Outrageous Oreo Crunch Brownies

I came across these brownies when I was looking through other blogs and I knew instantly that I had to make these! I love Oreos. They are one cookie that you can’t really replicate at home, and why would you want to? (There are quite a few bloggers who are making homemade Oreos, but I don’t think I’m going to try that recipe.) Oreos are one of the few store bought cookies that I really like.

I was pretty shocked that the recipe here was only half of the original recipe. It still had a lot of butter and chocolate! I had my husband help me chop the Oreos. He wanted the smash them rather than chop them, but I’m not sure that work have worked as well. I wanted nice big chunks for the brownies.

These brownies had a lot of similarities to the spiced chocolate cake that I made earlier this week. You melt the chocolate and the butter together rather than creaming the butter with sugar. This makes for a couple more pans to wash, but that’s ok. The brownie batter was nice and thick and had lots of Oreo chunks. They baked up perfectly and have a nice little flaky crust on the top, which is common when you have a bar cookie with a lot of chocolate!

Since I make these in the evening after work, it is always a battle to get them baked and completely cooled in one evening. It seems like I never leave work on time these days, so that makes it a big challenge to get things done. I cooled them as much as I could before cutting, but I think that I could have cut the bars more cleanly if they were completely chilled. C’est la vie!

These are some dense brownies! Maybe they could have been baked a touch longer, but they are very fudgy and gooey. I don’t think that you can taste the Oreo all that much. Maybe it’s because they are still a little warm and really soft. I thought the Oreo flavor would be more distinct, but they are still a very wonderful decadent brownie.

2 sticks butter
8 ounces chocolate chips
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
3 eggs
1 1/2 tablespoons instant coffee granules
1 tablespoons vanilla
1 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp flour
1/2 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups chopped Oreo cookies (25 cookies)

Preheat to 350°F. Butter and flour a 9"x13" baking pan.

In a heatproof medium bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water, heat butter, chocolate chips and unsweetened chocolate until melted and smooth. Allow to cool slightly.

In a large mixer bowl, combine eggs, coffee, vanilla and sugar and mix until combined. Mix in the melted chocolate/butter mixture; cool to room temperature.

In a small bowl, mix together 1/2 cup flour, baking powder and salt. Stir the flour mixture into the batter. In a small bowl, stir Oreos and remaining 2 tablespoons flour. Stir the Oreos into the batter by hand. Spread the batter into baking pan and smooth top with a rubber spatula.

Bake 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted 3 inches from center comes out clean; do not overbake. Allow to cool. Refrigerate, tightly wrapped, until cold; cut into squares.

Recipe from eat me, delicious. Original recipe from Ina Garten

Spiced Chocolate Cake

I made this cake to celebrate another birthday at work. It seems like I make a lot of things for birthdays, but honestly I don’t work that that many people! The birthday girl is quite a foodie, so I wanted to make something a little unusual. I also had very little time to make this cake, only an hour or so, so I needed to find something that was quick and also something that I had all of the ingredients. I came across this cake and thought I would give it a try.

I have baked other items that contained pepper, so I wasn’t too afraid of that. I was a little afraid of cayenne, so I went a little shy of the measure called for in the recipe. I also substituted a mix of unsweetened and semi-sweet chocolate since I was out of bittersweet chocolate. The cake came together with no problem at all, very straight-forward.

The cake baked nicely, but the cake seemed really dense! I was hoping that it wouldn’t be too dry. It did contain a lot of chocolate, so I figured that was why it was so dense. The original recipe called for a simple topping of melted chocolate, but I wanted to add something that would add a little moisture, so I found this ganache glaze that would stay soft even after it cooled. I’m glad I went that route. I added some chocolate sprinkles to fancy it up a bit.

The cake was dense but it wasn’t really dry. I may have over mixed the batter a touch, as it had a couple of air bubbles that were larger than I would have liked. You could taste the spice, but it was very subtle. I think that some people who had the cake wouldn’t have liked it to be any spicier, but others would have been ok with more heat. I liked the subtleness of the spice; it was kind of like a slow burn in the back of your throat. I really liked the flavors all together. I may try to find more recipes with this type of flavor mix!

