No-bake Cookie Dough Truffle Bars

Happy Halloween Everyone! I am very happy to have the time to share this recipe with everyone, since I have been fairly swamped with necessary, productive activities the last few weeks.  Since my first round of midterms are over, I decided to bring some treats to work today.  Today also seemed like an appropriate day to get into the Halloween spirit.

As a child, Halloween (and all holidays for that matter) were at least month long ordeals.   Starting October 1, I would start thinking of costume ideas and planning out trick-or-treating routes to get ready for the big day.  Don't even get me started on Christmas.  The moment Halloween was over, I was scouring the toy catalogs to start making my list. As a college student, it is almost the opposite. There I was, thinking about all the notes I had to catch up on or the essays I had to write when I realized, "oh hey, Halloween is this Thursday...... wait it is Thursday right?? Or is it Wednesday?"  I obviously am on top of it .....NOT.  Aside from my daily concerns of overdosing on Vitamin A from the copious amounts of pumpkin and sweets potatoes I eat each day (pumpkin in oatmeal anyone?) I literally have put no thought into the holiday.  So, I thought, what better way to enter Halloween week than making a delicious Halloween treat?

After spending a while on Pinterest pursuing the various cute tombstone brownies, eye ball cake pops or spider cookies I could make, I simply couldn't find anything that would take a reasonable amount of time with relatively few ingredients.  So I ditched the  Halloween theme, and shortly after had a "brain blast" (what show, everyone???) of the easiest, most delicious (albeit calorically dense) dessert ever.

I realized that eggless cookie dough finds its way into many of my recipes, such as in http://cookingwithgertrude.blogspot.com/2013/06/cookie-dough-brownie-bombs-danger-danger.html, as do Oreo truffles, such as here:  http://cookingwithgertrude.blogspot.com/2012/12/tis-season-for-awesome-cupcakes.html. Why not put them together to form Cookie Dough Truffle Bars? No baking (ie, no dealing with pesky Gertrude) , 20 minute prep time, out-of-this world taste.... can't get much better than that.  Driving to the store I was redetermined to tie back in my halloween theme by using Halloween Oreos for the Oreo truffle layer.  My dreams were crushed when I learned that  Safeway apparently does not believe in virtue of Oreos with bright orange cream. So, in a last-ditch effort to tie some halloween-ness into my treats, I picked up some Candy-Corn M&Ms (which are really just candy corn colored M&Ms with white chocolate) to mix into the cookie dough and put on top.

 I'm sure someone else in the wonderful world of Pinterest has done this exact idea, but I am going to tell myself that this recipe was a unique Cooking-with-Gertrude Creation.  Want to recreate the magic? Here is what I did

No-bake Cookie Dough Truffle Bars

Oreo Layer 
8 oz. Oreos (I used 1 pack of mini-Oreos, but 20 normal Oreos is equivalent)
4 oz. Cream Cheese (I realized after that I should have used pumpkin cream cheese!  That would have been way been way more Halloween-y than my lame M&Ms ) 

1. Line 8 by 8 pan with aluminum foil  
2. Crush up Oreos using the method of your choice. I started with the old-fashioned fist crush and then put the cookies into the food processor to finish the job.  
3.  Soften cream cheese and mix into oreo crumbs to make a dough-like mixture.  
4. Pat mixture into bottom of pan
5. Put into fridge as you prepare the cookie dough 

Cookie Dough layer (adapted from  http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2009/03/raw-cookie-dough-thats-safe-to-eat.html) 

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup milk
1 cup candy corn M&Ms  
1 cup chocolate chips 

1. Mix all ingredients together into a large bowl.  
2.  Pat about 1 inch cookie dough (or more or less, depending on your love for cookie dough) on top of Oreo layer. I had some extra cookie dough..... Too bad I can NEVER find any use for extra cookie dough :) just kidding. 


Chocolate Topping 

1 cup chocolate chips 
1 tbs shortening 

1. Melt chocolate and shortening at intervals of 30 sec until smooth
2. Pour over cookie dough layer
3.  Garnish with extra M&Ms 
4.  Place in fridge for about an hour to set before cutting 
5.  Enjoy!

