Prince Charming and I both love coconut and chocolate so the moment I came across this recipe on Two Peas & Their Pod I knew it belonged on my must bake list (that makes me sound much more organized than I am; mostly I just keep multiple browser tabs open on my computer for online recipes and I tuck scraps of paper in my cook books). This also happens to be one of those recipes that inspired me to make a few changes and develop my own version.
I have seen any number of posts around the blogosphere recently touting the perfect chocolate chip cookie. While some of them are repeats of recipes that I’ve seen before, many of them are subtle variations made in an effort to achieve perfection. Which, of course, leads to the question: How does one define the perfect chocolate chip cookie?
This week Jasmine of Jasmine Cuisine selected Peanut Butter Crisscrosses on page 78 of Dorie’s book. I thought these would make a nice extra treat for guests to munch on at “the Little Prince’s” first birthday party, so in the midst of making all the other food for the party not to mention the stress and excitement of making my very first children’s birthday cake (I will post pictures of that soon!) I managed to squeeze in this recipe as well.
Natalia of gatti fili e farina chose Gingered Carrot Cookies for this week’s TWD challenge. At first I was somewhat ambivalent about this recipe. I like carrot cake, but I don’t love it and I generally prefer my carrot cake minus all the traditional extras (i.e. coconut, raisins, nuts, etc.) and with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting on top.
However, after reading through the recipe a couple of times I decided I was at least a little bit excited about this one after all…
The recipe of choice this week is Chewy Chunky Blondies selected by Nicole of Cookies on Friday. As far as cookie bars go,blondies play a very close second to brownies as far as I’m concerned. Especially blondies that are full of chocolate bits and toffee pieces!
I have a TWD double header going on this week. I really did make last week’s Dulce de Leche Duos and was all prepared to post about them on Tuesday but instead I had the pleasure of dealing with a broken refrigerator (which didn’t get fixed until the next morning anyway). After that I just never seemed to find a chance to post about the cookies until it just seemed to make more sense to combine two weeks worth of TWD into one.
And so, here we are…TWD two for one!
This week Mike of Ugly Food Dude selected Thumbprints For Us Big Guys on page 164. I can’t say that thumbprint cookies have ever been a favorite of mine, but I was looking forward to giving these ones a shot. Primarily because cookies are nicely portable and easy to share with my co-workers whom I have been horribly neglecting on the baking front recently.
This week’s recipe was chosen by Kait of Kait’s Plate? – My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies from page 68 of Dorie’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. I positively love chocolate chip cookies and I’m afraid I have to disagree with these being the “Best.” It’s not that they are terrible, it is hard to find a terrible chocolate chip cookie, but I did find them disappointing.
First – apologies for my unannounced (and unplanned) disappearance for the past month-ish. I did make the pecan pie back in December (actually I made it for Thanksgiving and it was wonderful), but we left town the day the post was due and I never got around to posting it in all of our travel chaos. I truly wanted to make the chocolate cheesecake but there was no way I could bring Dorie’s book in my luggage and I clean forgot to make a copy of the recipe before we left. Next thing I know, here it is mid January and I haven’t posted since mid December.
Anyway, enough with the excuses, right? This week Lillian of Confectiona’s Realm picked Chocolate Oatmeal Almost-Candy Bars on pages 114 and 115. This is one of many recipes in the book that doesn’t have a drool inspiring photo paired with it so I have often missed it as I flipped through but I am glad that Lillian selected it.
Tuesday has very nearly come and gone, so we’re aiming for a quickie this week.
Jayne, of the Barefoot Kitchen Witch, chose Coconut Butter Thins for this week’s recipe. Based on the P&Q the groups results on this one were all over the board, although the recipe seemed very simple and straight forward…