Daniel's Carrot Cake Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting

When you're selected as my "baking target" the first thing I do is ask you what you like and what you don't like. What usually follows is a meandering trail of back and forth questions and answers until I feel satisfied that I know your palette well enough to make you something you'll like. Once I have my completed dossier, I get to work sifting through my endless supply of "gotta-make" recipes, which is my favorite part. This part of the process can some times take longer to complete than actually making the treat!

When I asked Daniel what he wanted for his birthday he was very succinct about his baked-good preferences. He specifically mentioned carrot cake which immediately made me think of this recipe. Happy Birthday Daniel! I hope you had a great birthday!

Carrot Cake Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
Adapted from one found on Epicurious

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon good quality cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup fresh, coarsely grated carrots (2 medium)
1 scant cup pecans (3 oz), chopped (optional but note that if you omit them, you will end up with slightly less yield. The nuts really bulk up the batter.)
1/2 cup raisins (2 1/2 oz)

8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Put oven racks in upper and lower thirds of oven and preheat oven to 375°F. Butter 2 baking sheets or use a Silpat mat.

Whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a bowl.

Beat together butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla in a bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Mix in carrots, nuts, and raisins at low speed, then add flour mixture and beat until just combined.

Drop 1 tablespoons batter per cookie 2 inches apart on baking sheets and bake, switching position of sheets halfway through baking, until cookies are lightly browned and springy to the touch, 10 to 12 minutes total. Cool cookies on sheets on racks 1 minute, then transfer cookies to racks to cool completely.

While cookies are baking, whip cream cheese and vanilla together until well combined. Add sugar and continue mixing until smooth.

Sandwich flat sides of cookies together with a generous tablespoon of cream cheese filling in between or just serve as singles. Garnish with a small fragment of nut on top.

A few tips when making these cookies:

1. Don't try to save time by buying baby pre-peeled carrots. Although they will save you some time, they will cost you in flavor.

2. Let them cool completely before enjoying. The flavor takes some time to develop and actually tastes a little bland when they are fresh from the oven. It's a bit strange, but the longer they sit the better they taste. If you need them for an event, I'd make them at least a day in advance.

3. Use a good quality, recently purchased cinnamon. My favorite is Vietnamese. It has a bold, yet sweet flavor that won't overwhelm. If your cinnamon has been in your cupboard for a few years, toss it or you'll be missing out.

4. Be sure to be generous with the frosting. Although the cookies aren't dry, they aren't super moist either so there needs to be an adequate cookie-to-frosting ratio. Pour it on a bit thick.

5. I have an old fashioned nut-mill (not sure if that's what you call it) that I used to cut the pecans I used. The nuts were cut rather small and I found that this really changed the texture of the cookie. I would recommend cutting the nuts up into larger chunks and maybe even toasting them before hand to get more nut flavor.

Yield: I made two batches and ended up with about 60 cookies. I "sandwiched" 20 of them together and decided to switch to singletons because I wanted the recipe to feed more people. I preferred the singleton because it had more frosting. Yum!
Would I Make This Again? If I would have written this blog post right after baking these, my rating would have been really low (see tip number 2, above) but the next morning when I tried one they were so much better! They just get better with age. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip One-Bite Sammies

Okay, so yeah... it's been a few um, months since my last post. But, life has threw me a few curve balls and I didn't feel much like baking. One of the biggest changes has been that I am no longer working for the company that started the whole "Birthday Fairy" thing. I've since started over at a new company in a completely different industry. So far so good! I'm really enjoying the new job and the new folks that I get the pleasure to work with everyday.

Now that I'm settled, I'm really starting to get the itch to bake again. Yippee! I have a lot of awesome stuff lined up too. So get ready!

So on to the good stuff....the cookies!

