Hello friends! Today I'm sharing my favorite cookie dough recipe with a twist. Instead of traditional chocolate chip cookies (which are just as delicious), I'm using this basic brown sugar dough to make chocolate toffee nut cookies, and oh my goodness, they are good. As a bonus, this particular recipe stays very fluffy and doesn't spread all that much, and also holds lots of mix-ins very well. Bake on!
The Lineup:
2 1/2 cups AP flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla
1/2 cup chopped chocolate (I used dark, but you could use anything you like)
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup toffee pieces (mine did not have chocolate on them, but those would work,
too)
The Play-by-Play:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a
medium-sized bowl, set aside.
2. Beat butter and sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and
vanilla.
3. Add flour mixture to butter mixture in thirds, mixing until combined. Add in
chocolate, pecans, and toffee pieces, mix until combined.
4. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough (I used an ice cream scoop to ensure
consistent sizes) on cookie sheets lined with parchment or silicone mats. Bake 8-10
minutes until golden.
5. Let cool on cookie sheets 2 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks. *PLEASE resist
the urge to eat them straight out of the oven, as the toffee pieces will be melted
and still very hot.
6. Place cooled cookies into a zipper bag to keep fresh up to 1 week. Enjoy!
I wish you all the best,
Erin
Hello friends! I have another dessert recipe to share with you, that being red velvet cookies. This is a recipe I kind of threw together myself after looking at so many others in an attempt to find one I liked, and this is what I came up with.
The Lineup:
1 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 tbsp. cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
2/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp. Greek yogurt
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 tsp. red food color gel
2/3 cup white chocolate chips (optional)
The Play-by-Play:
1. Mix flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl, set aside.
2. Cream together butter and sugars. In a small bowl or ramekin, mix together yogurt,
vanilla, and food color gel, add to butter and sugar. Add egg, mix well.
3. Slowly add flour mix to butter mix in 2 stages, mix until combined. Mix in 1/3 cup
white chocolate chips.
4. Refrigerate dough at least 30 minutes before rolling into balls. Place remaining
chocolate chips on top before baking. Depending on size, bake approximately 10
minutes at 350 degrees.5. Let cool on pans about 2 minutes before transferring to cooling racks. Enjoy!
Alternates & Quick Play:
- Try using things other than white chocolate - dark or milk chocolate, walnuts, etc.
- I used about 1/2 tbsp. of dough per cookie, but more dough will require more cooking time.
- You can also place the remaining chocolate chips on top of the cookies as soon as they come out of the oven to avoiding the browning on top.
I wish you all the best,
Erin
Hello friends! Happy Halloween! Yesterday was the day of fun costumes, tasty treats, and ghouls and goblins galore. Here are the treats I made for a family Halloween party, the tricks my family planned, and my costume. Enjoy!
Treats
Because I'm still at school and going home on the weekends, I needed to shortcut these recipes. Of course, you can tweak these to your liking and do them from scratch (typically I would, but shortcuts work just the same), and there are a million ways to decorate them.
First, I made Creepy Cupcakes. Cake batter is the one thing I can never get right from scratch, so I always need a little help from Betty Crocker or the Pillsbury Dough Boy. I started with these adorable candy corn cupcake liners by Wilton, and filled them with vanilla cake batter. When they were done, I loaded my chocolate frosting into a Ziplock bag with a decorating tip, and iced away. The liners came with these adorable decorative picks, and that's how I topped mine off. You could use red velvet cake to make these extra creepy, but I wanted the designs on the liner to show through.
Next up, I made Ghastly Ghost Cookies. Again, homemade dough is my preference, but I was all about ease this time around. I used Nestle Tollhouse Mini Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough (in the refrigerator section) and baked as per usual. When the cookies were cool, I melted some white chocolate and spooned it onto each cookie in a puddle-like shape. I topped each puddle with a marshmallow and attached some Wilton candy eyes with melted semi-sweet chocolate, which I also used to pipe on a mouth. You can use any type of cookie for these, and I also saw online using Whoppers (instead of white chocolate and marshmallows) and making spiders or bats.
Tricks
My family loves Halloween, especially my uncle. He turns their house into a graveyard/haunted mansion deal every year, and always invites us over to check out his months of work. It was creepy to say the least.
My Costume
I'm not the type to dress up in the gore (or teeny tiny outfits) typical of Halloween, so finding a costume is usually a challenge. This year, I decided to combine one of the makeup trends of the season with a classic character, and came up with comic book Superwoman. I did the pop art makeup, curled my hair, and made a tee shirt with the logo. After that, it was super easy: all I needed were red pants (I had some red jeggings), a gold belt, and a cape (I got mine for $7 at Party City). Typically Superwoman wears patent red stiletto boots, but I didn't have those and certainly wasn't going to buy them, so I opted for some white tennis shoes. I also layered my tee shirt over a white thermal because it was quite chilly out.
I wish you all the best,
Erin
