M&M Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are the second cookie I made for Christmas and Santa.  I love M&M cookies. I saw this recipe posted on Pinterest for 'Perfect M&M Cookies'. And they looked so good that I wanted to try them out.

Ingredients 

Now the recipe called for a special ingredient: Vanilla pudding mix.  Supposedly, adding the pudding mix keeps the cookie soft and fluffy and gives you a perfect shaped cookie. That didn't exactly happen with mine, but I'll explain that later.

First you soften your butter to room temperature. Once it is softened, add your sugars and blend until creamy.  Add your eggs and vanilla and mix well. Then comes your dry ingredients!

Big helper adding the pudding mix

Now, when I added all the dry ingredients and mixed it, it came out pretty dry/crumbly. So, I will recommend starting with less flour than the original recipe called for, and then adding more if you need it. I'll include directions in the recipe that follows. After you have the dry ingredients added and mixed, you are ready to add your candy and chocolate chips!

Chocolate Chips go in! 

M&M's added! 

YUMMY

Mix the M&M's and chocolate chips in until combined. You can see in the below picture that my dough was too dry, there isn't enough 'stickiness' to hold on to the chips and m&m's.

I used a cookie dough scoop and placed the dough on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. I used a pretty small one, but you can use whatever size you want.

Ready for the oven

My first batch barely spread, so for all my other batches, I flattened the dough slightly with the bottom of a glass. When they were all done they looked like the below picture.

All done!

Now, these cookies still tasted pretty good, I just think they would be even better had there not been too much flour. I actually joked that they ended up looking a lot like Keebler cookies!

Recipe:

2 sticks butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup packed light brown sugar

2 large egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 1/2 - 3 cups flour  *Start with 2 1/2 and add more if too sticky. DO NOT exceed 3 cups*

6 tablespoons vanilla pudding mix (INSTANT)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups mini chocolate chips

2 cups (or more LOL) mini M&M's

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line baking sheet with parchment paper

In mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars

Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.

Add Flour (Again, start with less and then add more), pudding mix, baking soda, salt and stir to combine.

Add Chocolate chips and M&M's and mix in.

Use cookie dough scoop or rounded tablespoon and place dough on prepared baking sheet.

Bake for 10-12 minutes.

After 10min of cooling, transfer to cooling rack.

Another cookie picture!

Gingerbread Kisses

Who doesn't like making cookies for Santa?  For this past Christmas, my daughters and I made 3 different cookies for Santa. What can I say? I was determined to keep Santa 'Jolly'.  The first cookie we made is what I am calling Gingerbread Kisses.

Ingredients

 

I love Gingerbread cookies. They are however, pretty complex to make from scratch. You have to make the dough the night before and since I was already making 3 cookies, I just wanted to keep this one easy. Plus I really like Betty Crocker cookie mixes. 

You start with softened butter. Once your butter is soft, add the cookie mix and the egg. Mix until well combined.



Ingredients added 

All mixed

 

I loved that as soon as you started mixing this together, it smelled SO good. Once it is mixed, place some white sugar on a plate. Take bits of cookie dough, and roll into 1 inch balls. It should resemble the below picture.

Probably a little bigger than an inch

 

Then roll your cookie dough balls through the sugar like in the below picture. Don't mind my creepy fingers, I was trying to take a picture while rolling the cookie dough ball.

 

Once you have your balls rolled, place about an inch to 2 inches apart on a parchment paper covered baking sheet. 

Ready for baking

Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 8 minutes.  While they are baking, unwrap your Hershey's Hugs. As I've said before, it is much easier to have them unwrapped so that you can press them into the cookies quickly. 

 

All Baked!

 

Once your cookies are done baking, immediately press a Hug into each cookie. Set them on a rack to cool while still on the pan. If you leave them on the stove while you are still baking, the chocolate will continue to melt and/or take MUCH longer to set. I put each batch on a rack for about 15min and then popped them into the fridge for about 20-25min until the Hugs had hardened back up. Once the Hugs have hardened, store all your cookies in an airtight container.  

