Rocky Road Cookies

All right, we're on a cookie spree. And this time, I'm turning ice cream into cookies.

I'm kinda liking this as a theme, and I think maybe next time I'll try a mint chocolate chip. I also thing that the next time I'm at Recipe Guy's place, I need to try making ice cream again. 

Rocky Road Cookies

What you need:

• 1 1/2 cups sliced almonds
  
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 6 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
  
• 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup mini marshmallows 

What you gotta do:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Spread the mini-marshmallows on a baking sheet and put them in the freezer.

They only take about 10 minutes to freeze. You can do this ahead of time and store the frozen marshmallows in a container in the freezer until you need them... which makes me wonder what else I can do with frozen mini marshmallows.

Spread the sliced almonds on a baking sheet and put them in the oven for about 5 minutes.They should be getting just golden and toasty.

You can do this with whole almonds and chop them afterward if you want chunkier bits of nuts.

Put the butter, bittersweet chocolate, and unsweetened chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and nuke for 45 seconds on half power.

Stir and repeat until you've got a bowl of smooth, melty buttery chocolate.

In a big bowl, beat the sugar and eggs until they're pale and frothy.

Add the vanilla and melted chocolate mixture and beat until shiney.

 

Mix the flour and baking powder together in a small blow. If you used unsalted butter (I didn't) add a scant 1/4 tsp of salt too.

Stir the flour into the shiney chocolate mixture.

Fold in the toasted almonds, frozen marshmallows, and chocolate chips.

This is going to be a pretty soft cookie dough. It's really more of a brownie batter, but I don't recommend trying to bake it in a pan as brownies. The marshmallows can only handle being inthe oven for a little while. If you want to make this into brownies, leave the marshmallows out, and put them on top for the last 5-7 minutes of baking.

You could actually do that with the cookies too if you felt like bothering.

Since this is soft, and we don't want the marshmallows to thaw too quickly, put the bowl in the fridge for 5-10 minutes. It will firm up so that you can scoop it nicely.

Or, you could just drop the dough by the spoonful onto a baking sheet, and put the baking sheet in the freezer for 5-10 minutes. I tried baking a set after just a few minutes in the fridge and the marshmallows couldn't take it. They just turned to goo and left holes in the cookies where they'd one been. The lacey sugary stuff that spewed out of them totally tasted like toasted marshmallows, but that's really not the intent here.

Even after time in the freezer, the marshmallows are going to nearly disintegrate. But they won't do it as fast or as completely.

You know, if you didn't put the marshmallows in the batter, you could chill it until you can handle it, then roll bits of batter around a marshmallow or two. That way, you'd be guaranteed to have no marshmallows on the edges. It's the edge ones that turn into goo and disappear.

I didn't do that this time, and I'm not sure I'd have the patience for it some other time, but you could always give it a shot...

Bake them for 10 minutes and give them a minute to cool on the parchment before tranferring them to a cooling rack.

They are soft and holy freaking chocolatey, and have these fun gooey spots inside them.

I would ask what else has fun gooey spots inside, but we already know the answer to that: "your mom".

So instead, I'm going to ask: "What else can I do with frozen mini marshmallows?"

Chocolate Chip Cookie Perfection

Is there anything better than a chocolate chip cookie?  Crispy, chewy, gooey, chocolaty.  It’s one of the few things that can embody all of those characteristics at the same time.  To make them even better, they’re easy to make and use ingredients you probably already have on hand. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

½ cup butter
¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon molasses
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 ½ cups flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Make sure your butter is very soft and put it into your mixing bowl with the sugar.  If you forgot to pull the butter out ahead of time, we have a trick for that here.  My recipe calls for sugar and molasses simply because I don’t keep brown sugar on hand.  I always have regular sugar, though, and if you just keep a bottle of molasses in the pantry, you’ll always have fresh brown sugar rather than gambling that when you pull out the bag, you might just have one big brown sugar rock.  That being said, if you have brown sugar on hand, feel free to substitute ¾ cup of it for the sugar and molasses. 

Cream together the butter and sugar until it becomes light and fluffy.  If you’re using a mixer that will probably take about 2 minutes. 

Add the vanilla and molasses.

Scrape everything down and mix until incorporated and add the egg.

Mix until thoroughly incorporated.  You can mix your dry ingredients in a separate bowl before adding them, but when I’m being lazy, I just add the flour and sprinkle the soda, powder, and salt over the top. 

Once the flour is in, you don’t want to over mix, so just enough to bring it together as a dough.  The perfect cookie dough will still be quite soft, but has just lost its stickiness.  

Add your chocolate chips.  I was on the baking aisle and these Ghirardelli mini chips caught my eye.  For some reason anything that’s miniature makes me happy.  I mean, what isn’t cuter when made small?  You can use whatever size chips you want, though. 

Stir them in so they’re fairly evening distributed.  I know it looks good enough to eat just as it is, but my mom always taught me to not eat things with raw eggs in them, and it stuck.  So I’ll pass, but help yourself if you want, but I promise it’ll be better once they’re baked anyway. 

Using a spoon, scoop the dough and scrape it off the spoon onto a parchment lined cookie sheet, leaving plenty of room for them to spread.

I wanted fairly large cookies, so I used a generous rounded tablespoon.  You can make them whatever size you like, you’ll just want to watch them and adjust the baking time. 

When they’re all scooped, pop the pan into the freezer for 15 minutes.  While they’re in there, preheat your oven to 375° At this point, if you don’t want to bake all of your cookies, simply scoop and freeze all of the dough.  (I did these ones smaller)

Then just pop the dough balls into a bag and back into the freezer.  That way you can have fresh cookies whenever the mood strikes.  Just pull out however many you want, preheat your oven, and bake them. 

After the cookies you’re going to bake have been in the freezer for 15 minutes, pull them out and bake them for 14 – 17 minutes if they’re this size.  If they’re smaller, decrease the time, and just watch them.  They should be just starting to brown around the edges and no longer look wet on top. 

This will create the perfect crispy exterior and chewy interior everyone loves about chocolate chip cookies.  They’ll be sort of puffy when you first pull them out of the oven, but will quickly settle. 

Leave them on the pan to cool for a few minutes, and then transfer them to a rack.  If you can get them there, anyway.  I’m pretty sure one will find its way into your mouth on the way. 

Definitely serve with a glass of milk, then just close your eyes and treat yourself to some chocolate chip cookie paradise. 

What cooking lesson did you learn from Mom when you were growing up?