Double Chocolate Mint Cookies

It's been a blah week for me and I haven't been cooking. I whipped these up this morning. I have shared this recipe before but I made a few simple changes. What I got was a more natural (I would say all natural but I can't be positive with the chocolate chips). The flavoring is natural and it's really good. I purchased an all natural mint extract from Walmart but it's the Watkins brand. I can't wait to try more all natural flavorings and in the meantime need to come up with ways to use the artifical flavors that are still in my pantry.

Double Chocolate Mint Cookies
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 ¼ cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teas mint extract
1 cup cocoa
½ teas baking soda
1 ½ cup flour
2 cups chocolate chips
Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla, beat well. Add cocoa and baking soda, slowly mix until smooth. Add flour ½ cup at a time. Mix in chocolate chips. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe is based on the Polka Dot Cookies from Guittard. I made it with their mint chips and the result was fantastic. They are almost a cross between a brownie and a cookie. At first I was a little worried that the cookies would spread but they don't so pile on a good tablespoon of dough (I use a tablespoon cookie scoop). I list chocolate chips in the recipe - feel free to use any type of chip. These cookies were great with the mint but would be equally awesome with peanut butter or butterscotch or even just chocolate to double the chocolate punch of these cookies. They definitely need milk and are perfect for these wintery days (we're having snowmaggedon here in Washington).

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 ¼ cup sugar
3 eggs
2 teas vanilla
1 cup cocoa
½ teas baking soda
1 ½ cup flour
2 cups chocolate chips
Cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla, beat well. Add cocoa and baking soda, slowly mix until smooth. Add flour ½ cup at a time. Mix in chocolate chips. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

Chocolate Fudge

I needed a good easy fudge recipe that didn't have too many ingredients since we had to stay within budget for the month. This recipe comes from Eagle brand sweetened condensed milk. I made my own with the recipe I posted earlier this week. The only problem I encountered is that the powdered milk stayed a little lumpy. I made this a second time and beat the milk more reducing the number of little milk lumps. You can't taste the powdered milk and my husband is convinced they are nuts (I didn't add any nuts and have told him several times). We used milk chocolate chips since the semi-sweet that were on sale were gone. The result was a wonderful and rich candy. I, also, found that cooking it for just a few minutes after the chips were melted resulted in a firmer less sticky fudge but either way is great.

Chocolate Fudge
3 cups chocolate chips
14 oz Sweetened Condensed Milk
¾ cup chopped nuts
1 ½ teas vanilla
Melt chocolate chips and milk in a pan over low heat. Add nuts and vanilla. Pour into greased 8x8 inch pan. Chill for 2 hours.

Chocolate Jelly Truffles

This recipe is thanks to Joanne Fluke except I changed the name. I wanted to open it up to more flavors than just raspberry. This is the easiest truffle recipe out there. I doubled her recipe for convienence but feel free to cut it back in half.

Chocolate Jelly Truffles
1 package chocolate chips (2 cups)
4 TBs fruit jelly
cocoa powder
Melt chocolate chips and jelly in a double boiler until thick and smooth. Let cool. Roll into balls and refrigerate. Remove and re-roll until small smooth balls (they will spread and soften when warm in the beginning but chilled they will hold their shape well). Roll in cocoa powder. Store in refrigerator.

Toffee

Yesterday's post made me think of toffee. For those of us in Washington, this toffee recipe is often called Almond Roca after the popular candy (made in Tacoma Washington - some day I will visit that factory). This recipe can easily be converted into the toffee topping for the Chewy Toffee Almond Bars. Omit the chocolate and the almonds, then break up the toffee for the bars.
If you aren't interested in doing that much work - then just make the toffee as instructed and enjoy. We love this candy and I think I'll be putting together a batch this weekend.

