Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Mother's Day White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Every time I order vitamins--which is about once a month--I can't help but order something for funsies, too. Usually it's nail polish and candy, but sometimes it's something even MORE exciting--like white chocolate chips! So when I got my white chocolate chips I thought, what goes well with white chocolate? Macadamia nuts, of course! And who loves macadamia nuts? My mom! So I saved them for Mother's Day.


The cookies at the left are the Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Walnut Cookies from Veganomicon, with the white chocolate chips and chopped macadamia nuts subbing in for the obvious. The cookies at the right are, again, Dreena's beloved Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies, with white chocolate chips subbed in and the addition of about a 1/2 C of chopped macadamia nuts.

Conclusion? They were both pretty yummy--but the vanilla version was absolutely out of this world. There's also a chance I may have ever so slightly overbaked the chocolate--only by a minute or so, but still--but in any case, the usually-amazing chocolate cookies just couldn't hold a candle to the vanilla.

Check them out, in their little boxes, just waiting to be UPS'd! My mom said they were delicious. But then again, she's my mom and that's her job.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Josh's Monstrous Birthday Cupcakes

What are those ridiculous confections in the header? you may be asking. Those are cookie monster cupcakes--or, you might say, monstrous birthday cupcakes, which I made for Josh's 25th. (Josh is old.)

Components:
-1 batch Sexy Low-Fat Vanilla Cupcakes (from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World)
-1/2 batch Fluffy Buttercream Frosting (also from VCTOW)
-24 extra chocolate chips

I first baked the cupcakes; while those were cooling, I baked the cookies and then mixed up the frosting. For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to try to mix the frosting in the food processor--this was the first and only time I attempted to do this. Fortunately, for these cupcakes, I didn't need particularly fluffy frosting, so it worked out all right--and I learned a valuable lesson.

Note about the cookies--Dreena's recipe usually makes 8 big cookies. I made 16 smallish ones, and they were still a little too big for the cupcakes. If I were to do this over, I would've shot for maybe 20 or so--I really felt like I was cramming these cookies into the poor Cookie Monsters' maws.

I separated out a big glob of frosting to set aside (for the eyeballs), and then mixed a few drops of blue food coloring into the rest and mixed until I achieved an appropriate color. Once the cupcakes had cooled, I used a big soup spoon to gouge out little mouths in each cupcake--that way, they were smiley!--and then shoved a cookie into each mouth, as I tried not to think about violent force-feeding.

Using a #21 star tip, I piped blue frosting onto the cupcakes using short little upwards motions and being very careful around the cookies. As I did these, I popped them into the fridge to allow the blue frosting to set. After furring all the cupcakes, I washed out my frosting gun and equipped it with the white frosting I'd set aside. Using a round tip, I piped little swirly eyeballs on the cupcakes and dropped a chocolate chip pupil into each, set in off directions because Cookie Monster appears to have a lazy eye problem.

Naturally, these were so adorable that they were a big hit! As for taste, they probably would have been richer if I'd gone with the butter-based golden vanilla cupcake, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I wanted to eat a cupcake, after all! (Full disclosure--I ate one without frosting. Nyah nyah.)

Nutritional info:
-Cupcake base: 139.5 calories, 3.7 g fat, 25.3 g carbs, .8 g fiber, 1.6 g protein.
-Frosting: 142.8 calories, 8.1 g fat, 17.7 carbs, 0 fiber, .1 g protein
-Cookie: 93.2 calories, 3.9 g fat, 14.2 carbs, .3 g fiber, .8 g protein
Total: 375.5 calories, 15.7 g fat, 57.2 carbs, 1.1 g fiber, 2.5 g protein.

And that, mes amis, is why I ate mine without the frosting.