chewy carrot cake cookies

Can I tell you about my life?

Well, it's just a small bit about my life, but I think it gives some insight into the kind of person I am. Get ready.

A few days ago my mom asked if I would be able to take her and my dad and grandma to the airport today, early in the morning. Okay, early for me, but normal time for everyone who's normal: 7:30. (Insight #1: I don't do mornings.) I said I thought I could do that. (Insight #2: I am super noncommittal.) She double-checked again on Tuesday (2 days ago) if I could do it and I said yup, I'm on board.

Flash forward to last night, or rather this morning at 2am. I had just pointlessly stayed up finishing a mini Gossip Girl marathon and was finally crawling into bed. (Insight #3: I do this thing where I stay up really late for no reason at all, and this causes Insight #1.) No sooner had my eyes closed than they popped open again. I HAVE TO TAKE THEM TO THE AIRPORT.

I had totally forgotten. I had turned off my phone. I had not set an alarm. Laughing at myself because of how close I came to completely failing them, and incredibly grateful for the reminder which could have only come from God himself, I turned my phone back on and set my alarm.

7:31 am: I'm awoken from sleep by my phone (good thing it was on). It's dad. I look at the clock and half yelp/half start muttering things to myself and answer it while jumping out of bed. He's just wondering if my car is big enough for all them and their bags or if he should get one of their cars out. I'm so muddled that it takes me a really long time to answer his simple question. Also I'm trying to put my pants on. I take so long to give a straight answer that he just asks, "are you close?" I say I'm eight minutes away.

As I run around my house grabbing things like scarves and jackets to throw on, I still kind of have to laugh at myself. (Insight #4: I'm a nutcase?) I don't know what happened to that alarm I set.

But somehow all went well, and they got there at a decent time, and since I haven't heard from them, I'm assuming they are happily on a plane to California.

By the time I get home from the airport it's 9:00. I think to myself I should get started on the day. I have a lot to do. I can get my workout in right now, and maybe I'll even go to the grocery store while it's still early and get that out of the way.



 Instead, I decide to just get in bed for a little bit because I'm so very tired. I won't sleep, I'll just lay here for a bit. (Insight #5: I have neither good judgement nor self-control.)

You can guess what happened there.

So when I finally got up, instead of working out or going to the grocery store, I baked up these cookies and had them for breakfast. (Insight #6: Sometimes I just make excellent decisions.)

(Insight #7: They're super delicious.)

Chewy Carrot Cake Cookies
Makes 18-20 cookies
 
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1/2 tsp. lemon juice
1 1/2 cups finely grated carrots (about 2 large)
1 1/2-2 cups white chocolate chips
1/2 cup shredded sweetened coconut
1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, optional

1. Place the butter in a skillet over medium heat. Let it melt, swirling occasionally.  When it has melted, continue swirling or whisking constantly until it has browned lightly and has a nice nutty aroma. This should take about 3 minutes or so. Be careful not to burn it. Transfer it to a large heat-safe bowl.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Set aside.

3. Add the sugars to the bowl with the browned butter. Beat until combined. Beat in the vanilla, egg, egg yolk and lemon juice until light and creamy. Let it sit for a couple minutes and beat it again. Add in the carrots and mix to combine. Add the dry ingredients gradually and blend until just combined. Stir in the white chocolate chips, the coconut and the nuts (if using) with a wooden spoon.

4. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour. (Overnight works too.)

5. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the sheet. (I like to use an ice-cream scoop.) Cookies should be about 2 inches apart.

6. Bake for 16-18 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

pumpkin white chocolate chip cookies

Did you have a nice weekend?
I'm not sure what day it is. But I think we just got finished with the weekend.

We went to support a friend who ran the Chicago marathon on Sunday. She did really well, I'm so proud of her! It was inspiring to be there, to say the least. And surprisingly emotional. I have so so much respect for people who do that. I hope to be one of those people someday. It's kind of a bucket list thing for me, but I haven't done anything about it. Eeep.

