Recipe: Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

Almond Chocolate Chip Cookies

BobsRedMill.com

4.8 stars

I've had almond flour in the pantry (to make macarons, actually) and had been meaning to make the cookie recipe on the back of the package. A friend of mine had brought them to a get together a while back, and we were all addicted to them! Love that they're so easy to make.

Ingredients: Bob's Red Mill Natural Almond Meal, dark chocolate chips, toasted sliced almonds, coconut, maple syrup, egg, egg whites, vanilla extract, almond extract, baking soda, sea salt

Tips:

• I like the hint of coconut from the oil but wonder how butter would work instead
• Didn't use the almond extract which is optional but will next time
• Leave out the toasted sliced almonds to make it lower calorie
• Half a batch made 11 cookies

Recipe: Chocolate-Olive Oil Crisps

Chocolate-Olive Oil Crisps

Martha Stewart Living, Mar 2020, p. 102

3.5-4 stars?

I'm not sure if I'll make these cookies again. I liked their texture and depth of chocolate flavor, but to me, they tasted like there was a bit of sesame oil in it. Not sure why or if the honey, vanilla or extra-virgin oil was imparting some odd flavor -- or maybe my tastebuds!

Ingredients: all-purpose flour, Dutch-process cocoa powder, egg, honey, vanilla extract, extra-virgin olive oil, granulated sugar, baking soda, Kosher salt, turbinado sugar

Recipe: Bouchon Bakery's Shortbread

Bouchon Bakery, p. 44-45
Shortbread
4.5 stars

I'm not a shortbread kind of person unless it's dipped in chocolate!  If I'm going to eat dessert calories, I'm not going to waste them on a cookie that I personally think is boring and on the dry side.  Shortbread and pecan sandies just aren't my thing.

However, I made this recipe for my co-worker who loves shortbread.  Thought it was going to be super easy (the ingredients include just butter, sugar, salt vanilla paste, all-purpose flour), but I had issues after making the dough.

It says that the dough can be refrigerated for up to 2 days or frozen for up to 1 month.

The recipe then says:  "Unwrap the dough and place it between 2 pieces of parchment paper or plastic wrap.  With a rolling pin, pound the top of the dough, working from left to right, to begin to flatten it, then turn the dough 90 degrees and repeat.  (This will help prevent the dough from cracking as it is rolled.)  Roll out to a 9-inch square.  If the dough has softened, slide it (in the parchment) onto the back of a sheet pan and refrigerate it until it is firm enough to score."

Sounds easy enough.  But do you know how HARD the dough was?  It was like beating a freakin' rock with the rolling pin.  Perhaps he should've said to let it soften just a tad to where it's somewhat malleable.

Anyhow, I like regular sized cookies, so I made a dozen though the recipe says it produces 2 dozen.

My co-worked and people at work raved about the shortbread and asked for the recipe, so I'll take their word for it that it was good!

Recipe: Bouchon Bakery's Chocolate Chunk and Chip Cookies

Update!  Here is what 150g cookies look like.
Note the quarter in the middle so you can see
how huge these cookies are.

Bouchon Bakery, p.34-35
Chocolate Chunk and Chip Cookies
5 stars

This is THE BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE RECIPE EVER!!!!
Soft, chewy, chocolatey.  Perfect.

Two super interesting things about this recipe:

• It uses dark brown sugar, granulated sugar and molasses (unsulfured blackstrap molasses which I found in our regular grocery store).
• These cookies are supposed to be HUGE.  150 grams of dough ball huge.  In fact, the recipe states, "The cookies are very large; bake only 3 on each pan."  I opted for the smaller cookie variant which is stated as 75 grams each.  They're still very large as you can see in the photo above.

Note/tip:

• Bake time of 17 min in a standard oven was perfect for the smaller version of the cookie.

Recipe: Slice-and-Bake Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Want dessert but don't have anything in the house?  If you cook and bake pretty frequently, you probably have all of the ingredients below to make these Slice-and-Bake Oatmeal Raisin Cookies from Bon Appetit (April 2013 issue, p. 32). 

Ingredients needed:  flour, baking powder, baking soda, kosher salt, nutmeg, unsalted butter, sugar, light brown sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, old-fashioned oats, raisins.

Things I did differently:

• Halved the amount of raisins -- substituted one cup for a cup of chocolate chips to make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!
• Didn't have whole wheat flour on-hand, so I used all-purpose flour.
• Didn't want to wait to freeze the dough, so I baked them right away.
• It's probably obvious from the photo, but I made very LARGE cookies.

Recipe: Spicy Pear Cookies

I love spice type cakes . . . and pears . . . and walnuts, so combine them together and voila -- a delicious winter cookie.  I like that these aren't super sweet, and in fact, they have almost a scone-like texture that they could be the perfect cookie to bring to a brunch or to tea.

This Spicy Pear Cookie recipe is from allrecipes.com and is oh so easy to make. 

Few tips:

• I had to bake them 5 extra minutes to get them golden brown.
• I didn't add the raisins to the batter.
• The lemon icing was ok -- taste it, you may want to go with a different lemon icing instead.