Super Power Cookies

In college, my girlfriends and I looked for any opportunity to dress up and have a party.  When I say dress up, I’m not referring to nice clothes; no I am referring to costumes.  And in college this all equates to an excuse to drink and decorate your dorm room.  Just like Halloween but multiple times a year.  As with Halloween, the costumes are, ahem, not the most modest. 

Sophomore year, a friend of mine was taking a course on super heroes (I know, it seems ridiculous, but I took two classes that involved quilts).  She managed to convince her professor that she should get extra credit if she threw, and documented, a “Super Heroes” party.  He agreed.  My friends all went into crazy planning mode, with mix tapes, theme drinks, and decorations. 

At the time, I found a recipe online for “power cookies” and I figured this would be appropriate fodder for keeping super powers up.  Now, this was before I had really honed my skills in the baking department, and needless to say these cookies were not very tasty.  Although, if you put enough intoxicated college students in a room with cookies – even terrible cookies – they will get eaten.

Recently, I had been thinking about those cookies.  One, because a friend mentioned that in London it is totally acceptable to have fancy dress parties, akin to our Super Heroes party, and I thought it would be wonderful if all of us know at the very end of our 20’s were to do something like that.  Ridiculous, but wonderful. 

Second, I have seen lots of recipes and even ads for something called breakfast cookies.  In looking at the ingredients or nutritional value of said cookies, I would not consider them acceptable for breakfast. And I suppose that some of these cookies probably are better than a pop tart, I still wouldn’t want to each that much sugar to start my day. 

In going back to the original power cookie recipe, I made some changes and when I tested these cookies – they were actually pretty good.  I brought them to a regatta this weekend for the rower’s to eat, and although I didn’t see too many get consumed while I was there, I heard good reports regarding the overall flavor and texture.  These cookies would be a great way to start your day, or an excellent and protein filled snack; especially if you need to keep up your super powers.

Please excuse the blurriness of this image, I took it with my phone at the regatta, while the cookies were still in the ziplock bag.

Power Cookies

As adapted from Sara Sue on allrecipes.com

I highly recommend using dried beans rather than canned beans for this.  In the original recipe, I used canned beans, and the cookies then tasted like beans.  The dried beans also yielded less moisture, so I added unsweetened, spiced, applesauce.  If you can’t find that, just get the organic unsweetened kind and add spices to the batter.

1 c. dried cannellini beans, soaked overnight, and simmer for 2 hours until soft (should yield 2 cups beans)

½ c. granulated sugar
½ c. dark brown sugar, packed
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. unsweetened applesauce
4 cups oats
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. salt
½ c. pitted dates
½ c. shredded coconut
½ c. raisins

Preheat oven to 375°. 

In a food processor, grind the oats into coarse flour.  It is not necessary for it all to be powder, as some larger bits will add texture to the cookies.  Move the flour to a bowl and add the baking powder, baking soda and salt, stir to combine.

Next, place the beans in the food processor (don’t worry about cleaning it between uses), and process until they are smooth, like a thick hummus.  Move beans into the bowl of a stand mixer.  Add sugars, vanilla and applesauce and mix until well combined. 

Add the oat flour mixture to stand mixture and mix until just combined.  Next, pulse the dates in the food processor to chop them into smaller pieces, about the size of the raisins.  Add the dates and raisins to the dough and mix until incorporated. 

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.  Scoop dough with a heaping table spoon and loosely shape into a ball.  Press the dough down slightly on the board, but not to flatten the cookies.  The cookies will not rise or flatten while baking, so there is no need to space them out very much.

Bake for 15-17 minutes, rotating half-way through, until golden on top.  Allow to cool and store in an airtight container.

Almost Almond Macaroons

We have come to the end of the cookie testing, and I am glad that I did it. I had a few hits and a few more misses. And as per usual, I have left the most difficult cookie recipe to try for this weekend. So if you hear me cursing and throwing ingredients around the kitchen, don’t be alarmed.

In hindsight I wish that I had really cooked the s**t out of some new cookie recipes, but alas my time was taken away from me. So I apologize for only giving you a couple of usable cookie recipes and only a few posts this month as well. I feel as though I have really dropped the ball on this whole sharing recipes for the holiday’s thing.

This week I made almond macaroons after seeing an old episode of Baking with Julia. The cookies seemed so simple to make, and are a favorite Italian bakery treat for Joe and I. I figured, why not. Instead of using the recipe from that episode (mostly because it called for 8 oz. of almond paste and I could only find a tube of 7oz.) I instead used the recipe inside the box. And typically, this method works out just fine. Well, except for the Tollhouse chocolate chip recipe on the bag, I find that it is a little too much butter if you don’t refrigerate the dough before baking, but that’s just me.

Anyways, this recipe gives you very almond-y flavored cookies which is wonderful, but they are a bit too chewy for me. I feel like a dog eating peanut butter when I chomp into one of the cookies. Aside from that, the cookies are good, and simple to make.

