Salty Chocolate and Caramel Turtle Cookies. I don’t like nuts in my desserts. I like nuts on their own – almonds, peanuts, walnuts and more. But when they are mixed into my cookies or brownies or ice cream or bacon, it’s a no-go. Not a fan. And yes, I just said bacon. But that all flies out the window when it comes to these cookies. I have never liked nuts in chocolate, so it came as a surprise to me when I found out that I loved turtles – the candy, not the animal. I think it is the sweet and salty combo. I have decided that nuts taste good in desserts if I expect them. I just couldn’t stop thinking about salty pecans in these chocolate cookies. So I added more sea salt than usual, added some salty pecans, and large chunks of caramel. Perfect doesn’t even begin to describe them. Salty Chocolate-Caramel Turtle Cookies Makes approximately 24 cookies 1 cup butter, at room temperature 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups flour 1/2 cup cocoa powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/2 teaspoon course sea salt 1 cup chocolate chips.
Peanut Butter Pretzel Truffles. These truffles might be life-changing. They are so fabulously delicious, that when I look at them I can barely think straight. And dare I say, they aren’t exactly terrible for you? I mean, I used natural peanut butter. And a sprinkling of pretzels. And you could use dark chocolate as a coating. I, of course, used the milkiest of milk chocolates I could find. Mr. He took down a few plate-ful’s of them, in an effort to gain back the small person he lost last week when he was sick. And decadent. My brother loved the truffles, too.
Which isn’t saying much, since he lives in one of those bachelor pads where consuming beer and chicken wings is required before chocolate and peanut butter. These truffles satisfy the sweet and salty craving all in one. Is there a better combination that peanut butter and chocolate? Salt in the form of crunchy pretzels. Peanut Butter Pretzel Truffles from Eating Well Combine peanut butter and pretzels in a small bowl.
Mr. Ok. Still . . . they are really tasty. Pumpkin Spice Cake Balls. Update your google readers! You still have over 24 hours to enter the food processor giveaway! Speaking of, your favorite Holiday memories are seriously choking me up. Even my husband was talking about them when he got home from work last night. I can’t wait to share some of mine. In my usual, dramatic fashion, I have SO many. I’m sure many of you have had the oreo balls, the red velvet cake balls, etc. If not…my, oh my, are you missing out. I thought pumpkin spice balls would work perfectly. I made a pumpkin loaf, using a recipe that I post a few weeks ago.
The minute it came out of the oven, I sliced it to help cool faster. Yes. That’s me. I’m sure most who have come in contact with me know that I have no patience. Back to the pumpkin loaf. I surprisingly snuck a few bites. I mixed it up with a block of softened cream cheese. I rolled ‘em into tiny balls and set them in the freezer. I also had some left over ‘crust’ from the pumpkin bread. Salted Mudslide Cookies. Cool people put salt on their cookies. Really! I swear. It’s not scary. Be a cool person. Because cool people also put booze in their cookies. Yessss. Mudslides were one of those drinks that I thought were insanely cool when I was 13 or 14 years old. A few summers ago at the beach, my uncle started blending mudslides one afternoon, changing up the typical bourbon/rum punch flow of the day. [You know... kind of like the time she thought Obama's name was "Omaha" for two weeks and asked every Sunday if we could take a quick stop at "Louie's" to looks at flowers.
So Mother Lovett, mudslinger in hand, got her drank on while sitting approximately 5 inches from the big screen TV so she could adequately hear Dr. By the time we came back up to our condos to get ready for dinner… she was MIA. Now I can’t ever drink a mudslide without thinking of Mother Lovett drunk as a skunk. But it’s 2011 people! I topped these cookies with sea salt flakes that I also found while on vacation. 1 cup brown sugar.
