One Great American Recipe!

Who doesn't love getting a Cookie Cake from the Great American Cookie Company. Dave gets one every year for his birthday since he's not a huge fan of cake. I'm okay with that since they are so good!

I've always wondered how they get their cookie so soft and delicious, and evenly cooked. I've tried in the past to make them with just a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe, as I'm sure many of you have as well, put it's just not the same! It doesn't turn out soft and chewy, and it's usually never evenly cooked (done in the middle but crispy around the edge). So I tied looking around for a similar recipe as we all know you can find them on the Internet now. I found a semi-homemade recipe, which just means less work ;)


Great American Cookie Company Big Cookie Recipe

Depending how big you want to make your cookie, all you need THREE ingredients!! Pre-made Chocolate Chip cookie dough, light corn syrup and canned frosting.

The formula: For every roll of cookie dough (16.5 ounce size), you add 1/4 cup of light corn syrup.

I made mine on Valentines Day for just Dave and I, so I just went for a small cookie in a 9x9 pan and only used one roll of cookie dough.

Mix cookie dough and corn syrup together with stand or hand mixer until smooth.

Pour into greased pan.

Pat it out to fit the pan with your hand. Wet your hand and this will be a breeze! Keep wetting your hand, don’t worry about getting water on top of the dough as it will evaporate in no time once you stick it in the oven!

Bake at 325 for 30-45 minutes, depending on the size of cookie you are making. If a little cooks up onto the sides, I just trim it off with a pizza cutter. Mine baked up really puffy at first but went back down, hence the need for the pizza cutter to trim the edges.

Duncan Hines Classic Chocolate is right on the money for what the Great American Cookie Company uses. I added pink sugar crystal sprinkles on just the lettering for Valentines Day ;)

Best With Milk

I love Oreos, especially the Double Stuffed ones! They are one of the best cookies to dunk in milk, which is my favorite way to eat them. So when I saw this recipe to make them homemade I had to see if it was the real deal.....and they are! Shockingly, they really do taste like the real thing and the best part you can put as much filling as you want to make them single or double stuffed. There are so many different flavors of Oreos now too, so I think next time I make them I might experiment with adding flavors to the filling (mint, strawberry, etc).


Homemade Oreos
Source: Smitten Kitchen

For the chocolate wafers:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa (I used Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa)
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 Tbsp ( 1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
• 1 large egg

For the Filling:

• 1/4 cup (1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• Optional - gel dye

Directions:

1. Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375 degrees.
2. In a food processor or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing or on low speed, add the butter, and then the egg. Continue processing or mixing until dough comes together in a mass
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and roll dough into small balls then place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool.
4. To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn mixer on high and beat for 2-3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy. (Optional-Blend in a tiny bit of gel dye until you reach your desired color.)
5. To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookies. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

Makes 25-30 sandwiched cookies

BIG Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these a few weeks ago and they didn't last long! I found them to be MUCH better then the recipe on the back of a bag of chocolate chips, which is how I usually make my chocolate chip cookies (not very inventive I know!). Mine usually come out flat but these were nice and thick and 3 times the size of a regular cookie which made them even more enjoyable!! Definitely best with a glass of milk :)


Big Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cubed
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp table salt or fine sea salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 2 1/2 cups good quality semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup walnuts, optional

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees
2. In bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle, cream together butter and sugars until well blended and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mix in vanilla and beat until well incorporated.
3. Add flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder and mix until just combined. Gently fold in chocolate chips.
4. Transfer dough to clean work surface and gently mix dough by hand to ensure even distribution of ingredients.
5. Weight out the dough into 4 ounce portions and gently roll into a ball.
6. Place each on a baking sheet pan lined with parchment paper and bake in the pre heated oven for 15-20 minutes, depending on how gooey you would like the interior. Bake until lightly browned but be careful not to overbake.
7. Let cool on rack and store what you don't immediately eat in an airetight container.

Tips:

• These are best eaten on the day they are made, especially warm out of the oven!
• To freshen them after a few days, give them a quick nuke in the microwave for 5-10 seconds
  
  

Sugar Cookies

Christmas is never complete until the sugar cookies have been made. Nothing says Christmas like cut-out Christmas cookies! This is one tradition I love and will always remember doing every year with my mom. The week before Christmas my mom would make the dough and keep in the refrigerator, I would always sneak a taste of the dough. Then we would spend an afternoon cutting out the dough with Christmas cookies cutters and decorating them with an assortment of sprinkles, colored sugars and frosting's. So much fun!!

The recipes I used for the sugar cookies is one of the best tasting sugar cookies I've had. They bake up nice and even and in no time. The cookies came out soft, sweet and chewy. The glaze didn't turn out exactly how I would have liked, it was a little thin and of course I ran out of powdered sugar so I couldn't make it any thicker (I would recommend added a bit more powdered sugar to the glaze), but it still was really good and went well with the sugar cookies. And of course all my good photos for these cookies got erased as well.

Best Rolled Sugar Cookies

Source: allrecipes.com

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt

Directions:

1. In a large bowl cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, mix in vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt. Cover and chill for at least one hour or overnight.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out dough on floured surface, 1/2 to 1/4 inch thick. Cut into shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungrease cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 6-8 minutes. Cool completely and frost with favorite icing.

Sugar Cookie Glaze

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp light corn syrup
• 2 Tbsp water
• food coloring
  

Stir powdered sugar, corn syrup and water together. Stir in desired food coloring. This glaze must be stirred each time you use it, if it is not stirred before each use it will begin to dry with a mottles look instead of a solid color.

*This glaze will dry to a hard shiny finish. Dries quickly.

Thumbprint Cookies

I love trying my hand at making new recipes, I have too many to count that I want to try just not enough people to try them out on! This was my first attempt at making thumbprint cookies, this recipe is a chocolate topped thumbprint cookie also known as Brown-Eyed Susans. These were easy and fairly fast. There light, flaky and buttery and I rolled mine in sprinkles....sprinkles make everything better!!



Brown-Eyed Susans
Source: Allrecipes.com

• 1 cup butter


• 1/4 cup white sugar


• 1/2 tsp almond extract


• 2 cups all-purpose flour


• 1/2 tsp salt


• 1 cup powdered sugar


• 2 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa


• 1 Tbsp hot water (I used 3 to thin the frosting out)


• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees


2. Cream butter and white sugar until light and fluffy. Blend in almond extract, add flour and salt; mix well.


3. Shape rounded teaspoonfuls of dough into balls. Dough will be flaky but will come together and form balls when rolled by hand. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Roll in sprinkles of desired. Flatten middle of dough balls with thumb print. Bake 8-10 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Let cool.


4. For frosting: Combine powdered sugar and cocoa. Add water and vanilla and mix well. Place chocolate frosting into thumb print indention of cooled cookies.