52 Recipes in 52 Weeks: Week 4 - Sweet Tooth

This week's recipe is a fun one! Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Shortbread Cookies! Yum!

I thought about typing the whole name of this week's recipe in the title, but it was way too long. Although, when I began this week's recipe, it was a little bit shorter. 

I was simply going to make cheesecake cookies. I found the recipe on (what else?) Pinterest...I swear. I really think there should be a support group for people like me. I get on Pinterest and, somehow, lose hours of my life. It's a little bit like getting stuck in the Target Time Warp; you just start meandering around looking at things you don't need/have no use for when, suddenly, you find yourself in the baby aisle holding a tiny pair of frilly socks (that you have absolutely no need for since you haven't even made it to your one-year anniversary and therefore, according to your husband, are not allowed to start thinking about babies) and you have no idea what time it is or how long you've been there. Target, like casinos, is devoid of windows and tricks you into thinking time isn't passing. That is how Pinterest has become for me. I will start, innocently enough, looking at what my friends have pinned. When I'm bored with that (sorry, y'all, but you repin the same stuff from each other all the time. Maybe I just need more friends), I'll start searching random categories. At some point in time, something will light the spark of creativity (or sometimes crazy) in my brain and I will begin searching for specific words. 

That's basically how I ended up finding this recipe. I have no idea what I started off looking for, but, after quite a few moments of indeterminate length, I decided I needed cream cheese cookies, which, ultimately, led to cheesecake cookies. 

The original recipe is yummy as is, but I really wanted something with chocolate. So I decided to add it. I'm not really sure if the original cookie was supposed to taste like a shortbread cookie or not, but that's what it felt like to me when I was all done. I also added some spices and might possibly have lost count of how many cups of flour I used, but this is what we ended up with:

Chocolate Chip Cheesecake Shortbread Cookies*

*(forgive me for the large quantities, but I tripled the original recipe so that I would have enough to send to E's office, take to my office, send to our leasing office ladies, drop some off to our new-mom friend who was told to gain weight 2 weeks after her baby was born (I know, right?) and still have some to eat at home - more about that later)

2 1/4 cups Butter (unsalted and room temperature)
9 oz cream cheese (such a pain since they only come in 8 oz packages...7 oz left over...thoughts?)
2 cups sugar
3 tsp vanilla 
6 (or so) cups all-purpose flour
heaping dash of Allspice
dash of cinnamon 
pinch of salt
1 bag of mini chocolate chip morsels 
a bowl of graham cracker crumbs

In terms of work, these don't require all that much. They're time-consuming only because of the steps you take in the end. The actual mixing portion of this recipe is easy-peasy. 

You'll want to begin by combining your butter, sugar and cream cheese until the mixture is smooth like...butter...hm. It needs to be creamy. You know what it looks like. Then you'll add in your vanilla. 

Now it's flour time. Here's where I got a little squirrelly in my attention span. I kinda lost count of how many 1/2 cups of flour I added into my dough. Since I was doing them in 1/2 cup increments, it seemed like it was taking forever. When things take forever, I get bored and my mind wanders and I start to say things like "tequila" instead of counting (anyone now have the "tequila" song stuck in their head? Ba da dada dada da...Ba da dada dada da dum...Ba da dada dada da...Ba da dada dada da dum...Ba dada DA dum...Ba dada DA dum...Ba dada DA dum...Bada dada dada DUM...TEQUILA!) See what I mean? I get distracted. Point is, I lost count and might have added a little more or a little less than 6 cups. I stopped adding when I felt like they were thick but not too floury tasting. 

Then I added the spices. I didn't really measure them. I really just went by taste. I felt that the dough needed a little something, so I added a pinch of kosher salt at first. Still not quite there, so I threw in some Allspice (a good bit more of this than the salt, mind you...don't get me started on the awful experience I had with salt and cookies when I was 10 years old...worst cookies ever...I've been mindful of the salt ever since) and some cinnamon. Now we were cooking! 

Cue the chocolate chips! I know it sounds silly, but I chose mini ones because they're just cuter and I like the chocolate flavor but don't like how big morsels can feel, well...almost disruptive of the other flavors. Mini ones just seem to blend in better while satisfying my chocolate craving. While the mixer was doing it's thing, I turned the oven on to 375 and let it heat up. I also crushed up some graham crackers and put them in a bowl. Once the dough was ready, I put parchment paper on my cookie sheets and got to rolling. 

It's tedium time! I guess it may not be quite as tedious if you don't triple the recipe like I did, but it sure did seem like it. You're gonna start rollin', rollin', rollin'...keep those dough balls rollin'...

