Coffee Cake Cookies from The Palatable Life

Coffee Cake Cookies - made dough December 24, 2022 from The Palatable Life

Cinnamon Dough

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 cup dark brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (I added another 1/4 cup for 2 1/2 cups total as dough was too soft)

Streusel

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/3 - 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch of salt

Icing

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon milk

splash of vanilla extract

1. Cookie dough: combine butter, oil and dark brown sugar, beating until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add egg and vanilla; beat to combine. 
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt and flour. Add to butter mixture and mix on low speed until just combined.
3. Streusel: combine butter, brown sugar, 1/3 cup flour, cinnamon and salt in a separate bowl. The mixture should stick together when squeezed but also crumble when you run your fingers through it. If it's still too wet, add flour, one tablespoon at a time, until it crumbles.
4. Portion cookie dough into golf-ball-size dough balls. Make an indent in the center of each cookie. Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove frozen cookies and fill indents generously with streusel. Evenly space on baking sheets.
6. Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes. Halfway through baking, check the oven and if your streusel is't enough because the cookies have spread, remove from oven and quickly add more streusel to the center of each cookie. Return to oven to finish baking, Remove from oven when edges are set and let rest on baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack.
7. Meanwhile, make the icing: combine the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla in a small bow. Whisk until smooth and runny. Drizzle over lukewarm cookies.

The original recipe mixed up as dough that was too soft and sticky for easy handling so I ended up nearly another 1/4 cup of flour. You want the dough to be pliable but not dry or too soft. Go by feel and see if you need to add more (or less) flour to yours.

Once I had it to the consistency I wanted, it was easier to form into dough balls and use my tart tamper (yes, that's a thing) to make the center indents. The dough did crack around the edges even though the dough wasn't too dry. If that happens, just pinch the cracked edges together to keep the indented dough disc intact.

I wasn't baking these right away so I froze them and baked them later. Above are the unbaked (still frozen) cookies filled as much as possible with the streusel. But when I checked the cookies halfway through the baking time, they had spread enough such that the streusel amounts looked miniscule. No problem - I took them out and quickly added more streusel to fill the gaps. Otherwise they would have looked anemic. 

As you can see, it mostly worked. I could've added more streusel and mounded it more on the top (the recipe makes plenty of streusel so no need to skimp) but I was trying to work quickly and not have them be out of the oven too long.

You can see they still baked up thick enough. If I hadn't added the extra flour and hadn't baked from frozen dough, I think these would have been flat cookies with the indents baked right out. 

If you want the icing to melt more into the cookie, drizzle over the cookies while they're still lukewarm.

If you want the icing to be more prominent, drizzle after the cookies have cooled completely.

Taste-wise I think these were good. Although I think I could've baked them a little longer for them to have a more cakey instead of dense texture. They taste amazing when warm so even if you serve them after they've cooled, pop them into the microwave for about 10-12 seconds and enjoy warm coffee cake in cookie form.

Coconut Bars from Fat Witch Brownies

Coconut Bars - made January 2, 2023, adapted from Fat Witch Brownies by Patricia Helding

Crust

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons packed light brown sugar

Topping

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of cinnamon

2 cups sweetened coconut (I used flaked)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x 8-inch baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Crust: mix together butter, flour and brown sugar until a dough forms. Spread evenly in bottom of prepared pan. Bake for 10 minutes or until crust is light golden. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.
3. Topping: Beat brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs and vanilla extract until well combined. Add the sweetened condensed milk, mixing thoroughly. Add flour, baking powder and cinnamon, mixing until combined. Mix in coconut until well combined. Spread topping evenly over par-baked crust. Bake for 30 minutes or until top is golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool completely before cutting and serving.

I'm forever switching back and forth between the recipes I've pinned on Pinterest and the (guilty) call of my existing baking books calling me from my bookshelves to use them. I bought them whereas the pinterest recipes are free so why don't I actually use what I bought? (rhetorical question)

In any case, I've had this book from Fat Witch Brownies for donkey's years. Long ago, when I first discovered Fat Brownies, online brownie bakeries weren't as much of a thing as they are today and getting a recipe book from said online (and brick and mortar) bakery was a big deal. So I promptly bought the book, tried a few of the recipes of the brownies I'd ordered online then let same book gather dust over the years. Sigh.

Anyway, I tried this recipe from Fat Witch and thumbs up because I love coconut and brown sugar flavor together. This one was a tad too sweet though and it may be because I didn't bake it enough (the edges were perfect, the middle piece was a bit grainy). Still, the crust was perfection, not too hard but not dry-crumbly-soft either. It's a good shortbread base and you can't beat the chewiness of the coconut.