1/4 cup cocoa

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

6 ounce bittersweet chocolate

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup dark brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch round cake pan and line with parchment paper. Butter the parchment paper and dust the pan with cocoa. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, and cayenne. In a double boiler over simmering water, melt 6 ounces chocolate and butter. Set aside.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and brown sugar until mixture thickens and increases in volume, about 5 minutes. Reduce mixer speed to low, add the melted chocolate and the vanilla, and stir until combined. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat until incorporated. Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven until cake springs back when lightly touched in the center, about 30 minutes. When cool, top with the chocolate ganache glaze.

Chocolate Ganache Glaze

4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

½ cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons water

Place chopped chocolate in a heat-proof bowl, set aside. In a small saucepan, combine the heavy cream, sugar and water. Bring the mixture to a full boil and then pour the liquid over the chocolate. Allow to stand for 30 seconds. Carefully stir the mixture, starting with small circles and generally increasing the circumference of the stir. Allow the glaze to set slightly before pouring over the cooled cake. Smooth the glaze with a small metal spatula.

Cake recipe from Country Living. Glaze recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

Tuesdays with Dorie: Caramel Crunch Bars

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection was chosen by Whitney of What’s left on the table? Check out Whitney’s blog for the complete recipe. I love making cookies, so I was happy to try this recipe. I’ve made things similar to this cookie, but I liked that this one was topped with toffee chips. I’m a big fan of toffee chips!

This is a fairly simple recipe, with a cookie base that includes some chopped chocolate, which is then topped with melted chocolate and the toffee chips. I didn’t have any problems with this recipe at all. I was a little worried that I would have problems spreading the dough in the pan evenly, but that wasn’t too bad. I just know that when the dough has to cover a large area, I’d just better use my hands to spread the dough rather than a spatula. My hands are much better tools.

I used dark chocolate for the chocolate topping. I think that I should have used regular dark chocolate because the chips weren’t that willing to melt completely. I had to stick it in the oven for an extra minute or so to make sure that it completely melted. It was a little hard to spread the chocolate all the way to the edges since the edges were a little higher than the middle.

The cookies are pretty good, but they taste different that I expect. My husband said that he expects the crust to be like a chocolate chip cookie, but it isn’t that soft. It’s a lot thinner and a bit crunchy. The flavors are good. The toffee is a nice flavor that balances well with the dark chocolate. I think you can really taste the espresso powder that is in the dough too. These were really good with my morning coffee.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 112

Gingerbread White Chocolate Blondies

I was looking through one of the cookbooks that I got for Christmas to look for this week’s cookie recipe. I marked a couple of different cookies and then had one of my colleagues choose which ones to bake. She picked these gingerbread white chocolate blondies. I guess gingerbread is a little Christmas-y, but I love ginger and I was happy to give these a try.

Unlike most bar cookies that are made in a 9 x 13 inch pan or even a 9 inch square pan, these are made in a half sheet pan, 12 x 17 inches. Luckily, I had gotten a half sheet pan for Christmas. My regular cookies sheets were just a tad short of the half sheet size, and I’m sure that they would have worked had I not had this new pan. The dough came together with no problem, although there was a lot of it! Instead of trying to spread the batter, I moistened my hands a bit and pressed the dough into pan. It’s a big pan so I had to make sure that I got the batter spread all the way to the edges.

I baked them for 25 minutes, and I probably should have taken them out of the oven a minute or two sooner as they were quite browned on the edges. I let them cool for about 45 minutes and they were cool enough to remove from the pan. Since the pan was lined with parchment, I was able to completely remove them from the pan completely and cut them on a cutting board. They were still a touch warm but they cut so easily! I tasted the over-browned edges and they were really fabulous. But then again, I love anything with ginger!

2-3/4 cups plus one tablespoon flour

1-1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1-1/4 teaspoons salt

1-1/4 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

¼ teaspoon cloves

1-1/4 cups butter, softened

1-1/4 cups packed brown sugar

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 eggs plus one egg yolk

1-1/4 teaspoons vanilla

1/3 cup molasses

10 ounces white chocolate, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 12 x 17 inch rimmed baking sheet with nonstick spray. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment and spray the parchment with nonstick spray.

Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices in a bowl and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Beat on medium speed for 3 minutes, until creamy and pale. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Scrape down the side of the bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and the molasses and stir until combined. Add the flour mixture and stir on low speed until combined. Stir in the white chocolate.

Spread the batter evenly into the prepared pan and bake until golden on edges, about 25 minutes. Let cool completely until cutting into squares.

Recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cookies

Tuesdays with Dorie: Devils Food White Out Cake

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe was selected by Stephanie of Confessions of a City Eater . She chose the Devils Food White Out Cake, which is the cover recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours. I think a lot of people were waiting for this recipe to be picked and I was very excited to try the recipe. One of my colleagues is about to have a baby, so this was the perfect cake to take for the celebration of her last day at work before the baby comes.

I actually had to buy new pans to make this cake, since in calls for 8 inch round pans and my pans are 9 inch. I luckily had a gift card to the kitchen store so I was able to add some nice new pans to my collection. This recipe is a fudge chocolate cake. You cake it and then split the layers. One of the layers you crumble up and use it as a topping. My cakes baked up nicely (I’m sure because of my nice new pans) and I cooled them overnight. I hadn’t split cake layers in quite a few years and I was happy that it worked so well. My cakes looked really nice.

I typically use a simple buttercream when I frost cakes, but this recipe called for a marshmallow-y frosting make of whipped egg whites and a sugar syrup. The recipe cautioned you about making sure that the sugar mixture gets to the right temperature to add to the egg whites when they are whipped. The recipe said to start mixing the egg whites when the syrup was just a few degrees from being done. This seemed off to me and I started whipping the egg whites when I started heating the sugar syrup. I’m glad I did, since my syrup got to temperature before the whites were stiff. In the end my sugar syrup got a bit hotter than it should have, but it turned out ok.

Assembling the cake was unexpectedly easy! The frosting was nice and light so it spread easily. I usually make extra frosting when icing cakes because I need the extra frosting to successfully cover the cake. I had plenty of icing and I was able to fill the cake and frost it using a generous amount of frosting. It looked great! I put the crumbs over the entire cake, not just the sides.

I haven’t cut the cake yet, so I can’t comment on the final assembled cake. The frosting was tasty and the cake crumbs taste good, so I think this will be a big success. I had a hard time photographing this cake, so I’m sorry that my photos aren’t very good. Hopefully I will be able to take some more photos once the cake has been cut.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 247

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies

Ah, what to make for Valentine’s Day? I wanted to make something festive for the holiday, but I was at a loss. At first I had thought of red velvet cake, somehow made into cookies, but my initial search for recipes didn’t find anything. My husband was looking and found a couple of recipes that used cinnamon red hots, but while he was searching he came across this recipe, which was just what I was looking for!

I’m quite fascinated by red velvet cake. To make it so red, you have to use an entire bottle of red food coloring. I’m a little worried that I’ve hopelessly stained a couple kitchen towels, but we will see how they do in the wash. The dough is somewhat similar to a cake batter, a little softer than you would expect for cookie dough. I used my small cookie scoop to shape the cookies and that worked great. I wanted the cookies to be nice and smooth, so I did smooth the tops of the cookies before baking, I don’t think that I needed to do that, but I wanted them to look nice.

I filled the cookies and squished them together into sandwiches. They are quite soft when you assemble them, so you have to be careful not to press too hard and have all of the filling squish out of the sides. Oh, these are so good! You’re not quite sure what to expect because of the color, but they are great. The cookies have a cakey consistency and have a subtle chocolate flavor. The filling I could make and put it on anything. That really makes the cookies. Yum!

2 cups flour

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ cup buttermilk

1 (1-ounce) bottle red food coloring (2 tablespoons)

Filling

¼ cup butter, softened

4 oz. cream cheese, softened

7 oz. jar marshmallow crème

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats. In medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.

In large mixing bowl, beat butter on medium to high 30 seconds. Beat in brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk, beating after each addition just until combined. Stir in food coloring.