I selected these because the other day I sent out an email to some friends at work asking them for suggestions on what I should make. My boss and I were talking about it and I told her I was thinking about making something with peanut butter and chocolate. Right when I said that she stopped in her tracks and said, "I was just going to say chocolate and peanut butter! Woah... that's so freaky!" I figured it was a sign. :-)

These cookie sandwiches are really something special. As you eat them, the flavors change and mature. I highly recommend using really good milk chocolate for the filling such as Green and Blacks brand. Also, as much as I try to avoid the cheapo peanut butter with all the sugar, these cookies really need to be made with it. Don't use natural peanut butter as it's just not emulsified or sweet enough for this recipe.

These cookies are an adaptation of this recipe that I found on Epicurious.com

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup plus 1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon (packed) dark brown sugar
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter like Jiff, NOT all natural
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 1/3 cups (about 8 ounces) of mini milk chocolate chips for small cookies and normal sized chips for larger cookies

Filling
3 ounces high-quality milk chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter like Jiff NOT all natural
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons whipping cream

Preparation
For cookies:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk first 4 ingredients in medium bowl. Using electric mixer, beat granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, and butter in large bowl to blend. Add peanut butter; beat until creamy. Gradually beat in vegetable oil and vanilla extract, then egg. Add dry ingredients; mix just until blended. Stir in milk chocolate chips.

I used this teaspoon-sized cookie scoop but the size is really up to you. Epicurious's recipe says to use a level tablespoonful of dough. Either way, drop cookies onto ungreased baking sheets, spacing about 1/2 inch apart for the tiny sized cookie and up to 1 1/2 inches apart for the tablesoon size. Honestly, I didn't feel like these cookies spread all that much. They rise up and then fall, that's about it.

Bake cookies until puffed and golden brown, about 8 minutes for the smaller cookie and 12 minutes for the larger. Cool slightly, then transfer cookies to rack to cool completely. Seriously...wait for them to really cool down. Otherwise when you try to fill them, the filling will just ooze out and the two cookies won't stay together.

For filling: Place chocolate, peanut butter, powdered sugar, and kosher salt in medium bowl. Bring whipping cream to boil in heavy small saucepan. Pour hot cream over chocolate mixture; stir until mixture is melted and smooth. Chill until filling is thick and spreadable, about 1 hour. Spread a small dollop for smaller cookies and about 1 rounded teaspoonful of chocolate-peanut butter filling on flat side of 1 cookie. Top with second cookie, forming sandwich. Repeat with remaining filling and cookies. (Cookie sandwiches can be made 1 day ahead. Store in airtight container in the refrigerator or at room temperature.)

Yield: I made the minis and I lost count after that 6th batch. Each batch was averaging about 30 cookies each...so yeah, it made a lot of cookies! Epicurious says their recipe makes 2 1/2 dozen.
Would I Make This Again? I think so. If I met someone who was a die hard chocolate and peanut butter fanatic, this would be the first thing that would come to mind. These cookies on the crispy side and are not very chewy.... but don't get me wrong, they are good just at bit unexpected. The filling is really something else too. I'd love this in between the layers of chocolate cake. Another plus about this recipe is that it makes so many, so if you need to feed a crowd, this might be a good choice. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Kevin's Orange Blossom Angel Food Cake

Kevin asked me to make him something low fat for his birthday treat this year. I wanted it to be simple but unusual and eventually ended up making Sesame Macaroons. While the flavor of the cookies was fine, they lacked the "wow factor" that I wanted.

For the last six months I've had a bottle of Monteux orange blossom water sitting in my cabinet, waiting patiently for just the right recipe. I bought the bottle because one whiff from the bottle and I'm back in the sweet, redolent orange groves of my childhood. So, while I lamented the Sesame Cookies, I decided to search the Net for a more interesting, yet low fat recipe that Kevin would enjoy. It was then that I decided to search for recipes that used the orange blossom essence. The very first recipe I found was the one I decided to make. It was elegant, simple, and low fat. I also thought Kevin, being the foodie that he is, would enjoy it.

I settled upon a simple Moroccan Angel Food Cake that was flavored with both vanilla and orange blossom water. The cake was beautiful as it baked in the oven. It was my first angel food cake and I was terrified it was going to bake up and over the top of the pan! It eventually stopped expanding and baked up to a beautiful golden brown. And just for extra fun, I also prepared a Moroccan Orange Salad to serve over the top of the cake. The recipe for both the cake and the salad can be found here.

