Pillow Cookies

After being in the new house for a few days Shane asked that I bake for him as he missed it while living in Auckland while I wound things up in New Plymouth. Pillow cookies have been on my list for a while so I decided to give them a go and try out the oven (for baking purposes anyways, all dinners thus far have come out of the oven just as good or better than usual – YAY!), they were a success and are sure to become a household favourite – you can’t go wrong with delish chocolate chip cookies, add brownie pieces and hello heaven!


Ingredients:
12 pieces of brownie (cut into roughly 1.5-2cm squares)
225 grams butter, room temperature
1¼ cups packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
2¼ cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
250 grams dark chocolate chips

Method:
Make your brownie and cut into 12 1.5-2cm squares, if you are one step ahead of the game use brownie you have already made and want to use the rest of… I suggest Natalie’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie, you will need less than half of it to use inside the cookies so bonus you get to enjoy that as well!
To make your cookie dough, beat your butter until it is nice and creamy (2-3 minutes)
Add brown sugar and beat until smooth.
Add eggs and vanilla and beat again ensuring everything is well combined, you may need to scrape the sides of your bowl.
Sift in flour, baking powder, soda and salt fold with your spatula before mixing on a medium to low speed.
Once your dough is starting to come together add your chocolate chips and mix well to make sure they are distributed evenly.
Cover your bowl and place it in the fridge for 45-90 minutes to chill.
Pre-heat your oven to 180°C.
Scoop 1/4 cup of dough at a time and place it on a baking tray lined with wax baking paper, only bake 6 cookies per tray to ensure there is plenty of space as these are large cookies.
Make an indentation in the middle of each cookie with your thumb and insert the brownie into this, work the surrounding dough so that it covers the top of the brownie.
Bake in your pre-heated oven for 12-15 minutes (until they are a lovely golden-golden/brown) before removing and placing on a wire rack to cool.
Enjoy with a glass of cold milk!


If you want to make cookie pops like the one above all you need to do is slide a lollipop stick into middle of your cookies before baking.So simple and so cute!

Chocolate Chip + Macadamia Cookies

I’m enjoying making biscuits at the moment.  Recipes like the one below, which don’t need any time in the fridge, are quick and easy to make.  Although, sometimes that isn’t such a good thing.  Why?  Well, I forget they don’t take as long to bake as muffins and usually end up slightly burning a tray!  However, this recipe yields enough that a few burnt biscuits won’t be an issue.

Makes approximately 32.

180g unsalted butter, chopped
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups flour
⅔ cup white chocolate bits
⅔ cup macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 160°C.  Line 3 oven trays with baking paper.
Put the butter and sugar in a bowl of an electric mixer and beat until creamy.  Add in the egg and beat until combined.  Transfer to a large bowl (if needed).
Sift in the cocoa, baking soda and half of the flour over the mixture and stir until combined.  Add the remaining flour, chocolate bits and macadamia nuts.  Stir until combined.
Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls and put onto trays 5 cm apart.  Bake for 12 –15 minutes or until crinkly on top.
Allow to cool on the trays.  Store in an airtight container for up to one week.

Single Serve Cookie

It’s winter, some nights it’s just so cold and miserable that you crave comfort food but you don’t have the time (or can’t be bothered leaving your warm comfy spot on the couch) to make and then wait for something like a delicious batch of cookies to bake.  What if I told you that I had a solution? That you could be enjoying warm delicious cookie in under three minutes!?  This recipe is for a single serve cookie that you make in the microwave.  I hope you enjoy this little treat for one as much as me!  I have to thank Facebook for this idea, there was a picture with a recipe similar to below floating around but no instructions so I had a little play and this is what I came up with…

Ingredients:
25 grams of butter, melted
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
pinch of salt
⅛ teaspoon vanilla essence
1 egg yolk
¼ cup flour
2 tablespoons of chocolate drops

Method:
Melt butter in ramekin (bowl or cup).
Add sugars, salt, vanilla, egg yolk and flour to melted butter and combine using a large spoon.
Stir the chocolate drops through evenly.
Place ramekin in the microwave for 50 seconds.  Check it, then continue cooking and checking for up to 1 minute 20 seconds depending on wattage (I did mine for 1 minute 10 seconds in a 1000W microwave).
Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before digging in!

It’s that easy and so, so quick!  I think this would also be fabulous with a scoop of vanilla ice cream for a delectable dessert, go on – spoil yourself, I know you want to.  Remember if you try this or any of our other yummy recipes you can leave a comment and let us know what you think.  We also love to see your photos – you can email them to bmtbblog@gmail.com or facebook us.

