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.

red velvet cookies

Disclaimer: This is a cookie glamour shot, said cookies were very ugly looking. 

Although I love my Grandma's Red Velvet Cake I hated these cookies. Maybe I just made them wrong? Maybe I just don't like Red Velvet cookies?  Maybe I just didn't like this recipe? Anyway you slice I found the recipe on the Food Network website. It was a Paula Deen recipe if you are so inclined to try it yourself. Just note she used a classic cream cheese frosting and I used my Grandma's flour-based one.


Red Velvet Cookies
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 1/3 cups flour
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tablespoons buttermilk
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 tablespoon of red food coloring

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Mix together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.

3. Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs 1 at a time. Then beat in the buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla and red food coloring. Once combined add the dry ingredients to wet. Mix until throughly combined.

4. Onto a parchment lined sheet tray, drop batter using an ice cream scoop, forming 2-inch round circles.

5. Bake for 10 minutes, until baked through. Cookies should be cake-like and light. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet, then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Frosting
1 cup milk
1/4 cup flour
Cook until thick add a pinch of salt and COOL completely
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
Cream shortening and butter and sugar. Then add cooled flour mixture and beat until fluffy, make sure that the sugar is dissolved. It will take a long time for it to beat fluffy.

My Notes: I hated these cookies. I don't know what I did wrong. They have to be better than I made them. They just had to, they were that bad. I doubled the recipe, not that it would change the tasted just a factoid for me to remember.

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.

almond lace cookies

In my search to find an "Irish" cookie recipe I kept coming back to lace cookies. But from there you have to narrow it down from "almond lace", "oatmeal lace", "pecan lace", etc. I picked almond, simply because I had almonds. I don't have the exact place I found the recipe, but it or variations of it are all over the internet. 

Almond Lace Cookies

1/2 cup chopped almonds (or ground in a food processor)

1/4 cup butter

1/3 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 TBSP heavy cream

1/2 tsp vanilla or almond extract [I used almond but would probably do 1/2 of each next time]

1. Preheat the oven to 375F. Grease cookie sheets. 

2. Boil the chopped almonds for 2 min. in just enough water to cover them. Drain and use a food processor to chop finely. [I chopped in food processor, but didn't boil and I don't think it would make a difference.] 

3. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat. Remove from the heat and stir in the flour, sugar, heavy cream, extract and chopped almonds. 

4. Drop by teaspoonfuls 2 1/2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Keep plenty of space or you will have them melt together. 

5. Bake until golden rims form, about 5 minutes. [I always want to cook cookies for too long and these were no exception, I cooked them for a minute longer and I shouldn't have.]

6. Let sit for a minute or two and then place on rack to make flat or on form to shape*.  They are really soft when they come out of the oven but harden pretty quickly after that. 

My Notes: 

 *I wanted to make cookie cups so I inverted a greased muffin tin and put the hot cookies on them to cool into formed cups. However teaspoons sized cookies were too small for a traditional sized muffin tin- I'd either use a mini-muffin tin or use a larger cookie to form my cups next time.

You can also cool them flat and drizzle with chocolate.

Or fill with freshly whipped cream and berries. Or dare I say both??

classic milk chocolate chip

So this particular recipe is not an heirloom by any means. In fact it was on the back of the package of Hershey's Milk Chocolate Chips that just happened to be in the pantry. But in terms of recipes I'll give credit where credit is due. I was born and raised on milk chocolate chip cookies myself, because my Mom isn't a fan of any other chocolate. 


Hershey's Classic Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of salt
2 cups (11.5-oz. pkg.) Hershey's Classic Milk Chocolate Chips
1 cup chopped nuts (optional) [Um, eww.]

1. Heat oven to 375.

2. Beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until creamy. Add eggs; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts, if desired.

3. Drop by teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.

My Notes: I dropped them by tablespoons not teaspoons onto the cookie sheets. Teaspoons just seem so tiny? I feel like I'm more likely to burn them that way. I always feel like cookies never look done enough, MUST resist the urge to cook longer.