Drop batter on prepared baking sheet using a small cookie scoop (about 1 teaspoon). Allow 1 inch between each round. Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until tops are set. Cool completely on baking sheets on rack.

Make the filling: In medium mixing bowl, beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Fold in one 7-ounce jar marshmallow creme.

To fill, dollop whoopie pie filling on flat sides of half the cookies. Top with remaining cookies, flat sides down. Store in the refrigerator.

Recipe from http://www.thestate.com/food/story/623712.html

Chocolate Hazelnut Coins

Another chocolate hazelnut creation! Regular readers of my blog know that I love this combination, so I was happy to find this recipe. It’s a refrigerator cookie, which usually come together quickly. As much as I love to bake, I have to be realistic about how much time I have. Most week nights I don’t have all that much free time. These fit the bill because I could make the dough, do some other things while the dough chilled, and then bake them up.

The dough was nice and soft and came together easily. It shaped into rolls without any problem, no crumbling or anything. It seemed like 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder was so little, but the dough looked nice and chocolatey. I chilled the dough for about an hour and a half, and it had firmed up enough to slice. Sometimes slicing cookies that contain chopped nuts can be tricky, but the nuts were so fine in the dough that this wasn’t an issue.

I put all of the cookies on a wire baking rack and drizzled then with chocolate all at once. I put waxed paper under the rack to try and minimize the splatter, which worked fairly well. I only had a little bit of chocolate splatter to clean up. The chocolate drizzle really adds a lot to the cookie. The cocoa isn’t that strong of flavor and they seemed a little plain without the chocolate on top. Overall these were a really good cookie. My husband’s coworkers enjoyed them a lot.

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

1-3/4 cups flour

3/4 cup finely chopped toasted hazelnuts

6 ounces chocolate chips

1/2 teaspoon shortening

In a mixer bowl, beat butter for 30 seconds. Add sugar and salt, stir until combined, scrape bowl to make sure everything is combined. Add egg and cocoa powder and stir until combined. Add the flour and hazelnuts and mix until combined. You may need to do the last of the mixing by hand, depending on the power of your mixer.

Shape dough into two 11-inch-long rolls. Wrap in plastic wrap or waxed paper. Chill for 1 to 2 hours or until firm enough to slice.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats. Cut rolls into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes or just until tops are firm to the touch. Transfer cookies to a wire rack; let cool.

Combine chocolate and shortening in a small bowl. Microwave about 1 minute until melted; stir until smooth. Drizzle melted chocolate over cookies. Let stand until chocolate sets.

Recipe from Better Homes and Gardens

Tuesdays with Dorie: Floating Islands

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Shari of Whisk: a food blog. She chose Floating Islands, which are meringues floating in crème anglaise, check out her blog for the complete recipe. This is a very different recipe than I have ever made. My first thought was that this isn’t the sort of thing that I make and maybe I would skip this week’s recipe. But the whole point of being in Tuesdays with Dorie is to try new things, so I thought I would give it a try. I wasn’t really thinking that I would like the recipe all that much.

Looking at the list of ingredients for this recipe, there is nothing unusual. Lots of eggs, some sugar, milk, and vanilla. First you make crème anglaise, which is custard. My husband loves custard! He was thrilled I was making it. It was too complex of recipe, but I definitely needed his help to add hot milk to the mixture while still whisking. He’s always a big help. The crème came together exactly as the recipe said it would. It thickened and got to the right temperature right at the ten minute mark as I hoped it would.

I had some issues separating the eggs for the meringues, which was completely annoying as I separate eggs all of the time and never have an issue. Of course the time I make something that requires pristine egg whites I have an issue with some egg yolk getting in to the mix! I ended up using the egg whites in a carton. I know that was cheating but it was the best I could do. The carton warned that the egg whites weren’t recommended for meringues, but oh well. They worked just fine. Perhaps the whites didn’t get quite as still as they could have, but they looked just about perfect to me.

