Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies - made August 12, 2016 from Liv for Cake

I was in Winnipeg last month for my cousin’s wedding. As always, when I visit that side of the family, I bring banana bread with me as it’s one of their favorites. While I was there, I also made apple cobbler as it’s my uncle’s favorite. My cousin, who was the one getting married, asked for oatmeal cookies, “the chewy kind”. At first I was puzzled by the request since, to me, all oatmeal cookies are chewy. Then I realized she was comparing it against the crisp oatmeal cookies you can buy in grocery stores. Yeah, I don’t do crisp.

I’m so used to baking in my own kitchen that it’s actually hard for me to bake anywhere else. For one thing, I take for granted that the staples in my pantry are staples in everyone else’s pantry. Which is not always the case. For this trip, I was staying in my other cousin’s house (the bride’s oldest sister) and I had to do an inventory of her kitchen to determine if she had what I needed to make cookies and I don’t just mean the ingredients: cookie sheets? Measuring cups and spoons? Mixing bowl? Mixer? Spatula, wooden spoon? My cousin was a cook rather than a baker. Thankfully she had most of the equipment so I mainly had to shop for ingredients. Another cousin of ours took me to the grocery store and some of the things I needed, she had in her pantry so between the two kitchens and a trip to the Real Canadian Superstore, I got what I needed to try out this oatmeal cookie recipe.

Normally, when I make cookies, I like to make them big. Partly because I like big, thick cookies and partly because they bake better when they’re bigger since you have time to bake them long enough for the edges to get crisp but the middles will still remain chewy. If you bake small cookies, they tend to not only bake faster but also more uniformly, meaning by the time the edges are baked, so is the rest of the cookie and there’s less underbaking in the middle in the cookie. Which is my favorite part.

In this instance, I did end up making the cookies small. I was only making one batch and there were going to be over a dozen people eating them so instead of getting 12 large cookies out of one batch, I made over 2 dozen small cookies. That did mean they ended up a little more baked than I would have liked. They weren’t dry but they weren’t as gooey-chewy as I normally make my cookies. The other challenge of not baking in my own kitchen is I had to learn my cousin’s oven. Some ovens run hotter than others. Her baking sheets were also a darker finish than mine and even lined with parchment paper, the bottoms baked more quickly than I would’ve liked. I know, a litany of first world problems, right?

In the end, the cookies turned out pretty well. I baked the first batch inadvertently to full bake instead of underbaking but I learned for the last 2 batches when to take them out so that even though they looked underdone, they were actually just right by the time they had cooled and set. I don’t know that I found these memorable compared to other oatmeal cookies that I’ve tried but it’s really hard for me to find THE oatmeal cookie recipe I would prize above all others. Then again, I also don’t know if that’s more because I didn’t bake these like I normally would from my own kitchen and had to adapt to a new place or if I’m just inordinately picky. My relatives loved them and were thrilled with fresh, homemade cookies so you have to take my picky spectrum with a grain of salt.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon, optional

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 cup butter

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

3 cups rolled oats

2 cups chocolate chips

1. In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; set aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream butter and sugars on medium-high until pale and fluffy, approximately 3 minutes.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, incorporating after each addition, and beat on high for 1 minute. Add vanilla.
4. With mixer on low, add flour mixture; mix until combined.
5. Add oats and chocolate chips by hand, using a wooden spoon. Mix until just combined.
6. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill for several hours or overnight.
7. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
8. Bake for 10 minutes or until edges are lightly browned but center is still soft and unset. Cool 5 minutes on baking sheet. Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.

Big Bakery-Style Peanut Butter Chunk Cookies

Big Bakery-Style Peanut Butter Chunk Cookies - made dough August 4, 2016 from Sally's Baking Addiction

This may be the best peanut butter cookie recipe I’ve tried. Or at least the best I can remember in my recent baking past. Which really says something because you know I’m indifferent to peanut butter. But if a peanut butter lover asked me to bake them some cookies, I would go with this one, hands down.

I like it for a few different reasons. First, with 2 cups of peanut butter in it, it isn’t messing around. It’s peanut butter. Even though it has chocolate chips in it, first and foremost, it’s a peanut butter cookie.

Second, and you had to know this was coming, it baked into a thick, chubby cookie! Hardly any spread. In fact, you may want to shape this as thick discs instead of dough balls as it won’t spread out that much if you bake it from frozen dough, which is what I always do. Baking as thick discs will help give you a uniformly thick cookie instead of (very slightly) thinner edges with a domed middle.

