Chocolate Stamped Sugar Cookies (recipe 6)

Chocolate Stamped Sugar Cookies - made dough July 9, 2021 from Nordic Ware 

Another winning recipe from Nordic Ware. I normally prefer any chocolate cookie to be the thick, chewy, moist, fudgy kind of cookie that you can really sink your teeth into. Or a thin crispy cookie like  a florentine with chocolate filling.

This is neither. It doesn't have the snappy crispness of a typical butter shortbread or the chewy fudginess of my favorite chocolate chocolate cookie but surprisingly, I still liked it.

The flavor was good (very important to use high quality cocoa powder) and I even liked the texture. And of course I'm going to like that it feeds into my cookie stamp obsession.

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

sugar for rolling

1. Cream together butter and brown sugar until well combined and no lumps remain, 2-3 minutes. Add egg and vanilla, mixing until just combined.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Add in two additions to the butter mixture, mixing until just combined after each addition.
3. Cover and refrigerate for 30-45 minutes. Portion into dough balls, roll each ball in granulated sugar and press with cookie stamp(s). Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space stamped cookies.
5. Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are set. Let rest on baking sheets for several minutes then transfer cookies to wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Vanilla Sugar Cookies (stamped recipe 5)

Vanilla Sugar Cookies - made June 26, 2021 from Nordic Ware

I'm going to start off by reminding everyone, including myself, that I am still obsessed with cookie stamps. If you recall, I've been trying out different recipes that will hold the stamped or embossed impressions. Starting with recipe 1 with an embossed rolling pin, a less successful recipe 2 with both embossed rolling pins and cookie stamps, recipe 3 with mooncake molds (my favorite to date), and recipe 4 with fewer ingredients but still not quite holding the impressions as well. 

Let me introduce you to recipe 5. This recipe is from Nordic Ware, the family-owned, made-in-the-USA clever company who also publishes recipes to use their wares on. And I'm going to rightly say "cheers!" to whoever developed this recipe for them. It was delicious as only a good butter cookie made with quality butter can be. In fact, this might have just unseated recipe 3 as my favorite.

As you can see from the "before" baking and "after" baking pictures, it kept the impressions from the cookie stamps pretty well. It helps that the cookie stamps are a good size without a lot of intricate, small details but even so, this is a good recipe for stamping and keeping the impressions.

The cookie stamps are a bit pricey but they're made in the USA and I believe in putting my money (and their cookies) where my mouth is so I'll spend a bit more for a quality product that's made "locally".

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 2/3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1. Cream butter and brown sugar together until fluffy and well combined, 2-3 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla until just combined.
2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture in two additions, mixing until just combined after each addition. Cover and refrigerate for 30-45 minutes.
3. Portion chilled dough into dough balls, roll each in granulated sugar and press with cookie stamp(s). Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space stamped cookies. Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are set and light golden brown. Let rest on baking sheets for several minutes then transfer to wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Chocolate Hazelnut Espresso Brownies

Chocolate Hazelnut Espresso Brownies - made July 9, 2021 from Olive and Mango 

I've adapted my current favorite brownie recipe to use more of a combination of unsweetened chocolate and bittersweet chocolate and I've been making that more often than not whenever I need brownies for a care package.

I've made it so often though that I thought I'd try out a new recipe just to mix things up a bit. This one has similar elements except it uses only bittersweet chocolate and adds a little espresso to punch up the chocolate flavor. You can't really taste the espresso in this one; it's only meant to bring out the chocolate flavor.

This was nicely fudgy as you can tell from the pictures and you can't go wrong with swirling Nutella in anything. It was a bit sweeter than my adapted brownie recipe and I still prefer my adapted recipe which I will have to remember to post here sometime, to document it if nothing else.

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate

2/3 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

2 eggs

1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon espresso

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 - 1/2 cup Nutella

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x 8 pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In the top half of a double boiler set over hot water, melt the butter and chocolate; whisk until completely melted and smooth.
3. Add granulated sugar and brown sugar, whisk until combined.
4. Whisk in eggs and egg yolk until combined. Add vanilla and stir to combine.
5. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, salt and baking powder. Add to chocolate mixture and stir until combined and mixture is glossy.
6. Pour evenly into prepared pan. Dollop Nutella in spoonfuls over the batter and swirl together with a knife. Bake 25-30 minutes until a toothpick inserted in a non-Nutella part of the brownie comes out with a few moist crumbs. Remove from oven and cool completely before cutting.

Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies

Chewy Peanut Butter Cookies - made July 9, 2021 from My Name is Snickerdoodle 

The sharp-eyed among you will notice I baked one batch of these cookies longer than the other, as evidenced by the darker color on some of the cookies and not others.

For a chronic under-baker of cookies, this is the kiss of death - overbaking. *clutches first-world pearls*. 

Fortunately, peanut butter cookies don't suffer as horrific consequences from overbaking as other types of cookies. Meaning, instead of being more soft and chewy, the ones I baked longer turned out more crisp but not dry. If you like crisp cookies, by all means, bake them a little longer. (shudder) The flavor was still quite good actually and some people (who aren't me) might prefer more crisp cookies.