I think I have narrowed down my Christmas cookie selection to the following:
Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
Jam Filled Cookies
Chocolate Mint Cookies (previous post)
Italian Tri-Colore Cookies
And if the mood strikes me, maybe something else.
I’ll let you know next week which ones worked out the best!

Almond Macaroons7oz. Almond paste
½ c sugar
Pinch of salt
¼ c egg whites


Preheat oven to 350°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Grate the almond paste and place in the bowl of a stand mixer. Add the sugar and salt and mix on medium speed to thoroughly combine. Add in egg whites and mix until the dough everything is well incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl several times (about 5-7 minutes).

Scoop cookie dough into a pastry bag, or releasable bag and snip off one corner. Pipe the dough in a snail like formation onto the cookie sheet.

Next dampen a cotton kitchen towel and gently smack the cookies to remove the lines from piping. Bake for about 12 minutes or until the edges are a light golden brown.

Let cool on the baking sheet. To remove the cookies from the paper, lift the paper, wet your fingers, and moisten the paper directly underneath the cookie. Then peel the cookie from the paper. This will help get the cookie cleanly off of the paper. Store in an airtight container. Makes about 2 dozen.

Another Look at Cookies

Again, let me apologize for not sharing a good recipe with you last week.  I have a better one this week – I promise. 

So toward the end of college I was working for a cookbook author, preparing to work again with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Foodways section, and waitressing in a bar.  That meant I was thinking about and dealing with food pretty much continually.  I didn’t eat too much food as I was incredibly busy, subsisting off of single pop tarts and hamburger halves through thesis writing and graduation.  (I realized this was a bad idea when I grabbed a hamburger from the bar I worked at, ran to pick up graduation tickets, said hello to a friend’s family, answered two telephone calls from my own family and began choking on said hamburger in front of my former advisor; I thought I should really move on to something that required less chewing.)

Anyways, around this time I started tinkering with my own recipes.  I made a pretty awesome strawberry rhubarb pie and some wonderful cookies.  I wrote down the recipe for the pie, but neglected to take my cookie recipe to paper.  Thus, I forgot the recipe.  But, I remember what those cookies tasted like. 

Have you ever eaten something but wanted it to be a little more spectacular?  Like, wow this chocolate chip cookie is good, but what if it had peanut butter in it too?  That’s the way I felt about the Archway chocolate cookies you find in the grocery store.  I had bought them for a project my step-sister was doing for her special-ed classroom – Ice Cream sandwiches.  The Archway cookies are big, flat and easy to handle.  They offer a large area for spreading ice cream which is always a big deciding factor in making ice cream sandwiches.  The chocolate cookies are good, but they were missing something – mint.  Now, if you are not a fan of chocolate and mint I am sorry, you are missing out.

These cookies are a little temperamental, they are superb when cooked exactly right and kind of duds when baked a little too long.  Although as long as you use a timer when baking, you should be fine.  (I don’t use a timer, and this comes back to bite me in the butt every so often).  These cookies store well in an air-tight container making them perfect for baking and sharing, but they also make a very handsome ice cream cookie sandwich.

Chocolate Mint Crinkles

as adapted from Bon Appétit Dec. 2000

2 sticks butter, softened

1 ¾ c sugar
2 eggs
¾ tsp peppermint extract
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 c cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
Large Granulated decorating sugar

Preheat oven to 350°.  Line 4 baking sheets with parchment paper.  In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs and peppermint extract and mix to combine.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until just combined.  Roll dough into 1 ½” balls and place on a cookie sheet spacing about 2” apart.  Press dough on the balls to flatten them to about ½” thickness. 

Sprinkle cookies with decorating sugar, and bake until the cookies are firm around the edges, but soft and crackled in the center – about 12 minutes.  Rotate pans if the cookies are baking unevenly.  Cool on trays for about 5 minutes and then move the parchment with cookies off of trays.  Allow to cool, and enjoy.

Christmas Cookies Part I

Alright here is my first installment of trying out cookie recipes for the Holidays and sharing them with you.  This week was Chocolate Pistachio Biscotti from an old Food & Wine recipe.  It looked quite delicious and biscotti keep very well so I thought I would give it a shot.

I don’t know about you, but I have binders (yes that’s plural) filled with torn out pages from magazines and handwritten recipes I scribbled down on something random.  Hello, torn piece of cardboard or back of “To Do List” from 2003.  My first binder is very well organized, with tabs distinguishing poultry from appetizers from desserts.  However, that binder got full real fast.  I also have a special purple binder emblazoned with Jewel (the singer) stickers that I brought with me to college.  This has in it my own recipes and other special ones, I know exactly which recipes are where in there and how each grease stain and food spot got onto the pages.  I love that purple binder (and no, not just because it has Jewel stickers all over it). 

The third binder is a bit more haphazard.  It’s kind of dangerous actually.  When I open it I have to be careful the recipes don’t take out their vengeance on me and cut me with a million paper cuts.  They are so poorly thrown together, some not even hole-punched (gasp!) that I am sure they feel their very nature has been compromised.  I am always hesitant to reach for that binder because I know it will take me an hour to go through it and find the recipe I want.  Seeing that binder reminds me why I should never take up scrapbooking. 