Lastly, I loved the texture. I’m still somewhat indifferent to the taste of peanut butter itself but I liked the soft, chewy, moist texture of this cookie. A lot. I put these out at work before 8 am, had meetings most of the morning but the next time I went to our communal kitchen, even the plate was gone. Rumor has it they were gone by 9 am. There weren’t even any telltale crumbs on the counter. So that’s my gauge that other people less indifferent to peanut butter than I am also liked this cookie.

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 cups creamy peanut butter
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup granulated sugar for rolling, optional

1. Whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together in a medium bowl; set aside.
2. Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and both sugars together on medium speed until smooth, 1-2 minutes. Add the eggs and beat on high until combined, 1 minute. Add the peanut butter and vanilla and mix until combined.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix on low until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips with a wooden spoon.
4. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls, flatten into thick discs if desired (these don't spread much), 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.
6. Roll dough balls in granulated sugar and evenly space on cookie sheets. Bake each sheet for 14-15 minutes until lightly browned at the edges and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheets for several minutes before removing to wire cooling racks to cool completely.

Basic, Great Chocolate Chip Cookies from Seven Spoons

Basic, Great Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough July 23, 2016 from Seven Spoons

I’m not over chocolate chip cookies yet. I may never be. Even though I went through a marathon baking sessions of trying recipe after recipe for chocolate chip cookies, apparently I haven’t gotten them out of my system yet because I still like trying new recipes for chocolate chip cookies. That’s okay. No one I know is sick of eating them yet.

My deviation from my usual chocolate chip cookie making is I used extra dark chocolate chips this time around. I’m a milk chocolate chip person myself but there are a lot of dark chocolate fans out there. A friend gave me 2 bags of the extra dark chocolate chips so I decided to use them for this recipe.

Mine didn’t turn out like the picture in the original blog where I got the recipe from but I’m okay with that as I think mine turned out thicker. I deviated from the recipe’s advice to use chocolate chunks because that would defeat my purpose of using the bag(s) of dark chocolate chips. Otherwise, it had all the earmarks of my kind of cookie: didn’t spread much, stayed thick, was chewy and moist, had crisp edges and the texture was beautifully chocolate-chippy. (Yes, I made up that term.)

I never measure chocolate chips. I just add at will until I’m satisfied with how many chocolate chips are in each dough ball. I always reserve some to add when the dough is almost gone as that’s usually the scoop that has the least amount of chips and I also press chips on the outside of each dough ball to make sure there are enough in the cookie. 

In this case, I used a full bag plus about ¼ of the 2^nd bag. If the chips had been milk chocolate, I’d probably be all over this cookie. With the dark chocolate, I liked it but would’ve preferred milk chocolate. I suspect I’m in the minority about dark vs milk at work since these went faster than my previous batches of (milk) chocolate chip cookies.

1 cup unsalted butter, chopped, melted

3 1/4 cups (415 grams) all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons medium-grain kosher salt
1 1/2 cups (320 grams) packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
12 ounces semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.
2. Combine melted butter and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time, whisking after each addition, until just combined. Stir in vanilla.
3. Mix in dry ingredients with a wooden spoon. Do not overmix.
4. Fold in chocolate chunks or chips. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 360 degrees F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are golden brown and middles are no longer raw. Do not overbake. Cool for 2 minutes on baking sheets then transfer cookies to wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Restaurant Review: Rose's Cafe & Donuts

Rose's Cafe & Donuts - brunch on August 6, 2016

Rose’s Café is the kind of place I like to go to for a casual meal: it’s a local small business, the prices are reasonable, you order your food at the counter and pay for it there, they bring it out to you and you eat. The selections aren’t fancy but straight up, good breakfast food. It’s larger inside than I expected from the outside and I’ve been told they had recently moved to their current location. It’s also nicely airy and bright, all the better to showcase their baked goods. They have a bakery display counter if part of your indulgence is bakery goods like croissants, cinnamon rolls, Danishes, apple fritters and doughnuts.

I met a friend there for brunch and, guided by the yelp reviews, ordered the breakfast burrito of scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon and hash browns in a flour tortilla. Simple, straightforward goodness. And it was cheap. I also bought the apple fritter to split with my friend and the two items together were less than $10. There are other, more expensive items on the menu with “expensive” being relative but it was definitely good value for your money. The breakfast burrito was sizable enough that I could’ve just eaten half for brunch and half for a late lunch. I didn’t but I could have if I had any self control.

The apple fritter was okay but I wished it had more apples. Plenty of fritter, fewer apples. For that kind of raised dough though, I still defer to Stan’s Donuts, king of donuts and breakfast pastries. I didn’t try anything else but I definitely want to go back to Rose’s again and explore their other offerings.