You then had to poach the meringues in simmering milk. Well, this was pretty messy. My meringues were quite soft and you were supposed to turn the meringues. This was really hard. A couple of the meringues were determined to not be turned! I was able to poach most of them ok, but they didn’t look cooked or anything so I was hoping that they were ok. I assembled the dessert by floating a meringue in a pool of the custard. I also drizzled some caramel sauce over the top. It tasted better than I was expecting, and the meringues were nice. I liked the custard the best. My husband really liked the custard. I had quite a bit of custard left and I had to stop him from eating the rest of the custard straight out of the bowl!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 401

Lime Bars with Coconut Crust

I hadn’t made any bars cookies in a while so I was looking for something new to make. My husband suggested lemon bars, but those don’t always travel that well. I was looking through the pictures in the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion and I came across these lime bars. I guess they are pretty close to lemon bars, but I liked the coconut crust. I thought that would be great.

I was a bit worried that all of the crust ingredients would fit in my food processor, but it did ok. Toasting the coconut made my kitchen smell divine! I used bottled lime juice which was a big convenience. I used just regular lime juice and not key lime juice as the recipe specified. I’m not that used to limes, so I don’t know how different that would taste.

My challenge with bar cookies is waiting until they are completely cool before cutting them. I think my husband is always disappointed when he can’t snag a cookie as soon as they are out of the oven! I let these cool for an hour and then about half an hour in the fridge and they seemed cold enough to cut. They were still a little soft but buy did they cut easily. They don’t have a super-strong lime flavor and the coconut has a good flavor. I’m so glad I tried these!

Crust

3 cups shredded coconut

2/3 cups brown sugar, packed

1-3/4 cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon coconut extract

½ cup butter, cut into cubes

Filling

8 oz. cream cheese, softened

1-3/4 cups sugar

Pinch of salt

3 tablespoons flour

4 eggs

½ cup lime juice

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Spread the coconut on a baking sheet and toast for about 10-12 minutes or until lightly toasted. Increase the oven temperature to 350 degrees. Spray a 9” x 13” pan with cooking spray.

In a food processor, combine all of the crust ingredients. Pulse until the mixture is crumbly. Set aside one cup of the crumbs, press the remaining crumbs into the prepared pan. Bake for 16-18 minutes, until light golden brown.

To make the filling, put the cream cheese in a large mixer bowl, beat until soft. Add the sugar and salt and beat until well blended. Stir in the flour, then beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the lime juice and continue stirring until smooth. Pour the filling over the partially-baked crust.

Bake the bars for 15 minutes. Sprinkle with the remaining crumbs and bake for an additional 10 minutes, or until set around the edges but still wobbly in the center. Cool at room temperature for one hour. Refrigerate completely before cutting in to squares.

Recipe from King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion

Tuesdays with Dorie: World Peace Cookies

Jessica of cookbookhabit chose this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie selection: World Peace Cookies. Check out Jessica’s blog for the complete recipe. If you read my blog regularly, these will seem familiar. I made these cookies in December, as one of the cookies I made for Christmas. But since the Seattle area had so much snow in December that I didn’t end up giving away any of the cookies that I had made and planned to make.

I wanted to try something a little bit different this time, and the only thing that I could think of doing was changing the chips. The recipe called for chopped chocolate or mini chocolate chips. I had some cinnamon chips that were fairly close in size to the mini chips so I figured that I would use those. I like the combination of cinnamon and chocolate so I thought that the flavors would go together nicely. (Had I had more time, I could have ordered some interesting variety of mini chips from the Baker’s Catalog. But I didn’t plan ahead.)

Since I had made these previously, I knew how to avoid any potential pitfalls. The dough can by quite and crumbly, so I made extra care to scrape the sides of the bowl completely before adding the flour mixture. If you don’t, the butter gets stuck at the bottom and doesn’t get incorporated fully. Shaping it into a log can be a bit tricky too, but using plastic wrap to keep everything together helps a whole lot.

I think that I cut these a bit thicker than I should have, since they looked a bit strange after they were baked. It’s hard to describe, but there was an odd edge on the top of the cookies. These have a great chocolate flavor, and I like the cinnamon chips. They add a very interesting flavor, a little more depth. It tastes a bit like caramel with a hint of cinnamon. I think that these cookies taste better after a day or two, the flavors somehow develop and become more pronounced.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 138-139