Tasty Recipe Review: My Big, Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies

 This week's recipe review comes to us from the fabulous Tyler Florence at Food Network as well and I will be reviewing his recipe for My big, Fat Chocolate Chip Cookies. 

Let's get started! Below is the recipe and the review follows. 

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 1 (8-ounce) block dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

Place the butter, sugar, and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer; cream together on medium speed until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Beat in the vanilla and eggs. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and continue to mix until a smooth batter forms. Turn off the mixer and fold in the chocolate chunks using the spatula.

To form the cookies, scoop about 1/4 cup of cookie dough into your hands and roll it around into a ball; place them about 3-inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets; you should get about 4 cookies on each pan. Press down the tops of the dough slightly and bake until the cookies are light brown, 12 minutes for chewy cookies, or about 15 minutes for crispy cookies.

Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough/cookie sheets.

The first thing I noticed about these cookies is that they are indeed big and fat! The second thing I noticed is where are the chips????

In my opinion the recipe did not ask for enough chocolate, the cookies looked kind of naked. 

See! No chips!

I have to say I found this a little disappointing, let's take another look

See what I mean!

The misterious case of the disappearing chips!

Ok, putting that aside I hadn't tasted the cookies yet, maybe even without the chips they were fantastic!

So it's all about taste now cause by looks it's not going so well. Sad to say it all went downhill from there. The cookies were more cake like than cookie. It didn't appeal to me at all. The dough was normal, nothing special, just regular chocolate chip cookie dough you know, but cake like and there was just too much of it!

I'm sorry Tyler, I love you and everything but these cookies just didn't cut it for me. I will stick to my variation of Martha's cookies... with a little Tasty twist for the time being.

I will say this, on the plus side, they are very easy to make!

Till next time, I hope you enjoyed this review and remember if you have a Tasty Recipe that you would like to share, or if there's a recipe that you have been wanting to try and just haven't been able to, let me know about it. I'll give you a Tasty Review.

 

It wasn't me

Ok so maybe it was, but I couldn't help it, they looked so good!

Last week I posted about the effects of a banana cupcake that had no baking soda. You can check out my post HERE.

Well, I decided to make some of my banana cupcakes yesterday and share the recipe so that you could see what I meant.

Come on, tell me they don't look good???

Here's the recipe for you to enjoy

Banana Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1/2 cup ( 1 stick ) butter or margarine at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups flour
1/4 cup of wheat bran ( if you can find it with honey even better)
2 - 3 tablespoons honey ( I like to use 3 depends on your taste )
5 ripe bananas
Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Place paper liners into muffin tin.

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for about 5 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add 3 bananas. With the mixer on low add eggs one at time, mixing well after each addition. Scrape the bowl and add the milk and vanilla. (The mixture will look curdled.) Add the dry ingredients mixing  until just combined. Add the remaining bananas and honey mixing on low speed until bananas are just broken down but you still have some medium sized pieces.

Pour into tins filling 2/3 of the way. I like using the 1/4 cup measurement for this. Bake for 20 minutes.

Enjoy!!

Tasty Recipes

Being a baker I love to try new recipes all the time. I have found some wonderful recipes as well as disasters!


This is why I have decided to create this segment Tasty Recipe Review. Every Sunday, I will post a new recipe that I have tried out during the week and let you all know if it’s up to my standards and hopefully yours as well!


This week’s recipe comes to us courtesy of Paula Deen from foodnetwork.com (don’t you just love her?!) and it is a Ginger Cookie recipe.



Recipe:


Ingredients:


* ¾ cup vegetable shortening

* 1 cup sugar plus more for rolling

* 1 large egg

* ¼ cup molasses if I don't have molasses I use dark corn syrup, works just as well

* 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

* 2 teaspoons baking soda

* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

* 1 teaspoon ground ginger

* ½ teaspoon ground cloves

* ½ teaspoon salt


Directions:


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.


Line cookie sheets with parchment paper or nonstick baking mats. You can use a nonstick spray as well.


Using an electric mixer at low speed, cream the shortening and sugar until thoroughly combined. Add the egg and molasses and beat until completely incorporated.


Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and salt and add to the mixture. Stir until combined.


Roll the dough into balls about 1 inch in diameter. I use the tablespoon measurement, they come out perfect!


Roll the balls in sugar.


Place ½ inch apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Flatten the balls slightly with your fingertips.


Bake for 12 minutes. Cool on wire racks.


I find that 12 minutes is the exact amount of time if want a nice crispy outside and a somewhat chewy middle. If you want a much crispier cookie all around bake for approx. 15 minutes.