Mocha Coconut Fudge. Ugh. I’m really sorry to have to do this to you. Really. Because I’m sure you have plans tonight and all, that include like, watching six episodes of Friends, eating a dinner of crackers, cheese and wine and then not doing laundry and not cleaning the bathroom. Especially if you are my clone. But you must cancel those plans. Because now you’re going to make fudge. Truuuuuuust me on this one. Know what I’m saying? Fudge is simply soooo chocolatey and rich that when all you want to do is chew, chew, chew, it isn’t the best drug of choice. But that’s neither here nor there. THIS fudge needs to be made. That’s really all I can tell you at the moment as I’m still somewhat sidelined on the couch with my BFF Kleenex and my old friend, Pinot Noir.
But anyway. For basically my entire existence, Mother Lovett insisted on making this two-toned butterscotch/chocolate fudge, even though every year we begged her to make a two-toned peanut butter/chocolate fudge. She froze it anyway. Mocha coconut it is! Print. Mocha Almond Fudge Cookies. Nuts in cookies. Cookies with nuts. Few things in life make me cry like biting into a warm, chewy cookie only to chomp down on a rock hard nut. Clorox and rubber gloves. Empty wine bottles. Baked goods without butter. Compromise. Broccoli. Cookies with nuts are lumped somewhere in that list. Its not that I don’t love pecans and walnuts and peanuts.
But I made some cookies that sort of changed my tune. Don’t like coffee? Bottom line? And no, I don’t mean chaffing. Mocha Almond Fudge Cookies makes about 30 cookies 1 cup butter, at room temperature 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 cups flour 1/2 cup cocoa powder 2 tablespoons instant coffee powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon 2/3 cup chopped almonds 1 cup chocolate chips Add chopped almonds and cinnamon to a saucepan and toast over low-medium heat.
Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until fluffy. Fold in chocolate chips and almonds. Bake for 8-10 minutes. You get the point. Fat Fluffy Snickerdoodles. Guess what? Up until last week, I had never made snickerdoodles. I was a snickerdoodle virgin. And I know I said that I might be a little cookie-ed out, but I couldn’t let this one slip through the cracks. I had to share… for a few reasons. First up, again – I had never made snickerdoodles.
And they are one of Mr. How Sweet’s favorite cookies. I’m pretty sure that these cookies have developed a complex since I keep calling them “fat.” I found this gem on an old newspaper clipping from 1965 in Mother Lovett’s stash. See how thick and fluffy? Mother Lovett definitely made these one year, though I have no idea what year that was. They definitely are the fattest snickerdoodles I’ve ever had. But these? Thank you, newspaper from 1965. Fat Fluffy Snickerdoodles makes 16-20 cookies 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature 1 cup sugar 1 egg 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon 2 tablespoons milk Preheat oven to 375. Easy No-Bake Peanut Butter Cookies. If the yellowed index card doesn’t give it away, the “White Karo Corn Syrup” ingredient must.
It’s another gem from the depths of Mother Lovett’s never ending recipe collection. And you can imagine my excitement when I found this, for they are made with an ingredient I absolutely adore: graham cracker crumbs. True story: sometimes I melt butter in the microwave, add graham cracker crumbs, add marshmallows, then add chocolate chips and microwave again for a “s’mores bowl.” I’m sort of embarrassed to admit that. But not really. And then I somehow convince myself that it is a healthy snack. As we all know, there is only one way to make peanut butter better… The best part of the graham cracker crumbs is that they cause these cookies to be a bit salty.
So since we have some salty, peanut buttery goodness going on here, you can only imagine how fabulous a drizzle of chocolate is on top. The cookies are not super sweet, so the chocolate is perfect. I’ll take ten please. makes about 20 cookies. Oreo Balls. Update your google readers! Remember the pumpkin spice balls dipped in chocolate? They are the offspring of these Oreo balls.
If you’ve never had Oreo balls before, they can be described as ‘cake-like,’ truffles, or the-best-thing-you’ve-ever-eaten-in-the-entire-world. Not only do they taste incredible, but they are SO EASY. I use my large food processor for this one, and mix the Oreos into crumbs first. I cut the cream cheese into chunks before adding it.