Cookies with Gertrude

As of late, I have discovered something dangerous. Gertrude can make cookies...... really, really, really good cookies.  The whole 50 degrees lower + parchment paper+ high rack words wonders. 

I needed to bake some cookies for various people for random favors, so I needed a crowd pleaser that I could make a lot of in a relatively short amount of time.  I also didn't really feel like going to the grocery, so I had to make do with what I had.  Since I have oatmeal religiously for breakfast every morning, I have a huge can of it that I would happily donate 1.5 cups towards cookies.  Also, white chocolate chips happened to be a irresistibly cheap at the store, so I happened to have some of those on hand too.  So it was settled: oatmeal white chocolate chip cookies. 

I used the following recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/white-chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies/  with a few modifications.  I unfortunately did not have pecans (remember I'm on a budget), but I had the exciting addition of 1 tsp cinnamon.... definitely a nice touch.  Anyways, the recipe was pretty straight forward so I had no kitchen fails. However,  I did learn a valuable lesson that can be expanded to all other aspects of life: trust the process.  Even though the cookies only looked half-baked when it is time to take them out, I needed to trust that they would harden up only slightly to be literally the most chewy, delicious cookies ever.  And they did.  Anyways,  10 of them are sitting in my freezer right now so I can take them to work.  Writing this blog is one way to distract myself.  

Fun with Fondant

Wow, it is good to be back.  I have been super busy studying for a big test I had to take this past wednesday, but now that it is over, I can relax for a whole week before school starts.  For me, relaxing means cooking awesome foods..... obviously.   My week of relaxation also perfectly corresponds with a cake auction at my dad's work that I plan to bake a cake for.  Since most of the cakes I make are just for birthdays, I don't ever feel that much pressure about making them look super professional (don't want to have people think they are store-bought, right??).  However, a cake auction seems like sort of a big deal for me, so I want to make the cook look super good (along with having it taste super good too).  This being said, I cannot deny that pretty much every cake I have ever looked at and been like "wow, this cake is decorated really nicely" is made with fondant.

For those of you who don't know, fondant is basically like frosting dough that you can mold and cut to put on cakes to give that "bakery" appearance.  I have heard that sometimes this good look of fondant compromises its taste.  Therefore, I did my research to find the best-tasting/easiest recipe I could possibly find.  A marshmallow fondant recipe I found looked the most promising, but I was still a little bit skeptical about it so I decided to practice it in a low- risk situation.  Every saturday I tutor kids so I decided to bring them cookies... since bringing them any cookies (not to mention decorated cookies) basically makes their days, I decided if my fondant turned into not-so-(fun)dant I would not feel too bad.  

This endeavor had an even greater risk of failure do to the fact that I decided to make cookies.... in Gertrude.  For those of you that don't remember, Gertrude decides to take all of her pent up anger out on cookies.  Challenge accepted. 

I used the following recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/the-best-rolled-sugar-cookies/?scale=15&ismetric=0 with a few modifications.  I quartered the recipe because I only needed about 15 servings rather than 60 servings.  After quartering the recipe, I added a 1/4 cup of powdered sugar just because :) Also, I reduced the over temperature to 350 instead of 400 in an attempt to make it more Gertrude-proof.  This precaution, along with my raising the oven rack and putting the dough on parchment paper, turned out the most successful cookies I have ever made (in Gertrude that is).  

Next, I rolled out the fondant using a ghetto rolling pin (aka a plastic cup.... gotta love college) and used a similarly ghetto cookie cutter (a wine glass) to cut out fondant circles.  I did not have any normal frosting to "glue" the fondant to the cookies, so I decided to just put the fondant onto the cookies straight out of the oven with the hopes it would melt on.  In retrospect, this could have gone horribly, since in a very parallel universe the fondant could have liquified, turning into not-so-(fun)dant. However, that surprisingly did not happen and I have nine beautiful, happy cookies to give to my students today.  Not to mention the fondant tasted pretty good too.  Needless to say, I am happy with this fondant experience and feel confident about buying an absurd amount of marshmallows to make this cake (that will be featured on my next blog) happen!