3/4 cup butter, cold and cut into cubes

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until combined and no butter lumps remain, 2-3 minutes. Beat in peanut butter until combined.
2. Add eggs, one at a time, and vanilla extract, mixing briefly after each addition.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together salt, baking powder, baking soda and flour. Add in two additions to butter mixture, mixing until just combined. Do not overbeat.
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 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough balls. Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw. Do not overbake. Let rest on baking sheets for 2-3 minutes then transfer to wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Crumbl copycat Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe compilation

Have you ever heard of Crumbl Cookies? If you haven't, I recommend checking out their website and keeping a Kleenex handy to wipe the drool from your screen. I won't repeat their story since they write it up so nicely on their website here but it's worth a look.

Sadly, there's no Crumbl where I live and I'd never heard of them until I was surfing Pinterest and kept seeing all these Crumbl copycat recipes. It was like the new copycat craze after Levain Bakery copycats. And like any good obsessive baker, I had to try a bunch of them for myself. At the time I made these, I had not had an authentic Crumbl cookie since there wasn't one in my area so I had nothing to compare the copycats too. I made my notes about them as I made each one but it was more to judge them as milk chocolate chip cookies rather than as Crumbl copycats.

To cut to the chase, these are all fine recipes. As long as you're using fresh, good-quality ingredients, it's hard to go wrong with whopping big chocolate chip cookies eaten warm with melting milk chocolate chunks. Truly. Rather than write out each recipe which would make this post too long for text instead of just pictures, I've summarized them in an Excel table at the bottom of this post and provided the links to each one underneath their picture so you can go directly to each site from which I got the recipes.

You'll notice from the dates that I made the doughs within the same 2-week timeframe but I will admit, I didn't bake each one and taste test them without having at least a week or three between taste-test cookies. Eating 6-ounce cookies need to be spaced out, even for me. I made a 6-ounce cookie from each batch then baked the rest as normal-sized cookies for military care packages. Win-win for everyone.

Now, since the taste test cookies, I did end up being able to try a genuine Crumbl cookie from an actual Crumbl franchise bakery. Turns out there's one 2 hours away from me. While even I won't drive 2 hours just for a cookie (er, at least I don't think I would), serendipitously, the Crumbl bakery was on the way to the Bay Area and was less than a mile out of my way when I did a road trip back to my geographic roots last month. So I got to try the original milk chocolate chip cookie as well as their Samoa cookie. Crumbl rotates their cookie flavors each week and I was lucky enough to catch the Samoa when I went.

Crumbl Milk Chocolate Chip cookie

You go inside the bakery to place your order then wait outside for them to give it to you. The retail space is small and shares space with an open kitchen so customers can see the baking activity. During these Covid times, only a limited number of people are allowed inside and most customers have to wait outside for their orders to be brought out in the signature pink Crumbl bakery box(es). 

Crumbl Samoa cookie

My 2 cookies came 1 to a box and were given to me warm. Think of a Mrs. Fields cookie back in its heyday but on steroids in terms of size, flavor and classy packaging. And price. I only had room in my belly for one cookie (at a time) so I only had half of the milk chocolate chip cookie while it was warm and while I was continuing on my road trip. Yes, it was delicious. I think it's hard to beat a well-made, warm chocolate chip cookie. It had a softer outside texture than a Levain Bakery cookie and was flatter but not flat. It also wasn't as sweet or as frankly overwhelming as a Levain cookie. I like both and you can't make me choose a favorite.

In terms of price, I paid $10 for 2 Crumbl cookies but that included the tip I left the bakery workers so, if memory serves, each cookie was $4. Which might seem a bit steep for a cookie but think of it as spending $4 for the experience, not just the cookie. Make sure to eat it warm though because that is part of the experience. 

I can't say any of the copycats were that close to the real Crumbl cookie but, in fairness, since I didn't eat them side by side at the same time, I may not be the best judge as I'm only going by memory over a span of 2 months' worth of cookies. I will say all of these copycat recipes are good chocolate chip cookie recipes. I would say the same thing of all the Levain Bakery copycats as well. Not quite the real thing but still good recipes, although I might have to give the nod to the recipe from Salt & Baker as my favorite of this batch of recipes that I tried. For all of these recipes though, I do advise double panning them for baking so the cookie bottoms won't get too hard or overbaked while the rest of the (giant) cookie catches up. In hindsight, I would also minimize the number of chocolate chips on the outside of the cookie. Tuck them inside the cookie dough before baking then as soon as you take the cookie(s) out of the oven, press the milk chocolate chips gently on the outside of each cookie. Since the bake time is so long on big cookies, the chocolate chips on the outside of the cookie will have a tendency to burn, especially if you bake at a higher temp or your oven runs hot. Better to press the chocolate chips on the outside of the cookie as soon as it's baked.

Copycat Recipes 

Salt and Baker

Salt & Baker (made dough April 4, 2021)

Modern Honey (made dough April 4, 2021)

Burnt Apple (made dough April 4, 2021)

The Cafe Sucre Farine (made dough April 5, 2021)

Ivy Lauren blog (made dough April 5, 2021)

Let's Dish (made dough April 18, 2021)