Cooks and Cookies

My family is filled with cooks. It starts with our grandmother, she is a wonderful cook, my mother is an excellent cook, my aunts are great cooks, my cousin's a chef, I think even my uncle is a good cook. I have one sister who doesn't really like to cook, but I'm sure that if she wanted to cook, she'd be great. So you see, we come from cooks and we are cooks which is why it doesn't surprise me that my nieces love to cook. They like to bake most of all, but what kid doesn't love to make cookies right? I'm sure when they are all grown up they are going to be marvelous cooks!

I mentioned I had five nieces right, yep FIVE girls and they all want to bake cookies every single day of course! Just the other day, my third niece decided to alter the recipe for Grandma's Cornstarch Cookies and add chocolate chips, just like that, let's add chocolate chips. Well, they turned out great! Then I decided to roll some around in coconut before baking, just to mix things up some more and those turned out really good as well.  So I guess anything can happen to recipes with a family filled with cooks!

If you would like to try these new cookies we came up with, follow the recipe for Gradmas's Cornstarch Cookies omit the guava jam and add chocolate chips accordingly. I made 1/4 of the recipe and added 3/4 cup of chocolate chips and then rolled them around in coconut. But I like lot's of chips in my cookies, if you want less chips cut down to 1/2 cup and so on. If you don't like coconut just take it out. Remember to flatten the cookies some with your fingers so they spread out rather than puff up.

Enjoy!

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.

 

Martha's Cookies... with a little Tasty twist

These are by far my favorite cookies I think. I got this recipe from Martha Stewart, (not from her directly of course, I wish!) which of course is great, but I decided to change it a little bit and what came out was a truly different and delicious cookie.

So, here's Martha's recipe with my changes...

You can buy chocolate that has already been chunked, or you can just cut up your favorite chocolate.
Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons milk
2 large eggs
2 cups old-fashioned rolled oats or powdered oatmeal (I use this)

1 cup shredded coconut
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped into 1/2 inch chunks (I just use chocolate chips)
1 1/3 cups coarsely chopped (5 ounces) pecans
Directions
In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set dry ingredients aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine butter with both sugars; beat until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, milk, and eggs; mix well. Add reserved dry ingredients, and beat until just combined. Remove bowl from mixer, and fold in oats, chocolate, and pecans. Place dough in the refrigerator until firm, at least 2 hours or overnight.
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper, and set aside. Remove dough from refrigerator. Using an ice-cream scoop, shape into 2-inch-diameter balls. Place six balls on each baking sheet, spaced 4 inches apart, and press down
Transfer to oven. Bake until golden, but still soft in center, 15 to 16 minutes. Remove from oven, and place on a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough. Store in an airtight container up to 2 days.