Chocolate Drops

When I was growing up in Virginia, there was a bakery called Brenner's Bakery. They made these chocolate drop cookies that we called POOPOO cookies because of how the chocolate frosting looked on top. I have wanted to try my hand at making these for a while. So, I finally decided to try it for St. Patty's Day. Don't worry, you can make these anytime as the only thing that makes them 'St. Patty's Day' cookies is the sprinkles.

Ingredients

Now, I only took pictures of making the cookies. I will include the recipe for the Dark Chocolate Buttercream I used at the bottom as well.

Start with softened butter. Add sugar and beat with electric mixer until fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Your mixture should resemble the following picture.

Add your egg and mix until combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Slowly add your dry mixture to your wet mixture and continue to mix on medium speed.  Once combined, add your vanilla and mix well. Your dough should look like the picture below.

Take a small amount of dough, around a tablespoon and roll into a ball. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, spacing about 2 inches apart.

Slightly flatten dough with the palm of your hand just before baking.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10-13 minutes or until just browned on the edges.

All done

Allow cookies to cool completely. My mom (who's house I made these at), has the best cookie cooling rack. I seriously need to purchase one!  Once cookies are cooled completely, you can frost and decorate as you like. 

I went with a Dark Chocolate Buttercream, though staying true to Brenners would have called for a basic Chocolate buttercream.  I just favor the dark chocolate more :)  Hope you enjoy this recipe and here is the cookie and frosting recipe:

Recipe:

 Butter Cookie

1 1/2 sticks softened butter

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Cream butter and sugar using mixer until fluffy, 2-3 minutes.  

Add egg and mix until combined.

In separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder and salt.

Slowly add dry ingredient mixture to your wet mixture.

Mix until combined on medium speed.

Add vanilla and stir to combine.

Take about a tablespoon of dough and roll into a ball. 

Place on parchment paper lined baking sheet

Repeat with remaining dough, placing dough 2 inches apart.

Flatten slightly with palm.

Bake for 10-13 minutes until just browned.

Cool cookies completely.

Dark Chocolate Buttercream

1 1/2 sticks softened butter

1/2 cup Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder

2 1/2 cups Confectioner's sugar

1/4 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

Add butter and cocoa to bowl of stand mixer (or bowl if using hand mixer)

Cream together until well combined.

Add sugar to butter mixture slowly. 

Add vanilla extract and mix well.

Add milk, at a tablespoon at a time, until you reach the consistency you want. If too stiff, add more milk.

*Pipe onto cookies using decorating bag or Ziplock with corner snipped off.

As I said in my previous post, I am trying to catch up on recipes and obviously I made these a while ago. Hopefully I will have the rest of my back recipes up on here soon!

Extreme Cookie Closeup

Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies

I know, I know. I have been awful at updating my blog. You would not believe the amount of recipes I have that I need to put on here. Some are over a year old!!  These cookies though, I made this past week. They were so good. As with all my stuffed cookies, they came out extremely larger than I intended, but they were so worth it!

I made these Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies for the first Bryant Football game of the season. It's been a long time since I've made cookies for Craig and his staff and it was fun to try a new recipe for them.

As  with a lot of cookie recipes, this one starts with some nice softened butter. Then you add your brown sugar and white sugar.

By the way, I have to show off my new favorite spatula. Pretty fitting right? 

Beat your softened butter and sugars for about 1-2 minutes until nice and fluffy. It should resemble the following picture. 

Then add your eggs and vanilla and mix well ( I did not take a picture of this).

Now it's time to add your dry ingredients. I rarely if ever use a seperate bowl. I just pile them on top of each other and mix. 

Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until just combined. It should look like the picture below.

Then, my favorite part: CHOCOLATE CHIPS! 

 Mix the Chocolate chips in until combined (like below) 

Allow the dough to chill in the refrigerator for an hour. While you are doing this, unwrap some caramels. I unwrapped way more than I needed as I only made 10 huge cookies. But my girls didn't complain.

Yum

Once your dough has chilled, you are ready to make your cookies.  Take about 3 tablespoons of dough and roll it into a ball. Repeat for a second ball of dough.

Stick a caramel partway into your ball of dough like the below picture.

Cover the caramel using the second ball of dough and form it into one large ball of dough like the following picture.  

SEE HOW BIG?!?!

I literally could only fit 5 cookie balls on a pan at once. I'm not sure, maybe next time I will try less dough, but my girls loved the HUGE cookies. Bake the cookies in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes depending on the size of your cookies.

All Baked

You want to pop the cookies out while they are still soft and sprinkle them with sea salt. Because mine were so large, I actually popped them out at about 10 minutes, sprinkled them with the salt and popped them back in the oven until they were done.

Trying to get a view of the salt.

Like I said, these were REALLY good.  I love Salted Caramel and I thought they really added an extra kick to a basic chocolate chip cookie. Even eaten the next day they were still very good. Just not as gooey. Hope you guys enjoy this recipe and I hope to try a new pumpkin cookie next month (when my husband has his next home game). But until then, I will try to update my other recipes!

Recipe: Adapted from: Salted Caramel CC Cookies

12 TB softened butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

2 cups flour

1 3.4 oz box Vanilla Instant pudding mix

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 12 oz bag Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

Soft caramels (I used 10 Kraft square caramels), unwrapped

Sea salt

Soften Butter

Add Sugars and beat with electric mixer until fluffy

Add egg and vanilla, mix well.

Add dry ingredients and mix until combined.

Stir in Chocolate Chips

Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Unwrap caramels

Take 3 TB of dough and roll into ball, repeat for second ball.

Place one caramel square into one ball and press in slightly.

Cover with second ball and roll to form one large ball.

Place on parchment paper lined cookie sheet

Repeat with remaining dough.

Bake 10-15 minutes, take out when still soft and sprinkle with sea salt.

Allow to cool and enjoy!