If I make these again, I'd bake a little longer than the 30 minutes the recipe suggests (at least in my oven) or, at a minimum, I'd use the recipe for the shortbread base in any other recipe that needs it.

 

Chocolate Chip Cookies from Urban Apron

Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough January 1, 2022 from Urban Apron

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 cup shortening

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 cup chocolate chips or chunks

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and shortening until well combined and creamy with no lumps. Add brown sugar and granulated sugar and beat until well combined.
2. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing on low speed after each addition. Add vanilla and beat until just combined.
3. Add salt, baking soda and flour, mixing on low speed, until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips.
4. Portion dough into golf-ball size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough balls. Bake 9-10 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

You may see me trying out different recipes for chocolate chip cookies more often again. It's partly because I'm trying to clear out my pinterest boards (a never-ending quest) and partly because chocolate chip cookies are the most popular and requested items from deployed military service members.

If I'm going to keep making them for military care packages, I need some variety in what I'm mailing out, even if the service members will neither know nor care what recipe I'm using, lol.

Fortunately, this one did not go the way of thin, flat, spread out with abandon cookies like some of my earlier tried and true recipes have done because of the more-water-in-the-butter issue of the past few months. I don't think it was necessarily the recipe as much as I'm now just adding more flour than the recipe might call for until I'm satisfied with the texture of the cookie dough. You don't want to add too much or it'll affect the final texture and flavor of your cookie but a couple of extra tablespoons doesn't hurt if your dough is too soft and sticky.

These came out fine and are your basic, good chocolate chip cookies with crisp edges, chewy middles and a nice caramelized brown sugar flavor. 

Crumbl Copycat Cinnamon Fry Bread from Lifestyle of a Foodie

Crumbl Copycat Cinnamon Fry Bread - made dough December 28, 2022 from Lifestyle of a Foodie 

1 stick unsalted butter, softened

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 large egg, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 tablespoons sweetened condensed milk

Cinnamon buttercream, optional

4 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix to combine.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt and cinnamon. Add to butter mixture and mix on low speed until just combined.
4. Portion into 8 equal-sized dough balls and flatten each ball slightly to thick discs, at least 2/3-inch thick. Evenly space on baking sheets, leaving cookies 2 inches apart.
5. Drizzle each cookie disc with about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon sweetened condensed milk. Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets until lukewarm. Remove to wire cooling rack to cool completely before frosting.
6. Make the buttercream: cream butter, sugar, vanilla extract and cinnamon until smooth and fluffy. Top each cooled cookie with about 1/2 to 1 tablespoon of cinnamon buttercream.

I didn't quite make this exactly like a Crumbl copycat as you know I'm not about the frosting and this is supposed to have a dollop of it. But I was intrigued by the idea of drizzling sweetened condensed milk over a cookie and wanted to see what that would add.

As you can tell by the picture above, I didn't drizzle so much as "envelope" the cookie dough balls. That was on purpose as I really did want to see how they'd turn out. During baking, it turns out the baked sweetened condensed milk obligingly did envelope the cookie, even down to the edges of the bottoms.

Which made removing them from the baking sheet a bit sticky-tricky but hence why I always use parchment paper. Don't try this at home without parchment paper. Not unless you want to be scrubbing your baking pans after.

The cookies might look more underdone than they actually are but you can see from the bottom of the cookie below that they're not. It's the sweetened condensed milk baked on top that gives them that appearance.

Taste-wise, I thought this was good. I liked the texture. The baked sweetened condensed milk over the top of the cookie makes it more chewy, not crisp, which isn't surprising. It's like a dense sugar cookie but not as sweet as one. The cinnamon isn't as pronounced but was still present. Not sure this will stand out later to me as more than a dense, chewy cookie but I liked it at the time. Oh, and in fairness, I can't say I've had fry bread before so I can't evaluate this well in terms of having the cookie version of it.

Graham Cracker Cookies from The Kitchn

Graham Cracker Cookies - made dough December 28, 2022 from The Kitchn

2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, packed

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a large bowl, whisk together graham cracker crumbs, granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, baking soda and salt. 
2. Add melted butter, beaten egg and vanilla extract, stirring with wooden spoon or rubber spatula to combine into a soft dough. Portion into golf-ball-size or smaller dough balls. Cover and chill for an hour or more.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space chilled dough balls 2 inches apart. Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw. Let rest on hot baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

I have to confess I consider this one another baking fail. If you click on the post title and go to the original blog post from The Kitchn, you'll see immediately what I mean. Mine looks nothing like what they're supposed to. I mean, they do look like they have graham cracker crumbs in them but the similarity ends there.