IN THE (cal)ZONE.....

So it looks like this week I am going pretty much all out with the whole-wheat bread products.  From England on Monday with my English muffins, I decided to take a little stroll across Europe to the land of alfredo, pesto and mozzarella... Italy (I don't know for sure if Calzones actually originated in italy, but one can guess).  Anyways, those three things I mentioned... Alfredo, pesto, and mozzarella... well, I decided they should all be included in this calzone.  Before you assume this is going to be another peanut butter cookie dough cheesecake bar recipe where your arteries close by simply looking at the pictures, think again.  This recipe is actually decently healthy.  Whole Wheat Crust, a lightened up Alfredo sauce and spinach make this a filling yet wholesome recipe.

STEP 1: I got to use my handy dandy bread machine! First, I mixed the following ingredients, in order, into a bread machine and let go on the dough cycle (takes about 1.5 hrs on mine)
1 1/3 cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
1.5 cups bread flour
2.5 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons yeast

STEP 2: While the dough was doing its thing, I prepared the goodness that was going to be stuffed into these calzones.  I used the following recipe from http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=163122 the alfredo sauce:

Ingredients

1 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
 

4 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups skim milk
1 cup chicken broth
3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Top-Rated Olive Oil at Amazon

Directions

In a medium saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add garlic and saute until golden brown.

In a small saucepan, stir together milk, chicken broth, flour, salt and pepper over low heat until smooth and thick. Stir in parmesan.  

I'm always I little skeptical of these "lighter Alfredo sauces" since I am usually faced with what I call the "Healthification dilemma".  I will explain: I often see recipes for items such as "skinny cookie dough bombs", "healthy donuts" or "low-fat nutella cheesecake". The "Healthification dilemma" arrises when I realize that in order for these recipes to taste at least remotely close to their calorie and fat laden originals, they have to have an amount of fat and sugar that I would consider to be "unhealthy" according to my maniac-runner health-freak standards.   Therefore, I am faced with the question: why don't I just enjoy the real thing in slightly smaller/less frequent amounts, rather than dealing with this recipe ridden with an identity crisis as it just tried so hard to be "heatlthy" but really is neither particularly nutritious nor delicious.

Alfredo sauce definitely is one of these major dilemna foods: would I rather have a delicious,rich, creamy, buttery plate of Fettucchine Alfredo once every month as a treat or a seriously watered down version every week? Usually I would go with the first, but after perfecting this sauce, I may go with the second.  The key to making a decently healthy (but not overly so, of course) Alfredo sauce: patience, my friend.  In the words of our beloved Dory: "just keep (stirring)"!  The sauce took a good 20-25 minutes of stirring to achieve the thickness that hallmarks a delicious Alfredo sauce.  In chemistry class, we use magnetic stir bars to keep stirring the solution constantly.  I would imagine that someone has invented a similar invention with culinary uses,which I would like to acquire.  Until that time though, I found the best solution was to plop a chair in front of the stove and just keep stirring!

STEP 3: I just happened to have about 2 tbs of pesto in my fridge, so I just basically smothered it all over the 8 or so chicken tenderloins I had thawed, added about 1/4 cup of chicken broth and cooked on medium heat until done.  Sorry I don't have an exact recipe for the chicken, but at this point I was just wingin' it and making do with what I had.

STEP 4: After the dough was done, I divided it up into 5 balls, flattened them out into 7 inch or so rounds and began to fill.  I chopped up some spinach to add into the calzones along with the Alfredo sauce, chicken and a sprinkle of light mozzarella cheese. I must admit, I got a bit greedy with the stuffing.  I have never really made calzones before but now I know: there is a very fine line between deliciousness and disaster. Though three of the calzones worked magnificently, the other two  couldn't really keep in the filling after I folded them in half and sealed them.  But I made it work.

After baking at 375 for 20 min, here is the result: As you can see, my greediness in overstuffing continued to backfire as a few sorta exploded in the oven.... however, parchment paper was my saving grace because Gertrude miraculously decided not to burn the oozing cheese.

They made an excellent dinner.... and lunch.... and dinner.  I am a little (Cal)zoned out now.  Ciao!!!