Toffee
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3 tbs. water
1 tsp. vanilla or corn syrup
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup finely chopped almonds
Boil butter, sugar and water (and corn syrup if using) until mixture browns and pulls away from side of pan (about 10 minutes/ 290 degrees). Add vanilla and 1/2 cup nuts if using. Pour onto buttered cookie sheet and place chocolate on top of hot mixture. Spread evenly as it melts. Sprinkle nuts over chocolate. Cool and break into pieces.

Chewy Toffee Almond Bars

As part of our mad baking day on Sunday, my dad was trying to clean out his pantry. We found a bag of toffee bits and a recipe for chewy toffee almond bars. I made two major changes to the recipe. We had whole almonds so I smashed them up with a rolling pin instead of using sliced almonds and when it was all done we topped it with chocolate chips. We let the chocolate melt a little and then spread it over like a frosting. I think our toffee bits were a little stale or we over cooked them because the toffee was rock hard. It was a fun contrast to the soft cookie and made a great but tasty mess. After they had sat for a day, the cookie hardened and they were a little less tricky to eat but the toffee was still really hard. However, the taste was amazing. I really like these and think it wouldn't be hard to make a version with homemade toffee.

Chewy Toffee Almond Bars
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1-3/4 cups English Toffee Bits
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sliced almonds, divided
3/4 cup Sweetened Coconut Flakes, divided
Heat oven to 350°;F. Grease sides of 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Beat butter and sugar until fluffy. Gradually add flour, beating until well blended. Press dough evenly into prepared pan. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Meanwhile, combine toffee bits and corn syrup in medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until toffee is melted (about 10 to 12 minutes). Stir in 1/2 cup almonds and 1/2 cup coconut. Spread toffee mixture to within 1/4-inch of edges of crust. Sprinkle remaining 1/2 cup almonds and remaining 1/4 cup coconut over top. Bake an additional 15 minutes or until bubbly. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars.

Chocolate Applesauce Jar Cake

I'm just posting a recipe today. I'm working half day today and then my afternoon is filled with various appointments so I'll be on the run. I know I had three recipes for Jar Cakes but for the life of me I can't find number three. I just remembered what it was so maybe I can find it for Monday. This is a tasty cake but I do want to mention that the jar cakes are a little on the dry side so a little extra applesauce will not hurt (and the reason for serving with a good sauce over the top).

Chocolate Applesauce Jar Cake
4 oz + 3 tbs. unsalted butter, soft
3 cups sugar
4 eggs
1 tbs. vanilla extract
1 teas almond extract
2 cups unsweetened applesauce
3 cups flour
3/4 cup cocoa
1 teas baking soda
1/2 teas baking powder
1/2 cup chopped pecans or other nuts
8 pint jars
Preheat oven to 325, generously grease jars. Beat butter and 1/2 sugar, beating in eggs and remaining sugar and extracts. Beat in applesauce. Add dry ingredients. Stir in nuts. Spoon 1 cup batter in each jar. Carefully wipe rims clean, place in center of oven, cook 40 minutes. 10 minutes before done prep lids and rims. When cakes are done, remove jars from oven. Carefully put lids and rims in place, screw tightly shut.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins

I wanted a muffin with zucchini that reminded me of the chocolate chocolate chip muffins from Costco. These weren't them but they were still rather tasty. I will admit they were a little dry so perhaps some applesauce in the mix will help later. I adapted the recipe from The Zucchini Cookbook by Paula Simmons for Zucchini Muffins.
I used frozen grated zucchini - if you use frozen as well, let thaw just enough to make it measureable but not enough so that it's soupy.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Zucchini Muffins
2 cups flour (I used 1 1/2 cups AP flour and 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour with 2 TB flax meal)
1 TB baking powder
4 TB cocoa
1/2 cup sugar
2 TB butter or margarine, soft
1 cup finely chopped zucchini
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1 cup chocolate chips
Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix in butter until resembles really dry crumbs (it won't all combine which is okay). Add zucchini and mix some to break up zucchini into the flour. Add egg and mix well. Drizzle in milk and mix. Stir in chocolate chips.
Spoon into greased muffin tins. Bake at 400 for 20-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Hot Chocolate

