Cookie cravings can always be fulfilled with a little advanced planning and some extra freezer space.
Posts with tag Cookies
Prepping for a Cookie Emergency - Tip of the Day
Continue reading Prepping for a Cookie Emergency - Tip of the Day
Substitute Honey for Sugar - Tip of the Day
With a little experimentation you can use honey as a vitamin-packed sugar substitute. Here's how.
Continue reading Substitute Honey for Sugar - Tip of the Day
Should the Girl Scouts Ban Online Cookie Sales?
When 8-year-old Asheville, North Carolina girl Wild Freeborn enlisted her dad's help to set up a cookie-selling website, all she wanted to do was hawk enough Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties to earn her troop a trip to summer camp. Sounds smart, right? After all, any savvy entrepreneur needs a website.
At first, Freeborn's strategy worked, reports Newsweek: She sold more than 700 boxes of cookies to local residents through the online form, delivering every box herself.
But some parents got mad, citing unfair advantage, and Girl Scout officials quickly demanded that Wildborn take the website down, pointing to the Girl Scouts of America's longstanding ban on online sales. "The safety of our girls is always our chief concern. Girl Scout Cookie activities are designed to be face-to-face learning experiences for the girls," says the Girl Scout website.
Many people see this ban as silly and archaic, since the point of selling Girl Scout cookies is to raise money and teach entrepreneurship to young girls. And the future of entrepreneurship is certainly in online marketing, not going door-to-door Avon Lady-style. I say the Girl Scouts should get with the times and not punish girls for using their smarts and taking advantage of their resources.
What do you think - should the Girl Scouts ban online cookie sales?
Lovebug Cookies And Other Valentine Treats From Martha Stewart
Valentine's Day, with its endless opportunities for both food AND crafts, is a big deal in Marthaland, where the chocolate strawberries are always hand-dipped and the decorative pink ribbons always cut on the diagonal. Check out Martha's adorable Lovebug cookies, which satisfy both the baker's sweet tooth and the decorator's need to go wild with the gel paste food coloring. The bugs' eyes are silver dragees and the spots are white dragees or white fruit imperial candies. The fuzzy insect heads are acheived with black or brown sanding sugar. Other Martha-approved Valentine's treats include chocolate truffles, pink-on-pink strawberry cupcakes, heart-shaped raspberry Napoleons, mini heart-shaped cakes, heart-shaped merengues and massive chocolate cupcakes.
Sweet Potato and Cheddar Cookies
Seriously? Sweet potato and cheese cookies? That's what I thought when I saw this recipe too. But Dawn from Vanilla Sugar swears by them, and I'm inclined to believe her. I've always thought that the cheddar cheese + pie combo was highly underrated, so I can see how the sweet and savory flavors would work together much the same way in these cookies. Plus, since cheese has protein, you can eat the cookies for breakfast. Right? The recipe includes mashed sweet potatoes, shredded sharp cheddar, cinnamon, pecans and raisins. I won't have a chance to test these out myself until the weekend, so if anyone else tries them, please let me know how they taste!
'Settlers of Catan' Goes Foodie
Ever played a board game and started thinking about how well it would work in the world of food? I mean, beyond those interest-centric birthday cakes that are all the rage these days? Or the shot glass chess made to get you annihilated?
It seems that Settlers of Catan has done just that. Food was just about the last thing I was thinking of the few times I played it. (I was more in the "When will it be over?" camp.) Nevertheless, here we are -- Settlers of Catan pizza, gingerbread cookies (above), and cupcakes. We're not just talking food inspired by the game -- but food that actually mimics it.
Now if only we could get a completely edible Scrabble game...
[via Serious Eats]
Troubleshoot a Cookie Mishap
Say hello to flatty and softy. Both come from the same batch of cookies, yet one is flat as all hell, and one is nicely shaped, and doesn't reveal the wonderful sea of butterscotch inside.
I've made many cookies over the years. Some I've loved; some I've hated. Sometimes something goes wrong. But I've never had a batch pull out two different results. I was trying out Accidental Hedonist's Butterscotch Cookies, taking out the nuts (hello, allergies) and adding in some extra chips. The dough looked delicious -- the perfect cold dough for the adult mouth with its sugar sweetness cut by wonderful dark rum flavor.
Then they went in the oven, and bled into hard, flat discs. The flavor was excellent, but the shape was not. So, I tried firming up the batter in the fridge for round two. They turned out exactly the same. I began to consider rejigging the recipe for next time. However, I had four cookies left over, so I put those on a piece of old parchment, waited for the other round to finish, and baked them last. Voila! Perfect cookies.
Can silicone baking mats really wreak havoc on a cookie? That's the only difference between the three batches. Share your thoughts below!
Christmas Day Candy Cane Cookies
Most candy cane cookie recipes turn tasty sugar into candy cane shapes, but why do that when you can put your piles of real candy canes to good use and make some Christmas Day cookies?
This recipe for Candy Cane Cookies isn't your normal cookie treat, but it's delicious, and easy to prepare. Even better, it'll make use of your pile of candy, and allow the kids to wield a hammer and smash things. Trust me -- they'll love it, and it's perfectly safe with supervision. Just put the candy canes in a zip lock bag and get to work!
Unlike most recipes, these cookies call for powdered sugar, and that helps to give a nice, powdery inside to contrast the hard, slightly melted candy canes coating it. This is also a great way to use jars of peppermint snow. The recipe calls for finely crushed canes, but coarse chunks work just fine.
