Hawaiian Cookies

I wanted to make some cookies to supplement the chocolate deliciousness that was the cupcakes this weekend. I had dog-eared Maple Nut Refrigerator cookies awhile back in my Betty Crocker Cookie Book and decided to give em a whirl! I'd already decided to use mini chocolate chips (we had a plethora of those little guys in our freezer), when Spice handed me a bag of dried pineapple and told me to get rid of it. So what did I do? Threw em in! I then realized I had a bunch of white chocolate chips I wanted to get rid of too. Why not toss them in as well?!

I ended up with a good cookie! They tasted Hawaiian to me, so thus they got their name. Maybe with some coconut they would be even better! I liked the maple taste the dough had but Annie Bananie didn't like the pineapple chunks in them. The cookies were pretty flat and crispy, if you like that sort of thing!

Hawaiian Cookies
Adapted from Betty Crocker Cookie Book

3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped dried pineapple
1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Beat sugar, butter and syrup together until creamy. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in chips and pineapple.

Shape into roll about 12 inches long. Wrap and refrigerate 2 hours or until firm.

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Cut roll into 1/4 inch slices. Place on greased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

Devil's Food Cupcakes with Magnolia's Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

These cupcakes were very lovely! I have been planning to make cupcakes for awhile and just hadn't gotten around to it. I was excited to try out a new decorator tip and a cupcake carrying case that Annie Bananie got me!

When our landlord helped us out with a crisis in our apartment one morning (don't ask)...I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to make some cupcakes for him! This recipe made a TON of cupcakes, though. So I also gave some to my friend who was in a play this weekend and Annie Bananie also sold some at the Broadway Flea Market! Obviously these cupcakes got a lot of mileage.

The cupcakes are a Martha Stewart creation, so obviously they were delish. I could have used more chocolate in them, but that is just me being a crazy chocoholic. The frosting was the Magnolia Bakery's recipe for vanilla buttercream. Of all the cupcakes out here in NY, Magnolia's are pretty far down on my list, but their frosting gets me every time. YUM!

Devil's Food Cupcakes
Martha Stewart

3/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
3/4 cup hot water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
1 1/2 cups unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
4 large eggs, room temperature
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup sour cream, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lind standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together cocoa and hot water until smooth. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

Melt butter with sugar in a saucepan over medium-low heat, stirring to combine. Remove from heat and pour into mixing bowl. With an electric mixer on medium-low speed, beat until mixture is cooled, 4 to 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Add vanilla, then cocoa mixture, and beat until combined. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the sour cream, and beating until just combined after each.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool 15 minutes; turn out cupcakes onto racks and let cool completely.

Magnolia's Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
Food Network.com

1 cup butter (softened)
6 to 8 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the milk and vanilla. On the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat until smooth and creamy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition (about 2 minutes), until the icing is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency. You may not need to add all of the sugar. Top with shaved chocolate.

Banana Bread

Stop reading if you are squeamish about bugs (that means YOU, Spice...I mean it! Don't read this!). Why I am putting this story on a food blog, I have no idea...

So last night, I'm coming home from rehearsal, step into my apartment and turn on the light. Scurrying right across the floor is a gigantic cockroach. I definitely do not like bugs. Spice, however, may take the cake with this one (luckily she wasn't home). The only other time we have seen a cockroach in our apartment was at the beginning of the summer and it happened to be in Spice's room. I'm sitting on the couch minding my own business (its probably about 11:30pm) when Spice screams, runs out of her room, starts hyperventilating and bursts into tears. We tried to find the cockroach in her room, but couldn't. Spice was determined to take EVERY PIECE OF FURNITURE out of her room to find the little bugger. Long story short, we woke up all our neighbors and our land lady's son had to come kill it for us. Side note: This was cyber cockroach. He flew, hit walls and literally wouldn't die despite multiple wacks with shoes and a pool of bug spray.

Anyways...so last night, upon seeing the cockroach, I knew I would have to kill it before Spice came home or we would have another freak out. Luckily, this was a normal (by normal I mean he didn't fly) cockroach and I attacked him with bug spray and a broom and he was gone within 15 minutes. And when I say bug spray I literally mean there were pools of bug spray all around our apartment. After the killing, I washed up and even swiffered the floors, but it still smelled like bug spray and chemicals.

