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Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Halloween Cookies

Australia is very slowly embracing halloween. I remember being about 8 years old, cutting two holes in an old sheet, smearing my mother’s blue eye shadow all over my face and traipsing over to my neighbour’s house, plastic bag in hand, shouting “trick-or-treat” at the top of my lungs. After my mother spending about 15 minutes attempting to explain the concept of halloween to my elderly neighbours, they finally relented, but sadly all they had were some apples and a bag of prunes. Not the magical haul of chocolate and lollies my 8 year old imagination had been dreaming of.

`These days it’s different – halloween is catching on…..so I decided to yet again embrace halloween (I might even destroy another perfectly good bed sheet to make a new ghost costume).

I saw this pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe on The Butter Half Blog, and had to give it a whirl!! In Australia, pumpkin usually is for savoury purposes….but I can certainly get on board with pumpkin flavoured desserts!!

The only change I had to make was the tinned pumpkin. In Australia, it’s really difficult to find canned pumpkin….instead I bought a butternut pumpkin and cooked and pureed it (which didn’t take long at all – just allow time for the pumpkin puree to cool before you start).

Ingredients:

1 cup canned pumpkin (or pureed cooked butternut pumpkin)
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup sour cream
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 Celsius. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Mix together the pumpkin, sugar, butter, sour cream, egg and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium speed for about 1 minute. Add the baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and salt to one cup of flour. Add it into the wet mixture, thoroughly mix, then add in the remaining cup of flour. Pour in the chocolate chips until everything is well mixed.

3. Use a cookie scoop or spoon to drop a small mound of dough (about the size of a golf ball) on the cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes on 375°F. Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then serve warm.

They’re pumpkiny….chocolatey…. what more could you want!? Do you love halloween? Who has a costume idea that’s not a sheet with two holes in it!?

Nutella Stuffed Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt

Say what!? Yes, that’s right…these are chocolate chip cookies, made with brown butter, STUFFED with Nutella (and sprinkled with sea salt!). !@#$, what a cookie!!

I’m sure they’re worth the equivalent of a day’s worth of food in calories, but they are so darn delicious they’re worth it.

Being the new year, I’ve been attempting to stick to healthy eating…yoghurt and berries for breakfast, salad and tuna for lunch….but tonight it was cookies (hell, and wine!) for dinner…what a meal!!!

This recipe was taken from the blog Ambitious Kitchen, and what a fantastic recipe it was!! I also used a tutorial on how to brown butter from the same blog and found it really easy (I’ve tried other ways in the past and this method worked really well!!). My last attempt was in my brown butter cake recipe! You can make brown butter in advance and store it in the fridge also. Brown butter is seriously the bomb….try it on toast, try it drizzled on steak….even better, try it in cookies!! Enough about the joys of brown butter, here’s the darn recipe!!

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 tablespoon plain greek yogurt
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1 jar of Nutella, chilled in refrigerator
Coarse sea salt for sprinkling

Method:

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl and set aside. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. The butter will begin to foam. Make sure you whisk consistently during this process. After a couple of minutes, the butter will begin to brown on the bottom of the saucepan; continue to whisk and remove from heat as soon as the butter begins to brown and give off a nutty aroma. Immediately transfer the butter to a bowl to prevent burning. Set aside to cool for a few minutes.
With an electric mixer, mix the butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Beat in the egg, yolk, vanilla, and yogurt until combined. Add the dry ingredients slowly and beat on low-speed just until combined. Gently fold in all of the chocolate chips.
Chill your dough for 2 hours in the refrigerator, or place in freezer for 30 minutes if you are super eager, although I cannot promise the same results if you do this.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
Once dough is chilled measure about 1 1/2 tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. Flatten the dough ball very thinly into the palm of your hand. Place 1 teaspoon of chilled nutella in the middle and fold dough around it; gently roll into a ball — it doesn’t have to be perfectly rolled! Make sure that the nutella is not seeping out of the dough. Add more dough if necessary. Place dough balls on cookie sheet, 2 inches apart and flatten with your hand VERY gently. (Really only the tops need to be flattened a bit!)
Bake the cookies 9-11 minutes or until the edges of the cookies begin to turn golden brown. They will look a bit underdone in the middle, but will continue to cook once out of the oven. Cool the cookies on the sheets at least 2 minutes. Sprinkle with a little sea salt. Remove the cooled cookies from the baking sheets after a few minutes and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with remaining dough.

And that’s it….pure deliciousness!! Can you think of a way to increase the calorific content of already delicious foods by stuffing them with even more delicious foods! The possibilities are endless!

Calories aside, these are the best cookies I have ever eaten!!

Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies

It’s a cold and rainy winter’s day in Sydney….what better to do than to bake cookies!! I also suggest baking cookies in the following situations:

When avoiding doing work
When avoiding cleaning the house
When avoiding study commitments
When avoiding going to the gym!!

One of my first blog posts in 2013, was a recipe for Tollhouse cookies, one of my all time favourites!! Today I decided to try something different, with the addition of oats….and these babies were delicious!! Easy to make (and too easy to eat *hangs head in shame*). Whilst these aren’t exactly health food, the addition of oats makes them lower GI than regular chocolate chip cookies.

I used this recipe from BBC Food Network:

Ingredients:

150grams butter (room temperature)
100 grams caster sugar
80 grams tightly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour (250 grams)
1&1/4 cups rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bi-carbonate soda
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 packet milk or dark chocolate chips

Method:

Pre-heat over to 180 degrees celsius
Line baking trays with baking paper
Cream butter and sugars together with an electric mixer. Add egg and vanilla and continue to beat with mixer until light and creamy.
In a second bowl, combine flour, bi-carb, baking powder, oats and chocolate chips
Gradually add dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, and beat to combine.
Roll cookies into 2cm balls, and space 5cm apart on baking trays
Bake for 8-10 minutes
Transfer to a wire rack for cooling

Don’t forget to enjoy with a glass of milk!!