Happy Baking and Merry Christmas!
Morphable Cookie Dough, Raclette, and Vancouver Restaurants - The Globe and Mail in 60 Seconds
- With one simple cookie dough recipe, Lucy Waverman morphs it into fruitcake squares, plus chocolate, thumbprint, pinwheels, and toffee cookies.
- If you're looking for a good melting cheese, try Raclette -- melted over baby potatoes, sliced meat, and gherkins, in fondue, on pizzas, or gourmet nachos.
- The economy might be suffering, but Vancouver's restaurant industry continues to expand -- this time with Twisted Fork Bistro...
- ... and also Miku, brought to North America by the Toro Corp.
Sugary Perfect Butterscotch Cookies
Usually when I'm itching for a dose of butterscotch, I'll whip up my favorite chocolate chip recipe and substitute butterscotch chips for the chocolate. But last night I was in the mood to try something different. Accidental Hedonist's recent Butterscotch Sundae Cookie post came to mind, but I couldn't remember which blog I saw it on. Google blog searching finally led me to it, as well as Double Butterscotch Cookies (The Taste of Home Cookbook) over at Baking Blonde. Which to do first?
I tackled the double butterscotch, which you can see above. Whether baked light or dark, these cookies are delicious. I made a few substitutions -- all butter rather than half butter/half shortening, I left out the nuts, and I used butterscotch chips rather than toffee bits. They're firm, but soft and chewy with great sugary flavor that's rich, but won't give you that stomach-churning rotted gut if you have two or three.
I didn't roll and slice the dough since I prefer the puffier texture, like the recipe suggests, but I might next time. I'm scheming up a way to have creamy waves of butterscotch in the cookies, rather than chips, to perfectly match the creamy cookie. If you've got a butterscotch cookie to rival this, please share it below! Some people want the perfect chocolate chip cookie, but some of us prefer that irresistible butterscotch.
On Holidash - Party Cookies and Kisses
Pascale La Draulec gushes about the ease and allure of a retro cookie swap shindig -- one that could overload even the Cookie Monster with dozens upon dozens of cookies.But if you want something a little friendlier on your midsection, you might want to try kiss-theming your holiday celebrations. Pucker up!
A Peek at Those Coffee Cookies
You may have caught the In Sixty Seconds Toronto Star post yesterday that began with a recipe for espresso cookies. Being a coffee fiend who roasts beans often, I couldn't resist trying it out.
They're called "Espresso Cookies," which is mainly because of the dark roast, but these are really just coffee cookies. (They do require a fine grind, but more flour-like than espresso-like.) And calling it "coffee" isn't a slight. These sugar-covered treats are a great, coffee-flavored treat that is perfect for adult crowds and coffee fiends. Put a pile of sugar cookies out for the kiddies, and these for the adults. Since they've covered in sugar, it's also a good excuse to get out the colored sugar like I did, and theme the cookies up good and proper.
I'm now looking for a good rationale to eat these suckers all the time. There's just something subtly addictive about them, and with that added blast of roasted flavor from the bean, I'd write a song for these cookies if I could.
A Taste of Sweet Corn Lace
I must start this by saying: Forgive the plain-Jane picture. I had planned to play around with some of cookies and take pictures, but these things are so darned good that I remembered my plan the second I finished the last one. Oops.
May I introduce you to Sweet Corn Lace, straight from Alice Medrich's Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts. The other night, I wanted to extend my baking reach and try out some cookies I've never had before. Since I also wanted to be free of the allure of sugary death, I hoped to find something relatively healthy as well. Enter Sweet Corn Lace.
This delicate cookie is much simpler than it looks to make, and has a delicious, light, and sweet finish. Basically, it tastes like a sweeter, cinnamon-tinged homemade corn flake. The only problem is -- they're so light and airy, and taste so much like the cereal, that it's quite easy to eat them all. Luckily they're only 18 calories a cookie. Continue through the jump to check out the recipe, and if you try them, let me know what you think!
On Holidash - Thanksgiving numbers and artificial cookie smells
Ever wonder how many calories you're swallowing during your large Thanksgiving feast? Have one measly serving of everything could cost you close to 2,000 calories. For one meal. Don't forget pre-dinner snacking and meals. That certainly deflates the tasty allure of helping #3. If you don't want to think about the inevitable holiday weight gain, you could intake food through the nose! You can smell your cookies instead of eating them, although that might be a tease too tempting to bear.
Tate's Bake Shop
Tate's Bake Shop is a Hamptons-based company who makes cookies, brownies, cakes, and squares.That's right. Squares. That's how quaint they are.
Inside Kathleen King's adorable yellow and turquoise Victorian-style shop in Southampton, sweet smells, smiling faces, and flowers abound. King grew up on a farm near Southampton and sold cookies from the age of 11 at her family's farm stand.
Tate's Bake Shop has a loyal following across the country. Their secret is in their simplicity. Quality products, nicely packaged, and as my friend Lora says: "By rich people, for rich people."
You can order the delicious cookies and other baked goods online here, for a wonderfully classy host gift or party favor for the holiday season.
Second Helping of Slashfood - June 19
Competitive-Eating Contest to Pit Humans Against Elephants
The Backyard Boom - The Hungry Bride
