nuts to that

Is it chocolate or is it a nut?

I had a request for cookies with white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts in them. I've heard of this combo before but I'm not really fond of chunky bits of nuts in my cookies so I've never bothered with them. But they asked, and so I make.

I figured though, if I'm going to fill a cookie with these pale bits of stuff, it needs to be something other than a typical drop cookie. So I decided to make a super chocolately brownie style cookie.

Reverse Chocolate Macadamia Nut Chip Cookies

What you need:

• 8 ounces unsweetend chocolate
• ¼ c butter
• 1 ½  cup sugar
• 4 large eggs
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour (I used 2 cups. DON'T do that; it's too much)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 c chopped macamadamia nuts

What you gotta do:

Okay, first off, I used too much flour. I made mine with a full 2 cups and they didn't spread at all as they baked, and they were a little crumblier than I'd hoped for. So, I'm thinking that if you reduce it to 1 1/2 cups, they should have a better shape and texture.

Melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave. Start with a minute and a half at 50% power, stir, and then a minute at 50% power, stir. You don't want the chocolate to melt entirely in the microwave. Don't worry, the residual heat will get rid of the rest of the chunks.

In a big bowl, mix the eggs and sugar together.

Add the vanilla and the melted chocolate to the big bowl. Stir until it's lovely and dark and glossy.

I had thought I'd be able to bash the macamadamia nuts in the bag they came in with the bottom of the baking powder jar to break them up. Didn't work.

So, chopping them with a knife. They're a much softer nut than say an almond or a pecan, and they seem to shave better than they chop. mmm shaved nuts.

If you feel like sifting the flour, baking powder, and salt before you add it to the big bowl, go right ahead. I didn't. I just piled it all on top (srsly, don't use this much flour) and gave it a bit of a premix before I mixed it all in.

Yay, flour. I was having a seriously spilly kinda of day.

Yup, definitely too much flour.

It all mixed in though... there are times when chocolate really just isn't very photogenic.

Add the nuts and the white chocolate chips to the dough.

Now, if you only used 1 1/2 cups of flour, chilling the dough before you scoop it onto the baking sheet will probably work well to give you a nice soft cookie. Mine though retained their shape a little too well after chilling. So, I left the dough on the counter after the second round.

It didn't help much. There are some things that just can't be fixed, and too much flour in your cookie dough is one of them.

Good enough. They're chocolate, there's lots of them, and though the texture is a little less than ideal, they don't taste half bad. You could do this with bittersweet chocolate, but then they'd be too sweet to eat more than 3 or 4 at a time.

Bake them at 325 for 10 minutes and let them cool on a rack before you pack them up to take to work. Or pile them onto a plate to eat in bed. 

And so begins the Mayhem!

Last May, we had a wee bit o' the crazy going on. Taneasha was eating nothing but road food as she was being chased across the country by tornadoes, I was posting about ice cream and toads (and dumb fuck june bugs) and neighbours with guns and really, we barely made it out alive.

So, this year, we decided to do it all over again.

Of course the first thing that happens is I get locked out of the website while Taneasha is trapped in a car crossing 5 different state lines in 12 hours. And so, No Post For You! (today? yes, Tuesday? no)

We're pretty sure she's not going to be homeless in the middle of the month, but I'm evicting her from Fridays for a while.

Carrot Cake Cookies with White Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing

(Yes, that whole thing is the name of the recipe. Yes, I'm a freaking genius to mix white chocolate and cream cheese)

What you need:

• 2-3 carrots (~1 1/2 c once grated)
• 1 c butter
• 1 1/2 csugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp cardamom
• 2 1/2 c flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

not shown, but also worth adding

• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1 tbsp orange zest

What you gotta do:

Preheat your oven to 350.

Grate the carrots. If you do this by hand, you are insane and you probably have no skin left on your knuckles.

Since you've already got the food processor dirtied, may as well go all the way. Switch from the grater blade to the regular blade.

Dump in the butter and sugar and let the sharp things do all the work.

I was going to continue the whole recipe in the food processor, thinking I could save dishes that way, but I wasn't convinced that it would be able to hold the whole recipe's worth. Cut this recipe in half and do the whole thing in the food processor. It makes a lot of cookies anyway and you can save a few dishes.

If you're doing the full recipe, dump the sweet carrot butter into a bowl and add the egg, vanilla, and spices (and orange zest).

Mash this all together then start adding flour. I did a cup at a time and mixed well after each one.

This gradual-addition-and-lots-of-mixing method will result in a cookie with a cakier texture.

You should have a stiff, but sticky dough.

And you also should have added the baking powder with the flour... dammit.

I sprinkled about half a teaspoon of baking powder over the dough and mixed it for a couple more minutes. Seemed to work.

There are a couple ways you can make these cookies.

You can just drop spoonfuls of dough onto the cookie sheet and bake them, but they don't spread like most drop cookies. They hold their shape. So you'll probably end up patting the tops down a bit so they aren't so blobby.

You can also chill the dough for about half an hour and then roll it into balls and poke them until they're shaped like eythrocytes. (word of the day, bonus points if you know it, google it if you don't)

Bake them at 350 for about 14-16 minutes. They should be barely browning on the bottom and look dry on top.

This recipe makes 5 dozen cookies! I really recommend cutting it in half. Good luck with the egg.

Now, you could eat these as is. But no one eats carrot cake because they like it. They're all after the icing.

• 1 c cream cheese
• 1 c icing sugar
• 4 oz white chocolate

Cream the cream cheese and icing sugar together.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave on 50% power 30 seconds at a time until you can stir the last of the lumps out of it.

(yes there are only 3 oz in the bowl. I added the fourth after I decided I wanted it)

Pour the melted chocolate into the sugary cream cheese and mix well.

Making the icing is never the hard part. Icing 61 cookies with what I'm pretty sure is the world's stickiest icing is the hard part. It never really sets, and it stays sticky, even after an hour in the fridge.

But they taste damn good.

 Did you know what an erythrocyte was??