Candy Topped Cookies

Here is another cookie recipe for you, and this one is a classic. These candy-topped cookies are soft, chewy, sweet but not cloying. Kids love helping with making them, and everyone loves eating them. The best part of this recipe is how versatile it is—you can add stuff to the dough, put stuff on top of the cookies, or any combination of the two. So without further ado, I present to you the candy-topped cookie recipe.

Orange Gingerbread Cookies

Christmas time is a wonderful time. A wonderful time of the year.
Filled with smiles and laughter and fun all around.
With cakes, pies, and cookies your joy will abound.
Gingerbread cottages sparkle with snow,
Yet their fate is to wait til in the garbage they go.
Why not instead, with joy and with glee,
Make a gingerbread cookie? It's easy you'll see.
All you need is some time—and an orange or two—
And then for Christmas treat fixes, your friends will come to you.

I really do love gingerbread. I apparently like it so much that I wrote a (really bad) poem about it. What I don't like are hard "gingerbread" crackers over-flavored with cloves and allspice whose sole reason for existance is to be turned into amateur building material.

Chewy CSID-Friendly Cookies

DISCLAIMER: This recipe is intended to bea reduced-starch/starch-free/sucrose-free recipe.
These cookies are NOT low-calorie, sugar-free, or gluten-free.
Please use caution when adding a new food to a special or restricted diet.

Hello again recipe seekers. I am very glad that you have decided to join me today as I have a great recipe to share with you—CSID-Friendly COCONUT FLOUR COOKIES. Before you scoff and hit the back button on your browser in disgust at yet another failed cookie recipe, give me a minute to explain.

Way back in January of 2013 my oldest son was diagnosed with CSID, which is a genetic disorder which prevents his body from producing the enzymes needed to break down sucrose (table sugar) and maltose (a major component of all starch). Think of it like lactose-intolerance for sugar and starch. A few months later my second son received the same diagnosis. Over the past almost three years we have managed to recreate many "normal" foods in a CSID-friendly fashion, but I hadn't yet really been able to make a really good cookie recipe for them. This was somewhat of a sour point with me as I worked for two years developing cookie recipes for Lofthouse Cookies.

True, there are many recipes for cookies which do not use wheat flour as their base, and there are even some for cookies which don't use any grains. Meringues come to mind, as do one of my favorite Christmas cookies—Zimtsterne. While both of these cookies are delicious, they are a pain in the rear to make, and they don't really work for the good old American staple, chocolate chip cookies. My wife has searched on and off for a good CSID-friendly cookie recipe, and has found some based on coconut flour, but the cookies they yielded didn't really work for me. They were often dry and crumbly, and I wanted something soft, moist, and chewy.

Then one Saturday I was suddenly hit with inspiration, and I knew how to solve my problem. Chocolate chip cookies are sweet (a no brainer, just add a sweetner), but also chewy, which is brought about by a combination of hygroscopic properties of brown sugar and the protein network created by the gluten found in flour. My revelation was that I could replicate both of these by using agave syrup and vital wheat gluten. The bulking of wheat flour was replaced by almond flour, and the moisture absorption was accomplished with coconut flour. Further structure comes from two eggs instead of the usual one. My go-to replacement for sugar, dextrose, isn't sweet enough to use by itself, so I split the amount 50/50 with fructose. And just like that, a cookie was born.

What was a little suprising for me was that these cookies were actually really good. If you didn't tell me before hand that they were developed to be a CSID-friendly cookie, I probably wouldn't have known. They are delicately coconutty, delightfully chewy, and deliciously moist. These would be a good base for frosting, ice cream sandwiches, or eating with milk. Enjoy!

Root Beer Cookies

I love ice cream sandwiches. They are just so deliciously tasty and fun to eat, not to mention being a great tie back to when I was younger and only had them on very rare occasions. I remember making ice cream sandwich cookies at work one day and I had the idea that a root beer float ice cream sandwich would be delicious, if I could only find a recipe for root beer cookies.

So, I looked around the internet and found a couple recipes, but none of them had everything I wanted. One thing they all had in common was root beer concentrate, so that was a definite must, but the rest of the recipe seemed to be up for debate. So I figured, I make cookies for a living, what's one more cookie?

The butter was an obvious choice, and I thought brown sugar would complement the earthiness of the root beer concentrate. To round out the flavor I added vanilla extract. Also on my list of ingredients was cream of tartar to get some of the acidity of root beer. I made a batch and found they still lacked the bite of root beer, so I upped the acidity with a little bit of citric acid. Finally I got some cookies that I felt were worthy of being given the name of root beer.

These cookies are perfect for making ice cream sandwiches. They have a deep root beer flavor that is not overpowering, and pairs perfectly with vanilla ice cream. For tips on making ice cream sandwiches read this post.

3 Secrets of Perfect Ice Cream Sandwiches

I love cookies and ice cream. The combination of sweet, sugary cookie and the rich, mellow ice cream is one that is hard to beat. Maybe I am weird, but I think the ideal sandwich is similar to a FatBoy—soft and tender cookie and firm ice cream. I could eat these ice cream sandwiches by the dozen. Actually, I need to make sure I don't eat one because I have that hard of a time stopping.

