The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap 2012: Waffle Cookies

It’s holiday cookie swap time! This year, I decided to participate in THE BEST COOKIE SWAP EVER: The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap! How could you not love an event that combines some of the best things ever: baking and eating cookies, supporting a good cause, receiving fun mail, exchanging recipes, and meeting new friends. Here’s how the creators, Lindsay and Julie, describe the swap:

"The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap brings together food bloggers from around the world in celebration of all things scrumptious. The premise is this: sign up. Receive the addresses of three other food bloggers. Send each of them one dozen delicious homemade cookies. Receive three different boxes of scrumptious cookies from other bloggers. Eat them all yourself (or, you know, share. If you want. No judgement either way.) Post your cookie recipe on your blog. See everyone else’s cookie recipes. Salivate. Get lots of great ideas for next year's cookie swap. Rinse and repeat."

To impress my three lucky matches, I wanted to make a cookie that I love, and that other people may not have tried before. I immediately thought of my mom’s waffle cookies with maple glaze. While my dad was always the baker and sweet tooth in my house (not to mention the waffle fanatic), it was Mel who always made the waffle cookies.

Growing up, Amanda and I were obsessed with waffle cookies. Along with Mel’s smoky salmon dip, Oma’s poppy seed struedel, and whole pomegranates from Grandpa’s tree, waffle cookies were one of those things that the other kids (in rural Washington in the late 80s/early 90s) didn’t have in their lunch box. Imagine the cafeteria trading power we could have had! But alas, we hung on to our waffle cookies for dear life, they were far too delicious to part with!

Mel’s cookies have shortening, but I went with full on butter for a cookie that’s buttery, dense, salty, sweet, and just downright delicious. And top that with sweet maple-cinnamon glaze….need I say more?

Waffle Cookies with Maple Glaze

1.5 cups unsalted butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1.5 cups brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
4.5 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

For glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar
4 tablespoons pure maple syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla
a pinch of cinnamon

Cream butter, both sugars, and vanilla. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and salt, and mix into butter mixture until stiff dough is formed. You'll need to chill your dough before cooking, but you have a few options. You can either roll dough into walnut sized balls, spread out on a cookie sheet, and pop in the freezer for 30-60 minutes, or you can roll into logs, freeze for 30-60 minutes, and slice off half-inch thick slices to cook. Cook in a hot waffle iron until golden brown. 

Whisk together glaze ingredients, and drizzle over cooled cookies. 

These hold up really well in shipping, and also stay fresh quite away. To package for shipping, I filled 2 little treat bags with 6 cookie each, and put those side by side in a plastic container filled with tissue paper, which went into a shipping box filled with packing paper. 

Wait, there's more!

Looking for more recipes from the cookie swap? Check out the blogs of my random matches: the gals I sent these bad boys to, as well as the gals who sent cookies to me!

Heed the Feed: http://heedthefeed.com 

Wee Eats: http://wee-eats.com

My Kitchen is Open: mykitchenisopen.com

The Right Recipe: http://therightrecipe.org

a periodic table: http://aperiodictableblog.com

The Hardistys: http://thehardistys.blogspot.com

C is for Cookie.

Have you ever watched Sesame Street? Well, the Cookie Monster is real. They don’t tell you, however, that instead of a big, blue, furry guy with a deep growly voice and kindergarten reading level, the Cookie Monster is a petite girl with brown hair, freckles, and a college degree.

Amanda's PBJ Cookies

I. Love. Cookies. Sure, I get weak in the knees for many (most) culinary delights, but if I had to single out one specific weakness- that one food that carries with it a little bit of indulgent guilt, that I couldn’t give up no matter how hard I tried—it would be cookies. Everyone has their one-big-weakness. For some people its chocolate or doughnuts. For others it’s potato chips or diet cokes. For Biscuit (the cat) it’s canned Fancy Feast. For me… it’s cookies. It takes incredible will power for me to turn down a cookie (or five). Sometimes, when I start noticing a little too much junk in my trunk, I can cut back on my cookie habit. During these moments, I can muster the strength to have, say, only two cookies a week.

While one could argue that a cookie-lover such as myself must love all cookies, I am (a tiny bit) picky. I don’t want boring ol’ mass produced cookies. When I’m craving cookies, I want the kind of cookies that really pack on the pounds. I’m talking big, fluffy, chewy, melty, gooey fresh baked cookies. My favorite is the classic chocolate chip, which is followed closely by the oatmeal chocolate chip (no raisins), then the peanut butter, molasses, cut-out cookie (gingerbread and sugar), and the ever-elusive snickerdoodle.