Cake and Orange Salad
Yield: 16 servings?
Would I Make This Again? Yes (although I haven't eaten it yet!) 4 stars out of 5

Sesame Macaroons
Yield: About 30 cookies
Would I Make This Again? No. While the taste was just okay, they were just a bit too boring for me. 2 stars out of 5
(pictures coming soon!)

A Cookie with Some Potential...

It's been a while since I posted but the busy birthday season is upon me and I'll be posting a lot over the next few weeks. Between birthdays, B.B.Qs, and other random summer events, I'll be one busy lady. I have another ten recipes to post before the end of the month alone!

These cookies were baked to share at my son's end of season basebaseball potluck. The potluck was fun, but the weather could have been a bit warmer. I don't think I'll ever get used to the fact that 55 degrees is considered normal for June in Seattle. Brr! Everyone seemed to like them, but I thought that they were a bit too white chocolaty. A pound and a half of white chocolate seemed like too much and it was. I should have trusted my instincts but Ina Garten's recipes rarely lets me down. I mean, don't get me wrong, they were good (I ate several) but they were just very, very sweet. The chocolate cookie part was very good and I think the recipe has a lot of potential. Perhaps next time I'll replace the half the white chocolate with pecans, chocolate nibs or semisweet chocolate chips. The possiblities are endless....

Anyway, here's the recipe...

Chocolate White Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Copyright 2001 Barefoot Contessa Parties!

1/2 pound unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 extra-large eggs at room temperature
2/3 cup good unsweetened cocoa
2 cups flour 1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 pounds good white chocolate chips
- OR -
1 cups of white chocolate chips
1 cup of chopped pecans or chocolate nibs
1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the vanilla, then the eggs, 1 at a time, and mix well. Add the cocoa and mix again.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt and add to the chocolate with the mixer on low speed until just combined. Fold in the chopped white chocolate.

Drop the dough on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat Mat or parchment paper, using small (1 inch) cream scooper or a rounded tablespoon. Dampen your hands and flatten the dough slightly. Bake for exactly 15 minutes (the cookies will seem underdone). Remove from the oven and let cool slightly on the pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely

Yields: approximately 5-6 dozen
Would I Make This Again? Probably not exactly as Ina wrote the recipe, but I because the chocolate cookie base is so good, I'd love to make it again with nuts or nips, semisweet, and and white chocolate. Yes! 3 stars out of 5

Joanna's Thin Mocha Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies with Mocha Cream Filling

Yesterday was Joanna's birthday and like most people I bake for, she asked for something chocolate and bite-sized. So I started thinking about what to make and I originally thought I'd make a domino-cookie -- chocolate-cookie with white chocolate chips, but that didn't seem right. Definitely not chocolaty enough. And then I came across a chocolate-chocolate chip cookie with mocha cream filling on Epicurious. Since I remembered seeing Joanna with a big cup of Starbuck's at her desk, I knew I'd found a winner. So, I tweaked the recipe a bit (a little on purpose, a little on accident) and a star was born! Everyone loved them. I'll definitely make these again.

Thin Mocha Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies with Mocha Cream Filling

Cream Filling
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 tablespoons instant coffee granules
1 cups powdered sugar
1 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cookies
2 cup all purpose flour
4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons unsweetened dark cocoa powder
2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 large egg
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoon instant coffee granules
1 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk chocolate, coarsely chopped

Cream Filling: Stir chocolate chips, cream, and coffee granules in heavy saucepan over medium heat until chocolate melts and coffee dissolves. Cool to room temperature, about 20 minutes. Using electric mixer, beat sugar, butter, and vanilla in bowl until blended. Beat in chocolate mixture. Refrigerate until beginning to firm, about 20 minutes.