Once the Oreos have warped into crumbs, I add the cream cheese chunks and let the food processor go to town. It creates an Oreo ‘dough.’ This dough is 1. easily eaten in one sitting 2. easily pliable to rolls into balls. I would advise using Option 2 if you’d like to please others. After I roll them into balls, I pop them in the freezer for an hour or so. I melt some chocolate in a double boiler and dip the Oreo balls in. I have also dipped them in peanut butter and white chocolate. Oreo Balls. Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies. There is only one thing worse than you having to stare through the screen at these cookies.
And that’s listening to me talk about how incredible they taste. Or… I guess it COULD be worse – I could remind you for the 3700th time that the only way the peanut butter + chocolate combo (aka life itself) gets better is by adding banana, but whatever. I wouldn’t want to bore you. But obviously, these cookies do contain three of my favorite things in the universe. I baked them in the morning, which meant that I ate cookies for a very balanced lunch and dinner. Oh, and three snacks. … or four. I tried my traditional sneak: leaving them on the counter for when my husband got home from work, in the hopes that he – the man who doesn’t love banana baked goods because he only eats bright GREEN bananas (dubyu tee eff?) Hallllllp me. There is one big major giant deal to note: these cookies are not cakey. Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies [adapted from giant rainbow cookies] makes about 18-20 cookies. Baklava Recipe. I’m about to bombard you with pictures, so let’s just get this out of the way.
Sold yet? Here’s the deal: I’ve wanted to make baklava for YEARS. As a firm believer of the nuts-stink-in-desserts camp, this flaky treat has always made the cut. In fact, I’m pretty sure that for the first like, 15 years of eating this, I didn’t even know it was nuts. I just thought it was some sort of delicious, caramely heaven thing. No one in my family ever made it, but a few of my mom’s friends would graciously gift us some around the holidays and I would often hog it all to myself, saving one last piece for my mom.
I knew I wanted to put a tiny bit of my own spin on the flavor, so I added cardamom and vanilla beans. I also used mostly pecans, then almonds and pistachios. Here’s a bowl of nuts. Um, let’s talk about how I often do things wrong. Tyler Florence’s (yes, we are BBF’s now) recipe called for a sh*tton of nuts. I also used vanilla beans! I love spending my life’s savings on food related items. Oh. Butterball Cookies. Click here to update your google readers! This is another cookie that I would make with Mother Lovett while she was still kickin’. If you have someone in your life that prefers treats on the milder side and does not like thing’s very sweet, this cookie is for them.
However, I have zero concept of someone thinking a food is too sweet. That’s impossible. I broke out her old, handwritten recipe. There are strict instructions to not refrigerate this dough. Of course I followed these instructions. We always stuffed the cookies with 2 things: pecans and maraschino cherries. Luckily, I had some pecans hanging around. Unfortunately, I did not have any maraschino cherries. After rolling the cookie into a ball, push a pecan inside and continue rolling the dough around it. Unfortunately blurry, but gets the point across. I made a few plain ones, but most are stuffed with pecans. They come out looking buttery and delicate.
Alas, there is. Butterball Cookies. Cake Batter Chocolate Bark. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to share a recipe with you. Or to lick a bowl. The secret ingredient here? You may think I’m crazy… but it’s a spoonful of actual cake mix. All you must do is whisk it well into the melted white chocolate. The truth is, I’ve never been much of a “bark” person. After laying on the couch slurping butter-soaked shrimp scampi, plowing through a bag of m&m’s and watching 7 hours of Lifetime television, I had my answer: cake batter.
And I didn’t want to just make white chocolate bark. Did you know I have an obsession with sprinkles? I’d put them on everything if I could. Cake Batter Chocolate Bark 6 ounces high quality dark chocolate (I used Lindt 70%) 12 ounces high quality white chocolate (I used Lindt) 3 teaspoons yellow cake mix sprinkles of your choice (at least 3 tablespoons worth or more) Melt dark chocolate either in the microwave or a double boiler. Melt while chocolate. Once set, break into chunks.