Posts Tagged ‘chocolate’

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cookies

Posted: 28th March 2013 by doomthings in Dessert, The Foodening
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I’m apparently on a strawberry and pecan meal kick, as the last bunch of posts seem to have some version of one of those in them.  So now, I shall combine the two.

For years, my dad added pecan meal to his chocolate chip cookies instead of chopped up nuts.  When I made my own for the first time, I ignored the “chopped nuts” part of the recipe and they never tasted like his cookies.  Every time I’ve made them since, it’s been the same result and I could never figure out why.  Until now.  [The mini-egg chocolate cookies also calls for pecan meal.]  Now I’m hooked.  This recipe is based on the Toll House chocolate chip cookie dough recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup + 2 tbsp bread flour
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
  • 2 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 3/8 cup dark brown sugar
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup coursely chopped strawberries (or more if desired)
  • 1/2 cup pecan meal
  • 1/2 to 1 cup of chocolate chips (for melting)

Directions:

  1. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and set aside.
  2. Beat sugar, butter, and vanilla until creamy.
  3. Add egg and mix well.
  4. Gradually add flour mixture.
  5. Stir in pecan meal and mix well.
  6. Coarsely chop strawberries and stir into mixture.
  7. Drop by teaspoonfulls onto baking sheet and bake for 9-11 minutes at 375 degrees F.
  8. Melt chocolate chips via your favorite chocolate-chip-melting method as the cookies cool.
  9. Once mostly cool, decorate the cookies with chocolate!  I dipped half of each cookie and let them dry on wax paper before packing them up.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cookies | doomthings

This recipe makes about 30 cookies, more if you make them smaller.  I was going to write a bunch of words that described how good they are, but I couldn’t find any.  Pictures are MUCH better.  Drool away, because they’re AWESOME.

Craisin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Posted: 26th March 2013 by doomthings in Dessert, The Foodening
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The very first time I ever flew first class (2 1/2-hour domestic flight, a chance upgrade for $70, and will likely never happen again), I was treated to a cranberry white-chocolate chip oatmeal cookie.  Normally, that combination would have made me reach for the regular chocolate chip cookie, but alas those did not exist on that trip, and I was determined to enjoy every little bit of my one and only first-class experience.  [Side note:  I found out that I really like almonds because of this trip.]  Since then, I have craved something of this nature (and coincidentally started loving craisins), and it hasn’t gone away.  I came across White On Rice Couple‘s blog via Pinterest and their adaption of a similar cookie, which sounded ripe for my own adaption and immediate consumption.

Trying to work only with what I already have in my kitchen (keeping future furloughs in mind), I came up with the following:

Craisin Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies | doomthings

Ingredients (adapted from White on Rice Couple):

  • 1/2 cup dried cranberries (craisins)
  • 1/2 cup other dried fruit (or more craisins)
  • rum, enough to cover the dried fruit
  • 1 cup pecan meal
  • 1 1/4 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups quick oats
  • 3/4 cup  unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 1/4 cups packed dark brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F.
  2. Soak the dried fruit in a bowl with enough alcohol to just cover them.
  3. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in the oats. Set aside.
  4. In a mixer, beat the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then mix in the eggs and vanilla extract.
  5. Stir in the oat mixture until nearly combined, then stir in the chopped nuts and chocolate chips.
  6. Drain the dried fruit and stir into mixture.
  7. Scoop by tablespoons onto parchment-lined sheet pans, about 1 1/2″ apart.
  8. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly browned. Cool on the sheet for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack.

 

So, they didn’t quite turn out looking like the original cookie, but that could be because I halved the recipe and substituted pecan meal for the original recipe’s chopped pecans and almonds.  They smelled really good though, so I could barely hold myself back from eating these fresh out of the oven.  I definitely burned the top of my mouth and fingers as I shoved one into my mouth without regard to my personal safety.

It all worked out because they were hearty and delicious!  What I really liked about them is that they were not overly sugary.  They were not very gooey, which I did not expect, but I enjoyed this little detour from the norm.  My husband gave me the thumbs up, so I’m happy.  Once you try one, I dare you not to eat the whole batch.  Because you will.

Banana Ice Cream

Posted: 20th March 2013 by doomthings in Dessert, The Foodening
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The original post for this recipe from Use Real Butter (which I found via Pinterest) titled it “single ingredient ice cream”, but really it’s banana ice cream with various flavorings.  So, it’s not reaaaally a single ingredient recipe (which she did admit in her post).

We don’t buy ice cream anymore because the good stuff is full of sugar and fat and we’d rather keep that at a minimum.  Considering my other baking experiments, it’s probably a good thing that we don’t have ice cream on hand to add to the internal chaos that comes with deliciously unhealthy foods.  I was originally very skeptical about this recipe because it sounded too good to be true, but I just decided to go for it.

Ingredients (is seems silly to list these at this point):

  • 4 bananas, just slightly overripe (brown spots good, completely black not so good)
  • 2 tbsp creamy peanut butter (optional – thus 2 ingredient ice cream)
  • 2 tsp cocoa powder (optional – thus 2 or 3 ingredient ice cream depending on peanut butter)

Directions:

Note: Don’t freeze the banana whole.  That could seriously mess up your food processor.

  1. Peel the bananas and slice them up into 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick disks.
  2. Place the banana slices in the freezer for about an hour or until they are frozen solid.  Overnight works nicely.
  3. Put the frozen slices in a food processor and process the crap out of us.
  4. First they will start to resemble gravel, but keep going because it will soon turn into a frozen mush.
  5. When the bananas look like whipped ice cream, add your preferred flavor!
  6. Makes about pint.