It might be early in the season for hot chocolate but here in Washington the night's dip to really cold temperatures and hot chocolate becomes the perfect evening treat (especially with some homemade bread). We were big on the instant hot chocolate because it was easy, then my father suggested I make some from scratch (he stopped buying instant because it was going too fast).
This recipe is adapted from the Hershey cocoa powder box and is just as easy as making instant except I haven't come up with a microwave version. It cooks on the stove but only takes as much time as it takes to heat the milk.

Hot Chocolate
1/4 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened)
1/2 cup sugar
4 cups milk
3/4 teas vanilla

Pour milk into saucepan. Add cocoa and sugar. Stir with a whisk. The cocoa will float on the top of the milk until it heats up a little but this is not a problem, just keep whisking now and again until it all combines. Stir occasionally but do not leave unattended. Do not let the milk come to a boil. When hot, remove from heat and add vanilla. Whisk quickly and serve.
Great with whipped cream or marshmallows. (if serving with marshmallows and you like them melty, heat the milk up hotter than drinkable and let cool with marshmallows on top).
For a kick, add a little cayenne pepper.

Devil's Food Cake

After reading Joanne Fluke's Devil's Food Cake Murder, I had my husband copy some recipes before sending it back to the library. Not knowing that there were several pages to each recipe, he copied the pages and away the book went. This weekend when I decided to make her Devil's Food Cake recipe I discovered I had the list of ingredients and the first little bit of instructions. I believe this cake had multiple layers to it but what I got was still a decent chocolate cake. It was denser than I expected and think I will use AP flour instead of cake flour next time.
I had to guess on the cooking time but it came out nicely, I also used a 9x13 pan and I believe the recipe is for round pans so that you can make layers.

Devil's Food Cake
1 cup water
3/4 cups butter (or Nucoa)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 oz unsweetened chocolate (I used 3 TB cocoa powder and 1 TB oil)
1 teas instant coffee or espresso
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 teas baking soda
1/4 teas baking powder
1/2 cup unsweeted cocoa powder
2 eggs at room temp (set in hot water while preparing ingredients if cold)
2 teas vanilla
3 cups cake flour or 2 1/2 cups AP flour
Combine water, butter, 1/2 cup white sugar and brown sugar in saucepan. Break up chocolate into pan. Heat on Med High heat until chocolate and butter melt. Remove from heat and add instant coffee. Let cool.
Prepare 2 9"round pans or 1 9x13 pan by oiling and flouring the pan.
In a large bowl or mixer, mix 1 1/2 cups white sugar, baking soda, baking powder and cocoa. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Alternate liquid from saucepan with flour. Mix until combined. Pour into pan and bake at 350.
For 9x13 pan bake 35 - 45 minutes, 2 9" rounds should be checked at 25 minutes and baked until center is firm (test with toothpick - if it comes out clean, cake is done).
We frosted with peanut butter frosting. When I get the book back I will double check her instructions against the ones I made up and see if there's anything I should change and I will share her frosting recipe for the cake.

Homemade Chocolate Syrup

Making your own chocolate syrup is almost easier than buying chocolate syrup. One thing I have learned, however, is that this is not a recipe that does well when doubled or tripled. I think the sugar doesn't dissolve enough or something because when I attempted to triple the recipe it turned out gritty and not very good. I love this recipe because it is simple. It comes out just like Hershey's syrup so it's great on ice cream but makes great chocolate milk. You end up with about 1 cup of syrup with this recipe and it stores easily in a glass jar in the fridge.

Chocolate Syrup
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa
Boil water. Add cocoa and sugar. Heat until dissolved, stirring constantly.