Perhaps if I have a snow day and some tabs and a hole-punch I can make an honest binder out of it.  Until that day comes, though, I will continue to add torn pages from magazines to the top of my book shelf and neglect them with all the others. 

Luckily for you though, this recipe came from the previous well-organized binder.  But I never had a chance to make it before now.  And the verdict is – it’s not really worth it to make these biscotti.  I know right!  What a letdown.  I had high hopes for these – pistachios, chocolate, almond extract, more chocolate – what could be bad about these.  It turns out that second addition of chocolate just doesn’t work.  Since biscotti get baked twice, they tend to be crisp and sturdy.  These took a little longer to cook then I prefer drying out parts but not the whole thing.  They were also very delicate to handle and tended to crumble since I had to move them around so frequently during the baking process. 

They taste fine, and they are pretty neat to look at but they kind of leave me with a ‘so what?’ feeling.  I figure that when trying to make cookies to encourage your neighbor to snow blow your walk way throughout the entire winter – you had better make some pretty spectacular cookies.  These were not snow blower approved.   If you would like to try them out for yourself, the link to the recipe is here.  So because of this, I do not have recipe per se to share with you today.  However, I am on the prowl for a scrumptious cookie and hopefully I can share a recipe with you next week!

In the Jamie v. Cookies battle so far:

Christmas Cookies – 0

Jamie - 1

Impulses

I am a sucker for impulse buys. If you put something shiny in a checkout line, I am immediately drawn to it. Also, when trying out a new product or receiving a free makeover at the mall, I will invariably purchase whatever someone is selling. This got so bad in fact that during college I bought 2 bartending kits through shady companies. The first one I purchased willingly with the promise that it would make me an expert bartender and I would earn loads of cash working in DC bars. Never mind that I was 18, and no restaurant in their right mind would ever hire an 18 year old to sling drinks. I actually still have some pieces from that original bartending kit –so for me that was 20 bucks well spent.

It was really the second bartending kit I inadvertently bought, that makes my college friends tease me to this day. When I say inadvertently, I mean that I was unaware I was purchasing said kit while it was happening. Once again applying to bartending jobs through our college newspaper, I was on the phone with a representative from a company called something like Bartenders Today. Mid-conversation he asked me what the expiration date on my credit card was, “Well, I don’t know. Let me check.” Don’t worry, I figured out what he was up to once he asked me what the credit card number was, but I felt by that time it was too late. Thus I had purchased my second completely worthless bartending kit.

By now, I am sure you are shaking your head in disbelief and wondering if you can sell me Brooklyn Bridge – perhaps, but only after you make it shiny and tell me it’s a bargain (and that it could potentially lead to a bartending job). I think this affliction is due to imposed restraint at impulse buys as a child. While my mom was checking out at the grocery store, my sisters and I would stand by the candy and toy vending machines on the way out deciding what we wanted. When my mom came by with the cart we began to make our case about why it was necessary to pay 50 cents for sticky green slime. She never fell for it.

What I didn’t realize, was that she was making her own impulse buys at the checkout line! Yes, that’s right mom, I am telling your secret to the world! You love grocery store checkout cookbooks. Don’t be ashamed, we all think about it from time to time, and I admire your spontaneity for snatching off the rack and tossing it onto the pile of groceries on the conveyor belt. We have so many of those paperback brand name product cookbooks at home they are like a shrine to all things Kraft.

When I moved out, my mom pawned some of these off on me. Probably just to clear space for the newest editions, but regardless of her motives, I now have a handful of these on my own shelf. I have flipped through these from time to time, and occasionally stumble upon a good recipe. When deciding what I should make for this week’s post, I was looking though the M&M’s baking cookbook and found a recipe that caught my eye. I happened to have a giant bag of M&M’s left over from a conference, as well as one almost rotten banana, so why not.

Banana Pecan Oatmeal Cookies with M&M’s
as adapted from M&M Baking Cookbook 1996
I was a bit dubious of the outcome for these cookies, while reading the recipe. But, with a few minor tweaks, the cookies came out wonderfully. Plus, with the addition of oats, banana and whole wheat flour, these cookies are almost good for you.

½ c butter, softened
½ c margarine or vegetable shortening
1 ¼ c light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 egg
1 medium mashed banana (about ½ c)
2 ¼ c white whole wheat flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. ground nutmeg
¼ tsp. salt
1 ½ c. old fashioned oats (I used Thick Cut oats)
1 c chopped pecans
1 ¼ c M&M’s

Preheat oven to 350°. In a bowl cream together butter, shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in egg and banana and mix until combined. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda and spices. Gradually mix in dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Stir in oats and pecans until combined, then fold in M&M’s.

Place onto ungreased (or parchment paper lined) baking sheets by large dinner spoon, keeping about 1” apart. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden, but the rest of the cookie is still fairly soft. Remove to wire racks and cool. Store in an airtight container or plastic bag. Makes about 2 dozen.