English Muffins

Once in a while, I actually do what a food blogger should do: make up recipes.  Usually I  use already developed recipes with small adjustments (peanut butter chips for chocolate chips... *gasp*) that I don't feel comfortable crediting as my own.  However, this time around, a deficiency of a few vital ingredients forced me to essentially create my own recipe for..... English Muffins!

 I love English Muffins, but often don't buy them at the store because I find them ridiculously overpriced.  $4 for 6 English muffins that are probably going to go bad in 2 days??? I don't think so.  I've run the gambit on other bread products- bagels, pretzels, bread, regular muffins, etc- but I have never done english muffins.  This is another episode of cooking without Gertrude, since the odd part about English muffins is that instead of putting them in the oven, you heat them up on the griddle (okay let's be honest, I don't have a fancy griddle-  I used a skillet).  I guess the British had had enough of finicky ovens like Gertrude and resorted to other heating sources.

Here is the recipe I used for the muffins: 

1/4 cup warm water
1 tbs yeast
3 cups whole wheat flour
1/4 vital wheat gluten
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 dry milk powder
3 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 egg
Whipping this together, I was a bit skeptical- I am always a bit skeptical when powdered milk is involved. The stuff has the oddest texture.  But it ended up working out  Anyways here is the process

1.  sprinkle yeast in 1/4 cup warm water (about 105-110 degrees F) in a bowl and allow it to become foamy (about 10 min) 
2. mix flour, salt and vital wheat gluten in a different bowl
3.  In another bowl (sorry for all of the bowls!) mix together the milk powder and water to make "milk" and add the oil, honey and egg.  
4. Add half of the liquid mixture into the flour mixture, followed by the yeast, followed by the other half. 
5. mix until smooth and then return to a floured surface to knead for about 5 min. 
6. let rest in covered bowl for about 1 hr until it doubles in size.  Ideally, this should be a warm place- luckily, I just plopped the bowl on my backyard and prayed that no woodland creature would try to snack on it.  It was just fine. 
7.  flatten out to about 1/2 inch and use  some object with a 3 in diameter to cut circles.  The dough was a little bit hard to cut, so I used a pizza cutter to cut the circles. 
8. let rest for another 20-30 minutes
9.  heat up a skillet and cook each side for 3 minutes, until the tops become golden but not burnt.  
10.  enjoy with cheese, peanut butter, a slab of butter or a drizzle of honey (probably not all of those together) 

  

A lot of catching up to do.........

Hello to my loyal visitors who are still checking this page despite my complete negligence.  That being said, though I have been slacking off majorly on the recording of my baking escapades, I thankfully have gone full force on the important part- the baking!  In the last... uhhh month... I have made a plethora of scrumptious treats that I am going to briefly talk about (and show pretty pictures obviously).  For those of you who are more interested in the play-by-play kitchen commentary, I will try to squeeze a little of that in too.  However, for the sake of brevity, I will resume with the step-by-step recollection of my baking experiences next time (earlier than September, don't worry).

RECIPE 1: First up is the famed bread that I briefly mentioned in a previous post.  Though I was showing the fairly primitive stages of the bread during that previous post, it evolved quite nicely as you will see below.  The recipe is at this link:  http://www.marthastewart.com/907240/chad-robertsons-tartine-country-bread

See the resemblance?? I don't either......

The bread some mean paninis with tomatoes, pesto, fontina and sopressata: 

 Just one more picture of 3 of the 7(!!!!) loaves:  It was quite a big time commitment so multiple loaves were necessary to justify the fact took a whole day to make! 

RECIPE 2: The recipe was not outrageous like a few of the ones to follow, but I had to mention these (http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/heath_bar_cookies/) Toffee cookies because they represent the first successful cookie-making endeavor in Gertrude.  The secret (or should I say secretS) is two pans stacked on each other, parchment paper, top rack, half the necessary time and 50 degrees less in the oven.  The result- beautiful, unburnt, chewy cookies.  In my opinion, crunchy cookies are not worth eating, so I am glad that attacking Gertrude at various angles allows for edible cookies. 

