Pistachio Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies

What to do during spring break? Make yummy food of course.  Today started with this recipe for cookies.  I found a shortbread pistachio recipe that I contemplated to make for St. Patty's Day but found another recipe today that included chocolate.  Original recipe is from a blog called Baking Banquet.

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup brown sugar

3 tbs white sugar

2 (3.4ounce) packages instant Pistachio Pudding mix

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 or 2 drops green food coloring (optional, I did not use this)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup chopped pecans (You can use any nut you want, pecans just happened to be in the pantry.)

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
2. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and set aside. 
3. Cream together butter and sugars. 
4. Beat in pudding mix until blended.

   

   Pistachio pudding being added to the creamed butter and sugar.  Love the color!

5. Add the eggs, vanilla and food coloring (optional). Mix well. 
6. Add the flour mixture and mix to combine. 
7. Stir in pecans and chocolate chips.

   

   Ready to scoop!

8. Place golf ball sized dough balls on a cookie sheet.

   

   Ready for the oven.

9. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
10. Let cookies cool for 5 minutes on cookie sheet before moving to a cooking rack.

Aren't they pretty?

Close up!

These turned out really well.  I will definitely make them again!

Lindsie Birthday Cookies

We (Greg and I) have made these for Lindsie a couple of times now. Since she likes them so much, there's no need to send her anything else. Her former roomie from Berkeley enjoyed them as well. (She called me a cookie goddess. I'll take that as a compliment!) We sent these to our mom this year for Mother's Day and they were well received.

Ingredients

• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
• ¼ cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 cup (milk or semi-sweet) mini chocolate chips (we cut up some Hershey's candy bar one time instead of the chocolate chips)
• 1 cup of toffee (Sometimes Heath bars come pre-chopped in the baking aisle or you can buy a bag/bars and chop away!)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix/cream the sugars and butter together.
3. Add egg and vanilla.
4. Sift/mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl.
5. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix.
6. Fold in chocolate and toffee.
7. Place tablespoon sized balls onto non-greased sheets.
8. Bake for 10 minutes.
9. Let cool before eating. :)

Happy Birthday Lindsie! Have fun in Wisconsin!

Shortbread Cookies

What do you do with strawberries and Nutella? Why, put them on a homemade shortbread cookie of course! I referenced a few recipes to come up with this simple one.

Shortbread Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
  
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Cream softened butter thoroughly then slowly add the sugar and vanilla.
3. Sift flour and corn starch before adding. Mix well.
   
4. Press into a log form, place in plasticwrap and put in the fridge for one hour or the freezer for 20 minutes.
5. Cut log into 18 even slices.
   
6. Bake 25 minutes or until very light brown.
7. (Optional) Once cooled, spread with Nutella and half a strawberry.
8. Enjoy!

The dough was much to soft for my liking and one of the recipes I referenced called for the dough being chilled before baking. The other recipe said to spread the dough onto a cookie sheet and then cut after it was baked. Not having a cookie sheet with sides, I went with the 'freeze the dough and cut approach'. Uncle Dean says he practically lived off shortbread cookies when he was in London and said my cookies were very good. Success!

They are good with the toppings or plain!

Double Chocolate-Almond Biscotti

While Lindsie was in town, we actually baked together! I think she wanted to show she can care about baking. We have not had success in the past.

When I was in SF a few weeks ago, I bought this marvelous book from Ghirardelli Square.
So naturally we picked a recipe from here. Page 46 has the 'Double Chocolate-Hazelnut Biscotti' recipe. Since we do not have hazelnut on hand, we went with almonds.

Double Chocolate-Almond Biscotti

Should make 48 cookies, but we cut ours a little bigger.

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup granulated white sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup Ghirardelli Sweet Ground Chocolate and Cocoa
4 ounces Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet Chocolate baking bar, finely chopped (We used semi-sweet chocolate chips chopped because that's what we have on hand)
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup almonds, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease two cookie sheets.
   
