Baking Black and White Cookies

I know it has been a few weeks since I have made an entry, but with graduating from college and then moving the 400 miles back home….. Life has been a little hectic. I also have already found a job (Woo!!) working at a cider mill/winery/bistro. I will mostly be working in the kitchen but hopefully I will have the opportunity to do other things like working outside and maybe doing wine tastings. Another plus side note, my boyfriend’s parents gave me a hugely generous graduation gift of a Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer!!!! It is the Bay Leaf color and I love it so much. So of course, I had to find an excuse to use it!!

Buddy was MIA for most of this baking adventure because he is a bum. One of our other cats, Monty was more than happy to help out with the baking and he approved of my new mixer.

I have been wanting to make these cookies for a long time, probably close to a year since my mom got me a cook book called Easy Baking by Linda Collister. This book has simple recipes for more sophisticated desserts. I just haven’t made anything from it before now for lack of having quality ingredients. Anyway, I made these black and white cookies using my new mixer, they are pretty simple and really delicious. This yielded 28 cookies.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

1 stick unsalted butter at room temperature (I used salted butter and skipped the pinch of salt later on)

Scant ½ cup light brown sugar

1 large egg, beaten

Scant ½ cup self-rising flour (I just used all-purpose and these turned out fine)

½ teaspoon baking powder

A pinch of salt (skip if you use salted butter)

½ teaspoon real vanilla extract

1 ½ cups rolled oats

6 ½ oz. bittersweet chocolate-chopped into chunks

I used my mixer ( :-D ) and beat the butter until it was creamy and smooth, then add in the brown sugar and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the egg and beat this mixture well. Sift in the flour, baking powder (and salt if you used unsalted butter). Add the vanilla extract and oats. Mix this all in together. Once this mixture is thoroughly mixed well, add in the chocolate.

I used bittersweet chocolate chips and I chopped them up roughly so there were still some chunks but also a lot of chocolate shavings.

You want to either have a greased cookie sheet, or a cookie sheet with a SilPat mat. I have a SilPat so I used that and didn’t have a problem with the cookies sticking. Put heaped teaspoons, spaced apart so the cookies can spread out a little, on the cookie sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes, I think 13 minutes worked out well for me.

After the cookies bake, let them sit on the sheet for a couple of minutes before transferring them to either a wire cooking rack or a paper towel on a table. My cookbook says to store them in an airtight container and that they will keep for up to a week or you can freeze them for up to a month.

These turned out quite yummy, they didn’t flatten out like they are pictured in my book, but I think they are just fine the way they are. Hopefully I will be baking more often now that I am settling in back at home. And Buddy showed up right at the end, after I had taken the last batch of cookies out of the oven.

Enjoy!

~Jenn

Baking Chocolate Crinkle Cookies With Buddy

I am heading into my last week of finals for my undergraduate-ever… weird. Anyways, a couple of friends and I went out to dinner the other night and we were trying to decide on dessert when I suggested that we go pick up a movie and then head back to my apartment and I would make these cookies that 17 & Baking did a few months ago and I have been dying to make. They are Chocolate Crinkle Cookies.

These cookies have a very simple recipe that can be brought together by hand, but make sure you read through the recipe because it will save you some sticky dough and headaches later on. When I finished the dough, I immediately started rolling the cookies out, and even though I had lightly oiled my hands, the dough was sticking terribly to my hands. Then my friend pointed out that the dough was supposed to be chilled for 4 hours before rolling out! So I finished rolling the first dozen cookies and I baked them and they turned out just fine, and to expedite the process of chilling the dough, I put it in the freezer for about an hour and a half. Once I put the dough in the freezer, it was so much easier to work with. After rolling out 2 dozen more cookies, the dough was getting warm again so I put it back in the freezer for about 10 minutes to finish up the final 2 sheets of cookies.

I ended up with about 4 and a half dozen of these cookies.

Here is the recipe, thanks to 17 & Baking who got it from All Recipes:

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 cups white sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup confectioners’ sugar

In a medium bowl, mix together the cocoa powder, sugar and vegetable oil. Make sure this is mixed together well. Then, one at a time, beat in the eggs. You could probably use a mixer for this but I mixed everything by hand and didn’t have a problem. After adding the eggs, add the vanilla extract. At this point, your dough will look like brownie batter. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder and salt. Slowly add this mixture into the chocolate mixture, the dough will thicken up.