RECIPE 3: Cake batter balls.  Once in a while, I come across a recipe that I wish I didn't know about. In these cases, the reason for my desire of ignorance is that the recipe produces something in just too little time that tastes just too delicious.   This recipe (http://www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/2011/03/cake-batter-truffles.html) is actually an instance of "Cooking With(out) Gertrude", since Gertrude played no part in this.  Despite Gertrude's lack of involvement, I had a minor fiasco with the dipping chocolate.  Though dipping chocolate is supposedly way easier to work with than chocolate chips, the addition of the cake mix to the dipping chocolate as mentioned in the recipe did not bode particularly well.  The chocolate did not get to the thin consistency I needed, and I ended up way overheating the chocolate to the point of no return.  Unfortunately, dipping chocolates are very hard to come by in Davis, California after 7 pm.  I thus had to resort to using white chocolate chips which though albeit delicious, do not look as attractive when melted. Luckily, covering the balls in sprinkles made everything better.   It helped that these cake batter truffles tasted phenomenal.  I don't think I will ever make the traditional cake balls again- why bake a cake, destroy it, then ball it up again when you just ball the batter up and skip those middle steps?? 

RECIPE 4: Oh boy, now I'm on to the good one.  Peanut Butter Cup Cookie Dough Cheesecake bars.  If every major obesity-related medical problem could be packaged into bar form, this would be it.  I mainly followed this recipe http://insidebrucrewlife.com/2013/03/peanut-butter-cheesecake-cookie-bars/ with a few modifications.  I did not have chocolate chips, so I just used peanut butter chips in the dough.  To compensate for the lack of chocolate in the dough, I added a layer of 12 big peanut butter cups that I broke up into pieces.  Then, I proceeded to add the cheesecake, more cookie dough, peanut butter chips and a chocolate drizzle.  There literally is no way for this to go wrong.  A picture is worth a thousand words. 

RECIPE 5: This one was fresh out of the oven today.  Yesterday at my work, my students (who are the lucky recipients of 95% of all of these baked good) finished off a box of drumsticks in about 10 min (2 drumsticks each).  A while later in the class,  I asked them what type of dessert I should bring for the next day (today).  They were all so full from the ice cream, that they jokingly suggested salad.  While I didn't go that extreme, I did use vegetables as an inspiration as I decided with zucchini cupcakes! I used the following recipe of http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/zucchini-cupcakes for the cake part and http://www.food.com/recipe/homemade-caramel-frosting-303255 for the caramel icing.  Though I accidentally used bread flour instead of cake flour to make them a bit more "bready" then I wanted, they had a lovely flavor that was complemented well by with the icing.  And the picture turned out really well:

Man, I am sick of writing now.  Well, I guess that is my own fault.  Until next time!!

Cookie Dough Brownie Bombs.... Danger, Danger!

In summer time, I work for a tutoring company.  In order to stay on the good side of the kids I teach I make them treats eat week..... it's a great job. Anyways, I usually try to only make really intense desserts when I have a legitimate excuse, meaning I have many people to give them so they do not sit in my fridge for days on end (ok, maybe just a few days before they get eaten). I consider this job a very legitimate excuse (and I get reimbursed for the materials, even better!!).   Anyways, I decided to go with what I was comfortable with for the first week.... brownies, cooking dough and chocolate! Luckily for me, Gertrude's inability to make cookies was not a problem because this recipe has cookie DOUGH, not cookies.

Here is the recipe:
http://thedomesticrebel.com/2013/02/20/chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-brownie-bombs/

 Anyways basic idea.... make cookie dough (without eggs of course!), roll it into balls, make brownies, smoosh them up, roll smooshed brownies around cookie dough balls, dip in chocolate.... there really is no way they could not be delicious.  And the were.  These are a little bit too good, so I was very happy to get these out of the house very quickly.  The whole process went very smoothly (hence I don't have a long story like I usually do!).  Gertrude can handle brownies pretty well, so I only had to do some minmal edge trimming to ensure the brownies were fudgey enough to smoosh.   Nom Nom Nom Nom

Stay tuned for more kitchen adventures!!