This is what the cookies look like when they come out of the oven

See how the tops are all crackly. That's from the sugar that we used to roll them in before baking.

Take a closer look

 They look good right?

Well, the truth is they are good. They're very good!


These cookies are truly delicious. The recipe is so easy and quick to make, you can even ask your kids to help. I'm sure they'll love making the balls and rolling them in sugar. The dough is great to work with, it's not sticky at all. I found it perfect.


Another great thing about this recipe is that your house smells wonderful as they're baking!


Did I mention they were delicious? OMG! I wanted to eat them all straight out of the oven.


I found that they can also make a great gift, especially for the holidays, they have all those autumy - chistmasy  spices baked right in!

In the end, these cookies deserve all the stars available, this is truly a Tasty Recipe!


If you have a Tasty Recipe that you would like to share, or if there's a recipe that you have been wanting to try and just haven't been able to, let me know about it. I'll give you a Tasty Review.

Winnie The Pooh

How cute is Winnie The Pooh?

I was asked to make a Winnie the Pooh cake along with 12 cupcakes for a girl's birthday. Freaking out here! How am I going to make Winnie the Pooh???

I was really nervous that I wouldn't be able to get him looking right, but it turns out the didn't come out that bad after all!

Here, why don't you be the judge:

Kinda cute right?

Here's a closer shot

 

 

Ok ok, I know he's not perfect and doesn't look exactly like Winnie the Pooh and looks like he's been eating a little too much of that "hunny" but hey, he still looks pretty good to me! 

The cake inside was three different colors, red, orange and yellow, it looked very cool! 

And take a look at the matching bee cupcakes:

How cute!!!

Bonjour French Cuisine!!!

Aaah the french and their wonderful pastries!!!!  Don't you just adore their Eclairs, Croque en Bouche, Croissants and Pain au Chocolat? I know I do!!!!

There are of course many other kinds but these are the ones that come to mind when I think of french pastries.

Just this morning I had a wonderful Pain au Chocolat from a local patisserie which I believe is the best one here yet.

I do have experience in making Eclairs and Cream Puffs , which are used in the Croque en Bouche (take a look at my Caramel Cream Puffs recipe, they're delightful!) for quite some time but I have never mustered the courage to try out the Croissants or Pain au Chocolat. It is definitely a labor of love and very intensive.

There are hundreds of recipes online for any one of these pastries. If you have managed to create one or more of these exquisite works of culinary art I would love to hear about it. Do you have a favorite? Which is the best recipe you have tried? Have you ever tried and failed? Any and all experiences all welcome!

I will, one day soon, take out the time to bake some of these and will surely let you know how it goes!

Au revoir!!!

Bananas and Soda???

Yum! Those are some pretty nice looking banana cupcakes right? To be honest, that's not my picture I found it on Tesco.com but that's besides the point because all I wanted was the picture. For now at least!!

Here's my issue. I have a tried and true recipe for banana bread that I have tweaked and trimmed and I absolutely love it! I had some bananas lying around the other day but not enough for my recipe and coincidentally I received an email with a banana cupcake recipe that asked for the exact amount of bananas that I had! 

Well, needless to say I decided to try it out right away. Here's my problem, the recipe did not ask for baking soda. At first I didn't give it much thought, but after I had them in the oven (of course!) I thought what?? No baking soda?? That's weird. First banana bread or cupcake recipe that I see that has no baking soda.

I know what you're thinking, flat cupcakes right? Well no, rising wasn't the problem because the recipe did call for baking powder, so that was fine. So what was it??

Texture! And worst of all, color!!!

OMG!!!! Horrible, sad looking little cupcakes! And they were dense and not at all melt in your mouth good!!!

So, here's a tip, always, always, ALWAYS use baking soda, NO MATTER WHAT THE RECIPE SAYS!!! If you don't, your bread, cake or cupcakes will come out all gray looking and... and... and... just not right at all!

If you have a recipe disaster, please share it!!

Hola Dora!

These are Dora the Explorer themed cupcakes that I made for my friend's daughter's birthday, wew, what a mouthfull. The little cutie celebrated her 2nd birthday and she wanted a Dora the Explorer theme. 

I pondered whether or not to make Dora, the monkey, the map (sorry, don't really know the names). In the end, I really liked the simplicity of the stars, plus I thought their faces came out really cute!

  

Pretty cute huh?!

Red velvet cupcakes with Buttercream icing mmmm can you say yummy??

Thankfully, everyone loved them, specially the dad!!