Cookies, you say? And what's up this week

It was kind of a miss this weekend on the cookies. I only did two different kinds, and....well, here are the results. (I didn't take any pictures :( Shenli ate the chocolate chip ones too fast, and the lemon ones I had to freeze so I wouldn't eat them all by myself!)

Chocolate Chip Cookies: I ended up using this recipe, because Shenli didn't like the look of the NY times ones. I didn't put snickers in, I just did chocolate chips and a few with toffee bits as well. So this one had browned butter- which should make things DELICIOUS! And yes, it was quite delicious, but also odd. The dough was horrible cookie dough (and I am definitely a cookie dough person!). It had a weird taste because of the browned butter, and I had to add about an extra 1/2 cup or more of flour because the dough was way too sticky. It wouldn't even hold together in a ball on the cookie sheet! So the actual cookies were okay. Very soft, and not that unique. I think I like browned butter for muffins/zucchini muffins (these were so good!), but for cookies, I just like the regular old soft butter way! So, we will have to experiment with other cookie recipes!

The Lemon cookies were AMAZING though. The dough was perfect- like lemon sugar cookie dough. The cookies came out crisp on the outside but chewy on the inside. I loved them- Shenli wanted to know where the chocolate chips were! But to stop myself from eating them, I had to freeze them. To enjoy at a later day I suppose....whenever that will be....

All in all, it was okay. But I'm looking forward to trying a new chocolate chip recipe, and also the caramel snickerdoodles sometime!

For this week's recipe....I'm definitely thinking cinnamon rolls. Because it's conference weekend of course! My family has always done cinnamon rolls for conference. I've wanted to branch out with my family- maybe start a new tradition! So I debated about crepes with fruit and homemade whipped cream or something, some kind of waffles (like cinnamon apple! yummm), muffins, homemade donuts (baked probably, not much of a frier). But Shenli vetoed all those ideas (well...he just didn't seem that enthusiastic about them. haha.) So we're back to cinnamon rolls. But I am going to try a new variety! Probably either these ones from The Pioneer Woman,

or these ones that promise to be like a cinnabon! From The Girl who Ate Everything

Or finally maybe these ones, which would take less than an hour! They are from Ounces and Grams. 

We'll have to see what I'm in the mood for. I love cinnamon rolls! And having them for breakfast is one of the things that makes conference weekend my favorite!

-Eliza

Cookies x3

So, I can't bake very well. It's partly my tiny old oven: I think the temperature is off, it doesn't fit a full size cookie sheet, and the heat is definitely not even. However, a lot of it is me too. I tend to overcook things A LOT and I have one major flaw: I like to skimp on ingredients. Sure it's a recipe I've never tried, but does it really need this much butter? sugar? flour? caramel? I like to skimp because I want to save the ingredients. So I can use them for other recipes! So what do I end up with? Recipes that fail and are waaay dry because I want to "save" for better recipes. Oh dear.

So I have made a resolution. I will use what the recipe calls. Maybe MORE! If I'm feeling indulgent. :) And to kick off my new resolution, I am going to try some new cookie recipes. I'm not sure if I'll do all of them, or just one or two, but these are the ones that sound good to me right now!

1. Lemon Crinkle Cookies. Don't these look AMAZING? So light and chewy and soft and lemony!

2. Chocolate Chip Cookies: I am searching for the perfect recipe. I might also try putting caramel inside these, or candy bars like reeses or twix or snickers. So yummy! Plus Shenli just loooooves chocolate chip cookies.

3. Caramel-filled Snickerdoodles: These look so good to me. PLUS I still have caramels left over after I skimped on caramel brownies last week. Hah. So I will use up those caramels making delicious snickerdoodles. I think snickerdoodles are actually my second favorite cookie, right after peanut butter cookies!

4. (Okay I know I said 3.....but I love cookies!) Praline Cookies: These have also looked good to me lately, they just look light and like it says in the blog post, they look like they would melt in your mouth! They might not happen this weekend, but eventually they will be on the menu!

Have a great week--I know I will be looking forward to the weekend! -Eliza

Eliza's Recipe Results

Oh, wait. You didn't know that I was making barbecue chicken pizza this weekend? How weird. Are you sure you checked the blog to see our recipe intro? Hm.....oh yah. That's because I forgot to post it! Silly Eliza. So anyway, I made barbecue chicken pizza this weekend on homemade pizza dough. The pizza is this recipe and the dough was this one.

