The Giant Cookie Cake

Believe it or not, I have a child who doesn't like cake.  Or ice cream for that matter.  Strange you say?  I totally agree.  He is a pretty good eater though so I guess I can't complain. Though I aways get a confused look from parents at birthday parties followed by, "Your son says he doesn't like cake?"  I don't understand it myself.  I did make his very first birthday cake from scratch and I sometimes wonder if that did him in. Hmmm,  everyone else seemed to like it!

Getting to the point.  A child who doesn't like cake still needs something with "Happy Birthday" on it and candles to blow out at his parties.  My son was pretty um, healthy, as a baby, weighing over ten pounds when he was born, so my husband and I used to joke that we would just grill him a steak and write "Happy Birthday" on it with steak sauce.  Ha ha!  Dont' worry, we never did that.  Anyway, I decided to go the cookie route.  He loves cookies so a cookie cake just made sense.  And he was thrilled when I offered to make him a giant cookie.

Who doesn't love a slice of soft chocolate chip cookie with a yummy blob of icing?  Odds are most of the ones you have had are store bought because well, they are just not that easy to make.  I began searchingfor a recipe.  I found one that required you to bake the cookie in a cast iron skillet.  It seemed like a good idea but it was very dry and hard.  I had to smash it with the skillet because I didn't want to go all the way to the garage for the chainsaw. 

So that got me thinking about the softest chocolate chip cookies I have ever eaten and that make me think of my dear sweet Meema.  She always brought cookies over for Christmas.  She would put them in a cardboard Christmas gift box lined with wax paper.  We always looked forward to the treats she brought us.  Ok, so enough reminiscing.  The cookies were made with a yellow cake mix.  Which perfectly explained why they were always so soft.  There was cake in there. 

So I mixed up the batch but instead of dropping them on a cookie sheet, I put the whole mix in a round pan and cooked it up.  I had to adjust the cooking time a bit but it came out perfect.

It was soft and moist and he loved it.  So then my older son decided he wanted one for his birthday too. 

And then my husband like them so much I made one for his birthday too. Phew!  Fortunately they are all several months apart.

I did this one a little different because I needed it to feed more people.  I made two complete recipes and made sort of a giant Oreo cookie with vanilla icing in the middle.  It was yummy but very heavy.  Great for a lot of people but not so much if you're going to have leftovers.  I also made it with a chocolate cake mix instead of a yellow one.  Same cooking instructions.  I imagine you can use any sort of cake mix you want, but I have only tried the two.  Please let me know if you try something different.

Now I'm sure you are all dying to know the recipe.  I have wondered if I should share it with you or just keep it a family secret.  But I think my Meema would like to know that her recipe was getting passed around.  So here it is, in her very own handwriting.

To make the cake just spread the mixture in a round pan, the larger the better, and watch it closely until its done.  Oh, and I feel the need to add that my Meema probably got this recipe out of a newspaper or off the side of a box many years ago.  Enjoy!  And happy baking!

Holy Chocolate Batman!!

Today was pretty stressful. And after spending eight hours with a bunch of bitchy women I knew there was only one way to end the day.  I had to end it with chocolate.  I feel the need to add a disclaimer here though.  Tonight I made some seriously rich, seriously chocolately chocolate cookies only to realize that I was out of milk.  I do not recommend this people.  Please, make sure you have plenty of milk before you attempt this recipe.  Otherwise really bad things could happen.  You might suffer the same fate that I had to endure tonight.  Eating a warm, gooey cookie with........water.  Oh the horror!  I'm sorry, I just can't think about it anymore.  Moving on.

I have been making a lot of chocolate chip cookies lately because well, there my favorite.  But I sort of felt like mixing things up a bit.  So I did what I normally do and fished through my Pins on Pinterest until I found a recipe that I happened to have all the ingredients for. And there is was, "The Giant Double Chocolate Cookie".  All those words together are just......terrible.  Giant. Double. Chocolate. Cookie.  After wiping the tears from my eyes I hoisted the KitchenAid up on the counter and got to mixin.