Out of sheer brilliance, I made some banana bread to make the apartment smell better. Only I would think to bake instead of spraying air freshener.

I found this recipe in the latest issue of Cooking Light and it turned out GREAT! I made a few changes which I wrote below. The bread stayed very moist and had a great crispy crust after cooling. Despite reading about cockroaches for several minutes, I think you should make this banana bread this weekend.

Banana Bread
Cooking Light

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat flour
1/4 cup oat bran
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 medium bananas, mashed
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1/4 cup canola oil

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.

Combine flours and next 4 ingredients (through baking soda) in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Combine banana and next 4 ingredients (through oil) in a small bowl. Add banana mixture to flour mixture, stirring just until moist.

Spoon the batter into a 9 by5 inch loaf pan coated with cooking spray. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour and ten minutes. Cool for ten minutes in a pan on a wire rack and remove from pan.

Cinnamon Twist Cookies

I know I am weird. I guess most people are. But I usually know what it is about me that makes me weird. Every once upon a time, however, I do something I don't realize is strange until someone tells me.

For example, I wanted to make these cookies. They were dog-eared in a cookbook I have. I finally got around to it at about 10:30pm on Sunday night. I just wanted to bake them, not really for any purpose other than that. I guess that's odd, but it just hadn't occurred to me. Annie Bananie, one of my roommates, was there and voiced how weird it was that I liked to just bake. Not to eat it. Not for someone's birthday. Just to bake.

Upon reflection, I realized just how strange that was. Most times when I bake something, I try to decide how I am going to get rid of said item. Should I bring it to rehearsal? Will Spice be home so she can bring it to work? Will Annie be home so she can bring it to the show?

Oh-well. I just like to bake. That's that. Deal with it. =)

These cookies were great! Not really how I expected them to be. I kind of had a vision of the cinnamon twists that I assume now are made with puff pastry. The dough was very chewy, which I thought made them good. I brought them to work and they were a big hit. Per usual =)

Cinnamon Twists
Betty Crocker Cookie Cookbook

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Cream the sugar and butter together. Add the vanilla and egg. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt.

Divide dough in half. Stir cinnamon in one half.

Shape level teaspoons full of each plain and cinnamon dough into 3 in ropes. Lay them side by side and twist gently. Repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 8-10 minutes on a greased cookie sheet. Let cool several minutes on sheet before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Caramel Apple Cookies

Doesn't that sound like the best idea for a cookie EVER?! I was so excited when I stumbled across this recipe and couldn't wait for the weekend to try it. You would think they would have turned out grrrreat, right?!

Epic fail.

Don't let the first picture I used fool you. About 10 of these cookies actually turned out into real live cookies. The rest crumbled as soon as they came off the baking sheet or the caramel bits melted out of them while baking. See sad picture below. Boo.

Although I have no for sure reason why these cookies were so drastically terrible, I have a few ideas. For one thing, I was using the final dregs of our can of cooking spray, which maybe meant it didn't have the full nonstick punch. Second, I chopped up those caramel candies because I couldn't find caramel baking bits. And third, I didn't ground the oatmeal.

Surprisingly enough, the cookies tasted delicious. I couldn't stop eating the crumpled remains of the broken cookies and my roommate couldn't stop eating the actual cookies. Lesson learned. I will follow directions from now on.

Caramel Apple Cookies
Craftzineblog.com

1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cup flour
2 3/4 cup old fashioned oats (not quick cooking oatmeal)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
12 oz caramel baking bites
2 cups granny smith apples, chopped

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add the vanilla and eggs, beat until combined.

Measure oatmeal into a food processor and pulse until ground finely. In a medium sized bowl, stir the oatmeal, flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda until combined. Set aside.

Stir the flour mixture into the butter mixture until combined. Stir in the caramel bits and apples.
Refrigerate dough for one hour. Roll the cookie dough into golf ball sized balls. Bake on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet in an oven preheated to 350 degrees F, for 10-12 minutes. Cool on the pan for 4 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.