All done!

I have to say, I really liked these cookies. I was going back and forth between getting Dark Chocolate Kisses and the Hugs. I really like the Hugs though. I though they complimented the Gingerbread cookies really well, and I feel like the dark chocolate would have overpowered them.

 

Recipe:

1 pkg Betty Crocker Gingerbread cookie mix

1 Egg

1 Stick of butter

Sugar for rolling

Hershey Hugs

 

Cover baking sheets with parchment paper

Place a little bit of sugar on a plate

Soften Butter to room temperature

Preheat oven to 375 Degrees

Combine cookie mix, softened butter and egg.

Once mixed, take bits of dough and roll into 1 inch balls.

Roll balls through sugar to coat.

Place cookie balls on baking sheet.

Bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes

While baking, unwrap Hershey Hugs

Once cookies are done baking, place 1 Hug on each cookie and press lightly.

Move off oven to cool and/or place in fridge until Hugs harden.

Store in airtight container.

 

Extreme Cookie Close-up!







Oreo Stuffed Blondie Bars

Once again, my blog has fallen to the wayside. This recipe I made for Thanksgiving and I have THREE I have to post from Christmas.  I don't know how other bloggers find the time to post every week (sometimes twice a week!!!). Between taking care of my two girls, studying and everyday stuff, I am pretty busy!!
Anyway... back to the task at hand.  I made these delicious bars for my family's Thanksgiving dinner.  If you haven't noticed from previous posts, I love the combination of oreo's and chocolate chip cookies. Or any 'stuffed' dessert. Stuffed dessert are fun because you get a little surprise in the middle.

Ingredients

 

I actually made these two ways. As I have posted before, I have a sister and a niece who don't like chocolate. So when making these, I decided to make a portion with white chocolate chips and golden Oreo's. I also used (as you can see from the picture) the Holiday Oreo's. I really like using the colored Oreo's for recipes when they are available because they look really neat. Now, like my last recipe, I pretty much slacked on my picture taking. Hopefully my instructions are enough!!

 

As with almost any cookie based recipe, your first step is softening your butter.  Then you add your sugars to the butter and mix together until creamy. Then add your egg and vanilla and mix well. Add all your dry ingredients (save chocolate chips) and mix until combined. It should look like the below picture.

All Mixed 

At this point, I took out about a 1/4- 1/3of my dough and put it in a separate bowl.

 



Separated dough

Add 1 1/2cups chocolate chips to your first bowl and 1/2 cup white chocolate chips to your second bowl and mix well. Now you don't have to do this unless you are making it 2 ways like I did. If you are just doing this recipe 1 way, add 2 cups chocolate chips to your dough. Once it's mixed, press half of your mixture into the bottom of a greased pan (I am pretty sure I used a 9x13). Place your Oreo's on top of the dough and press down slightly. It's ok if they break. It should look like the below picture.

 

Then take the remainder of your dough and press it over the Oreo's making sure they are covered completely.

All covered!

I tried to keep my two mixtures separated as you can see in the above picture. Obviously if you were just doing one, you wouldn't have them separated.  Once you have your dough all set, put it in a 350 degree oven for about 25-30min until they are just starting to brown.

All Done

 

Allow to cool before cutting into bars. Store in airtight container.

 

Recipe:

2 sticks softened butter

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

3 cups flour

2 cups chocolate chips (I used 1 1/2 cups chocolate and 1/2 white chocolate)

Oreos (you can use as many as you want, I used 8 golden and 9 regular)

 

Preheat oven to 350

Soften butter

Cream butter and sugars together

Add in eggs and vanilla and mix well

Add flour, salt and baking powder until combined

Mix in chocolate chips

Press half of the dough into greased baking dish

Place cookies on dough and press down lightly

Add remaining dough over cookies, spreading until the dough covers the cookies.

Bake in preheated oven for 25-30minutes.

Cool before cutting into bars.

