Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookies

Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've already got plenty of chocolate chip cookie recipes that work great for me. Sometimes I like them small and crisp, sometimes I like them thick and cakey, and sometimes I like them dense and chewy with some crispiness around the edges. I think this chocolate chip cookie is like that: It's got a lot of chew and a lot of chocolate and it's got a buttery crisp edge. Very nice. 

I wasn't really looking for a new chocolate chip cookie recipe, but if you spend enough time on Pinterest, you get sucked into some amazing looking pics of chocolate chip cookies that take you down another rabbit hole of cookie baking. This rabbit hole was worth it. I used a whole two bags of Dove Dark Chocolate Promises on this recipe, so it had better be worth it, right? 

I'll have to take some better pics of these, but for now, the ones I have will do. If you're looking for a generally great chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe, look no further.  For Me-For You got it right when she called this "The Only Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe I Will Need to Know For the Rest of My Life." I don't know if I'd go THAT far, but if you're looking for that ONE awesome recipe, use this one.

Jaques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookies

       --adapted from For Me-For You who in a roundabout way got it from Jacques Torres

Ingredients:

• 2 cups minus 2 Tbsp. cake flour 
• 1 2/3 cups bread flour (I used King Arthur Unbleached All Purpose Flour)
• 1 ¼ tsp. baking soda

• 1 ½ tsp. baking powder

• 1 ½ tsp. coarse salt, such as kosher

• 2 ½ sticks unsalted butter, softened

• 1 ¼ cups packed light brown sugar

• 1 cup plus 2 Tbsp.  granulated sugar

• 2 large eggs
 (room temperature)
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract

• 20 oz. good quality semi sweet chocolate chips/chunks/discs (I used 2 9.5 oz bags of Dove Dark Chocolate Promises, unwrapped an chopped into large chunks.)
• Sea salt or kosher salt for garnishing

Instructions:

Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Put dry ingredients through a sieve to sift them together. Set aside.

Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low/stir; then add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly to incorporate. Place in an airtight plastic container, and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Once chilled, you can bake or scoop dough balls to freeze for later baking.

When you’re ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F. Remove the bowl of dough from the refrigerator, and allow it to soften slightly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

Now here is where you have to decide what size to make the cookies (unless you made the balls earlier for freezing). I used a medium sized Pampered Chef cookie scoop, which is probably about 3 tablespoons. Bigger is probably better with these cookies. (For Me-For You used a 1/3 measuring cup for hers.) Place scoops onto parchment lined cookie sheets and leave about 2 inches between cookies. Sprinkle each dough ball with a little bit of sea salt or kosher salt. Bake cookies for12-14 minutes or until puffed and browned at the edges. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies onto the rack to cool a bit more. 

Enjoy with a tall glass of cold milk. Mmmm...

I'm not sure yet how many cookies this makes.

Lots of chocolate. LOTS.

Chex Scotchy Muddy Buddies

Chex Scotchy Muddy Buddies

What do I do on a snow day five days before Christmas? I bake. I make things with the ingredients in my house. I stay cozy. Today I made these Chex Scotchy Muddy Buddies. I had the milk and butterscotch chips from Scotcheroos last month, and I had the Chex from Crispy Caramelized Chex Mix last week. So... with a whole day on my hands, I decided to bake up a new batch of Dutch Letter sticks to pass out for Christmas. And then I made these Scotchy Muddy Buddies. I love the flavor of scotcheroos, so I thought that this would be a natural and delicious thing to make. 
I like these, but as with most muddy buddies, they're delicious, but pretty sweet, so I'll be taking these to work tomorrow as a little dessert for our pizza we're all planning to have for lunch on our last day before winter break.  Good times.