French Toast Combo

Breakfast Burrito

My friend got the French toast combo and I have to say, the smell of the French toast was to die for. I don’t know why it smelled so good and normally I don’t order French toast since I could make it so easily at home but I might have to get it next time, if for no other reason than to inhale the scent and satisfy my olfactory senses.

Oh and one thing to know about Rose's Cafe: it's cash only. Fortunately, their prices are reasonable so you don't have to bring a lot of cash but enough to cover what strikes your fancy.

Apple Fritter

Fudgy Dark Chocolate Brownies

Fudgy Dark Chocolate Brownies - made August 4, 2016 from Belle of the Kitchen

I can’t remember why I made these. I think I needed something quick and easy for treat bags when I went out with friends and brownies are almost as easy as cookies, especially if you need a decent number to give away.

These look almost too gooey but that’s mostly because I cut them and took pictures before the brownies had completely set and cooled. Remember the key to moist, fudgy brownies is to underbake them because the chocolate sets after baking and cooling. If I had taken pictures of these the next day, they would look more fudgy rather than gooey. That said, I think I did underbake them just a trifle and they could’ve done with an extra 2-3 minutes in the oven without comprising their fudginess. 

The reason I can tell is they were just a trifle difficult to remove from the cooking-spray-coated foil lining in the pan. Normally, it’s easy to pull them apart after cutting but they were just a bit gooey when I tried it. Regardless, they were still fudgy goodness. 

One trick I’ve learned with baking brownies – if you’re like me and don’t like a crust-like top on your brownies, either that thin, almost flaky crust you get with boxed brownies or a “crisp”, thicker crust, you have to avoid overbeating the batter after you add the eggs (that’s the thin, flaky crust with your eggs adding a meringue-like texture to the top from being beaten too much) and bake the brownies at a lower temp. If your oven tends to run hot or you’re baking thicker brownies, try baking at 325 degrees instead of 350. Never go higher than 350 as that will (over)bake the top of your brownie while the center underneath will take a little longer. I also never bake on the convection setting because I don’t want the top to bake into a crust while the rest of the brownie catches up.

1 cup unsalted butter
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 large eggs, cold
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven 350 degrees. Line a 9 x 13" baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In the top half of a double boiler over barely simmering hot water, melt butter and chocolate, stirring until smooth and completely melted. Remove from heat and cool for several minutes.
3. Whisk sugar and vanilla into chocolate mixture. Whisk in eggs, one at a time, until combined and smooth.
4. In a separate bowl, sift together cocoa powder, flour and salt. Combine flour mixture with chocolate mixture and whisk thoroughly.
5. Spread batter into prepared pan and bake for 25-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs. Cool completely before cutting and serving.

Outrageous Chocolate Toffee Cookies

Outrageous Chocolate Toffee Cookies - made dough July 31, 2016 from The Creekside Cook

I always like recipes that pair a word like “outrageous” with “chocolate”. “Obsession”, “Death by” and other hyperboles work as well. I’ve still got bags of toffee bits to use and I went against the grain to try this recipe for chocolate cookies that had toffee bits in them as opposed to just sprinkled on top, as with brownies.

These ended up being super dark chocolate in flavor. When I took the first bite, I wondered if I had forgotten the sugar; they were THAT dark chocolate in flavor. I think it’s because I used the “good” dark chocolate, meaning 85% Lindt dark chocolate. There is sugar in the recipe but if you don’t have much of a sweet tooth and you like dark chocolate, these cookies might be up your alley. Seriously, they’re not sweet. The addition of the toffee bits didn’t sweeten them as much as you might think either.

I don’t know that I loved the toffee bits in here. They did provide a little bit of crunch, a little bit of chewy and a little sweetness but I tend to be a purist so I think I would like these better without the toffee and just as pure unadulterated chocolate.

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate (I used 85% Lindt), coarsely chopped

4 tablespoons butter

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 large eggs

3/4 cup dark brown sugar, tightly packed

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips (you can use semisweet, milk or white)

3/4 cup toffee bits

1. Melt chocolate and butter in the top half of a double boiler over gently simmering water, whisking until completely melted and smooth. Cool for several minutes.
2. Whisk flour, salt and baking powder together in a small bowl; set aside.
3. Combine sugar, eggs and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer and mix briefly on low speed, just until combined.
4. Increase mixer speed to medium high and beat for about 2 minutes, until mixture is creamy. Reduce speed to low and beat in chocolate mixture.
5. Fold in flour mixture then add chocolate chips and toffee bits; do not overmix.
6. Portion into dough balls, cover and chill or freeze several hours or overnight.
7. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line several baking sheets with parchment paper.
8. Evenly space frozen or chilled dough balls on baking sheets and bake cookies for 9-11 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool for several minutes on baking sheets before removing to wire racks to cool completely.