I am such a dork. Yeah, roll a whole bunch of dough balls and, when you've got enough to space out nicely on your cookie sheet, start covering them in the graham cracker crumbs. They don't spread out too much, so I easily fit 12-15 on each large cookie sheet.

Bake cookies for 12-15 minutes, or until they're puffed and lightly browned. 

Let cool completely before you try to eat them. They taste much better! 

Just ask Cali...

She looks innocent...

Apparently, while I was hanging out with Katie, the aforementioned friend who just had the sweetest little baby girl, Cali decided that I hadn't wrapped the "Shevan" portion of the cookies up tight enough. When I came home, I went into the kitchen to grab a cookie and found this: 

But she's not...bad dog!

Yeah...but it was on the floor. Out of 25-30 cookies, she had left us 4. I decided not to take these to work because, as you might have guessed, my coworkers aren't fond of dog slobber covered floor cookies.

At least I ate one before I left...

Oh, and to all of E's coworkers...you can blame Casey for hoarding the second round of cookies I dropped off on Friday. I told her to share. She apparently doesn't like the rest of you. :) 

And, in case you were wondering how the previously posted marshmallows work for indoor S'mores, here's a teaser: 

Maybe, if I feel like it, I'll tell you how I made these. They're not all that exciting, but they were tasty! 

If you're really lucky, I might even tell you how to make these super yummy S'mores Bars...

I might just keep this one to myself though...they're just too good!

Rainy Days and Mondays always get me down...

Unless I have them off! Yay for a relaxing day off work to clean the apartment, do the laundry and...

Who are we kidding? I did nothing of the sort. 

For the vast majority of the day, I did absolutely nothing. I literally sat on my butt on the couch watching hours upon hours of "Dance Moms." I love this show. I am not ashamed. 

During this time, I felt I needed something to occupy my hands, so I set to work untangling the mess of yarn that had been created when we left a certain puppy at home alone for *gasp* 4 hours. 

"But mom...I swear I didn't do it!!!"

(side note: I'm nowhere near done with this task and am seriously considering chucking it and going to buy some more.)

This is what 4 hours of unwinding a giant yarn mess gets you.
I decided to use the water bottle since it was so clear that I would need both hands to tackle this task.

(additional side note: Teaching oneself to crochet using YouTube videos and online tutorials is not working out for me. I will be needing assistance. Please help.)

Around 2:30, I decided that Cali and I needed to go for a walk. So we walked down to the leasing office, took our friends some cupcakes (that I had made the night before in a fit of baking euphoria...) and chatted for a while. But Cali was stinky so we made it short. 

Then we came home, made the bed, cleaned up the kitchen and watched more "Dance Moms." Then I started to feel a little sad that I hadn't gotten to eat one of my cupcakes. Last night and this morning, I had no desire to eat them, yet now, after they had all been devoured, I was consumed with regret. This always happens though. 

With applesauce in them, it's almost like eating fruit, right?
I'm gonna say yes. 

So what do I do? Start looking up fall cookies. I was planning on following my Apple Spice Cupcakes (see above picture) with some sort of pumpkin dessert. But nothing was striking my fancy. So I widened my search to sweet potato and marshmallow desserts. I mean, what is more fall than sweet potato casserole? But, alas I was not so impressed. Ok. Skip the fall themed flavors all together. Marshmallow cookies. 

Jackpot!! Browned butter dark chocolate and marshmallow cookies. It was as if Heaven was sent to me in cookie form. 

When Evan got home, we ate dinner and went to the store to pick up a couple of things I was lacking, specifically, the marshmallows and dark chocolate. Pretty essential stuff, I'd say.

I came home and got to work. I did change the recipe a little bit. Since I was making enough to take to my marketing meeting in the morning and for Evan to take to work, I doubled everything. But then I also halved the browned butter because the taste is so strong. I also used half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. Not to be healthy. Just out of convenience. Then I added a splash of vanilla extract because cookies just don't seem the same without it. 

7 dozen cookie balls. Oh these are going to be trouble!

All in all, this was a great experience! This was much thicker dough than I had expected, but it was SO YUMMY!

If you bake at all and don't have one of these stackable cooling racks, you're insane!
I absolutely love these things!

Evan gave them his seal of approval! (I had a picture for this, but SOMEONE won't let me use it. He claims he looked horrible but refused to take any more pictures. Lame.)

As always, there are some cookies that come out looking perfect and others that are just plain butt-ugly. Guess what? Butt-ugly tastes just as good as pretty and you don't feel half as guilty about eating them. 

The difference is clear. The taste, however, is the same.
Nicely done, Butt-Ugly cookie. 

The best part is that there are plenty for me to keep here in case I change my mind about trying them! Yum yum yum!