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| how good can these be? pretty darn good. |
I've been dreaming about sweets all day. I love looking at pictures of food, and I spent a good 15 or 20 minutes reading recipes for cinnamon rolls. Yum! But who has time to let dough rise and all that? Not me. So I gave up my cinnamon roll dreams and moved onto chocolate chip cookies with Oreos hidden inside!
The original recipe is from the Picky Palate and makes 24 monster-sized cookies. The problem is that Steve doesn't really eat sweets that much, so that means I'd have/get to eat all the cookies myself. But 24 monster sized cookies is too much for one not-monster-sized young lady (although my friend's mom once insisted I'm at least 5'10''). Even 12 cookies seem like too many (well, I *could* eat them, but *should* I?). So, I ended up quartering the recipe. In the name of pretending to be healthy, I subbed in a little whole wheat flour in place of some of the white flour. The recipe I ended up using follows here!
I started by preheating the oven to 350 F and cracking a Summit winter ale. Then, I creamed 1/2 stick softened (not melted!) butter and 1/4 cup brown sugar. Because I don't have a mixer of any sort, I used a wooden spoon and my good ol' arm. I think that this means the net calories of this baking experience are about 0 from all the effort of creaming the butter and sugar. Then, I added 3/4 tsp vanilla and one egg white. Again, mix mix mix with the arm of steel.
In a separate bowl, I combined 1/4 cup wheat flour, 1/2 heaping cup all purpose flour (read note at bottom!), 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp baking soda. Then, I added a bit of the dry ingredients to the wet, mixed, added some more dry ingredients, mixed, and repeated until all my dry ingredients were mixed in.
Next, I took a lightly sprayed baking sheet (the recipe suggests parchment paper, but I have none!). Then, I got to get my hands dough-covered by surrounding each Oreo in cookie dough. The suggested method is plop some dough on top of the Oreo, plop some on the bottom, then seal the two bits. I ended up making 5 cookies in this way, although I wish I had made 6 cookies and used less dough on each. Finally, I baked the cookies until they looked yummy to me. I let them go for 13 minutes, but the original recipe says anywhere between 9 and 13 minutes, depending on how you like your cookies.
Once they came out of the oven, Steve and I tested them. I wish I had used a little less flour, but they were still delicious! Steve pointed out that the chocolate chip cookie overwhelmed the Oreo, and I agree. Perhaps this is because I made 5 cookies instead of 6 (so the dough:Oreo ratio was a bit too high), or perhaps I should have used Double Stuf Oreos, or perhaps that's just the way this cookie works. I find this as a bit of a let down, but of course they are still beautiful and yummy!
In conclusion, I'd say the deliciousness is neither additive nor multiplicative, but something like the decibels for the two noisy machines. Or, if you're a statistician, you can think of some kind of a model where two explanatory variables will improve your model fit but your second explanatory variable is explaining some of the variability that is already explained by your first.
One final note: this cookie reminds me of the snake eating the 76 pound deer. Absolutely ridiculous, mostly awe inspiring, and kind of gross to some.
Shopping list:
Shopping list:
- butter
- brown sugar
- eggs
- vanilla
- flour (all purpose for sure, maybe whole wheat flour if you want)
- baking soda
- salt
- Oreos