It's around that time of year again. Time to break out the mixer and make cookies, and lots of them. Christmas cookies are by far my favorite cookies. I love decorating sugar cookies for Santa Claus and making cookies for our Christmas dinner. My favorite Christmas cookie are these snowballs, which are shortbread balls with ground up pecans rolled in powdered sugar. Soooo good.
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Everyone at college always asks me, "How do you have all that time to bake?". Now, I know what they mean when they ask me that, I do bake a lot, but I find this a really frustrating question. To me, this question insinuates that because they are so busy studying and playing sports and whatnot, they don't have enough free time for things like that.
But, this is false. I study; I study a lot. Ask anyone in my family and they will probably say I'm addicted. I also figure skate, which takes up 7+ hours of my week. So this is my answer. Some people love to read. Some people love to do yoga. Some people love to run. I love to bake. No matter how busy we are, we always find time to do whatever it is that we love, and therefore finding time to bake is not a problem for me. Now to be fair, I know when people ask me this question they mean no harm; in fact it is merely a question, and a fair one too. But to me it is obvious. Baking is my passion, and therefore I will always, always find time for it. And I hope all of you love the fact that I do! This recipe is amazingly easy. It has 3 ingredients, and all you need is a microwave and a fridge, which I'm guessing most people have. The three ingredients are peanut butter cups (of course), milk chocolate chips (of course), and sweetened condensed milk.
Sweetened condensed milk is found in a small can (14-oz.) in the baking aisle. It never goes bad, according to my knowledge, so a lot of bakers will just keep cans of it in their pantry and use it when they stumble upon one of the few recipes that calls for it. Fudge is one of those recipes. You will find this ingredient in most fudge recipes and it is what gives it that distinctive fudge-like taste. This is also a great recipe for Holiday baking! Fudge is commonly made around this time of year, and I can see why because it is delicious and really easy to make! Plus it yields a large amount for one recipe (you can make up to 64 squares from this recipe). Yesterday was National Chocolate Day. That is a big deal, and it calls for some celebration. I felt like baking, so my first thought was that I would make pumpkin bread since I've been meaning to for a while (no worries, it will get made and posted eventually), but then once I remembered that there is NO chocolate in that, I just had to switch to a recipe with chocolate. In come Chocolate Frosted Brownies.
One of my favorite things to do is take regular, simple recipes and jazz them up. So then I thought, what's better than brownies? Brownies with a rich chocolate frosting that literally melts in your mouth. So good, and yet so simple! Do you like how I positioned the cookies in the above picture so that they are alternating between light and dark, chocolate chip cookie and brownie? Yeah, I tried.
I saw these cookies on Pinterest, and right away they went on my list of things to bake. They are really easy, and best of all, you probably already have all the ingredients on hand. Because, let's be real, the worst is reading a recipe that is perfect for your current mood and easy to make, but you get to the last ingredients and it says "white chocolate chips" or "heath crunch" or "heavy cream". Great. That's just the worst. BUT, that shouldn't happen with this recipe, yay! Photo by Julia Gorlovetskaya It's been over a month since I've posted on my blog! Horrific, really. Now don't you worry, I've still been baking up a storm (although much much less than usual), but I haven't been able to post.
Why? College. That's the short answer. The more complex answer is that first I was living in the woods for four days being swarmed by bees, then I was being hustled from presentation to bonfire to meals and more, and then I finally settled in and realized I had brought no baking tools to college. So, what did I do? You guessed right, Oh, the beauty of Amazon Prime. I ordered a set of baking tools (pans, more pans, and even more pans) for a really cheap price, and now I have the basics. Then I went to Hannaford's (for the first time, they don't have them where I live), and bought all the basic ingredients, and more. Then I went to Hannaford's again the next weekend and bought more ingredients, and I think I've finally settled in. In this cake you will find three layers of rich, chocolatey brownie with a Biscoff layer and a malted Nutella layer in between, frosted with a salted Biscoff frosting, and finished off with jumbo chocolate malt balls and pulverized Biscoff cookies around the sides. It was so much fun to make! I have to say though, give yourself plenty of time to make it and make sure you're really in the mood to be baking for a while. It took a lot of hands-on time for me to make this cake, I said below about 2 hours, but that's just an estimate and now that I'm thinking about it that might be an overestimate. But nevertheless, it takes quite some time.
I've always wanted to try using honey roasted peanuts in a cookie recipe. It sounds so good. I mean, honey roasted peanuts are delicious by themselves, so of course they would be good in a cookie recipe. If you're wondering where to buy them, they should have them at pretty much every supermarket in the nut aisle with the peanuts. Planters makes them. I however used a Trader Joe's version, which I find are equally as good as Planters. These cookies are pretty simple. They're chocolate chip cookies with a little bit of honey in the batter and honey roasted peanuts mixed in. They create this delicious chocolate and peanut butter cookie with the sweet taste of honey. You can even sprinkle sea salt on top if you'd like, I bet that would taste good as a sweet and salty combination.
I've never achieved such a perfect texture to a cookie. These cookies are perfectly crisp on the outside, and nice and chewy on the inside. I feel like people say that all the time about their recipes, and then I don't really find it to be true. They are either completely chewy or completely crips, in my opinion. But not these. That means that both my mom and I can like them. She only likes crisp cookies and I only like soft and chewy cookies. Not only that but the flavor of these cookies is just to die for. Milky chocolate chips with toasted macadamia nuts. And if you;re second-guessing the recipe when you scoop them out and feel like they're going to spread like pancakes in the oven, because yes they call for MELTED butter, believe me I thought that too and they don't. They spread perfectly. I don't know how it happens, really I don't. In fact science-wise I want to know but am left confused. Nevertheless, all science put aside, these cookies are magical and you should bake them right now.
There's nothing like the combination of peanut butter and chocolate. I use it all the time in my recipes, and so should you. This is just a classic blondie with peanut butter in the batter and chocolate chips mixed in. The blondies are very rich so I suggest making 16 bars out of this, as opposed to maybe 12. Also, resist the temptation to cut the bars right out of the oven pretty please! I waited a half hour and that worked well enough, although I've always found that if you really want clean perfect cuts (like what you see in the pictures), cut them the day after. I did cut them half an hour after taking them out of the oven, I just recut the edges because I have to take pretty pictures for all of you, but since you don't have that issue half an hour will do,
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AuthorMy name is Katherine and I love, love, love to bake! You can find all my baking adventures on this blog, plus you can follow me on Social Media by clicking below! Archives
January 2016
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