Easy Drop Cookies

Rarely do I come across a recipe that I have to rush home and make. There are some out there that I dream about or crave but usually they are complicated beautiful recipes that I will probably never make. This one was an exception. After reading about this recipe on Mystery Lover's Kitchen Blog, I started planning it out. I knew I had the ingredients but I was sure I would only have 1/2 cup of chocolate chips. This recipe halved so easily that I think it will be our new favorite cookie.
It's so easy and takes a minute to throw together. The only disadvantage to this recipe is it requires sitting in the oven overnight. It was worth it. I wasn't sure how it was going to work but it did. This morning we had crisp chocolatey cookies sitting in our oven when last night there was chocolate chips and nuts covered with raw egg white. (I ended up skipping the salt because I forgot to add it)
Most people who bake should easily have these ingredients in their pantry. I think this will be fun to try with different chips and a variety of nuts.
Half this recipe made 8 cookies but I think I could have gotten 9 nice cookies since the dough does spread a little.

Easy Drop Cookies
2 egg whites, beaten
2/3 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients and drop by teaspoons on foil-covered baking sheet. Put cookies in the oven and turn the oven off. Let the cookies stay in overnight or for five hours.

Oven S'mores

There is something about S'mores that I love. We were a little disappointed when we made s'mores with our homemade graham crackers and homemade marshmallows. The graham crackers were far to flavorful and completely overwhelmed the marshmallows and chocolate. We tried roasting the marshmallows but their square shape didn't work as well (they're more rectangular and slightly thin). We made the first batch in the oven and I realized it wouldn't take much to make graham cracker-less s'mores the same way. I will give you both directions since they are quite similar. When cooled you can store them in a ziplock bag so they are available any time.

Oven S'mores
12 small squares of graham crackers (for store bought 6 crackers broken in half, gf graham crackers are 12)
Chocolate chips or chocolate bars
6 marshmallows
non-stick baking sheet

Preheat broiler in oven.
Place 6 graham crackers on baking sheet. Top with a square of chocolate that leaves about 1/2" of space from edge of cracker or place a single layer pile of chocolate chips (again leaving about 1/2 inch of space around the chocolate). Top with a marshmallow.
Put baking sheet in oven. Your oven rack should be in the second slot or 6-8 inches away (depending on oven). Broiler for 2-3 minutes. Remove when the marshmallows are golden but not too puffy (if they expand greatly, you over cooked them and they will be a sticky mess which is not bad tasting at all but tough to remove from pan). Top with remaining graham crackers and eat.

For graham cracker-less s'mores, omit the graham crackers and lay the chocolate directly on the baking sheet. Make sure your chocolate chips all touch the marshmallow if not using bar chocolate. Broil in oven (same as above). Because you do not have the graham cracker to hold together all the gooey goodness, you have to place the baking sheet in the freezer for several minutes. Don't let sit too long because the delicate flavor of the marshmallows will absorb freezer flavors. Use a stiff spatula (I use a cake frosting spatula) to pop the candies from the baking sheet. Enjoy.
This is a great way to eat the homemade marshmallows but can be done with storebought marshmallows as well.

Chocolate Pudding

I am working on a writing project that I could be doing lots with but I don't give myself enough time to work on. Yesterday, I thought I'd set aside my blogs for later in the day and work on the project. I did better but I still goof off way too much. I had forgetten my blogs in the process since I always do them early in the day. Not a problem - I'll do it at home, except I forgot my computer was completely eaten by a virus and keeps having to go back to the shop while they try to figure out how to restore it to it's former glory (the computer is about 6 months old and this worm/trojan thing went right through our anti-virus software and completely ate our windows - my mom keeps telling vindow viping jokes since Viper is our software). Needless to say, no blogging was done yesterday and I am sorry. To make up for it I will do two posts today.

