Chewy Chocolate Crackles

These cookies almost beg to be experimented with.  Maybe chocolate chips or nuts or both. Maybe larger scoops and flattened more.  You get my drift?   Just as they are they are tasty cookies, though, so don't think you have to change anything.  I find them a little labor intensive and the recipe in Martha Stewart's "Cookies" is certainly more trouble than it needs to be.  Here is my version:

Ingredients
8 oz bittersweet chocolate
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter (soft)
1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
granulated sugar and powdered sugar for rolling dough

Instructions
Melt chocolate in microwave.  Let cool.  With an electric mixer beat butter and brown sugar 2 to 3 minutes.  Mix in eggs, vanilla, and melted chocolate.  At reduced speed mix in flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Add milk.  Add nuts, chips, or other optional ingredients.  Divide dough into 3 or 4 parts and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.  Working with one piece of dough at a time, form 1" balls.  Roll first in granulated sugar then in powdered sugar.  Place 2 to 3 inches apart on cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 degrees for 14 minutes.

Ginger Snaps

Today's recipe review and recommendations will be for two ginger snap recipes.  

Chewy Molassses Crinkles from Martha Stewart's Cookies

And Gingersnaps (chewy) by Karen Ganas

As you might suspect the two recipes are very similar as you will see from the table below:

Ingredient	Martha Stewart recipe	Karen Ganas recipe
Butter	½ cup	1 cup
Brown sugar, packed	1 cup	1 ¼ cup
Granulated sugar	½ cup for mix, ¼ cup for rolling	--
Molasses	½ cup	5/16 cup
Eggs	2 large	1
Flour	2 cups	2 ¾ cup
Vegetable Oil	2 Tbsp	--
Baking Soda	1 tsp	1 tsp
Ground Cinnamon	1 tsp	1 ½ tsp
Ground Ginger	1 tsp	1 tsp
Ground Allspice	1 tsp	--
Ground Cloves	--	½ tsp
Coarse Salt	½ tsp	--
Instructions	Mix butter, brown sugar and ½ cup granulated sugar until smooth – about 3 minutes.  Add in eggs one at  a time then molasses & oil. Reduce speed and all other ingredients.  Chill for at least 1 hour. Scoop or form 1 ¼ inch balls.  Roll in granulated sugar.  Bake at 325 for 17 minutes.	Cream butter and sugar.  Add molasses and egg.  Beat until smooth.  All rest of ingredients.  Chill for at least an hour.  Roll into balls and coat with granulated sugar.   Bake at 375 for 8 to 10 minutes.  Do not overbake.

We found both cookies had great taste.  Martha's cookies were a little more chewy while Karen's could melt in your mouth.  Martha's cookies could be cooked just a couple of minutes longer and be great dunkin' cookies.  

A different kind of cookie

I had a real hankerin' for a no-bake cookie the other day. Fortunately, Carolyn had a hankerin' for making cookies and she was agreeable to making that kind. Although she had to make a couple of substitutions (she's lactose intolerant these days) they turned out perfectly.

But imagine my surprise and delight when going into church last Sunday at having a new kind of no-bake cookie - one that sort of resembled sushi.These are about as easy or difficult as you'd like to make them. I did a quick survey on Google and found, of course, that lots of people had the idea of making sushi cookies but there's a wide range of looks.
Some want to emulate the look of some popular sushi going to great lengths and efforts. You should look at the two websites :

http://www.browniepointsblog.com/2006/04/09/how-to-make-sweet-sushi/


http://candy.about.com/od/candybasics/ss/candysushi_sbs_10.htm

before you decide to use the simple recipe below:
Ingredients:

• 6 cups Rice crispy cereal
• 3 Tbsp butter or margarine
• 10 oz pkg of marshmallows
• candy bars of choice

Step 1: Butter or spray cookie sheet
Step 2: Prepare Krispie treats from recipe on box of the Internet. Roll out finished treat mix to about 1/4 inch thick. Allow to cool 10 - 15 minutess.
Step 3: Transfer kirspies to cutting board, then place whole candybars end to end along one side of krispie mix. Lay othe candies as desired along th candybar. You may wish to add peanut butter, caramel, or melted chocolate chips along the bar. Roll the blanket of crispy around the carndy bar mixture and cut off when completed. pinch the two sides together. Repeat as necessary.

Step 4: Cut roll into 1 inch pieces, serve flat. Enjoy.

'tis indeed our Irish custom

What we have come to believe is "traditional" Irish fare - corned beef and cabbage - turns out to be nothing of the kind. Although the Irish had cattle they were mostly for their milk products. It was too expensive to have them for beef. A more common Irish meal might be bacon or side of pork and cabbage. Someone from the Corned Beef Council probably noted the similarity of salted pork to salted beef and voila a myth was born.

In any case our family has enjoyed an easy to prepare version of Corned Beef and Cabbage we named

Corned Beef Casarole and Cabbage:

Ingredients:
6 oz or 2 cups of dry macaroni
12 oz can of corned beef
1/4 lb mild cheddar cheese
1/2 can each of Campbell's Cream of Chicken Soup and Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 cup milk

Preparation:
Boil 2 quarts of water with 1 tsp salt and one tsp margarine. Add macaroni and cook until tender (7-10 minutes) Drain. Mix soup and milk over medium heat. Crumble in corned beef. Add cooked macaroni. Heat to just below boiling. Cube cheese in 1/4 inch cubes and add just before serving. Serve with cabbage boiled until just barely tender. Red cabbage adds color to the meal.

There you go. Easy enough for a child to make but sophisticated enough to serve to guests.

Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Hope you're not reading this on an empty stomach. These little babies are just too good to pass up. Fact is, yesterday I had such a craving for double chocolate chip cookies but just didn't feel like digging up all the ingredients. I needed something fast and easy and these fit the bill.

Someone had told me that you could make cookies from a cake mix by just adding an egg and a half cup of oil or butter. I looked in our pantry and found that, sure enough, we had a brownie mix. That sounded close enough to cake mix for me. Only problem was that the brownie mix already called for adding two eggs and a half cup of oil to the mix. I wondered, should I add the two, take the larger, or average? Ended up using the numbers on the brownie mix box. I figured the worst I could do was get flat, round brownies. The brownie mix also called for 2 tablespoons of water but I after I had mixed the eggs and oil into the mix it looked so much like cookie dough that I didn't figure it needed any more liquid.

I had the over turned on to 350 degrees. I scooped the dough onto ungreased cookie sheets and baked for 13 minutes. The result was so delicious I almost didn't get this picture. Enjoy!