For some reason, every time my kids see the big, red mixer on the counter they come running.  Now don't get me wrong, I love baking with my children and I love that they want to help.  But it was 8:30 pm, almost bed time, and I just wanted to hurry it up.  After some whining they were happy to dump some flour in the batch and let me finish up the rest.  The recipe said the batch makes one dozen large cookies.  Ha, well, what's a "large cookie"?  I may have gone a little extreme.

Its hard to tell from this picture but imagine you are making a big juicy burger to put on the grill.  This is about the size it would be.  And I still ended up with 13 cookies.  I don't know how in the heck they only got a dozen out of this batch.  One thing I did learn, they don't spread very much.  So don't worry about making them too big, they never touched each other.  I think next time I will try a little harder to make them pretty.  I am used to drop cookies that spread out nice and smooth while baking.  These didn't move much so what they look like when you put them in is pretty much what you get.  Now I have never met a cookie that wasn't beautiful, but if you were giving these as gifts or taking them to party you might want to take a little extra time in the cosmetic department.

After some very sticky fingers, about four "Mommy are the cookies ready yet?" and 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven they are complete.  The kids and I couldn't wait to dig in.

I got a nice tall glass of cold water  :o(  and bam!! Total chocolate explosion.  I imagine The Incredible Hulk, only brown instead of green, punching me across the room and I wake up in a cloud of cocoa powder.  Yikes!  This is a very good cookie but after about two bites I was completely satisfied.  Which I guess is a good thing.  Because when I make chocolate chip cookies I usually eat three before they ever reach the cooling rack.  This recipe wasn't a bust but I would most definitely make sure you have MILK (gosh, I still can't believe this) and maybe consider making them a little smaller.  I may be done with chocolate for a while now!!!  Or at least until tomorrow.

Oh, in case you wanted to try a batch yourself.  Giant Double Chocolate Cookies  Just watch out for the big brown Hulk!!

The "Cure-All" Cookie

No cookie blog could possibly start without first mentioning the "Queen" of all cookies.  The first thing that springs to mind when the word "cookie" is mentioned.  If you ask a child to draw a picture of a cookie it is most likely to resemble.....The Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Oh yes!  And hot out of the oven is best.  But this seems to be true for any baked dessert.  But unfortunately we are living in the age of "break-n-bake" cookies.  I have to admit I am guilty of using them.  They aren't too bad, in a desperate situation. But if that is all you have used lately, I strongly encourage you to get ou your mixer and scratch up a fresh batch.  You'll never go back to "break-n-bake" again.

Did you know this wonderful cookie was created by accident?  By a woman named Ruth Graves Wakefield who owned The Toll House Inn in 1930.  She was trying to make chocolate cookies and ran out of regular bakers chocolate so she used broken up pieces of Nestle chocolates instead.  Someone sent some of the cookies to WWII soldiers who went nuts for them and were writing home asking for more cookies.  Ha, I don't blame them a bit. 

There are a bazillion different variations of the chocolate chip cookie and I have tried quite a bit of them.  One thing I know for sure, DON'T you DARE put nuts in my chocolate chip cookie!  Nuts are for breads and muffins, not cookies.  There are a few exceptions but not many.  I have recently narrowed it down to two favorites.  I have made one particular recipe quite a few times over the past several weeks and I will share the recipe with you now.  This is not an original recipe mind you.  I'm sure its been passed around and flown around the internet a few times.  But they are super soft and yummy.  And they stay that way.  No dry, crunchy cookies with your coffee the next morning.  If you can make them last that long.

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie (In my opinion)

2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 cups of chocolate chip cookies (more or less if you like.  Some peanut butter chips thrown in there are good too.)

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix flour, baking soda, and salt in separate bowl and set aside.  Mix butter, sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla with mixer until smooth.  Mix in eggs.  Gradually add flour mixture.  Drop onto ungreased cookie sheet a couple of inches apart.  Bake about 10 minutes.  Cool on wire rack until they won't burn your mouth and then pig out.  Enjoy!!