Life in the Cheese Drawer

NOTHING WEIRD. i was shocked.

this recipe calls for pecans, dried cherries, and chocolate chunks, BUT it says you can swap out the additions for other stuff, so i used pecans, craisins, and chocolate chips. i’m not a huge fan of nuts in my cookies, so i put in about half the amount it called for.

i am always a fan of oatmeal anything (except oatmeal raisin cookies, because they are SO DECEIVING!), so i skipped over the peanut butter cookies and went straight to oatmeal. maybe i’ll come back to peanut butter cookies.

recipe called for it to make 16 cookies, and i got about 20 out of the dough. ATK calls for ginormous serving sizes. those cookies would’ve been the size of my head! there are a couple i made that ARE the size of my head!

these are pretty darn good cookies. i always have a tough time finding a decent oatmeal-chocolate recipe, so i’ll give the point to ATK.

well, it turns out i’m not going to make EVERY cookie in the america’s test kitchen cookbook; some of them contain DEVIL’S SYRUP. i’m not going to bend my boycott for you, ATK.
so i jumped ahead a couple recipes, and the next in line was the double chocolate cookie. this is an intense cookie. it calls for melted chocolate AND cocoa powder. if you wanted to be really intense, you could add some chocolate chips to it as well. not to mention it calls for instant coffee/espresso powder. o.O 
 
i didn’t have instant coffee OR espresso powder, so on recommendation from nate, i ground the heck out of some coffee we already had. it was dark chocolate truffle flavored as well, so i’m sure that added to the chocolateyness that was these cookies.

4 eggs in these cookies! that is a ton. the recipes calls to spread the coffee over the whisked eggs to let it dissolve, but i didn’t do that great of a job when spreading, so it just sort of sat there.

when everything was in, it looked a lot like brownie batter and had the consistency of brownie batter (except a wee bit thicker). i was all set to go, when i realized i hadn’t added the cocoa powder. and the batter looked and tasted completely fine. what the heck; more chocolate never hurt anyone. (except dogs. don’t feed your dogs chocolate.)

 
i seriously could’ve made brownies with this batter. it calls to roll it into balls, but to heck with that. i just scooped it onto the sheets with my cookie scoop. unfortunately, they looked like little turds.

 
these baked pretty quick – you can bake them two sheets at a time as well, as long as you rotate halfway through.

holy crap; these are delicious, but you seriously need something to cut them with – a huge glass of milk or bowl of ice cream will do the trick. using these to make ice cream or cream cheese frosting sandwiches would be a stellar idea.
all the other ATK cookies i’ve made i can scarf down one after another. these are 2 and done. i don’t know if i would necessarily make these again, but they are definitely a force to be reckoned with.
point: ATK (? maybe?)

i knew this would be the real test. and it’s pretty darn close. america’s test kitchen classic chocolate chip cookies are really good, a very close second to my family recipe, but i’m not giving up my recipe.

the recipe seems pretty innocuous – basic CCcookie ingredients. i’ve never added just an egg yolk to a CCC recipe, but i’ll go with it.
as with the brown sugar cookie, this one called for browning the butter.

you know it’s ready when it stops steaming and the froth is gone from the top. this pan of melted butter is good to go.
reading directions, blending dry goods, etc., etc., then OOOH – there it is. the weird thing.

whisk sugar and butter for 30 seconds, then let rest for 3 minutes. repeat 3 times. what?? the only think i can think of that this accomplishes is it cools off the butter and lets the wet ingredients cream a little better.

16 oz. of vanilla from penzey’s. no messing around with vanilla this time.
i love CCCs because all you have to do is scoop them up and put them on the cookie sheet. no rolling, dipping in sugar, all that jazz. the recipe called for this to make only 16 cookies – that’s huge!! instead i made normal sized cookies.

i have to admit: if i didn’t have my own recipe already, i would make these cookies (with maybe less chocochips – there were a lot).
point: it’s a tie.
ATK:1; kate: 2; draw: 1
next up: chocolate cookies.

here’s the problem with having tried and true cookie recipes that i’ve gathered and used over the last 15 years of christmas cookie baking: they’re tried and true. so i found with the sugar cookie. i had never tried the brown sugar cookies, so those were awesome. i’m expecting the ATK chocolate chip cookies to fall flat (there’s a reason our family recipe has been around so long).
i use a molasses/ginger cookie recipe that i modified from a martha stewart recipe i found about four years ago. it’s awesome, but i was really expecting the ATK recipe to outdo it.

the weird thing in this recipe? it calls for pepper. and a seemingly ungodly amount of spices, the likes of which (the measurements, that is) i’ve never seen in a cookie recipe.

this alton brown liquid measuring cup was the best present i ever got nate 🙂

 
i poured the molasses onto the whipped sugar and butter, and it looked so much like chocolate syrup on ice cream that i almost dug in. that would’ve been a mouthful of weird, though.
basic cookie assembly. roll into balls, roll in sugar, bake. once again, ATK called for 22 cookies, and i came out with 32.

 
they sure LOOK pretty! final result? there is something about them that just doesn’t cut it. maybe they’re now quite sweet enough, or the huge amounts of all these kicky spices just don’t play well together. and one of the things mentioned in the recipes is that molasses cookies generally are dry and taste like cardboard. quite frankly, i found these a little dry. well, dryer than my tried and true molasses cookie. that said, they are still cookies, and still yummy.
so, ATK 1, kate 2. i will TRY the chocolate chip ones, but i’m not holding out much hope.