Chocolate Peppermint Blossoms

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you had a wonderful Christmas holiday. I got to celebrate this wonderful holiday season with family and friends, and some pretty snow to top it all off :) True that we my husband had to shovel snow multiple times in one day and driving was insane, but it was still very pretty. 
For the Christmas gathering at my mother-in-law's house, I brought these little gems for everyone to enjoy. I wanted to make some sort of cookie and my husband said his mom liked peppermint things, so when I came across these cookies, I knew I had found our winner! Now even if you are not a big fan of peppermint things, I think you'll still like these cookies, as the peppermint flavoring is subtle and not at all overpowering. Soft, melt in your mouth cookies, with lots of chocolate flavor! These cookies are very simple to make and you should go make these soon!

Chocolate Peppermint Blossoms
Makes about 3-4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:
1.5 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour3/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa1.5 tsp baking powder1/4 tsp salt1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, slightly softened (but still cool)1-1/4 cup sugar3 eggs1/2 tsp vanilla1 tsp peppermint extractabout 1/2 cup powdered sugar for rollingHershey's Kisses (about 3-4 dozen)

Directions:1. In a small bowl, sift and whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.
2. With an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on medium high speed until light and fluffy.  Beat in the eggs, one at a time, and the extracts, beating until combined and scraping down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed. Change speed to slow, then gradually add the flour mixture, beating on low just until combined.  The mixture will be very sticky.
3. Place the bowl in the refrigerator and chill for 30 minutes to 1 hour.4. While cookies are chilling, line cookie sheets with parchment paper.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Place the powdered sugar on a plate.
5. Using a teaspoon cookie scoop (or a spoon), scoop generous teaspoons of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets. Gently roll each ball of dough through the powdered sugar until coated, then place them back on the cookie sheet.
6. Bake for 12 minutes, until puffed and crinkly.  (Meanwhile, unwrap the Kisses.)
7. Remove from the oven and immediately press a Hershey's Kiss on top of each hot cookie.  Press firmly, so that it doesn't pop off.  Let the cookies sit on the sheet for 1-2 minutes, then remove to a wire cooling rack to cool completely. 

Recipe adapted from Bake at 350

Meringue Cookies aka Suspiros

Hello there! I can't believe my maternity leave is almost over... which means my little one is almost 2 months old! Time has just flown by, more so than with my first child it seems. Time just keeps going by faster as you get older huh?
Well, so I'm approaching this last week of being at home as a great time to do things I may not get around to as often once work comes along. One of those things for me is baking, sadly... Although I hope that's not much the case. We'll see... 
Anyways, I want to share this recipe I found for these little heaven-on-earth bite-sized cookies. I had some egg whites sitting in the fridge that I was going to use in a pie as a meringue topping. Then I thought "maybe I can find a recipe for suspiros!" What are suspiros? These are one of my favorite childhood treats from Brasil.  They are crunchy on the outside, but gooey on the inside and it just melts in your mouth. You can get these in treat bags in Brasil, and let's just say that you had to take those bags away from me before I finished it all myself. It is just oh-so addicting!
So I first looked for recipes in Portuguese thinking that I would be lucky there. Not so much... the recipes just didn't look very promising... so then I don't know how but I saw English versions called "meringue cookies". Now why didn't I think of searching by that name? I looked around, and the FoodNetwork had some good-looking recipes by Giada, although hers has espresso and chocolate chips in it. Maybe I will attempt to make those one day, but I wanted my simple/plain version. I finally came across a recipe at Joy of Baking that fit the bill! I mean, the true suspiros that I remember only took 2 ingredients: egg whites and sugar. This recipe also adds in cream of tartar, but that is wonderful since it stabilizes the egg whites to tolerate the heat better when baking. So I made these little gems and let me tell ya that it was everything I had hoped for and more! Taking bites of these truly sent me back to my childhood... I had to really control myself to not eat the whole batch!
Now you could make these big and even top it with some fruit or ice cream (unnecessary in my opinion), but I opted to make them bite sized so that, you know, you can eat more of them! 
Try these today and tell me what you think :)  Enjoy!

Suspiros
~makes about 3 dozen bite-sized cookies


Ingredients:
4 large egg whites
1 cup of superfine or caster sugar*
1/4 tsp cream of tartar


Directions:
Preheat oven to 200 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. 
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg whites on low-medium speed until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and continue to beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. Now add the sugar, about a Tbsp at a time, and keep beating the egg whites on medium-high speed until they can hold very stiff peaks (this can be checked by flipping the mixing bowl upside down and nothing would move!!!)
Transfer the mixture into a pastry bag with the big star tip (you can use any other tip you would like, or not even a pastry bag and just 2 spoons) and pipe it onto the parchment paper. Leave a little bit of room between the cookies, but since these don't expand, you don't need to leave a lot of room in between. 
Bake the cookies for about 1.5-2 hours (note: if you have a convection bake option in your oven, I would use that for this instead of normal bake because the fan removes the moisture better from inside the oven). The cookies are done when the outside is solid and the cookies are just a tad golden (just a tad!!!). Turn off the oven and leave the cookies in the oven until room temperature. To store them (if you have any left!), place them in a air tight container, and they will last for several days.


*Sidenote: I recommend having superfine sugar for this as it allows the sugar to be completely dissolved into the egg whites so that you have a smooth cookie rather than a grainy one. To make this sugar, I simply took regular white sugar and processed it in a food processor for about a minute.


Recipe adapted from Joy of Baking

No Bake Cookies

Hello everyone! Continuing on my cookie challenge, today I bring you No Bake Cookies. I was introduced to these marvelous things a long time ago, I think even before I got married. Back then I wasn't too confident about baking, so the thought of making cookies that didn't require baking were very appealing to me. I made these cookies and my then boyfriend (now husband) absolutely loved them! So I saved the recipe. It is such a simple cookie to make that I feel like I should make it more often... and it would be soooooooooooo hard to get rid of them... ;)

One tip though, this batch I made for a church luncheon, and so I doubled the recipe. It made 94 cookies! But, I wouldn't make more than that at once because towards the end the cookie "batter" started to harden a little bit inside the pot I mixed the ingredients in. So if you need to make more than 2 recipes of this cookie, I would recommend making it separately so you will have a fresh batch again. I have never tried to reheat the batter, so I don't know what that would do...

Hope you enjoy the cookies! :) These cookies nestled in tissue paper in a festive holiday tin would be so cute and a perfect gift for anyone special!

Chocolate Peanut-Butter No Bake Cookies

Makes ~3-4 dozen cookies (Tbsp sizes)

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar
¼ cup cocoa powder
½ cup (1 stick) butter
½ cup milk
1 cup peanut butter (smooth)
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3 cups oatmeal
Waxed paper

Directions:

In a heavy saucepan, bring to a boil the sugar, cocoa, butter, and milk. Let boil for 1 minute then add peanut butter, vanilla and oatmeal. On a sheet of waxed paper, drop mixture by the tablespoonfuls (or whatever size you desire), until cooled and hardened.


Recipe from Food Network, courtesy of Helen Ostrosky
For more of my cookie challenge cookie recipes, click here.