I had misgivings as soon as I had mixed the dough. I used packaged graham cracker crumbs instead of processing graham cracker sheets into crumbs but other than that, I followed the recipe exactly. But I suspect that was the problem - using the packaged crumbs yielded too much and the resulting dough was dry. Heck, it couldn't even be called dough The texture was similar to what it would look like if you were making the graham cracker base for Magic Cookie Bars. Except even more dry than that.

It was challenging even to form the dough into balls. In hindsight, I should've added more butter to make a more liquid dough. But I (foolishly) hoped that baking would do its magic and transform them into a more cookie-like appearance instead of "I got a rock" cookies.

Flavor-wise, I confess I wasn't that impressed either. They just tasted like....graham cracker crumbs. Or more kindly, like graham crackers without the crunch. Ironically, I did like the texture as it was like a soft doughy cookie. Unfortunately, that was all I liked about it. Ah well, at least I tried something new.

Instant Pot Indian Butter Chicken from Two Sleevers

Instant Pot Indian Butter Chicken - made December 15, 2022 from Two Sleevers 

1 14-ounce can canned tomatoes

5-6 cloves garlic, minced

1-2 teaspoons minced ginger

1 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon garam masala

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 pound chicken thighs, boneless or bone-in

To finish

4 ounces butter, cut into tablespoons

4 ounces heavy cream

1 teaspoon garam masala

1/4 - 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

1. Place all ingredients in instant pot in order listed until the chicken thighs. Mix well then add chicken. Seal lid and set instant pot to cook on high for 10 minutes. Let natural release for 10 minutes.
2. Remove chicken from instant pot and blend remaining sauce with immersion blender. Let cool for 10 minutes then add butter, heavy cream, garam masala and cilantro, setting on manual. Whisk to combine. Add chicken back in. Serve hot with rice.

There's a restaurant in the Bay Area, CA called Amber India that served the best naan and butter chicken. I don't have a tandoor oven and no plans to stick my hand inside a 500-degree one to slap a piece of naan dough against the side to bake (been there, done that, thanks culinary school) but I can make butter chicken, thanks to this easy Instant Pot recipe.

Traditional Indian cooks might be horrified (or not) at this hack of their dish but my Instant Pot and my air fryer are my codependency partners in my cooking crimes so there you have it. I've had this recipe for awhile but not the spices so I had to wait until I made a big Penzeys buy to get the spices I needed. I don't know how authentic this butter chicken is and it's not quite Amber India standard but I thought it was good. The spices aren't overpowering at all and are quite subtle. One recipe does make a lot of sauce so I had to use twice the chicken for this dish. 

Banana Blondies from The View from Great Island

Banana Blondies -made December 30, 2022 from The View from Great Island

1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 large egg

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1/2 cup well-mashed banana, about 1 to 1/2 overripe bananas

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Caramel Icing

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons cream or whole milk

1 cup powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 9 x 9-inch baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray. (I recommend making in an 8 x 8-inch pan for thicker bars.)
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together melted butter and brown sugar until well combined. Add egg and vanilla, mixing to combine. Beat in mashed bananas
3. Add flour and salt, mixing until just combined; do not overmix. Pour into prepared pan and smooth into an even layer. Bake 25-30 minutes or until center is set and toothpick inserted near center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs.
4. While cake is cooling, in a small saucepan, melt butter, brown sugar and cream or milk, whisking until well combined. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, before removing from heat and adding powdered sugar, whisking until smooth and combined. Spread immediately over cake and spread evenly. Let cool before cutting and serving.

This is one of the rare times I made something with bananas and frosting. Since 99% of my baking goes into military care packages going overseas, I don't bake or send anything with frosting and nothing with fruit like bananas. The bake would be too moist to survive potentially long mailing times without molding, even if vacuum sealed.

But we had a family gathering at my sister's with my aunt and uncle in town so I seized the opportunity to try out this recipe that I've been meaning to make for ages. It turned out really well, flavorful and perfect cakey texture.

The only tweaks I would make for next time is to bake in a smaller pan (8 x 8) to make thicker bars and to cut back on the powdered sugar by at least 1/4 to 1/3 cup. The frosting set up quickly and set more like a thin penuche. Plus it was really sweet. Less powdered sugar would keep it as a softer frosting and cut back on the sweetness. But the cake part of the blondies was superb.