Close-up of the white chocolate Golden Oreo Bars

Reese's Stuffed Chocolate Peanut Butter Fudge

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I made a total of 4 desserts as my contribution to my 2 Thanksgiving dinners. Two were new and two (my GF Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies, Mel's Famous Fudge) were desserts that I had made before.  Now I should admit that making four desserts all in one afternoon made me a bit scattered and I forgot to take my step by step pictures.  The steps to this recipe is almost exactly like my original fudge, up until you are pouring it into the pan. And the ingredients are different of course.

Ingredients

 



 I find fudge really easy to make. It's just a but labor intensive as you have to watch it constantly and there is a TON of stirring.  The first thing you do is prepare your pans. I used a large metal pan, like a 9x13. I sprayed it pretty generously with Pam so that my fudge would come out of the pan. Just make sure it is greased well.  Then you can start making the fudge! Melt your butter in a large saucepan. Once it's melted, add 10oz of evaporated milk and stir to combine.  Then you add your sugar.

Dumped all the sugar in

 

It's easier to add the sugar slowly, but as I mentioned, I was kinda in a rush. So I dumped it all in at once. It just makes it harder to stir in, but not impossible. And yeah, this was the last picture I took until it was all done. Sorry.

Anyway, you stir the sugar while slowly (emphasis on the SLOWLY) bringing it to boil. You want the sugar to dissolve.  You have to stir constantly to make sure it doesn't burn.  Once the sugar has dissolved (and I typically check the spoon to see if it has dissolved), remove the pan from heat and immediately add your peanut butter & chocolate chips. Stir until melted and then add 3/4 of the container of marshmallow Fluff. Stir until the fluff is totally incorporated. 

 

Once it's all mixed, pour half the fudge into your prepared pan. Quickly press your Reese's into the fudge. I find it easier to have them already unwrapped.  I used Reese's trees because they were on sale at the store, but any Reese's would work.  Once you have them on, quickly pour the rest of the fudge over the Reese's, making sure to cover them. I used the spoon to lightly spread the fudge over the top.



 All done!

 

You want to leave the fudge to cool completely. It will need extra time, because it takes a while for the chocolate on the Reese's to set. I actually popped it in the fridge so that it would set faster. I have actually never done that before with fudge, and it turned out great.  I had it in the fridge for about 15-20min and it set enough that I was able to cut it into squares easily.

 

I would recommend keeping it stored in a airtight container as fudge, once its been cut into, tends to get hard pretty fast. I kept this in a Tupperware container and it stayed pretty soft.

 

Recipe:

1 Stick butter

10oz Evaporated Milk

5 Cups sugar

2 12oz bags of Peanut butter & chocolate chips (or one bag peanut butter one bag chocolate)

3/4 16 oz container of Marshmallow Fluff

Reese's  I used about 16-18 mini trees.

 

Melt butter

Pour in and stir 10oz of Evaporated milk

Stir in 5 cups of sugar

Bring to a boil while stirring constantly until sugar is dissolved.

Remove from heat

Stir in Peanut butter and Chocolate chips until melted

Stir in 3/4 of the marshmallow fluff until combined

Immediately pour half the fudge into a greased pan

Press Reese's into fudge

Cover with the remaining fudge

Allow to cool and set completely and then cut into squares.

Store in airtight container. 

 

 



Gluten Free Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

My husband pretty much likes everything Pumpkin.  Every year on his birthday, I've been trying to make him something with pumpkin. I've made Pumpkin cookies, pie, ice cream, French toast.. Well this year, I had a bit of a conundrum as he has decided to cut back on wheat a bit (yes, it's like the bane to my baking existence). So to be supportive, I decided to try my hand at a gluten-free pumpkin cookie. Looking at recipes online was pretty disappointing. I found it very hard to find a decent gluten free recipe. Unless a cookie is meringue based (like my deep-dark-chocolate-cookies), the recipes I found included tons of ingredients I had never heard of and had no idea where to find, like Xanthan Gum. Umm no thanks.
In all my researching, I found that using canned pumpkin can replace the egg and oil you would use when making a cake. I also found a recipe where a girl used gluten free cake mix to make cookies. SCORE!