Chex Scotchy Muddy Buddies

Ingredients:

• 9 cups Chex cereal (rice and/or corn)
• 1/2 cup butterscotch chips
• 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions:
Place Chex cereal in a very large bowl. In a microwave safe bowl, place the butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter. Microwave on high for 1 minute. Stir for a couple of minutes to melt the chips the rest of the way. If they are not melting very well, you can microwave it on high for another 20-30 seconds. Stir until smooth.
Pour chocolate mixture over the Chex in the large bowl and stir/fold carefully with a rubber/silicone spatula making sure to evenly coat all of the cereal. 
Pour half of the powdered sugar into an extra large zip top plastic bag or a large paper grocery bag. Pour in the coated cereal. Pour in the rest of the powdered sugar. Seal bag or fold top of paper bag twice and carefully shake/jiggle until cereal is evenly coated with the powdered sugar.
Store in an airtight container.
Makes 9 cups

Ants On a Log

Ants On a Log

If you look around this blog long enough, you'll probably notice a glaring lack of vegetable dishes. Vegetables are not a favorite, and they are the part of a meal where I fall apart. Growing up, I don't think I ever ate celery with peanut butter. My mom might have, but I was super duper picky, and I was not forced to eat too many vegetables. Just enough to keep me alive. My son Ezra introduced these to me after they made them in his first grade class, I think. He was so excited about them and loved them so much, he asked me to make them at home. So, every time I buy celery (like I did the other day for meatloaf), Ezra asked me to make him ants on a log. I made one for myself too, and was reminded that they are, in fact, delicious. The celery is crisp and fresh, the peanut butter salty, sweet, and creamy, and the raisins are sweet and chewy. This snack has everything, AND it's pretty healthy. Right? Well, it passes for super healthy around these parts.
I'm blogging about them mostly to remind the rest of you about this healthy and tasty snack option.

Ants On a Log

Ingredients:

• Celery stalks
• Peanut butter (or cashew butter or Sunbutter...)
• Raisins

Instructions:
Wash, dry, trim and cut celery stalks into 4-6 inch sticks. Use about 1 teaspoon peanut butter per celery stick and spread into the "hollow" area. Use more or less to fit or meet your preference. Top peanut butter filled celery sticks with 4-6 raisins at regular intervals.
Enjoy your relatively healthy snack!

Gluten Free Cheese "Crackers"

Gluten Free Cheese "Crackers"
as tasty as the original

I've had a couple of jars of Kraft Old English Cheese Spread burning a hole in my cupboard since before Thanksgiving. It was around that time that I decided to force my older son into a very gluten-limited existence in the hope of clearing his brain/emotional fog (it's been working, by the way), and now that I've found Better Batter Gluten Free Flour, I thought I'd try it in my Cheese Crackers ala Marilyn recipe. The results: they taste FABULOUS. Max, though, who normally likes the cheese crackers, didn't really care for them. That's okay, because Ezra and I gobbled them up through the course of the day. I had to microwave mine for a few seconds, but, mmmm...mmmm...mmmm. They were salty, chewy, cheesy, crisp around the edges--PERFECT. They spread a little more than the original, but that may have been due to me inadvertently adding a little too much butter. I do that sometimes. Anyway, another gluten free success, even though my gluten free buddy didn't want to eat them.
I'm going to have to do some regular recipes here soon. I seem to be on an extended gluten free kick here.

Gluten Free Cheese "Crackers"

Ingredients:

• 1 jar (5 oz.) Kraft Old English Cheese Spread (see picture below)
• 4 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup Better Batter Gluten Free Flour

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or nonstick foil. (I think they can also be baked on an ungreased cookie sheet, but it's been a long time since I've done it that way.)

In a medium bowl, thoroughly mix the cheese spread, softened butter, and salt with a spoon.

Stir in flour until incorporated.

Scoop about 1 1/2 teaspoons of the dough and roll it into a ball.  Place balls 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheet.

Bake at 400 degrees for 11-12 minutes, or until edges are browned and cheese crackers are puffed and starting to brown on top.  Remove to a plate and allow to cool for a couple of minutes before attempting to eat.

Makes about 18 cheese crackers, depending on how big you make them.

Gluten Free Asiago Cheese Bagels

Gluten Free Asiago Cheese Bagels

These have the perfect bagel texture.