At this point, you are supposed to cover the dough and chill for 4 hours. Like I said before, you can put it in the freezer and have chilled dough in less time if you are impatient like I am.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. After the dough is chilled, it is time to roll it out. Put the ½ cup powdered sugar in a bowl. You want to lightly oil your palms and will need to keep oiling your palms about every 4 cookies or so (you will know when you need more oil because the dough will start sticking to your palms). Using a teaspoon, scoop a small amount of the dough onto your palm and roll the dough into a ball. You could really make the ball any size you want, I think I made mine bigger than Elissa did over at 17 and Baking, but they turned out well. So I’d say about the size of a walnut for the dough. Then roll the ball of dough in the powdered sugar until coated and place on a cookie sheet. You want to bake these for 10-12 minutes.

Allow the cookies to stand on the cookie sheet for a couple minutes before removing them. I just use a piece of paper towel laid out on the table since I don’t have wire cooling racks.

These cookies are more cake-like in texture, and best eaten right when they are warm from the oven. But they remain delicious when they are cooled.

I will probably be baking more this week as I have more free time and need to get rid of ingredients and food before moving home from college, so look for more posts this week!

Enjoy!

~Jenn

Baking Cinnamon Rolls with Buddy

With the semester winding down, I am finding less time to bake, but more need to bake from being so stressed out. As an equine science student at my University, we have barn finals the week before regular class finals. So when normal college students are enjoying their last week of classes or actually having time to work on major projects that are usually due the last week of classes, I don’t. Our barn finals are held as a 5 day long horse show where you show off what you have gotten done with your horse over the course of the semester. It is so stressful, I can’t even explain.

So Sunday morning I decided to try making cinnamon rolls-from scratch. The recipe really isn’t very difficult or challenging, but it does take a lot of time just because there is yeast in the dough and you need to let it rise.

I previously tried to make this recipe and failed because I walked away from my hand mixer and it proceeded to topple my bowl of half-made, really sticky dough on the floor. Needless to say, I was very angry and it has taken me a couple months to re-attempt this recipe.

I used the recipe from my Betty Crocker cook book. The recipe says that it makes 15 rolls, so I halved the recipe and it still made 13 rolls, they weren’t very big-about the size of the ones you get from the tube.

Here is the pre-halved recipe:

Dough:

1 ¾-2 Cups Flour

2 ½ Tablespoons + ½ teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 package Yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons)

½ cup warm milk

2 Tablespoons butter, softened

½ egg

In a large bowl, mix half of the flour (1 cup), sugar, the salt and the yeast. Add the warm milk (I just put the milk in the microwave for about a minute), the ½ egg and the butter. Beat this mix with an electric mixer for about a minute on low; make sure you keep scraping the bowl as you go to get everything in the mixture. Add the rest of the flour, and beat again.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for about 5 minutes (warning-the dough is very sticky at first). The dough should be “smooth and springy”. Grease another large bowl with shortening and put the dough in this bowl and turn the dough until the whole thing is greased. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for about an hour and a half. The dough should roughly double in size. When the dough has risen, you should be able to leave an impression in the dough when it has risen.

Mix the filling in a small bowl/dish and set aside:

2 Tablespoons brown sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

On a lightly floured surface, take the dough and flatten it with your hands or a rolling pin. The original recipe calls for a 10x15 inch rectangle and that is about what mine ended up being, so you might want to roll the dough somewhere between ¼ and ½ inch thick. Spread butter on the dough and sprinkle the filling evenly across the rolled out dough. Beginning on the long side, roll the dough tightly and then pinch the dough to seal the roll. Using either a serrated knife or dental floss, cut the roll into about 1-inch rolls. I used a serrate knife and it worked well. Grease a pan and place the rolls slightly spread out in the pan. Now cover the baking dish loosely with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise another 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and then bake the rolls for 30-35 minutes. I only baked mine for about 25 minutes and they were still brown and fully cooked.

While these were baking I made the glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

5-6 teaspoons milk

I doubled the glaze so that it would cover all of the rolls, above is the pre-doubled recipe.

After the rolls are done, remove them from the baking dish to a plate and allow the rolls to cool for a few minutes, glaze them with the icing you have made, and enjoy!

These were pretty good cinnamon rolls, but not the best I have ever had, and they were very time consuming, so it was a very good learning opportunity.

Enjoy!

~Jenn