Ingredients

 



Another thing I loved about this recipe, is that you dump everything in a bowl all at once. I always do the chips last, so you put the cake mix, pumpkin, pumpkin spice and vanilla in a big bowl and mix well.

Ready for mixin'

All mixed!

Once you have mixed all the ingredients you are ready to add your chocolate chips.  Now, I am a big lover of chocolate chips. I always add more than a recipe calls for, but you can add as much or as little.. or omit them all together. These cookies would still taste delish without them.

Loads of chocolate Chips

 

Once your chocolate chips are incorporated, you are ready to start baking. Now, any pumpkin cookie I have made has baked in the exact same shape as when it was dropped onto the cookie sheet. So you don't have to worry about spreading with these. Make sure your cookie sheets are covered in parchment paper as these can stick a bit. Drop dough by the spoonful and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10min.

In the oven

All done

 

Allow them to cool completely and store them in an airtight container.  These cookies stay soft and they taste SO good. You wouldn't even know they are gluten free!

 

Recipe:

1 box Betty Crocker Gluten Free Cake Mix (yellow)

1 can Pumpkin (pure not pie filling)

2 tablespoons Vanilla

2+ teaspoons Pumpkin Pie Spice (add more if you like, it's egg free so taste!)

1 Cup or more Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, line cookie sheet with Parchment paper

Mix all ingredients but chocolate chips in large bowl.

Add Chocolate Chips and mix in

Drop by the spoonful onto cookie sheet

Bake for 10min.

Cool completely and enjoy!

 

Halloween Candy Cookies

Did anyone else end up with TONS of Halloween candy this year? Now that I have two little munchkins that can Trick or Treat, we ended up with a lot of candy. And we only did two streets!

Sophia the First & Minnie Mouse

 

Sorry, I couldn't help sharing a picture of my Trick or Treaters.   With all the candy we had, I wanted to do something fun with it so that I didn't end up coming home with a ton.  I thought cookies would be a good idea since the kids love them and they can help.

I used a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe, but left out the chocolate chips.  Start with softened butter, add your sugar and brown sugar and mix until creamy.

Creamed butter and sugar



Then add your eggs and vanilla and mix well.  Then add all of your dry ingredients.

All the dry ingredients

 

Once that is mixed, you can start breaking up your candy.  Now you can incorporate your candy two ways. You can mix it into your dough or you can top your dough with the candy.  We went with the latter for two reasons. The first, is that my niece doesn't like chocolate. So we didn't want to mix in a bunch of chocolate candy and have her not eat any. The second, is that if you top your cookies with the candy, it's easier for the kids to help.

Just some of the candy we used

 

You want to break up the candy to make it easier to top the cookies with. Obviously stuff like M&M's and Skittles don't need to be broken up.  I put pretty large amounts of dough onto a cookie sheet and then let the girls 'decorate' the cookies.

Pretty sure they were eating more than they were putting on cookies

Layla putting her Skittles on cookies

 

We ended up using M&M's, Skittles, Reese's, Crunch bars, Kit Kats, Hershey Bars (Milk, Dark and Cookies & Cream), Milk Duds and Whoppers. The only candy I wouldn't recommend would be the Whoppers. They came out ROCK hard in the cookies. Everything else worked pretty well. I actually even stuffed two cookies with milk duds. Those came out pretty good too. Not as soft as Rollo's would have been though.

First batch ready for baking

 

Second batch

 

You want to bake them at 375 for about 9 min. If they are too soft you can leave them in longer but you want to watch them closely to make sure the chocolate does not burn.

First batch done

 

You want to let them cool for a while as the candy will take a bit longer to set. Plus I was worried about some of the candy, like the skittles and milk duds, being really hot. So I made these before dinner and then made the kiddos wait until after to eat them. Worked perfectly!