This turned out great!  I used just one banana (I wanted chocolate and my husband wanted peanut butter) and it turned out to be a perfect single-serving!  I was slightly worried after the “gravel” stage, because my food processor started to strain and got really hot.  I did have to stop a couple of times to smoosh the banana down so the blades could continue their work.  It very suddenly turned from gravel to mush.  It was like a step function (sorry, I’m an engineer; that’s engineer speak for “one second it was gravel, the next it was mush”).  It was cool to watch.  Then I added an absurd amount of chocolate cocoa powder.  YUM.

I really liked that I did not need to add sugar.  I had a chocolate banana.  Delicious.  My husband really liked his peanut butter version (no sugar added as well) and we didn’t feel like we had just eaten ice cream.  It was excellent.  I will probably make these tonight.  Again.

 [UPDATE Apr.04.13 – You can freeze the chopped up banana for up to a week (probably longer).  You can also freeze the ice cream once it’s made.  I left it in the freezer for over a week, and after letting it thaw for about 30 minutes, it had a texture very similar to ice cream, better than just eating it right away.  See this Update Post for details!].

Mini-Egg Chocolate Cookies

Posted: 20th March 2013 by doomthings in Dessert, The Foodening
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Easter is coming and in terms of food, for me that means one thing:  Cadbury Mini-Eggs.

Mini-eggs are my absolute favorite candy, and I never get sick of them because they only show up twice a year (Christmas).  I’m not a fan of the dark-chocolate variety, so I’m glad I could only find the milk chocolate variety.  [Side note: I love dark chocolate, but not in coated candy form of any kind… weird.]  I really wanted to use these in a way that wasn’t stuffing my face with them and regretting it later, so I turned to my mom’s trusty box of cookie recipes.

One of my very favorite holiday cookies from my mom is her Chewy Chocolate Cookies.  They are a delicious pecan-meal chocolate cookie that she only makes at Christmastime (another food I haven’t gotten sick of yet), and I found myself craving them.  Suddenly a “new” cookie was born.  Behold:

Mini-Egg Chocolate Cookies | doomthings

Ingredients (*adapted from my mom’s original recipe):

  •  1 ¼ cups butter*
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups bread flour*
  • ¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp salt*
  • 1 cup finely chopped nuts (optional)  (i.e. pecan meal)
  • handfuls of mini-egg candy

Directions:

  1. Cream butter/margarine and sugar in a large mixer bowl.
  2. Add eggs and vanilla and blend well.
  3. Combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; blend into creamed mixture.
  4. Stir in nuts, if desired.
  5. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet.
  6. Bake at 350 degrees F for 8 to 9 minutes.  (do not overbake, cookies will be soft.  They will puff during baking, flatten upon cooling.)
  7. Cool on cookie sheet until set, about 1 minute; remove to wire rack to cool completely.

 

I love these nostalgic cookies already, so I was really excited to try them with chocolate candy tucked inside.  At first, I didn’t know how they might do because mini-eggs are so much bigger than most in-cookie candies (i.e. M&M’s or chocolate chips).  When I mixed in the candies, I ended up using the mixer and not a spoon, which actually broke up most of the pieces.  This worked out well and created a fun effect in the cookies.

I was right to be excited.  Warm from the oven, the chocolate from the mini-eggs was a perfect amount of melty and went perfectly with the cookie.  The colors from the candy make them look like they’re ready for spring (and to be devoured).  I really want my mom to try this take on her delicious Christmas cookie turned Easter cookie.  Fortunately, I’ll get to see her this weekend.  Let’s hope they last until then!

Chocolate Waffles

Posted: 19th March 2013 by doomthings in Breakfast, The Foodening
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This doesn’t really seem like a huge shift to the right in terms of trying new things.  I know, I know, but who doesn’t like waffles and chocolate?  It just seems natural to mash them into a magical goo called breakfast.  Originally I attempted to follow this recipe I found on Pinterest, but it was way too complicated and I had waffle mix in my house.  Because of that laziness, and the fact that I didn’t use it, I haven’t reproduced the recipe here.

Also, I really didn’t like the idea of adding extreme amounts of high fructose corn syrup from store-bought chocolate syrup.

So, in the spirit of using what’s easily accessible in my house, being lazy, and really wanting waffles immediately, I grabbed a box of store-bought waffle mix, cocoa powder, sugar, (and the ingredients called for on the box) and made a mess.

Ingredients:

  • Waffle mix (store bought or homemade) and associated wet ingredients.
  • Unsweetened chocolate cocoa powder (to taste).
  • Granulated sugar (half the amount of the cocoa powder).

Directions:

  1. Combine waffle mix as per the box or recipe directions.
  2. Add cocoa powder by tablespoons to taste.  Mix well.
  3. Add sugar in half (or less) the amount of cocoa powder.  Mix well.
  4. Pre-heat the waffle iron and grease well.
  5. Spoon 1/3 cup batter into each mold, and cook until golden brown.

I ended up adding the cocoa powder until it “looked right”, and kept tasting it until it was adequately chocolatey.  For each scoop of cocoa powder, I added half that amount of sugar to sweeten the mixture up a bit.  I did notice that the more chocolate that was added, the more the waffle exhibited the “bitter” taste of unsweetened cocoa powder, despite the added sugar.  I didn’t mind though, too much sugar makes me crazy so I didn’t want to go overboard.  Because it’s just me and my husband, I seriously reduced the Bisquick recipe to make 4-5 waffle squares.

How were they? Delicious!  Also, they were husband approved, so this will definitely be made again.  As a side-note, it’s really hard to tell if these waffles were burned, although I have a sneaking suspicion that they were.  Despite that, they definitely did not taste burned.  +10 experience points.

[pictures will be posted as soon as I make this recipe again]

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