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, ground chocolate and semisweet chocolate.
3. In a separate bowl, combine the eggs and vanilla, and stir until well-blended. Pour the egg mixture into the dry ingredients. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until a dough forms (it should adhere to the beaters), 2 to 3 minutes. Fold in the nuts. It is a sticky batter.
4. Divide the dough into 2 equal parts. On the prepared cookie sheets, using lightly floured hands, shape each portion into 1 1/4-inch-by-12-inch logs.
5. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the logs are firm to the touch. Let cool on the cookie sheets for 15 minutes or until cool enough to handle.
   
6. Lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees.
7. Transfer 1 log to a cutting board and with a serrated knife, cut in half, and then into twelve 1-inch-wide cookies. Repeat with the remaining log.
8. Return cookies to baking sheet and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until crisp.
   
9. Transfer the cookies from the sheet to a wire cooling rack and let cool completely. Store at room temperature in a tightly covered container. This step is very important because the cookies will not stay crisp for too long if left out or not tightly covered.

I had a few with my herbal tea and it was great! They still had a crunch after dipping but not completely hard to chip a tooth.

Baking with Jessie

One evening Jessie and I made cookies for a dinner we were going to the next day. We were at the grocery store discussing what we should make and she started talking about chocolate and almonds. Sounds good to me! We went back to my house and found this recipe online. Of course, I added my own touches to it. Since she is a novice baker, I wanted to do something simple, yet delicious, to show her how less can be more when cooking/baking.

Ingredients for Chocolate Chocolate Chip Almond Cookies

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup softened butter
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup cut up almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda.

Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. We used Dean's trusty kitchen aide mixer. I just love that thing! [I need to just get married so I can put that on my registry! :-)] Beat in one egg until completely incorporated. Beat in the last egg along with the almond extract. Mix in the flour mixture until just incorporated.


Fold in the chocolate chips & nuts with a spatula, not the mixer; mixing just enough to evenly combine. Drop dough by heaped tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets. The size of our tablespoonfuls were more the size of a very large egg.

Bake in the preheated oven until the edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 1 minute before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.



I had a lot of fun baking with Jessie. She wanted to learn so that made it exciting for me to share my tips. I've had a sous-chef in the past that didn't particularly care about the food we were making and the end product was atrocious.



Thank you Jessie for baking with me! :-)

Chocolate Mexican Wedding Cookies

Tonight my Monday night group was getting together to have fajitas. Each person was asked to bring a food item to contribute. Knowing most were bringing tortillas, I figured I'd bring a dessert. Shocker, right?!? Wanting to bring a dessert that went along with the meal and not wanting to make flan, I googled 'mexican desserts' and came across a recipe for which I had all the ingredients. They actually turned out quite well though I altered the recipe slightly from the original.

Chocolate Mexican Wedding Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup margarine
  
• 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup ground pecans
• 1/2 cup ground semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar (after the cookies are baked)

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and 1/3 cup confectioner's sugar until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract.
2. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, ground pecans, 1/2 cup ground chocolate, cinnamon and salt; mix well.
3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture.
4. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill 1 to 2 hours, or until firm. (I put mine in the freezer for an hour and a half.)
5. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (180 degrees C).
6. Shape the dough into 1-inch balls. Place balls 1 inch apart on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 15 to 18 minutes, or until the cookies are firm to the touch. Cool 1 minute on the baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack. (I baked it for 17-18 minutes. I had expected them to be like chocolate chip cookies and to spread out while baking but they did not do that. They pretty much stayed in the same form into which I had rolled them.)
7. For the coating, sift 1/2 cup of the confectioner's sugar into a shallow bowl. While cookies are still warm, roll them in the coating. (Not sure if the cookies were still too warm, but I coated the first batch and the confectioners' sugar started to melt. So in the second batch, I waited til the cookies were pretty much cooled off.)

The cookies were only slightly sweet but still very good. I had a request to make them with pumpkin next time. That would definitely bring a different element/texture to the cookie.