When the race was done we had to walk like 18 blocks to get back to our car and I was complaining about it, and then I had to check myself because people just ran 26.2 miles and all I did was watch and eat cookies. Literally, I brought these cookies with us. That doesn't even make sense.



Okay so these are more like cakies, if we're being honest. But oh man.
They are so wonderful.
I know I just said that about the pumpkin scones I made, I know I may be getting repetitive be getting repetitive. But I also know you want to use pumpkin in everything right now, like I do.

Pumpkin pancakes? Yes.
Pumpkin cream cheese? Okay.
Pumpkin coffee? Grande please.



Just to let you know, I'm pretty sure white chocolate chips were made to be in this cookie.

I used Ariela Pelaia's recipe from here, with only a couple very minor changes.


Pumpkin White Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 sticks unsalted butter (1 cup)
¼ cup granulated sugar
1 ¼ cups light brown sugar, packed
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
2 Tablespoons milk (I used whole)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup canned (or fresh!) pumpkin puree
2 ¾ cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt (I used kosher)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon allspice or ground cloves
2+ cups white chocolate chips (depending on how chippy you want your cookies)

Melt butter in the microwave until just melted. Set aside.
Sift flour into a medium bowl and add salt, baking soda, and spices and combine.
Pour the melted butter into the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. (You can also use a large bowl and a hand held mixer.) Add both sugars and cream on medium speed until slightly fluffy, about 1 minute. Add the whole egg, egg yolk, milk, vanilla, and pumpkin puree. Mix well.
Add the flour mixture ½ a cup at a time, mixing between additions. Stir in the chocolate chips. Chill dough for approximately two hours in the fridge, or more. (even overnight)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
Remove dough from fridge and use an ice cream scoop to scoop generous, rounded balls of dough onto baking sheet, spacing them two inches apart. (you can spray your ice cream scoop with baking spray if you want.)

Bake for 14 minutes at 375 degrees.

Storage: These cookies will keep in an airtight container for 1 week.
Freezing: To save cookie dough for later baking, freeze raw balls of cookie dough on a cookie sheet before transferring to a freezer-safe airtight container. Dough will keep for 1 month. To bake, place frozen dough on lined cookie sheet and proceed as above, adding 2-5 minutes to baking time, depending on your oven.

whoopie pies

It's a rainy day.

The kind where the rain just falls silently outside and the whole world is dim and sleepy and quiet.

The kind where you want to curl up with a cup of steaming tea (or perhaps a brownie...same same) and read a book on your impossibly quaint window seat.

The kind where you stare aimlessly out the window for periods of time.

The kind that makes you sleep the day away.

The Norah Jones kind.

This kind:
 

What all this has to do with whoopie pies, I couldn't tell you.

...But here's something: Days like today are rather comforting. And so are whoopie pies. See? Very similar.

The other day I walked into Penzey's Spices for their some of their insanely great Madagascar vanilla beans (the smell of those alone is enough to put me in a tizzy). As I made my way to the back of the store where they're kept (Just know that I'm onto you, Penzeys...making me walk through your whole store like that), I passed by a table of chocolate. Wait...what? A TABLE OF CHOCOLATE?! 

There lay bags and jars of cocoa in all their glory, looking all tempting and probably displayed in a very attractive manner. I can't really remember, because once I saw this recipe card for whoopie pies, I grabbed it and a bag of High Fat Dutch Process Cocoa before you could say Madagascar Vanilla Bean. Then the voice in my head said Madagascar Vanilla Bean and I picked those up too and left the store before that table of all different kinds of honey could jump in my way. (I paid first)

 I added the vanilla bean to the filling and I must say I think it made it absolutely irresistible. (Though I've never had it the other way.) First of all, the texture of the filling is exactly what I want in a whoopie pie-sturdy yet creamy, if that makes any sense at all-and once the vanilla bean specks sat in there for awhile and permeated everything, mmmmboy. Squish that in between two fluffy yet perfectly chocolate-y pillows and you're in for it.

