Secret Recipe Chocolate Chip Cookies

A quick perusal of my Pinterest boards would reveal a few things: first, I recently chopped all my hair off (I obsessively pinned hair pictures for weeks beforehand). Second, I am a sucker for a good DIY idea (as who is not?) and third, I can never have too many chocolate chip cookie recipes.  I am fairly confident in saying that, if forced to only have one dessert forever, that dessert would be some sort of chocolate chip cookie.  It's a love story for the ages. 

My favorite sort of cookie is extremely chewy, a little crisp, has sea salt and no nuts (I will post my favorite recipe for that at some point-- it's my excessive modification of these). I could live on them for days. My poor husband, though, prefers crunchy cookies with nuts and lots of other ingredients (sacrilege!), so I like to find recipes for him too. Just the other night I was going through my mom's giant recipe box and I found a "Secret Recipe Chocolate Chip Cookies" recipe. It had some unusual ingredients (lemon juice, ground oatmeal) so I thought I'd give it a try.  Verdict: excellent.  They're flavorful and soft and unique.  The cinnamon doesn't make them taste like oatmeal cookies, it just gives them a depth and (apparently) the lemon juice helps to activate the baking soda? Sure!  Here's the recipe:

Not a great photo, but the idea is there...

Secret Recipe Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 Cup Rolled Oats

2 1/4 Cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 eggs

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350F. Place rolled oats in food processor or  blender (I used our Magic Bullet) until finely ground. Combine ground oats, flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon in a mixing bowl. 

In a mixer, cream butter, sugars, vanilla and lemon juice together. Add eggs and beat until fluffy.

Stir in the flour mixture and add chocolate chips and nuts. Drop a couple inches apart on a cookie sheet and bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly golden and set in the middle. 

No-Waiting Cinnamon Rolls

In my Quick Takes on Friday I noted that I had found a recipe for no proofing, no rising cinnamon rolls that I wanted to try.  Lo and behold, on Saturday morning my little bean woke up early giving me the perfect excuse to make them for breakfast.

Since I hadn't planned on making them beforehand I didn't shop for any ingredients or anything which is why when I pulled up the recipe, I realized there were some problems.  1) It called for ricotta cheese, of which I had none and 2) it called for a food processor which I also did not have.   The author mentioned she preferred this recipe to another she had tried that hadn't worked for her, so I clicked on through to that site.  There I discovered that there was no ricotta/food processor requirement, so I went for it.   This is how it went.

Your players:

Pretty basic stuff.

The first thing you do is mix together the brown sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter until it resembles wet sand.

Next you whisk together the dry ingredients in a separate, larger bowl: flour, sugar, baking powder,  baking soda, and salt.

Check on your sous chef.

Looks like a party over there.  Moving on.

In another bowl (medium sized) whisk the buttermilk and melted butter together, then add to the dry ingredients.

Mix together thoroughly with a wooden spoon.  Note that right now my mixer looks like this:

and that pleases me.  No mixer dishes!   I don't know why, but washing the mixer bowl and attachments always seems so daunting.

Anyway, once you mix the dough, it will be pretty soft, and look like this:

Turn that out onto a floured surface and knead for 1-2 minutes, until it looks like this:

The light wasn't great... early morning.

Shape the dough into a 12x9" rectangle and pour the remaining two tablespoons of butter over the top, spreading it evenly.

Pour the filling over the top, spreading it out evenly and leaving about an inch border on all sides.

Roll the back edge towards you, keeping a tight roll by moving back and forth at an even pace.  Bring the front up to the top, pinching the edges to seal.

Cut the roll into 8-12 equal pieces, depending on how large you like your cinnamon rolls (I did more like 12).  Place them in a greased cake pan.  Here is a picture of them in the oven, as I forgot to take one on the counter.

They took about 25 minutes to bake and I made the glaze in the meantime.

I have no pictures, but I whisked together 2 oz. mascarpone cheese, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and 2 teaspoons of vanilla.  I liked the sweet glaze, but I think I'd prefer the tang cream cheese has to the milder flavor of the mascarpone for next time.

Once the rolls come out of the oven, pour the glaze over and let everything get all warm and cozy.  Here is the finished product.

Final verdict: the texture was a little different than normal rolls; a little denser and flakier, but they were good and took about as long to make as some cookies, which is a major bonus in my book.  Try them out on a Saturday morning when you're up before everyone else with the baby.  People love yummy surprises.

No-Yeast Cinnamon Rolls

Recipe by Cooks Illustrated via Gastronomy Blog.  Click the link to get the full recipe!

Flat Cookies

Today, this overcast but nicely winter-y first day of 2011, I decided to make some cookies.  I had been planning to make Pioneer Woman's ("P-dubs" if you're tight with her like I am) recipe for Malted Chocolate Chip Cookies with the substitution of some gluten-free flour for my dear friend Kattus (any celiac reading this knows I had already gone wrong in the inception stage).  They came out like this:



And to add insult to injury, can anyone guess malted milk's number one ingredient?  Yes, that's correct: wheat flour!  Yay!

Weirdly, though, the scraped-off bits of cookie (the only way I could get them off of the cookie sheet) are DELICIOUS.  That Pioneer Woman really knows what she's about.

Anyhoodle, I thought this insignificant vignette might serve as well as anything for an introduction.  Hi, I'm Lacey.  I have a beautiful baby girl, a darling husband, and a joyful life.  But sometimes I forget to read the instructions.