Okay. So how did it go? Pretty well I guess. Shenli and I both like deep dish pizza better than thin crust, so I was hoping this pizza dough would be pretty thick.....and it was. Probably too thick- it overpowered all the other toppings/sauce/cheese/cilantro/everything! But the dough did taste good!

As for the toppings, it was also just pretty good. I used our favorite barbecue sauce, added shredded chicken, green peppers, purple onions, mozzarella cheese, and cilantro on top. It was just a basic barbecue chicken pizza- not anything spectacular. I think I needed more bbq sauce, and DEFINITELY more mozarella cheese. It always looks like so much cheese until it bakes!

I only made about 1/3 of the pizza barbecue, because we didn't have that much sauce. The rest was pepperoni and chicken with olives and green peppers. That was also pretty good. I think in general, I am just more of a regular red sauce, pepperoni, olives type pizza person. But that's okay. It was good to try something new! Will I make it again? Nah. But I have other recipes for chicken cordon bleu pizza AND hot wings pizza. Those will definitely happen someday!

Alexis' Recipe Results

Okay, so I didn't take pictures of my monkey muffins, but I did do them twice! I really like this recipe because it was so easy. You just eyeball everything and you figure out how you like it.

For the first try, I followed the recipe to the letter and it turned out well. I just used Pillsbury biscuit dough and was too impatient to let it rise. I pulled the biscuits in half, rolled them into balls, and stuck four in each muffin round. Once they were done baking, I immediately poured a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk on each. They were decent; you can't mess up these monkey muffins!

For the second try, I used brown sugar instead of white sugar. Definitely do that! I put only three dough balls in the rounds instead of four--much better. The sugary, buttery goodness was able to coat more of them. Another alternation: when I poured the spoonful of the sweetened condensed milk on the muffins, I slightly separated them with the spoon. This way, the sweetened condensed milk was able to soak inside the dough. Oh that was good!

The second try was by far the better way to go. I wish I could have tried Eliza's brown sugar glaze. You know you're sisters (and foodies) when you substitute the same ingredient!

Eliza's Recipe Results

So, monkey muffins are SO GOOD! How can they not be good when the only ingredients are butter, sugar, cinnamon, bread dough, more butter sugar and cinnamon! Wow.

So I had leftover bread dough from this recipe when I made BBQ sandwiches yesterday. It made 7 monkey muffins which was perfect! I didn't have sweetened condensed milk, plus I don't really like soggy bread things, so instead of pouring that over the finished muffins, I melted some butter and brown sugar and poured that over the finished muffins. It was perfect! Definitely gave the muffins the traditional monkey bread taste.

The muffins were a bit drier than the original recipe probably would have been (Alexis did the sweetened condensed milk I think, so I'm excited to see how hers turned out!) but I really liked them! Definitely something I will make again.

Recipe of the Week: Monkey Muffins

In my home economics class in 7th grade I was introduced to Monkey Bread. Since then, I've been hooked. I've always wanted to try it again, but I never got around to it. Recently I came across this muffin variation, which looks even easier than the original! There is no mixing involved. None! And you get even more of the crispy outsides. Thank you Pioneer Woman for reinventing the classic Monkey Bread!



Monkey Muffins

INGREDIENTS:
Leftover Bread Dough (or Refrigerated Biscuit Dough, cut into thirds)
Butter
Sugar
Ground Cinnamon
Sweetened, Condensed Milk

PREPARATION INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Add 1/2 teaspoon butter to muffin tins. Sprinkle in sugar and cinnamon.

Roll dough into walnut sized balls (or cut refrigerated biscuit dough into thirds). Place three into each muffin tin.

Top with 1/2 teaspoon butter. Sprinkle on more sugar and cinnamon.

Allow dough to rise, if applicable, or just go ahead and bake for 15 minutes, or until golden and bubbly.

Remove from oven and immediately drizzle plenty of sweetened condensed milk over the top of each one. Be generous! Allow rolls to sit for a little while to absorb sweet, sticky milk.

Scoop out with a spoon and serve to hungry humans.