Cookie Dough Truffles

Let's just start off by saying YUM. These are seriously sinful. I tried to give a bunch of them out so I didn't have them sitting in my fridge willing me to eat them and gain 6 pounds. They were easy enough to make. I made a large batch so the most tedious part was rolling them in the chocolate. Then there was the waiting game while the chocolate hardened. Jon didn't do so well with this part, he just ate them with the mostly melted chocolate, haha.


1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup chocolate chips
11 oz bag chocolate chips (for outside coating)
Sprinkles to decorate (optional)

Using an electric mixer, beat together butter and brown sugar. Add in vanilla extract, baking soda and salt. Alternate adding in flour and sweetened condensed milk. (Add 1/2 cup flour, then 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk, 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk). Fold in 1 cup of the chocolate chips. Form dough into bite sized balls. Set on baking sheet with wax paper. Set in refrigerator for about one hour.

Once the dough has set, use a double boiler or microwave to melt chocolate chips. Using a fork or slotted spoon, dip each dough ball into chocolate until fully covered. Add sprinkles while chocolate is still soft if desired.

Guest Blogger: Baking With Bonnie

So my friend Casey, who has a must read blog, has had her hilarious husband "guest blog" a couple times. I always wanted to do that but Jon can only toast a bagel and microwave leftovers. Fortunately, I asked my mom to email me one of her recipes for Oatmeal Cookies with Ganache filling and she included a story. Check out Mama, my guest blogger...

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Let me tell you my yummy (if I do say so myself) Oatmeal Cookie's story

A good friend of ours, Bobby, started working on the LOST TV series, he was on the camera crew...I was on my way back to my condo to make my oatmeal cookies when Bobby was driving by and told me to come down to the LOST site and he would introduce me to movie stars and show me the camp.  So I thought it would be nice to make some of my oatmeal cookies for the crew, or  anyone who wanted some...

So I make my cookies wrap them up pretty and make some for the security guard I always see sitting on the side of the road. I always felt bad for that guy. I get to the set and some big mucky muck is there that day and no one thinks they should let me in. I understand and I give the guard the cookies I made for him, he was so thankful and I think felt bad he couldn't let me in. He said if I drive around to the beach side, a one mile walk down the beach with the cookies, I could see some things being filmed...I said sure! Well after my walk down the beach with cookies in hand an definitely the wrong shoe choice, I get close to the camp and other guards...I tell them Bobby invited me and I have now walked for miles, but that big wig had everyone worried and I couldn't get on the set. So I give the security guards all of the cookies to get to Bobby, hopefully they will get them and eat them!

The next day I hear from Bobby, that the big wigs ate some of my cookies and were mad they didn't let me on the set...The whole camera crew was very upset and said I could get on the set of LOST anytime, but I had to bring more cookies...A few days later I got the royal treatment and so many people coming up to me saying they love my cookies!!!

 

So here is the recipe....

Cookies:

2 sticks of butter- ROOM TEMP.

1 c. firmly packed brown sugar

1/2 c. Maui Cane sugar or granulated sugar

2 eggs ROOM TEMP.

2 tsp. vanilla

1-1/2 c. all purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2  tsp. sea salt

3 c. Quaker Oats old fashion uncooked oatmeal

1 c. raisins

1 c. choc. chips-milk choc.

1 c. finely chopped walnuts, you might want to toast them for 2 minutes

Ganache:

4 Cadbury chocolate bars

1/4 stick of butter

1 c. whipping cream

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees. I use my kitchen aid mixer to mix the butter and sugars together. Add the eggs one at a time then the vanilla. Add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, sea salt, oatmeal, raisins, choc. chips & walnuts. I turn off the mixer and use a spatula's to clean the sides of the bowl and mix it a little better. With a tsp. drop the mix on a ungreased cookie sheet. It bakes fast so after 7 minutes watch closely, the bottoms seem to brown very fast. So I remove the cookies as soon as I see the brown bottoms, the cookies will continue to cook when you take them out of the oven.

Sometimes I get fancy and make a choc. ganache to put inside of the cookies. I buy 4 large Cadbury choc. bars, heat water in a pan and have a glass bowl inside the pan on top of the hot water. I add 1/4 of stick of butter, 1 c. of whipping cream, the chocolate and let it melt stirring constantly...It will take awhile to cool and thicken! You might want to add some extra butter to your cookie recipe to make a thinner cookie! enjoy!!!

