not derby pie cookies

One day this week I dropped the remote while I was feeding the baby- because of this error I was forced to watch the craft and cooking segments of a local morning show. They were making their version of Derby Pie.* Which is supposed to taste like a giant chocolate chip cookie pie. I thought but how could I make those into bona fide cookies? My first thought was to just use my mini muffin tins and make tiny cookie pies using a pie crust. But my mini muffin tin is in storage and those would still technically be considered pies not cookies. So I swapped the pie crust for cookie dough and the mini tin for a regular muffin tin voila! Not Derby Pie Cookies. 


Not Derby Pie Cookies
Cookie Crust:
1 batch of chocolate chip cookie dough (um, yeah I just bought some pre-made stuff)

Filling:
1/4 cup melted butter
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup flour
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Line muffin tins with papers and  spray with cooking spray to avoid sticking. Roll a little more than 1/2 of your cookie dough flat and press in to each muffin tin like a pie crust. Fill each tin with about a tablespoon of filling. Roll remaining cookie dough out and cover each cookie pie with a cookie lid (but I tried one without and it's not necessary if you'd prefer them roofless.) Cook for about 20 minutes or until centers are set. Best served warm.

My Notes:
*Apparently the name Derby Pie is trademarked- and the owners will sue. So people have to make up other names like "Kentucky Derby Pie" to pretend like it is something different. But I think just adding "not" to the beginning should pass basic legal muster, right? Yipes people! It's just a pie.

I can't attest to how accurately this represents a traditional Derby Pie-like taste. But if you like gooey cookie dough you'll love this. The outside of the cookie pie is just a traditional chocolate chip cookie and the inside tastes like a melted chocolate chip cookie. You'll need a spoon to eat it gracefully.

If I were to ever make this again, I'd make homemade vanilla ice cream to go on top of it (kind of like an extreme cookies and milk thing.) It's like a cobblerized version of a chocolate chip cookie.

chocolate-dipped strawberry cookies

A couple of days before Valentine's Day I spotted these giant, perfect looking strawberries at the grocery store. They were just begging to be dipped in chocolate. Because my culinary focus right now is cookies I wanted to find a way to incorporate fresh strawberries and rich, chocolatey cookies into one. I tried to find an existing chocolate-dipped strawberry cookie recipe. But all of the ones out there were all wrong (they either had a non-chocolate base or were merely strawberry flavored, unacceptable either way.) After the early morning disappointment of my Red Velvet cookies I wanted to stick with an easy, chocolate cookie I was familiar with so I went the whole "homemade oreos" route and I assembled the cookies as follows:


Chocolate-dipped Strawberry Cookies


Chocolate Cookie (aka homemade Oreos)*
1 package of Devil's Food Cake Mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
[I doubled it...]

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Roll dough into quarter sized balls (can be made bigger or smaller if  you want to do mini or jumbo cookies.) Place on cookie sheets and bake for eight minutes.

3. Let cool slightly on cookie sheet and transfer to cooling rack.

Chocolate Whipping Cream**
Add about 2 tablespoons cocoa powder to a pint of heavy whipping cream. Whip together until right before soft-peak stage then slowly add powdered sugar and vanilla to sweeten to desired flavor. You can add more cocoa powder if you want to make it more chocolatey.

Assembly 
chocolate cookies
chocolate whipping cream
strawberries
melted chocolate (I like to use the milk chocolate Cadbury bars, I melted down 2 bars for this recipe)

After chocolate cookies have cooled completely place half of the batch on wax or parchment paper and drizzle with half of your melted chocolate as seen above.

Immediately place washed, dried and chopped strawberries on melted chocolate.

Take the remaining half of your melted chocolate a drizzle on top of strawberries.***

Let chocolate harden and set-up before assembling further (I just put them in the fridge for a few minutes.)

After chocolate is cool. Take reserved cookies and add a swirl of chocolate whipped cream and sandwich on top of a strawberry cookie.

To prolong the life of your cookie, refrigerate until serving. But I'd make the day of serving, because with fresh fruit it probably isn't going to stay fresh for long.

My Notes:
*These are like the easiest cookies to make and they still feel kind of homemade-ish. I usually just do cream cheese frosting in these cookies (sometimes even mint or peppermint flavored cream cheese frosting) but that wasn't what I was going for here. It just happened to be the easiest chocolate cookie recipe I could think to make.
**I was just going to do regular whipped cream but decided to try chocolate whipped cream at the last minute. I had never made it before and it tasted a little bit like it was chocolate pudding flavored. I need to toy around with chocolate whipped cream before I make a final decision on keeping it around.
 ***One of my friends felt like there was too much chocolate on these, that they were too hard in places. But other people were okay with it. So I guess use your own digression.

I liked these cookies overall. I considered just halving the strawberries but I think that would have made for awkward biting. I think they need to be diced or at least sliced down for the whole cookie to have the chocolate-strawberry essence. If I made them again I might just do them all as open faced cookies with just the strawberries and chocolate layer and leave the cream and top cookie off. It would save some time and would taste more like a pure chocolate-covered strawberry...But they still tasted good with the cream if you wanted to go all out.

peanut butter kiss cookies

I had grand visions of cooking every batch of cookies from scratch, but 3 batches in and I've already resorted to a mix. I kind of blame Ruby though. On the eve of her sixth birthday I handed her a giant illustrated cookie book and told her to pick any kind she wanted and I'd make them for her. She flipped through the pages until she came across the peanut butter cookies with a Reese's Peanut Butter cup in the middle- the very cookies she's had a million times. And that was it. Why pick something new when you can pick something you already love? So despite the fact that I didn't really use a recipe I will include the basics of a peanut butter kiss cookie just because. 


Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies
Prepare peanut butter cookie recipe (or mix...) of your choice.

Take said cookie dough and form into 1 inch balls and roll in sugar.

Cook at time and temperature your recipe requires.

Take cookies out of the oven and smash chocolate candies of your choice onto the warm middle.

Serve to delighted six-year-olds.

My Notes: I usually make these with Dove chocolate squares, but I'm not above the Hersey's Kiss either. But Ruby wanted Reese's Peanut Butter cups, so I got the heart shaped ones. My Dad thought I had taken the time to form individual chocolate hearts out of Hersey's Kisses.

Although a mix isn't the same thing as straight-up homemade cookies, peanut butter is a pain to work with and I kind of like that most mixes don't involve adding actual peanut butter. But I still kind of feel like I cheated on a test.