Homemade ‘Cookie Time’ Cookies

The other week while out shopping I picked up a ‘Cookie Time Cookie’ for old times sake, growing up a Kiwi kid Cookie Time cookies were a big treat as part of a bought school lunch on a Friday. Shane mentioned that he thought I’d made a cookie that would rival them, after thinking about it I decided he meant my Pillow Cookies so I re-made them with a couple of small adjustments!

Ingredients:
225 grams butter, room temperature
1¼ cups packed brown sugar (I used Billington’s light Muscavado)
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 roughly chopped Whittaker’s 33% Cocoa Creamy Milk Chocolate

Method:
To make your cookie dough, beat your butter until it is light 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 about 60 minutes to chill.
Pre-heat your oven to 180°C.
Scoop 1/4 cup of dough at a time, shape into a ball and place it on a baking tray lined with wax baking paper, use the palm of your hand to flatten the ball so it is about 1cm thick. I placed 8 cookies per tray to ensure there is plenty of space as these are large cookies.
Bake in your pre-heated oven for 13-15 minutes (until they are a lovely golden-golden/brown) before removing and placing on a wire rack to cool.

Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough Truffles

These truffles accompanied the more traditional cookie dough truffles to the American themed pot luck dinner we went to the other week. Mel stumbled across the idea here, and passed it on to me to adapt when she heard about the dinner. They look good huh?! Well, it gets better, they are hiding something from you… every truffle has a rolo in the middle, deliciously wicked!

Ingredients:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon salt
100 grams butter, softened
⅔ cup packed light brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
3 tablespoons cream
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
24 Rolo chocolates
3 tablespoons sugar
¾ teaspoon cinnamon

Method:
In a mixing bowl, whisk together flour, ½ teaspoon cinnamon and salt, set aside.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together butter, brown sugar and ¼ cup sugar until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Mix in cream and vanilla extract.
Add dry ingredients and mix until combined.
In a separate small mixing bowl, whisk together second measures of sugar and cinnamon.
Scoop dough out one even tablespoon at a time, then press one Rolo  into the centre of each scoop of dough and roll into a ball.
Roll each dough ball into cinnamon sugar mixture. Chill or serve immediately.
Store Cookie Dough Bites in refrigerator. 

If you like these and haven’t tried the biscuits I suggest you give them a go or make this blondie – snickerdoodle style!

Cookie Dough Truffles

These delicious bite sized morsels are quite popular right now.  I had seen them around pinterest and on other blogs I follow and had been wanting an excuse to make some, it came in the form of an American themed pot luck dinner last weekend!  I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like to “taste test” the cookie dough while they baking but you can’t eat too much, as raw egg can be dangerous (and is an absolute no go during pregnancy).  However, this recipe for cookie dough truffles is perfect and you can eat as many as you’d like without the risk of getting sick from raw egg, although I can’t guarantee you won’t get a tummy ache if you gorge yourself on them!

Ingredients:
100 grams butter, softened
¼ cup granulated sugar
½ cup brown sugar, packed tightly
3½ tablespoons cream
½ teaspoon vanilla paste
1¼ cups all purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup dark chocolate drops
¼ cup milk chocolate drops
200 grams milk chocolate melts

Method:
In a the bowl of your mixer (or in a large bowl if using hand held electric beaters), beat butter and sugars with your paddle attachment until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). Mix in cream and vanilla.
Sift in flour and salt and mix on a low speed until combined.
Stir in chocolate chips.
Using a small ice cream scoop make 24 even balls.
Place rolled balls on a wax paper lined baking sheet and place in the freezer for at least 30 minutes or if like me – you don’t have room in your freezer – place in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight.
Melt your chocolate for the coating in the microwave in short burst stirring in between or in a double boiler.
If you want to cover the balls in chocolate dip each ball in chocolate and then place on a wax paper to set. Alternatively you can just drizzle the top with chocolate, to do this just place melted chocolate in a plastic zip lock bag and snip a small hole in the corner, then drizzle.
Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to a week – but I really don’t think they’ll last that long!

Delish!  If you like these then keep an eye out over the next week as I have a second cookie dough truffle recipe coming your way…

Cookie Dough Cupcakes

These are easy and very, very yummy! I used this recipe as a base for the cupcake and filled the cases to about half way with the mix, and placed a teaspoon sized blob of cookie dough on top - I used this ‘Betty Crocker’ cookie mix.

 
The cookie part kind of sunk towards the bottom, I had envisioned it sitting up the top and cooking on the top and being semi raw on the inside but it still worked even though it sunk.

Yummo!!!

I frosted them with a vanilla butter cream and added a couple of tablespoons of the left over cookie dough to the mix (you can add to taste).
*NOTE: If I was doing this again I would remove choc drops or use a mix that has choc chips opposed to drops, as it was quite hard to pipe with such large bits blocking the nozzle.

Vanilla Buttercream:
125g butter
3-4 cups sifted icing sugar (depends on the consistency you are after)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 tablespoons milk

Beat the butter until it is light and fluffy.
Add your first two cups of icing sugar, vanilla and 1 tablespoon of milk and beat.
Continue to add icing sugar and milk until you get the right consistency.

While I was putting this together I was thinking about ‘Cookie Monster’ – I mean who loves cookies more than him! So I used the same cupcake and made these…

  Nom, nom, nom!

To decorate the cookie monsters I topped them with vanilla buttercream, dipped them in blue sugar crystals, rolled fondant to shape the eyes and dotted them with a chocolate fudge pen. I used a chocolate chip cookie for the mouth. Not too bad for a first attempt and a very cute idea for kids.

Cookie Dough Brownies

A few weeks ago I saw a cookie dough inspired post on ‘Love From The Oven’, a blog I follow – it reminded me of these amazing but incredibly easy brownies my idol ‘Bakerella’ made a couple of years ago,  I hadn’t attempted them as yet as we didn’t have some of her “cheat” ingredients here in New Zealand.  Sure enough Bakerella’s brownies were featured further down the post so I went back and looked at the original and decided that I could definitely make them (by swapping out the ‘Hershey’s Brownie Mix’ with another Betty Crocker mix – I used ‘Triple Chocolate Fudge’) and so can you!  They are super easy but sure to impress, all you need is:

 
Follow the instructions on the boxes, making the brownies first, pouring the mix into your tin or dish then placing blobs of the made up cookie mixture on top.  If the cookie dough doesn’t sink into the mix just give it a gentle push down.

 Pre cooking

Then place in the oven and bake according to the boxes instructions for temperature and about 30-35 minutes.

Baked Brownie (sorry about the photo quality – it was night time).

Now at this point you could allow your brownie to cool, cut it into slices and eat by itself or dusted with icing sugar.  Me, I took a lead out of Bakerella’s book and covered mine with a chocolate ganache – the hardest part about doing this is waiting for the ganache to set!

Chocolate Ganache:
1 Cup Cream
50 grams Butter
120 grams Dark Cooking Chocolate (cut up roughly)

In a small saucepan, heat cream and butter until just before the boiling stage.  Pour over the chocolate.
Let stand about 30 seconds and stir until smooth.
Pour over brownies and let set before cutting (to help mine along I put the dish in the fridge to set).

Next time I make these I think I will try using ‘Natalie’s Brownie’ recipe, which I’m sure will only make them better!  Give them a go and if you get around to making them using Natalie’s brownie recipe before me, let me know how they turned out by leaving a comment.

Thank you Bakerella and thank you Betty Crocker!
(You will all be thanking me too – once you give them a go)