c is for chocolate crinkle cookies, clearly

I credit my niece for the cookie monster reference.

Chocolate crinkles. chocolate crackles. Snowball cookies. Those chocolatey things with the powdered sugar -- however you want to refer to them, these things are DIVINE. Rich and cakey with just the right amount of sweet, and easy to prepare. These are a staple in almost every holiday baking magazine, particularly around Christmastime. The event this time around? Superbowl. Hey, why not.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies

1/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
4 TB vegeatble oil
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups flour
powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Mix together all of the ingredients in a large bowl. Make sure it's well combined. Chill dough for anywhere between 2 hours - overnight.

Using a tablespoon or little cookie scooper (if ya have one), create a small dough ball using your hands and drop it into the powdered sugar. Roll to coat and plop on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake 12-15 minutes.



Allow cookies to cool, and sprinkle with a little bit more sugar if needed.

C is for Cookie

Some days just call for chocolate chip cookies. This past Saturday was one of those days. I had two dear friends from college coming over for dinner, have been stressed over work, and hell - for some reason I really craved a fresh from the oven chocolate chip cookie with some ice cream. Or a chipwich. You get the point.

I decided to venture away from my mother's famous chocolate chip cookie recipe and try Alton Brown's Chewy recipe, found over at chaos in the kitchen. With a few substitutions, I was all set to bake.

The cookies were very buttery (2 sticks of butter will do that), and didn't seem to hold up shape very well, or at least in my attempts. Also, since I don't usually keep a lot of milk in the house, used 2 TB of buttermilk in the recipe (shh, don't tell) and cut down the melted butter count by about 1 TB. For the chips, I added about 1.5 cups of chocolate chips and the rest of the 1/2 cup of peanut butter chips.

My grandmother's standing rule for making cookies and when to take them out of the oven didn't kick in until after batch 1. Her voice then popped into my head, and I remembered my mother explaining to me why we take the cookies out just before they look done, as she covered 3 counters of chocolate chip cookies for my brothers and I. Now, this doesn't work for all cookies, but I swear, for my mother's, it was like the secret ingredient (that, or shortening), and boy could she make cookies. They continued to bake on the counter out of the oven, she'd say. A trick she'd learned from her mother, whom I didn't know very well but I took my mother's word on it.

All in all, the cookies were delicious, but I may stick to the family recipe from now on.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies (w/ a splash of peanut butter for good measure)
Adapted from Alton Brown and chaos in the kitchen

Ingredients:
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 cup white sugar
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tbsp milk (* I used buttermilk, and took 1 TB out of the butter content up top ... try using the real stuff when ya can though :) )
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter chips.

Melt butter, add to mixing bowl. In another bowl combine flour, salt and baking soda. Add white and brown sugars to mixing bowl with butter. Cream butter and sugar together. I do this by hand (still haven't purchased the hand mixer). Mix in eggs, milk, and vanilla. Slowly add in flour until well incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips and peanut butter. Chill dough until firm enough to scoop.



Preheat oven to 375° F. I recommend lining the sheets with parchment paper. Greasing the pan leaves for oily or burnt bottoms of the cookies, and with this much butter in the recipe, it seemed destined for disaster.

Bake for 9-11 minutes and allow to cool. Or just pop in a bowl with some ice cream (hey, sometimes, it just has to be done.)