Whoopie Pies

Recipe slightly adapted from Candy Johnson

1 egg

1/3 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 cup sugar

2 cups flour

1/2  cup Dutch Process Cocoa Powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt (I used kosher)

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper (or grease them). 

In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a measuring cup, combine buttermilk and vanilla. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the egg and butter. Gradually add the sugar and continue beating until pale yellow in color. 

While mixing, alternate adding the dry ingredient mixture and the buttermilk/vanilla to the egg and sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.

Drop the batter by tablespoons onto the baking sheets.  (About 6 per sheet)

Bake 8-10 minutes, until top springs back when lightly touched. Remove to wire racks to cool. Repeat until all batter is used (I only used one pan at a time so it took a few batches).

Filling:

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar, sifted

1 cup marshmallow fluff

1 tsp. vanilla extract

One 2-inch section of vanilla bean, split, seeds scraped out

In a medium bowl, beat the butter. Add the sugar, marshmallow fluff, and extract and mix. Add the vanilla seeds/specks to the bowl and beat until light and fluffy. 

When cookies are all cool, make sandwiches using add a generous dollop of filling for each one.

Hello, gorgeous...

a week in food

Brunch: Blueberry-Banana Pancakes with a Kale/Bacon/Egg white/Tomato/I-can't-remember-what-else-was-in-there scramble

Dinner: Grilled Zucchini cheesy pasta (recipe to come)

Dessert/Breakfast/Snack: Coconut rice pudding topped with brown sugar, cinnamon, apricots and peaches

Dessert: The Chocolate Chip Cookies

Dinner: Pasta Primavera (recipe to come)

coconut oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

That's a mouthful.  Quite literally. 

These cookies are chewy and decadent and kind of took the place of breakfast and the better part of my lunch today...my sweet tooth controls me.

 Last night I was pretty stressed out and thought I would bake something to calm me down. I just wanted to throw ingredients together and create a spectacular, mind-numbingly delicious, forget-all-your-problems cookie. I grabbed things left and right like a bride at a blowout sale, and...ended up using bread flour instead of all-purpose. 

After deliberating over whether a suuuuper chewy/dense cookie would be quite as satisfying, I decided to chuck my progress and start again (fortunately I had only mixed dry ingredients at that point).

I also used some really brilliant weird methods to make this cookie, which actually didn't end up turning out too bad. I wanted to melt the butter like I do for some of my other chocolate chip recipes, in hopes of adding a caramel-y flavor dimension to the cookie. I also added the chips while the dough was still a tad bit warm, so they melted slightly and were more of chocolate swirlies than chocolate chips. But I liked the swirlies. I really shouldn't use that word when talking about cookies, should I? Noted.
 

Coconut Oatmeal Chocolate Chip cookies

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups oats

1 cup sweetened coconut

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

approx. 2 cups chocolate chips

Combine flour, oats, coconut, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat until it boils and bubbles slightly. Remove from heat and stir in sugars. Stir in vanilla. Stir in eggs, one a time, quickly so as not to cook them. Gradually add dry ingredients to saucepan, mixing to combine. 

If dough is still pretty hot, let it sit a bit before adding your chips. If you don't want your chips to melt at all, let it sit until cooled. After adding chips and stirring gently, put dough in the fridge for 2-3 hours.

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a baking sheet. Use about a 1/4 cup of dough for each cookie. Bake 9-10 minutes.

oh snap

I don't really have a whole lot of interesting things to say today, so let's just get right down to business, shall we?

Gingersnaps with Lemon-Ginger cream filling... 
 

Make these cookies if you want to impress people. 

They come out perfect, zingy, delicious, addictive.

They are delightfully chewy with just a bit of crisp on the outside edges.

Basically, exactly what you would want from a gingersnap.

And the filling, well let's just say the filling is something that you're gonna have to stop yourself from eating by the spoonful before it even makes it to it's rightful place between the cookies.

And now I'm salivating.

Find the recipe right here.