Chocolate

Sweet Saturday: Chipper Blondie Bars


Chipper [chip-er]

–adjective

marked by or being in sprightly good humor and health.

–adjective

marked by the presence of more than 2 types of chips in a baked good.

Lately I have been changing recipes just a tad and trying to figure out just how much can change without affecting the dish detrimentally.  I changed the pasta last week too much with the addition of the sausage, but other than that it was yummy, so I will consider that to be a success!

I found the original recipe for these bars on King Arthur’s website.  A lot of the recipes sound delicious but have mixed reviews, so I am often hesitant to try them.  The combination of butter, brown sugar, and chocolate sounded like it just couldn’t miss…so I decided to give these Warm Chocolate Blondie Bars a try.  I changed the mix-ins, but left the cookie base alone.  I don’t feel quite ready to start messing with people’s baking ratios.  I used chopped Hershey’s bars because they were on sale, white chocolate chips because I like them, and toffee pieces because they melt into pure deliciousness in a cookie.

blondiebars

The only other differences from the original recipe are that I didn’t use espresso powder or nuts.  The recipe has the option of either all purpose or white whole wheat flour.  I chose all purpose for 2 reasons: I didn’t have white whole wheat, and I didn’t want to replace it with whole wheat flour.  I would consider half whole wheat and half all purpose, but a cookie with ALL whole wheat flour is often too hearty and a bit gritty for my liking.  An oatmeal cookie with whole wheat flour works, but not a chocolate chip type cookie…in my opinion…which matters…very little.

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Daring Bakers: Cookies

I must admit this, I was not thrilled about this months challenge at first.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love cookies.  Almost all kinds of cookies.  I even like when they take all day to make.   My issue with this challenge was that I made one of the cookie recipes a few years ago with less than stellar results, so I was kinda bummed.  The other cookie also seemed a little boring.  I went into this challenge with a rotten attitude…but I came out a very happy girl.

mallow6

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole     at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I made the Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies first.

Day 1: I made the cookies a day before I planned to make the marshmallow and cover them.  The cookie dough was easy to deal with and the cookies made my house smell so wonderful while they baked.  I tried the cookies alone, and I found them to be a bit dry, but they had good flavor.

Day 2: I’ve made these cookies before, so I have made marshmallow before.  I really enjoy making food that starts out with a very ordinary and unassuming list of ingredients and miraculously becomes something completely different!  That’s why marshmallow is so fun to make.  It creates quite a sticky mess, but is worth it.  mallow1

Be sure to use good vanilla as this is the only flavoring in the marshmallow besides sugar. I recommend Nielson-Massey Vanilla Bean paste or Madagascar Vanilla.

The marshmallow was beautiful and piped out quite nicely onto the cookies.  I let them set at this point for a few hours at room temperature.

The process of covering things in chocolate and I do not get along very well.  Unless I am using that chocolate bark, my chocolate doesn’t ever harden completely without putting it in the fridge or freezer.  And yet again, I had that problem with these cookies.  They looked beautiful coming out of their chocolate bath, but even after 3 hours the chocolate was still wet.  So, in the fridge they went!  The chocolate hardened and then we were able to taste them!  The chocolate formed a nice hard shell around the soft gooey marshmallow and crumbly cookie.  I liked these cookies, but think they might require more work than they’re worth in the taste department.  They are beautiful and impressive, though.

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