Day 21 – Sassy Sugar Cookies

We still look for cookie recipes daily.  When we started this adventure we bookmarked a number of recipes that we wanted to consider, but I think both John and I still look online daily for new ideas.  At this point in the process, I think it is fun to keep trying new things so I went with the Sassy Sugar Cookie today.  Why, because it called for cayenne pepper.

I was the one that burned our only batch so far so when the recipe said these burn easily, I decided I better stay close to the oven.

Both of the little elves tried one when they came out of the oven and immediately said they tasted like Snickerdoodles, until right after they finished the cookie – then the heat came.  These taste like a light Snickerdoodle – not as much cinnamon, but you do get a little heat on your tongue at the finish (little heat to me, not sure about normal individuals).

After the first batch, I changed the amount of Turbinado sugar that I used.  The recipe says to roll the dough in the Turbinado, I decided that was a little much so changed to only roll the top of the cookie in the Turbinado.

My only issue was that in some of my later batches, the dough got too warm so it was spreading too much during baking.  I refrigerated the dough for a bit and that seemed to fix the problem.

http://www.food52.com/recipes/3916_sassy_sugar_cookies

These are a good sugar cookie with a nice little kick at the end.

Day 20 – Balsamic Chocolate Cookies

Many of you know that one of our favorite desserts is balsamic vinegar & black pepper strawberries.  We love them because they taste great and still have some “cool factor” because they’re a bit unique.  With strawberries out of season and the cookie energy lagging, I decided to search for balsamic vinegar cookie recipes.

I wasn’t able to find that many examples, but I did find two that seemed interesting and selected this one because it’s chocolate and sea salt, with the feature ingredient being balsamic vinegar.  Tough to top that on a rainy Thursday night!

These cookies were very easy to make and baked nicely.  They were a bit “cakier” than I anticipated and I wasn’t sure how much sea salt to add to each, so I progressively added more with each batch.  These have a rich chocolate taste and are balanced nicely by the sea salt. 

I’ll definitely add this to the list of 2-3 other new chocolate cookies recipes that we’ll make again.

http://kitchen-em.blogspot.com/2008/10/balsamic-chocolate-cookies.html

The Cookie Joy hit Carmel Middle School hard today, with 6 teachers getting a sample from the last few days, as well as a cupcake that H and I cooked in between cookies this week.

Heading down the home stretch and looking forward to a few more twists before it’s over.  TGIF!!!

Day 19 – Honey Oatmeal Cookies

Must admit that it’s hard to keep the energy high with the mid-week cooking, but Day 19 is here and it’s been a full day!  Didn’t decide what to bake until around 6:00 pm tonight, so crunch time was upon us.  I was searching for a peanut butter and honey recipe and stumbled onto this one instead. 

I love honey and was intrigued by the fact that this recipe had no sugar, so here we are.  I made numerous changes, including adding some flax seed, sunflower seeds, mixing butterscotch chips and dark chocolate and skipping the raisins (a theme throughout the first 19 days!). 

The first batch was a bit dry, so I added more honey to the next two batches and they were progressively better.  As you’ll see, mine were a golden brown, where the ones in the source recipe were much darker.  I can only assume that’s because they included raisins and all chocolate. 

These were also pretty healthy (Oats, Dark Chocolate, No Sugar), so I plan to add them to the list of breakfast cookies, rather than desserts. 

http://whiteonricecouple.com/recipes/honey-chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies/

The Cookie Joy was shared with both Bus Drivers today, as well as Haley’s teacher, Ms. Massengill.  Now, more than ever, we want to thank our teachers, bus drivers and school staff for everything they do for our children. 

Beth also shared the Joy with several family friends in Fairmont this evening.  Nothing beats home delivery after 6+ hours of driving!

Have some interesting plans for tomorrow, so I hope you’ll join us. 

Day 18 – Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies

I was able to kick off the cookie baking a little earlier today and I hit my first hurdle – it took us 18 days for me to burn our first batch of cookies.  You’d think after 18 days you wouldn’t make this mistake but it happens.  The recipe calls for a 400 degree oven and I think I may have started out that high, that seems high for a cookie recipe.  So we lost about 8 cookies that would have otherwise been delicious.  I took the oven down to 380 and reduced the cook time to 8 minutes.

I said it before but there are a lot of cookies coming through this kitchen so if I can cut the recipe in half (eggs, etc. work out) then I usually do.  I cut this recipe in half and had I not lost the 8 cookies we would have still had about 32 cookies.  The only change I made to the ingredients was I used Hot Mexican Style Chili Powder instead of regular Chili Powder.

These cookies do give you the taste of a good mug of hot chocolate with a finish of the chili powder.  I do believe in good quality Cocoa – so I used Ghirardelli brand Unsweetened Cocoa.  These cookies are not spicy, in my opinion.  I would definitely make these again.

http://www.marthastewart.com/336516/mexican-hot-chocolate-cookies

The Slomkas finally joined the Cookie Joy experience and responded with a one word e-mail, Wow!