Neiman Marcus Cookies

My friend Jarrah gave this cookie recipe to me  - it’s one of her favourites so I figured I would give it a go.  You may have actually seen this recipe before.  When Jarrah sent me the recipe I thought it had a weird name, so I googled it.  Apparently Neiman Marcus is a store (we don’t have it in New Zealand) and the recipe has been doing the rounds via email since around 1996.  Here’s the story that accompanies it:

“This is a true story... Please forward it to everyone that you can.... You will have to read it to believe it....
My daughter and I had just finished a salad at Neiman-Marcus Cafe in Dallas & decided to have a small dessert. Because both of us are such cookie lovers, we decided to try the "Neiman-Marcus Cookie". It was so excellent that I asked if they would give me the recipe and the waitress said with a small frown "I'm afraid not." Well" I said, "would you let me buy the recipe?"
With a cute smile, she said YES". I asked how much and she responded, "Only two fifty, it's a great deal!" I said with approval, "just add it to my tab".. Thirty days later, I received my VISA statement from Neiman-Marcus and it was $285.00. I looked again and remembered I had only spent $9.95 for two salads and about $20.00 for a scarf. As I glanced at the bottom of the statement, it said, "Cookie Recipe - $250.00". That's outrageous!!!
I called Neiman's Accounting Dept. and told them that the waitress said it was "two-fifty," which clearly does not mean "two hundred and fifty dollars" by any POSSIBLE interpretation of the phrase. Neiman-Marcus refused to budge.. They would not refund my money, because according to them, "What the waitress told you is not our problem. You have already seen the recipe - we absolutely will not refund your money at this point." I explained to her the criminal statutes which govern fraud in Texas. I threatened to refer them to the Better Business Bureau and the State's Attorney General for engaging in fraud. I was basically told, "Do what you want, we dont give a damn, and we're not refunding your money." I waited a moment, thinking of how I could get even,or even try to get any of my money back. I just said, "Okay, you folks got my $250.00, and now I'm going to have $250.00 worth of fun."
I told her that I was going to see to it that every cookie lover in the United States with an e-mail account has a $250.00 cookie recipe from Neiman-Marcus... for free..She replied, "I wish you wouldn't do this" I said, "Well you should have thought of that before you ripped me off", and slammed down the phone on her.. So, here it is!!! Please, please, please pass it on to everyone you can possibly think of. I paid $250.00 dollars for this... I don't want Neiman-Marcus to ever get another penny off of this recipe....”

I thought the story seemed like a lie and one of the first things I found when looking up the recipe was an article on about.com providing evidence to prove this (that it is a hoax).  However, I tried the recipe out anyway.  The cookies are yum.  Jarrah reckons they are risky things to make because they taste healthy but there’s actually quite a bit of chocolate in them.  I halved the recipe, but I could have halved it again – the recipe makes heaps of cookies (apparently about 112).  I had two bowls to accommodate my mix and as I said, that was half the ingredients.  Anyways, here’s the recipe:

2 cups butter
680g chocolate chips
4 cups flour
2 cups brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
500g chocolate, grated
5 cups blended oatmeal (measure oatmeal and blend in blender to a fine powder, I used oat bran instead)
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups chopped nuts (optional, I used peanuts)

Preheat the oven to 180°C.  Cream the butter and both sugars.  Add eggs and vanilla, mix together with the flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda.  Add chocolate chips, grated chocolate and nuts.  Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet.  Bake for 10 minutes.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Work was kinda average today so on the way home I decided some baking would be in order.  Chocolate Chip Cookies in fact.  This recipe makes heaps and they are yum - probably because you can’t really go wrong with a choc chip cookie :)


Makes: 36          Prep and Cooking time: 30 minutes

250g butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup caster sugar
¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 ¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
375g dark chocolate melts, chopped coarsely

Preheat oven to 180˚C.  Grease a couple of oven trays.
Beat butter, vanilla extract, sugars and egg in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and fluffy.  Stir in the sifted flour and baking soda in two batches.  Stir in the chocolate.
Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls, place about 5cm apart on the trays.  Bake for about 7 to 15 minutes depending how crispy you want your cookies.  Leave to cool slightly on the tray before transferring to a wire rack.
Cookies will keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

*Dark chocolate can be replaced with other chocolate if desired. I actually used a mix of Nestle dark and milk choc drops. If you want to add nuts you can substitute out a third of the chocolate.