BakeAwayGirl

 You read that right: these are THE best chocolate chip cookies ever. I found a basic recipe back when... I'm not even sure now? I think I still lived at home so let's just say it's been well over a decade! Anyway, the recipe was fine but regularly made thin, crispy cookies which are awful (sorry, not sorry). I spent many hours, tears, and pounds of butter throughout the last fifteen-ish years, tweaking the recipe slightly here and there to find just the right balance. I can finally say I have achieve the most perfect cookie, and it's my first real recipe... as in, I created it!  They are chewy and thick, with a crunchy edge and hold up their soft, chewy insides even after being left out overnight. Honestly, I even skip the cookies at the store because I prefer these. Chocolate Chip Cookies 3/4 cup unsalted butter (1.5 sticks), softened 1 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup white sugar 1 tablespoon vanilla extract 1 whole egg 1 egg yolk 2 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon baking soda Pinch ...

Yum!  Fall is here, and that means everything turns into a pumpkin.  My kitchen churns out all sorts of pumpkin spiced baked goods, from bread to donuts to these new cookies.  My son loves to help me bake, and our favorite activity is cookies, mostly because he loves to eat the chocolate chips that play a major role in every cookie I make.  Including these beauties.  I've never had pumpkin cookies, but everything else it touches is delicious, so why not?  Well, except pie.  Pumpkin pie is gross.  Fight me. So in my first attempt of pumpkin cookies I have learned a few things. These don't spread.  However you plop them on the cookie sheet is pretty much how they come out.  I happen to like them to look like delightful little blobs of pumpkin-y goodness, but the original recipe suggests using the back of a spoon to squish them down a little. These are cake-like.  Very dense.  It makes it extra delicious and increases your...

Before I start this one, I'll preface it with a simple breakdown of this recipe:  If you don't like mint, move on, this one isn't for you.  If you care for mint at all, make these. Now, mint lovers, this is the best cookie for Christmastime.  The original recipe I found was not specifically for Christmas, but it uses Andes mints, and those scream Christmastime to me.  This tastes exactly like mint chocolate chip ice cream in cookie form.  So delicious.  Jeff even suggested we put two together around a scoop of vanilla ice cream to make ice cream sandwiches. In the original recipe, it calls for Andes mints chopped.  That was way too time consuming for my liking, so I just broke them up with my hands.  They break pretty easily, so that wasn't a problem, but it was still time consuming and uneven, so there were some that were still very large.  I vaguely remembered that Andes mints came in chocolate chip sized pieces, but I didn't see them a...

When I'm craving something sweet and homemade, I bake one of two things:  brownies or chocolate chip cookies.  What can I say?  I like the basics.  I will eat tiramisu all day long, and if you want to bring me your fancy dessert, I'll eat that too, but my favorites will always be the classics. In my mother's house, if you ever bake a full batch of cookies, you're doing something wrong.  Lecture all you'd like about raw eggs.  I'll listen politely... as I stuff my face with raw cookie dough.  Mmmm salmonella!  My mother would rather have a spoonful of cold cookie dough than a warm chocolate chip cookie any day, so in her house, we made whatever dough she liked best.  As a result, we always made the standard recipe on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip bag. Which made flat, hard cookies. Blech. Not my picture! I tried undercooking them.  I tried melted butter, cold butter.  It didn't matter, they were always f...

Jeff and I were grocery shopping a while ago, and he paused longingly at a container of shortbread cookies, topped with chocolate.  Of course, this was your generic warehouse store, and the container of cookies held way more cookies than he or I should ever have in the house at one time.  I dragged my reluctant boyfriend along to stay on task, but the seed was firmly planted in my brain. Before coating in chocolate When we got home, I began my search.  Believe it or not, this recipe did not  come from Pinterest [pause for shouts of shock and awe].  You know how much I love Pinterest.  Pinterest is ideal for hours of lazy browsing through pictures of things that I will never or could never do and occasionally stumbling on something beautiful that I can and will do.  Searching for something specific, however, is not a task Pinterest serves well.  So I hit up Google and found a food network recipe. Now, these are shortbread cookies, which mea...