Recently, with the onset of crisp fall weather, I’ve been baking like my life depends on it. One night, I made a batch of basic chocolate chip cookies- the kind John always made when we were kids (straight from the Fanny Farmer cookbook). They’re thin and wrinkly, crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle, with a perfectly salty sweet batter and bittersweet chocolate morsels in every bite. I’m an impatient cookie maker/baker (like I’ve said before, I’m a cook, not a baker). By the final batch, I was tired of arranging little tablespoon size drops of dough on the cookie sheet, so I made a few giant cookies. With a cooling rack already full of the classic chocolate chip, I added a dollop of orange marmalade to the final batch to make things interesting. The orange and chocolate combo was delicious! The next evening, still affected by the baking-bug, I made the same basic recipe, but instead of marmalade, I went crazy and made batches with fig jam, almonds, kit-kat pieces, and dark chocolate chunks. All were amazing.

Right when I was thinking up my next cookie experiment, Food 52 announced a chocolate-based cookie contest! Perfect! I’ve never been crazy about regular chocolate based cookies (I mean, I’ll eat them if they are there, obviously), but there are two that I love. One is brownie-biscotti (which I’m considering a cookie), and the other is a chocolate-chai cookie that my roommate in college made for a holiday cookie exchange. For the ultimate chocolate based cookie, I decided to combine the two!

My Chocolate-Chai Biscotti was crunchy without being too hard, and the cinnamon glaze added a sweet spicy contrast to the yummy chocolate. I used powdered chai mix in the dough (probably why I didn’t win…shakes fist at Chai mix), but I think adding actual chai-inspired spices would kick up the chai flavor even more! These are great with coffee in the morning (just ask my coworkers) and with ice cream in the evening (just ask my girl-friends). A few pieces of this biscotti, and you’ll see why it’s so hard to turn down a good cookie.

Chocolate Chai Biscotti

1/2 cup melted butter
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/3 cup sugar
3/4 cups baking cocoa
3 tablespoons powdered chai latte mix*
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup chopped almonds
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 1/2 -2 teaspoon cinnamon
4-6 teaspoons water

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Combine butter, eggs, and vanilla until well blended
Mix flour, sugar, cocoa, chai mix, baking powder, baking soda. Gradually add to wet mixture until combined (will be crumbly). Fold in chocolate chips and almonds.
Divide dough in half. On ungreased baking sheet, shape each half into a 12 by 3 inch log (with space between each log). Bake for 30-35 minutes.
Remove from oven and cool for 10-15 minutes. Cut diagonally into 1 inch slices, and place cut side down on ungreased baking sheet. Bake for another 20-25 minutes until firm and dry. Cool on wire racks.
For glaze, combine powdered sugar, cinnamon, and as much water as needed for drizzle consistency. Drizzle on completely cooled biscotti.

Enjoy with a chai latte!

* For Chai-ier flavor, replace Chai mix with::
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

One Hot Cookie

I've been trying to come up with creative ways to use a jar of chipotles in adobo before they go bad. I notoriously will open up a jar, use 1 little pepper, and then throw out the rest several months later when I discover them in the back of my fridge. Not this time! First I whipped up some chipotle mayo for my sliders, and then...

Chocolate chip..otle? That's right. I said it. And I did it. I made chipotle chocolate chip cookies. I'm a big fan of mixing sweet with spicy and savory, and decided to give it a go with the all-American chocolate chip cookie. I've seen chipotle and chocolate together in desserts before, so I went for it. I mixed up a batch of basic chocolate chip cookies (from my old school Fanny Farmer cookbook...which Mel and Amanda both have as well...which is the one and only cookbook you need to survive... especially Mel's, which has notes in the margins). I scooped half the cookie dough out of my mixer, to save just in case things went awry. Then... hold on to your hats... I added 2 chopped up chipotles plus a little bit of the adobo sauce to the bowl and turned up the speed. The dough became stickier than the original, and also took on a red tint (with festive little specs of chopped up pepper). Into the oven my Frankenstein cookies went. The chipotle cookies spread out quite a bit during the baking process, and came out much flatter than their un-peppered half... but they still had a great chewy texture... and the flavor?

Not bad! They tasted just like a regular delicious chocolate chip cookie, but with a kick so hot it nearly knocked me off my feet! Wow! I was really surprised that they didn't have a weird peppery, savory flavor, but instead tasted sweet and chocolaty and delish. Unfortunately, the hot peppery kick really was so intense that some people couldn't hang... I won't name names that start with an 'A' and end with a 'manda'. Evan, on the other hand, loved them. As a self-proclaimed dessert-hater (I know... it pains me to even think such awful thoughts), Evan doesn't usually eat the cookies I give him (I'll find them hiding months later), but with these hot little ditties he ate them right up, and even went back for more!

The experiment was fun, and with positive results, but I don't know if I'll be whipping up another batch of chipotle chip cookies anytime in the near future. I have, however, been dreaming up a chocolate-raspberry-chipotle sauce...