Without going into too much detail and specifics about my son's "condition," I'm trying to limit my older son's gluten intake again. One of his very favorite (and disastrous) gluten-y eats is the asiago cheese bagels they have at church every Sunday morning. For the past month or so, I've had to deny my poor kid the joy of eating his half bagel on Sunday morning, because it just made him too weird come Monday at school. 
I tried a frozen gluten-free bagel a couple of weeks ago, and it was so bad, I had to spit it out. It was awful. Just awful. (Side note, my other son actually LIKED that nasty bagel and asked me to prep another one for him. It really makes me question all of the times the kid has told me I'm the "best cooker in the world." Hmmmm...)
Now that I've found Better Batter Gluten Free flour, I feel like experimenting more, and I was very excited to try a gluten free bagel. My gluten-limited son says these bagels are "weird, but good."
"What do you mean by 'weird'?"
"Um...uh. It tastes kinda funny, and chewy and fluffy, but good. In a cheesy bread kind of way."
We'll see if he finishes the others I placed in the freezer. 
(As for my other son, he LOVES them.)
The flavor here definitely isn't that of a wheat bagel, but my son, who knows asiago bagels, doesn't mind. I actually slice these for him, butter the cut faces, sprinkle with garlic salt, and broil in the oven, sort of like the Toasty Parmesan Garlic Bagels I love so much.
The first time I made these, I made 8 bagels from the recipe, but I think that made them too big and dense, and they didn't bake thoroughly. So the next time, I divided the dough into twelfths, and they turned out perfectly, as you can see in the pics. 
P.S. The second batch of these bagels have REALLy gone over well with my gluten-limited son. He's already breezed through this batch in less than a week, so I will be making them again this weekend. Ahhh...it does my mom's heart good to know my son has a replacement for his beloved Sunday morning cheese bagels, AND he can enjoy them any day of the week! 

Gluten Free Asiago Cheese Bagels

     --adapted from BetterBatter.org

Ingredients: 

• 4 cups Better Batter Gluten Free flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 package) instant yeast
• 2 1/4 cups warm water
• Better Batter Flour, for rolling
• Water plus sugar for the water bath (1 Tbsp per 2 quarts)
• 5 ounces grated asiago cheese, preferably good quality*

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Mix all dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attchment. Add the water and molasses mix on low until the mixture resembles very sticky play-doh.

Lightly flour a flat work surface (it should barely be covered with a fine film of flour). Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces.

Gently roll the dough balls on the floured work surface until they’re smooth. Flatten each ball ito a disk, about 3 inches by 1 1/2 inches thick.

Very gently, with floured hands, poke a hole into the center of the dough an work it until the hole is about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Repeat with all the dough. Let the bagels rise for 40-50 minutes, or until puffed (they won't double in size).

Heat a pan full of water, at least 3 inches deep to boiling. Add about a tablespoon of sugar per 2 quarts of water. Drop two or three bagels in at a time. They swell quite a bit as they boil, so don't crowd them.

Boil for 2 minutes, turn over, and boil for another 1-2 minutes.

Remove with a slotted spoon and drain a little on a paper towel. Place back on parchment paper. When one sheet of bagels has been boiled, carefully place about 2 tablespoons of cheese around each bagel. If some falls into the center, that's fine. It makes a nice cheesy center. Place in the oven and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until well browned and puffed.

Remove from oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool. Let cool completely before slicing.

Makes 12 bagels

*I say use a "good quality" asiago cheese because the ones you see pictured here were made with Target's Archer Farms brand asiago cheese. I tried Target's Market Pantry brand last time (which was also pre-shredded, as opposed to the Archer Farms chunk), and the Market Pantry asiago cheese turned a deep mahogany color. Still edible, but not as delicious as the previous ones.

Bagels set to rise

Boilin' some bagels.

I tried adding about 3 tablespoons of baking soda
to the boiling water to make these bagels
more pretzel-like. I don't think it changed the flavor,
but they do look nice, in my opinion.

Oven Wings

Oven Hot Wings
It's winter, so I'm using my Instagram pics.

Oven Teriyaki Wings

Chicken wings. My husband love, love, loves them. At 4:30 this afternoon, it is what he named as his dinner of choice when I asked. Yeah. So I had to go to the store, where they only had semi-frozen wings. Don't ask me how I thawed them. Suffice it to say, I had to sanitize my kitchen with Comet after I got to the flour coating stage of the following recipe. I love that man, and he is good to me. He deserves home made chicken wings once in a while, even if cutting the pieces up drives me to vegetarianism one of these days.
That said, I got this recipe from Allrecipes.com. The title is "Restaurant-Style Buffalo Chicken Wings" and it calls for frying the chicken in a deep fryer. One of the reviewers gave instructions for baking them, and that sounded better to me. They satisfy the husband, and I like them with teriyaki sauce. They're just a little more work than my average meal around here.
Oh, and now that it's winter, my pics of dinner-type items will be looking like this. I'm using my fancy new iPhone. It works. You at least get the idea of what the food looks like, and they look a little bit hip, I suppose.
That's it. Give these a try. You'll like 'em. Ezra sure did.