For the Independence Day, I brought that Blueberry Buckle from the previous post, but I felt like a copout.  But it's a holiday!  I wanted something a little more... festive.  So I started searching Pinterest (of course), and I came across this picture: Well pinwheels are pretty easy!  So I gathered my ingredients and got to work.  These can be altered for whatever colors you want or whatever season.  At Christmas, I've sprinkled 1/2 tsp of cinnamon in the red dough for a bit of a bite.  You can play however you'd like. **Just be aware that these cookies need to rest in the fridge for roughly 5 hours.  You can make them in advance and just slice and bake when your guests come (or when you're hungry), but they will need at least 5 hours for cooling. Pinwheel Cookies:  4th of July Version Cutting the dough Adapted from here 1 cup of butter (2 sticks), room temperature 1-1/3 cup sugar 2 eggs 2 tsp vanilla extract 3 cups flour...

I don't have enough adjectives to describe these.  Just trust me, they are awesome. What drew me to these were (of course) the Pinterest pictures.  Who doesn't want food that tastes delicious and looks amazing too?  Problem is, I'm no artist.  I'm not patient enough or steady enough to make things look as nice as they do on Pinterest, and the fancy camera is currently in my father's possession, so my little digital camera has to do. But something miraculous happened with these cookies... they came out beautifully!  I think it's the dark cocoa powder in it.  They were just stiff enough that they held the cookie cutter shape perfectly.  Even before refrigeration, they were stiff enough to cut out (but I didn't).  It turns out that I didn't have the heart-shaped cookie cutter I needed for a perfect Valentine's Day treat.  So my cookies refrigerated overnight, and it didn't do any harm.  They have almost the consistency of an Oreo. ...

What's that you say?  S'mores in my oven?  Heck yes!  This was another Pinterest find a long time ago, placed in my Bake It, Girl board for a rainy day.  Well, it's not quite raining here today, but the weather is gross and I'm bored. It's a quick easy recipe, but I warn you, you most likely will have to hit the grocery store for this.  Most of you won't have marshmallow fluff and two 4.2oz special dark Hershey's bars in your house.  If you do, I'm on my way over! S'mores Cookie Bars Adapted from Baked Perfection 1/2 cup butter (1 stick) 1/4 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup sugar 1 large egg 1 tsp vanilla 1-1/3 cup flour 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (about 5 graham crackers) 1 tsp baking powder Splash of salt 2  4.2 oz dark chocolate (I like Hersheys) 1 7oz jar of marshmallow fluff Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8-in square pan. Cream butter and sugars together until fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  In a separat...

After about 9 years of searching and experimenting, I have found the ideal decorating sugar cookie.  A few years ago, I plopped myself down on the floor of my local library in the middle of the baking cook book aisle and poured over book after book until I found the perfect recipe.  I've tweaked quite a bit and have played with it a couple of times since.  Here is the recipe, along with some pictures of the different cookies I've made with this recipe since discovering this gem. 4th of July Treat Deliciously Soft Sugar Cookies 11 Tablespoons unsalted butter, softened 3/4 cup sugar 1 tsp baking powder 1 egg 1 tablespoon 2% milk 1 tsp vanilla 2 cups all-purpose flour Mix butter alone until creamy.  Add sugar and baking powder.  Beat until thoroughly blended.  Stir in egg, milk, and vanilla.  Add flour one cup at a time, mixing completely before adding the second cup.  Chill dough in refrigerator for at least 1 hour.   Sprinkle...

You'd think with the holidays just passing that I'd have enough sweets to last me a lifetime.  I do, and I did.  I'm looking forward to going back to work on Monday just to start eating normally again!  But when my mom mentioned our weekly pizza date with my grandparents, I immediately thought of making a double chocolate chip cookie.  I've never (successfully) made them before, so I thought I'd go to my trusty Pinterest to find it. Problem was... I fell asleep on the couch.  When I woke up, I had just over a half an hour to find a recipe, bake it, and be in the car.  I will tell you now, I didn't make it.  But I was close!  At 5:03, I jumped off the couch and by 5:43, we were pulling out of the garage with a delicious smelling plate of cookies.  Here's the recipe! Decadent Double Chocolate Chip Cookies Adapted from Kitchen Simplicity 1 cup flour 1/2 cup cocoa powder 1/2 tsp baking soda Pinch of table salt 2/3 cup chocolate chips ...