 

Recipe:

2 sticks softened butter

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups flour

1tsp baking soda

1tsp salt

Lots of Halloween Candy (broken up)

 

Mix butter and sugars until creamy

Add vanilla and eggs and mix well

Add dry ingredients, mix completely

Drop large spoonfulls onto baking sheet

Top with candy

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 9-11min

Cool completely











Minnie Mouse Cookie Cups

 

 

I'll admit it. Sometimes I find cake and cupcakes for birthday parties... Boring. When we were planning my daughter Ariana's 2nd Birthday party, I wanted to do something different.  Besides, aside from the frosting, I don't know how much into cake she really is.  She loves cookies and thought a fun idea would be to make cookie cups. My mom used to make cookie cups, and I've always loved them.

Ingredients

 

Now my daughter is OBSESSED with all things Minnie Mouse. She loves her. I'm sure she likes Mickey too (she does love MMC), but not to the extent of Minnie. I saw a post on Pinterest that was Minnie Mouse cupcakes. So I decided to try my hand at MM Cookie Cups.  I used all pre-made, store bought ingredients since I am always in a crunch for time. But you could totally use homemade ingredients. Except for the Oreo's.. There is no substitution for Oreo's ;0)



 

The first step is making your cookie cups. I was out of PAM so I used butter and a bit of flour to grease my muffin pan.  I also did not use cupcake liners as they do not work very well with cookie dough (live and learn). You want to make sure it is well and greased so the cookies come right out of the pan. 

 

Once you are all greased, take small amounts of cookie dough and press into your muffin cups. You want to spread the dough up the sides so that it makes a cup like indentation like below.

Repeat until all your dough is used up. I used about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough per muffin cup. I also used an average sized muffin tin.

All Ready for the Oven





 

Once your muffin cups are full, bake in the oven according to package directions (or recipe directions if you are doing homemade). You don't want to take out early, as gooey cookie cups will not be able to be taken out of the pan once they are cool. Plus, gooey cookies will have a lot of trouble holding up frosting. You want them to be golden brown with a little bit of lightness in the middle. Now they will puff up while baking (see below) but that's fine.

All baked!

 

You want to let your cookies cups cool completely.  While they are cooling, the middles will sink in a bit, giving you the 'cup' shape. Which allows for more frosting of course. To remove them from the pan, I twist them slowly and then pull them out. If one doesn't spin easily, I slid a knife around the edges very carefully as to not cut off the bottom.

After cooling

Now you are ready to decorate!  I used both vanilla and chocolate frosting for these. The problem I had with the chocolate frosting, was that the Minnie Mouse bows I was putting on didn't show up (note to self, make sure you do not buy iridescent pink decorating frosting), so the chocolate ones became Mickey Mouse ones.

 

So you first want to put on your frosting. As Vanelope says in Wreck-It Ralph (one of Ariana's favorite movies), "A buttload of frosting!" You want to fill the indentation and have enough to hold on an Oreo and 2 mini Oreos.  After you apply your frosting, place one Oreo for the head, and 2 mini Oreo's for the ears and press into the frosting.  Then pipe on your Minnie Mouse bow. The next problem I had with that awesome pink iridescent frosting was that it did NOT show up on the Oreos.

See? Yeah, I didn't think so.

 

So I wiped that off and put the bows onto the vanilla frosting. It came out much better, though a little disjointed. 

Our chip & dip bowl has now become my cupcake platter

 



Like most of my recipes, this was really easy to do and assemble.  Plus the birthday girl loved them.

 

Recipe:

1 roll refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough

1 tub chocolate frosting

1 tub vanilla frosting

1 pkg Oreo's

1 pkg Mini Oreo's

1 tube pink decorating frosting

 

Preheat oven according to cookie dough directions

Grease muffin tin thoroughly.

Press about 1 1/2 TBS of cookie dough in to muffin cups. Press down in the middle and spread up the sides a bit.

Repeat until you run out of dough.

Bake according to dough package instructions.

Allow to cool completely.

Remove from tins CAREFULLY.

Frost cookie cups.

Top with one regular sized Oreo for the face and 2 mini Oreo's for the ears.

Pipe on Minnie's Bow.

Eat and enjoy!

 

Birthday girl enjoying her Minnie Mouse Cookie Cup (or just the Oreos)