For cookies: Preheat oven to 325F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt into bowl. Using electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in bowl until well blended. Add egg, 4 teaspoons water, vanilla, and instant coffee; blend well. Beat in flour mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and chopped chocolate. Drop dough by tablespoonfuls onto prepared sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake until tops are just firm to touch and no longer shiny, about 10 minutes. Cool cookies on sheets 10 minutes. Transfer to racks and cool.
Place half of cookies, flat side up, on work surface. Spread each with 1 tablespoon filling, leaving 1/4-inch border. Top each with second cookie, pressing to adhere. Arrange on platter; cover and chill at least 2 hours. (Can be made 2 days ahead. Keep chilled.) Serve cookies cold.

Nate's NoName Chocolate Chip Cookies

Nate's a guy who appreciates the good, simple things in life. For his birthday he asked for Chocolate Chip cookies. Nothing fancy, nothing with nuts, just "normal" cookies. Hmm.. I can do that!

I just happened to have a great chocolate chip cookie recipe that has been a favorite for generations on my husband's side of the family. I ended up tweaking it a bit, sort of by accident, and I really liked the way they came out. The cookies are a bit thin, but also soft and chewy. They are also just a bit crispy on the edges. I hope this is what you had in mind Nate. Happy Birthday!

No-Name Chocolate Chip Cookies *

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten slightly
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda + 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1 teaspoon baking powder + 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chunks (I recommend Guittard chocolate)

1. Preheat oven to 350F.

2. Cream together the butter and both sugars. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

3. In a separate bowl mix the baking soda and hot water together until dissolved. Add to batter.

4. Repeat the process with the baking powder and hot water. Add to batter along with the salt.

5. Stir in flour until well combined. Add chocolate chips just until combined.

6. Drop tablespoon sized dough onto Silpat (or ungreased) baking sheets. Bake for about 8 minutes, or until edges are slightly golden brown. Let the cookies rest on the baking pan for a minute or two until they firm up slightly. Cool on a wire rack until room temperature.

Yields about 5 dozen 3 inch cookies

* I need a name for these cookies, so if anyone has a suggestion, please let me know.

Ultimate Shortbread Cookie Recipe

This week I was asked to create a special cookie for a very unique birthday. The company I work for is re-branding the products they provide. To celebrate the official "birth" of the new name and brand, and I was asked to created 70 cookies with the new 360 logo. The cookies were to be shared with everyone at work after the formal introduction of the new 360 name. Today was the big day and everyone loved them.

For those who asked here is the recipe I used for the shortbread:

• 1 cups of sugar
• 1 cups of butter (at room temperature)
• 1 teaspoons of vanilla
• 1 eggs
• 3 cups of flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt

Cream the butter and sugar. Add vanilla and eggs. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients together. With the mixer on low/medium speed, slowly add dry ingredients to the wet, being sure to scrape down the bowl frequently. Chill for 3 hours.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Roll dough on well floured surface to 1/4" thickness (I highly recommend using rolling pin bands to help keep the height of the dough consistant). If dough starts to stick to your rolling pin or won't roll out well, chill again. Cut out desired shapes (I used a 4" cookie cutter) and place onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 9-12 min. Cookies should not be brown when you remove them from the oven.

This recipe yields approximately 1 1/2 to 2 dozen 4" cookies. 4 batches yielded a little more than 6 dozen 4" cookies.

I wanted to make sure the "360" lettering was an exact match for the font that Marketing had given me. To do this, I printed out a full-size version of the text in Word and then traced it on top of a large piece of heavy grade aluminium that I cut out of the bottom of a disposable brownie pan. Once I made the impression, I used a pen to retrace "360" into the aluminum over and over, until a clear negative image appeared on the bottom of the stamp. To mark the cookies, I tried a few approaches. First I stamped the cookies while they were raw. This didn't work because as they baked the stamp would just disappear. Next, I stamped them right after they came out of the oven. This worked pretty well but I had to work fast so that I wouldn't get burnt. Ouch! The last idea I came up with was to use create a stamp pad by saturating a new sponge with dark green concentrated food coloring. I'd pat the stamp against the stamp pad and then stamp the cookie. This worked great! Next time I'll use a lighter color so that it doesn't' bleed through the frosting.