Oven Wings
     --adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:

• 10 chicken wings*, cut into drumette and that other piece
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup Frank's Red Hot sauce**
• 1 dash garlic powder
• 1 dash black pepper

Special Materials:

• 2 sturdy baking sheets
• non-stick foil
• tongs

Instructions:
Make sure your chicken wings are cut into their two pieces (drumette and the other piece). Pat dry with paper towels.
In a large bowl, mix the flour, paprika, cayenne pepper, and salt. Place all of the chicken pieces in the flour mixture and toss until evenly coated. Cover and refrigerate for 60-90 minutes. (Note: I don't always let it sit this long, like tonight, where I cut, dried, and placed the wings in the bowl and then on the pan and into the oven in a matter of 30 minutes because of limited time. Do what you have to.)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Pull out a large piece of non-stick foil for each baking sheet and form it into an insert for the pan by folding up the corners. This will help catch the grease and make for easy cleanup.
Place half of the chicken pieces on each pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, turning and rearranging them with tongs every 10-15 minutes, so they cook evenly.
Meanwhile, in a small saucepan over low heat, place the butter, hot sauce, pepper and garlic powder. Heat until butter is melted. Stir and set aside.
When chicken is crisp and most of the grease has rendered, remove chicken from the oven. Toss wings two or three at a time in the sauce--or place wings in bowl, pour sauce over, and toss with spatula. Your choice.

*For a meatier, "lighter" version, use fresh chicken tenders. If you choose this, you'll need to pour a couple of tablespoons of canola oil on the pan before putting the chicken on it, to help crisping and browning. You can also use some wings and some tenders. The oil from the wings will help the tenders brown.
**I also like to use bottled teriyaki sauce instead of the hot sauce. I pour about a quarter to a third of a cup over half the wings about halfway through the cooking and stir with a silicone spatula to coat thoroughly. Then as they continue to bake, the sauce caramelizes and turns it into salty sticky chicken candy. Mmmmmm.

Makes about 4-5 servings.

Ezra's liking the wings. The hot ones.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

About an hour into work this morning, as I was chatting with my kindergarten small group about their weekends, I got a call from my son's school saying he was sick and needed to be picked up. This is what I love about my job: I told the classroom teacher what was up and said, "See you tomorrow," and left. Well, I did have to tell the other students and teachers I work with that I was leaving for the day; but I love that I'm a teacher who can get up and leave. 
At any rate, that meant I had the whole day to hang out with sick Max (who really is feeling fine now) and do whatever I want to around the house. So after some preliminary settling in, I took a nap. Then I lay there a little longer, and then I decided to make some gluten free chocolate chip cookies for my kid who got sick this morning at school. I still haven't decided if I'm going to let him eat any of these today, but I wanted to try out my Better Batter All Purpose Gluten Free Flour on my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. I should have remembered that these always turn out too flat for my taste, so I think I'll add more of the flour next time I try to make these. I also didn't allow the first batch to refrigerate before scooping, so that could be part of my problem with the flatness. 
These are tasty cookies, though. I think I'll have to try the Better Batter Flour in some of my other chocolate chip cookie recipes to see which one works best. I think I'll have Max try these ones tomorrow.

Gluten Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

     --adapted from Top Secret Recipes by Todd Wilbur 

Ingredients 

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup Crisco, room temperature
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 T water
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¾ cup brown sugar 
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• 2 ½ cups Better Batter All Purpose Gluten Free Flour
• 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions
1. Cream butter, Crisco, egg, vanilla, & water in a medium size bowl. (This will take a little while for the wet ingredients to emulsify and turn creamy.)
2. In a large bowl, stir together with a whisk the sugars, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and flour.
3. Combine moist mixture with dry mixture just until it comes together (do not over mix). Add the chocolate chips. Refrigerate dough two hours or over night. 
4. Preheat oven to 375°F. Scoop dough into balls that are about 1 tablespoon and place them one inch apart on a parchment lined cookie sheet. 
5. Bake 8-11 minutes, or until puffed and light brown around the edges.
Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

Looks like regular cookie dough.