The Cookie Story

So I'm about to bring you guys in on a family story of mine. This story to this day, when told, gets all family members in fits of laughter with tears in our eyes. It may not be that funny to outsiders, but we told Jon the story and he was laughing just as hard as we were.



Little Cait!



I was your typical child, took dance lessons, got good grades in schools, built tree forts on the weekends in the woods behind my house. I also would have my occasional meltdowns. One night, my mom gave me and my sister 2 cookies. I wanted 4 cookies. I was even a member of the fat kid club back then. I started having a typical meltdown and screaming on the top of my lungs "I WANT FOUR COOKIES!! I WANT FOUR COOKIES!! I'M GOING TO TELL THE WHOLE NEIGHBORHOOD WHAT AWFUL PARENTS YOU ARE! I'M GOING TO RUN AWAY!". This meltdown lasted forever with my parents and younger sister in the other room just laughing at me as I tore through the house freaking out. I'm sure at this point I could've just walked into the kitchen, gotten the other two cookies and be done with it. I kept going until bedtime, shut up, and went to bed with only the two cookies.

That's pretty much the cookie story. So, why am I sharing? Well, Jon now has his own cookie story. No tantrums or anything, just a disastrous cookie situation.

First off, every time I type cookie I feel like it should be cooky because the plural is cookies. Not sure what that's about. Anyways, Jon had been craving chocolate chip cookies. I was exhausted so I told him he could handle it, he just needed to follow the recipe on the back of the bag. In all truth, I've been trying to use him as my guinea pig to see if I can teach people how to act right in the kitchen. Not so much on mission #1.

He comes into the bedroom where I'm watching my DVR which is filled with old CSI episodes. [In case you're wondering, I watch the original mostly and occasionally NY. I NEVER watch Miami.] So, Jon comes in and with a very concerned voice states "Um, the recipe calls for two TSP (he actually says T-S-P, not teaspoon, by the way) of milk and we don't have ANY." So I'm like "Okay, we have egg nog, just use that." He looks relieved and walks away. Then I think back to all the times I made those cookies and realize its probably supposed to be tbsp of milk, not tsp. I pause Gil Grissom and walk to the kitchen.

I come in and first off, its a hot mess. He looks slightly overwhelmed. So I calmly ask him to check if he was supposed to do tbsp not tsp of milk. He like "awww, yeah I was!", picks up the tbsp measuring spoon and goes so "If this is the T-S-P spoon which is the T-B-S-P spoon?" I'm like "no, Jon that's the tablespoon.. Have you been using it as teaspoon?" He looks at it, then at the recipe and then back to me and goes "Uhhhh, yeah. Was that wrong?". What does this mean? Well, the baking powder and baking soda which was already incorporated with the flour had about 4x the amount it should. So, we had to quadruple the rest of the ingredients. I can't remember exactly but I think we had to use like 8 sticks of butter and 8 eggs to get the recipe exact. Thankfully, I had gone to Costco for Thanksgiving and bought what I thought was enough butter and eggs to last us until Easter. After quadrupling the ingredients, it tasted really good (the batter that is). We now had enough batter to open our own bakery with a batch of approximately 6,738 cookies.

So Jon was up for about 3 hours that night baking multiple cookies. We ended up just saving some of the cookie dough in the fridge to give our oven a break. I have been going to the gym religiously again, and now we have a bajillion cookies in our fridge taunting me every day I come home. Thank you, universe.

I hope you guys enjoyed our cookie stories. I've been really busy at work and actually had to type this post on my phone and email it to myself in the car to get this post even started. I have a couple days off soon, so I will hopefully be doing some experimenting to share with you guys. I do have a turkey pot pie recipe that is simple and tasty, so I will be posting that soon, I promise. Thanks for reading. I've been loving getting your emails with questions! Keep them coming- cookingwithcait@gmail.com.

xoxo Cait

NINJA SHAPED COOKIE CUTTERS

I am so upset right now! A customer told me about these and I was super excited to google them. They are a great deal at $7.99. Shipping however to Hawaii is $19.99! Ahhhh! They're mentally filed for the future when I have no impulse control and feel like wasting $20 on shipping. Sigh.