Are you familiar with the Crazy Cookies at Perkins?  They're half sugar cookie half chocolate chip cookie.  Each time Noah gets one of those Crazy Cookies I can't help but eye up the sugar cookie half, secretly hoping that he won't be able to finish it and he'll offer it to me.  I love sugar cookies.  They have been my favorite cookie since my very first bite of my Grandma B's amazing homemade sugar cookies.  It was definitely a case of love at first bite!  I was cravin' those melt-in-your-mouth cookies today so I pulled Grandma B's sugar cookie recipe out of the safety of my super secret recipe vault for the first time in years.  Ok, so I don't really have a super secret recipe vault but it sounded cool.  Right!?  Anyway, back to the Crazy Cookies...I asked Noah if he would like to help me bake some sugar cookies.  He agreed but thought it would be better if we made the sugar cookie/chocolate chip cookie combo like at Perkins.  Hmm...Challenge accepted!

Grandma B's recipe makes a sugar cookie that literally melts in your mouth.  That's part of what I love about them.  But, I didn't think they would work well paired with chocolate chip cookie dough as the sugar cookie side would probably break right off.  The ones at Perkins are more of a chewy sugar cookie.  I still used Grandma B's recipe but adapted it to what I hoped would work well and achieve the end result I was looking for.

First, I mixed up the chocolate chip cookie dough and threw it in the frig.  I will include the recipes at the bottom of the post so read on!

 
Next, I mixed up the sugar cookie dough.  I'm pretty sure my sweet Grandma B was rolling in her grave as not only did I completely alter her recipe but I ran out of flour...Eek!  How does a baker run out of flour!?  Such an amateur move!  I had roughly 1 1/4 C all purpose flour.  I peeked in the pantry and found bread flour and cake flour.  Oh, what do I do!?  I chose the cake flour, dumped some in with the all purpose flour, said a little apology to my Grandma and crossed my fingers! 

Sugar cookie dough is notoriously sticky.  Turns out my crazy concoction is no exception.  When I was done mixing up the dough I threw it in the freezer.

Let the two doughs cool/freeze for a while.  If you're like me and can't wait hours for fresh baked cookies, at least leave the doughs in the frig/freezer for as long as it takes to clean up the kitchen (no sense in denying that you make a giant mess while baking) and fully preheat the oven (350 degrees).  Also keep them in the frig/freezer while waiting for each batch to bake.

I made roughly teaspoon size balls out of the doughs and sort of just smooshed them together.  Line them up on a parchment lined cookie sheet (don't skip the parchment as sugar cookie dough really is quite fussy and will stick to your cookie sheet).  Here's how they looked before I press them.

Use the bottom of a glass, pressed in sugar, to flatten the dough balls.  Coincidentally, I still use the dishes that I inherited from Grandma B (see bowl of sugar).  I hope this makes up for butchering her sugar cookie recipe...Sorry Grandma!

Here they are ready for the oven.  They're not perfectly round but with a name like "Crazy Cookie" they can be, well, crazy!  Bake them in the oven for roughly 11 minutes.  Just keep a close eye on them and don't over cook them.  Over cooking sugar cookies is pretty much a major crime.  Just so you know.

And here they are directly out of the oven.  Not too bad, huh?

I'm pretty happy with how the sugar cookie turned out.  I did end up with a more chewy, less melt-in-your-mouthy cookie which is exactly what I was hoping for.  Hopefully Grandma B can rest a little easier now...

Crazy Cookie, anyone?

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough:

1/2 C Butter (1 stick)

1/2 C Light Brown Sugar

1/4 C Granulated Sugar

1 Egg

1 TSP Vanilla

1 C plus heaping 1/4 Cup Flour

1/2 TSP Salt

1/4 TSP Baking Powder

1 C Chocolate Chips

{Not My Grandma's} Sugar Cookie Dough:

1/2 C Butter

1/2 C Sugar

1/4 C Oil

1/2 C Powdered Sugar

2 Eggs

1/4 TSP Cream of Tartar

1/2 TSP Baking Soda

1 1/2 TSP Vanilla

1/8 TSP Salt

2 C Sifted Flour (Don't skip the sifting, my Grandma swore by it and goodness knows we shouldn't mess with her recipe any more than I already have!)

I recently saw this idea on Pinterest.  I was intrigued by the Nerds in the cupcakes.  I have no idea why.  I don't like Nerds or any other sour candy for that matter.  But, I thought I should give it a chance.  I'm pretty sure all great bakers have come up with some pretty crazy ideas.  Some of them turn out amazing and others...not so much.  I settled on baking a Nerds cake and asked for Noah's help in picking out the frosting.  He chose cotton candy.  Cotton candy and Nerds.  Huh.  We're going all in on this one I guess!

Have you seen these?  I normally make my own frosting but Noah saw these little packets and just had to mix up his own frosting.  There were many flavors to choose from, in case you're interested in checking them out too.  I still much prefer to make my own frosting but in a pinch the canned stuff will work.

I folded about half of the box of Nerds into my vanilla cake batter and poured it into a bundt pan.  If nothing else, the cake LOOKED wonderful when I pulled it out of the oven.  (Can you tell I'm still a little skeptical about adding sour candy to my cake batter???)

After the cake cooled I mixed up the cotton candy frosting and popped it into the microwave for a bit.  My mom was here to watch this step and was pretty impressed as she had never thought to melt frosting to make a drizzle.  I'm glad I could teach her something.  : )

After drizzling the frosting on the cake it was Noah's job to add the final touch.  He took his job very seriously...

Or, maybe not so much...



The verdict?  Mom and I didn't mind the tangy cake at all but Noah didn't care to take a second bite.  The frosting is, well, canned frosting.  'Nough said.  I would never bake with Nerds again but I'm glad I tried it because you just don't know if you never try!

It does look all cute and happy though.  : )

Happy Birthday Harry

I have a teeny bit of catching up to do so today I'm going to double post!

Last weekend was a pretty busy weekend but I still wanted to get my cake baked and decorated for Mugglenet's birthday cake contest.  So, over the course of three days, I managed to throw something together.

The first thing that popped into my head when I starting planning was the birthday cake that Hagrid made for Harry's 11th birthday.  As this was probably the single nicest thing anyone had done for Harry in ten years, I felt it was really important to include it but I didn't want my contest cake to just be a replica of it.  So I decided to make a mini version of Hagrid's cake as my cake topper.  With the design mostly figured out it was time to get to the baking.

Now, I know that this is a cake that is supposed to honor Harry Potter (and it will!) but the Hufflepuff in me couldn't resist using my own house colors in the cake.  Here are the yellow and black cake layers fresh out of the oven.  You can find the tutorial for the zebra effect here.

After the layers were cooled, crumb coated and cooled again I was ready to decorate.  This time I used Harry's house colors to create colored ribbons around the cake.

Next, the mini replica of Hagrid's cake.  I paused to take a photo here mostly because I was scared to try to toss that baby cake on top of the main cake without completely destroying something...

Whew.  Made it.

The contest rules were specific.  You had to supply a photo of the cake, a photo of the cake cut open and a photo of you with the cake.  This last one was a little tricky as I was home alone at the time.  Eventually I got myself in the shot a little better than this...LOL!

I ate that big chunk of cake when I was finally done photographing.  I totally earned it.  : )