For frosting, I made a batch of royal icing (I used the recipe that came with the Wilton Meringue Powder) and used lemon yellow, leaf green, and moss green to get the right color. Boy was that hard! It took a lot of "a little of this" and a "blob of that" to get the color to come together. Tip: Be sure to scrape down the bowl a lot during the coloring process. I found big pockets of frosting that was a little dry and wasn't mixing together into the batch. Nothing like a big pocket of white frosting to lighten my apple green frosting. Gr! Once I had the color down, I transferred the frosting into a air-tight container and covered it promptly. I then prepared a pastry bag with a #1 tip and filled it with about 1/4 cup of frosting.

I slowly outlined each cookie's 360 stamp and also created a circle of frosting around the edge. I let them dry for about an hour. I then took the left over frosting, added about 1 teaspoon of clear vanilla to it and about 1/3 cup of warm water. I poured the frosting into plastic bottles and along with a tiny paint brush, filled in the green color all over the cookie, except for inside the 360. I let them try over night. The next day I repeated the process with just white icing and filled in numbers. They dried in about 2 hours.

For packaging, I to put the cookies into CD envelopes that were lined with wax paper and sealed the back with a 360 logo sticker. This made handing out the cookies very easy.

Noella Got Married! Venetian & Italian Wedding Cookies

Last week, my dear friend Noella and her long time boyfriend, John went to Hawaii for vacation. Shortly after they arrived in Maui, John proposed, and forty-eight hours later at a courthouse in Kaua'i, they were pronounced husband and wife! I think it's the most romantic way to get married. She told me today, "I waited so long for him to propose I just couldn't wait to be married to him!" (Aww!)

In honor of their nuptials, her desk was decorated all "wedding-y" and it looked great! We didn't stop there! Of course I had to make her something super special. Since Noella is Italian, I knew she'd love either Venetian Cookies or Italian Wedding Cookies but I couldn't decide between the two. So I ended up making them both!

Congratulations Noella and John!

Scott's Lemon Biscotti

What to do about Scott.... Scott wanted veggies and low fat dip but anyone that knows Scott would know he really, really didn't want that. Scott is usually first in line for what ever I make so the thought of cutting up a few wet carrots and celery and mixing up an opaque bowl of low-fat dip just didn't sit well with me. Don't get me wrong, I respect Scott's wishes to eat low cal and low fat, but veggies? Blah! After all it's his birthday! So over the weekend I came across a Lemon Biscotti recipe in the 2007 March/April issue of Weight Watchers magazine and thought Scott would like it. Okay, so it's not completely without guilt, but it's 50 calories per serving, 1 gram of fat, and 1 grams of fiber. I'm still going to bring Scott a few baby carrots and dip, but at least he'll have these for dessert!

Ashley's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's been a while since I made cookies as a birthday treat and an eternity since I've made oatmeal cookies. They happen to be my very favorite, too. So when Ashley gave me choice of three different treats for her belated birthday treat, choosing Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies was no contest! But which recipe should I make? I narrowed it down to two and decided to see what would happen if I combined them. The end result? A little chewy on the inside, a nice crispiness on the outside, and just the right balance of spice and chocolate. What a great cookie for a cold winter day.

Ashley's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 cup butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup oatmeal flour
• 3 cups oatmeal
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 3 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup pecans, chopped
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. In a medium sized bowl, combine both flours, baking soda, salt, and pumpkin pie spice. Mix together will using a fork, being sure to break up clumps. Set aside.
3. In a big bowl, cream butter and sugars together. Add eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla.
3. Combine the dry mixture into the wet mixture, being sure to check for air pockets of trapped flour mixture. When well combined, stir in the nuts and chocolate chips.
4. Drop teaspoonfuls of cookie dough onto an ungreased baking sheet bake for 10-12 minutes. (I use this tool as it helps to make even sized cookies). Don't remove them from the cookie sheet too quickly. Allow to cool for a 3 minutes before transferring them to a bakers rack or they may break apart. Once they are completely cooled, store in an airtight container.

Oh, and one last tip -- these cookies would be great to make for an open house or right before a party. My house smells good enough to eat!