With everything going on and the crummy weather, I decided it was a chocolate pudding night. I love hot chocolate pudding. I usually make Jello cook and serve but I really want to start making things from scratch. My aunt used to tell me about making real pudding with flour (Jello uses cornstarch). Flour is a more stable thickener where cornstarch breaks down and makes your pudding watery over time. I will say it had good flavor but there was a major texture difference. I make flour gravies that are great but this pudding was a little gritty. It could be that I used cocoa powder instead of unsweetened chocolate so I may be posting this recipe again with some changes (if I waited for every recipe to be perfect I don't think I'd post ever again).

Chocolate Pudding
6 TB cocoa powder (or 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted in pan before adding milk)
2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
4 TB flour
2 egg
1 tsp vanilla
Mix cocoa and milk in a saucepan. Heat on medium to med-low temperature until hot but not boiling. Mix remaining ingredients together in a bowl with a whisk until smooth. Add to hot milk and whisk until fully encorporated. Let cook until thickened. Remove from heat.
Serve hot or let chill to serve cold.
The great thing about homemade pudding is you can add your own flavors - subsitute almond, orange, peppermint (anything) for the vanilla. Just remember that the stronger the extract flavor, the less you need.

Bee's Knees Brownies

These brownies are a creation by my friend Michele over at Blue Hive journals http://bluehivejournals.blogspot.com/. She raises her own bees and has so many great posts about her bee adventures. She created this recipe for her local fair and I have to say it's a really good recipe. I have a bunch of creamed honey left over from Scout fundraisers so I thought this would be a good way to use some of it. I will warn you - it's a lot of honey. I was actually surprised how much honey it was but the brownies were amazing. Of course we don't work with butter but the recipe worked great with margarine. (I didn't have unsweetened chocolate but semi sweet worked great - giradelli makes a good DF semi sweet chocolate chip).
A slightly bigger pan will make thinner brownies. I was really surprised by these treats - the batter's flavor was very vanilla-y but the end result was a light chocolate-y flavor. Though it's a lot of honey, the brownies are not overly sweet and made a nice accompaniment to ice cream (soy or coconut would work great).
I am really grateful to Michele for sharing this recipe and look forward to trying it with some of the fruit flavored honey that I have left over (I think we've used up all the "normal" flavors).

Bee's Knees Brownies
1 cup butter, the real stuff
1 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 1/4 cup honey from happy bees
1 tsp good vanilla
3 large eggs from a local farm
1/3 cup cocoa
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup of pecans, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 350' and grease a 9x12 pan.

Melt butter and chocolate in a water bath (for me that is a glass bowl nestled in a small pot with water it). Mix until very smooth. Add honey and vanilla and let cool. Whip the eggs until frothy and add a small amount of the chocolate to temper the eggs. Then add the remaining chocolate. Add cocoa and flour and stir until just moistened. Pour in to pan and top with nuts.

Bake 35 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool completely before cutting and use a very sharp knife when you do.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought I would share a favorite chocolate recipe. This was actually a recipe from the Two Fat Ladies called Adult Chocolate Cake. I don't know if I have altered it in any way since I've had it in my files for many years. This was a wonderful recipe I discovered before going gluten free but was a nice recipe to have when flour was a no-no. It's a really rich dessert. It should be refrigerated overnight but we've eaten it pretty fresh out of the oven and it was still good. Feel free to use semi-sweet or dark chocolate since they are similar in texture to bittersweet (I haven't tried milk chocolate so I don't know how it would alter the recipe).

Flourless Chocolate Cake
8 oz bittersweet chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter, soft
1 1/2 cup sugar
5 eggs
Grease 8" - 9" cake pan. Break chocolate into bowl. Set over saucepan of barely simmering water and melt chocolate. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Cut butter into little pieces and beat into chocolate. Add sugar and blend well. In other bowl, beat eggs until very frothy, then gently fold into mixture. Pour into cake pan and place in roasting pan. Add water to roasting pan - 1 inch up side of cake pan. Bake in a preheat oven at 350 for 1 hour, then let cool completely in roasting pan. When cold, remove from water and chill in refrigerator overnight.