have all these ideas and see all these awesome things on the internet that I want to try, so at any given time I have all the things I'm going to bake planned up to two months ahead. This isn't always true but most of the time, it is. I can't help it - I just get excited seeing all the cute recipes and decorating techniques and I want to try them myself.

This recipe is one of those planned months in advance. I've been wanting to decorate Christmas cookies, but every time I've made sugar cookies to decorate, instead of keeping their little ornament and Santa shapes they spread out in the oven and turn into horrible amorphous blobs. These are still tasty and frostable, but it's not what I wanted, and I KNOW it is possible to have a cookie keep its candy cane shape because it's all over the internet...so why can't I do it?

If you haven't noticed, I get on these kicks when it comes to my favorite bloggers. A while ago it was Brown Eyed Baker. Now, it seems that I've become infatuated by Amanda at i am baker. I just knew she'd have a perfect sugar cookie recipe, and I was right.

I followed both her recipe for the cookies and the icing - both can be found here. However, to ice them, I also used her decorating tutorial. (That's one of the reasons I love her so much - she offers so many awesome tutorials and makes it so easy!)

I only put one teaspoon of almond flavor into the cookie dough, and found it to be enough. Any more I think would have been overwhelming. After refrigerating the dough for one hour I had problems with it being too sticky, so I let it sit in the fridge until the following evening. It still stuck to my cutting board, so instead of using the cookie cutters I've been SO WANTING to use, I just molded my cookies into circles and decided I'd make do.

My dough yielded twenty-four cookies, plus a little extra dough that I may or may not have eaten. (You'll never know.) Each batch of twelve cooked for thirteen minutes. The cookies turned out great, not excruciatingly sweet but good enough to eat on their own without icing.

The icing part was what took the longest, as you might have suspected. I feel as though I complicate things, that there is always an easier way to do things than the way I do them, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I ended up making about five batches of Amanda's icing. I was up until three in the morning icing them - I made twelve designs, two of each.

My winter cookies were my favorite. I think it's partly because of the nice blue/white contrast. Surprisingly, these were the first ones I did. Usually the first ones I do are the worst because I haven't settled into a groove yet.

And these are my Christmas cookies. My mint turned out the worst, so I slyly set it to the side so it wouldn't be in the picture so much. My tree was supposed to have a yellow star at the top, and the green "Ho Ho" cookie was supposed to have a candy cane on it, but doing that would have required another batch of frosting, and at three in the morning I was ok with settling for less. I had a little trouble with my red frosting running; that means I added too much milk. Can you see the little edible pearls in the picture? I've had them for a while and couldn't wait for an opportunity to use them.

All in all, I'm very happy with my cookies. They didn't turn out as shapes, but I think I adapted well and at any rate, they taste good, and that's the most important thing!

Banana Nut Muffins

This will be a short post - I just want to share the simple recipe I found for banana nut muffins. I don't have a picture because A, this recipe is so simple and I didn't really feel a picture was required - don't all muffins look more or less the same? - and B, they were all eaten VERY quickly. So instead of a picture of my own, I'm using one from the recipe's website.

The only variation I made ingredients-wise was instead of only adding a fourth cup of mashed banana, I added two whole mashed bananas. They were sitting around and were about to go bad so my mom asked me to use them for something, so here we are. The other change I made to this recipe was I made mini muffins instead of regular sized ones. It yielded twenty-two minis.

Because of the pan change, I had to adjust the cooking time. I cooked them in two batches since I only have one mini muffin pan. Each batch took approximately 13 minutes.

As I said, the first twelve were gone before I even put the second batch in the oven. The second batch lasted a little longer, but not by much. This is a delicious recipe and VERY simple, and it tastes exactly like a box mix - but better, of course, because it's homemade.