But all too often when I am offered a homemade ice cream sandwich I end up being disappointed because the cookies are so hard I can't bite through them without inevitably squeezing all the ice cream out from between the cookies and onto my shirt or—even worse—the floor. My own experiments were not any more successful though, and I had to settle for eating my cookies and ice cream in the form of crushed cookies mixed into ice cream. Not that this is bad, but crushed cookies do not a sandwich make.

There has to be a solution, I would say to myself. After all, ice cream and cookie combinations are found everywhere in the frozen dessert section of the grocery store, in the form of cookies & creme ice cream and, of course, ice cream sandwiches. But it wasn't until I got a project at work to make cookies intended for ice cream sandwiches that I learned the secret to perfect ice cream sandwiches.

And before you run away screaming and waving your arms shouting about chemicals and artificiality, let me tell you the secret isn't as complex or scary as you think, and it's something you can do in your own kitchen and freezer. And now let me share with you the secrets I learned as a professional baker about how to make perfect ice cream sandwiches.

A return triumphant: Spritz and Piping Chocolate

Sorry to have taken so long to get another post out here. It's been far too long. But to make a long story short, I moved and was without internet for a long time. Plus, with everything going on, I haven't done much baking. There is one thing that I would like to share with you though, and it was inspired by a really fancy and expensive cookie I came across at work a couple months ago.

Do you see those cookies in the bottom right corner, the ones that look like a spritz cookie with a weird dollop of icing? Well, they are really expensive, and I'm not that big a fan of the icing. So, I made my own version.

I took my favorite spritz cookie recipe, baked it into a swirl-ish pattern, and after it cooled I topped it with the really cool stuff called piping chocolate. I found a reference to it in a book on French chocolate techniques. Here is what you do.

Home, home on the ranger cookie

I know I put a lot of cookie recipes on this blog, but I have a great love for cookies. They are normally small, hopefully moist, and deliciously sweet. Unfortunately for me, too many cookies are far too sweet, and make not only my teeth but also my stomach hurt. Recently I have been a far greater fan of cookies which have more going for them than the simple fact that they are a cookie. That's why when I develop a cookie recipe, I try to use less sugar than similar recipes, so that the other flavors may come closer to the surface.

This being the case, I would have to say that one of my all-time favorite cookies has to be the ranger cookie. There is just something about eating a cookie that is half-way to being a granola bar that appeals to the more my more, shall we say, grown-up tastes. Really: there is so much good stuff in this cookie that I would definitely consider it a decent breakfast food.&nbspBy the way, we are just going to ignore the fact that I consider any cookie to be a good breakfast food. Deal?

Ranger cookies are another thing I can actually remember about my childhood. Back then it was mainly my mom or my brother who made them, and I remember enjoying pilfering what felt like fistfuls of dough to snack on, it was that good. To be honest, I was never completely successful making these cookies according to my mom's recipe, so I have made a couple changes of my own: halving the sugar, increasing the egg, and replacing butterscotch chips with chocolate chips.

I won't promise that these cookies are good for you, but they are definitely good for your cravings. Trust me when I say that every person I have made these cookies for has become addicted to them. They are unlike any other cookie I have tried, but I would try them again and again and again.

Chocolate Chips Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies are, I would say, a truly American creation. They are also one of my most favorite recipes. I can remember eating chocolate chip cookies almost my entire life. Every family has their recipe, and rarely do they stray from it. My family was no different: making chocolate chip cookies meant making my mom's chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies are also, I would imagine, one of the first baking experiences many children have. If they aren't helping to crack the eggs (so many eggshells), or pour in the flour (I'm dreaming of a white kitchen), they are helping to scoop out the cookies or...um...remove the evidence. I know, I know, there is some risk involved, but come on. Eating cookie dough is one of those things that every child needs to experience.

Anyway, chocolate chip cookies are one of the few recipes that all of my siblings know how to make. A couple of my sisters have branched out and now have their own recipes, but we all started with my mom's. By the way, before I tell you more about my family's recipe, I need to point out that the following recipe isn't my mom's: this is. I love my Mom's cookies, and they will always have a special place in my heart. The only problem is that when I was younger, I could eat probably a dozen of my Mom's cookies, but now I can only manage one or two before I get sick. I think they are just too sweet for my current tastes. But hey, I've grown up. And my cookies have grown up with me.

I wish I could say that this post's recipe is one of my own devising, but that wouldn't be 100% truthful. To be honest, it is one of my own conglomerating. When I was little I used to read cookbooks for fun, and the habit never really stopped. So I have seen a lot of cookie recipes in my life. This recipe kinda combines some of my favorite things about a lot of those recipes, along with a few tips that I have learned along the way.

Sugar Cookies

For some reason sugar cookies just seem to evoke the feelings of childhood in adults. Maybe it's because I only can remember eating sugar cookies when I was barely tall enough to see over the table, or because stamping out sugar cookies reminds me of small hands. But for whatever reason, sugar cookies just seem to mean childhood.

A while back I worked for a bakery and learned some fun things about baking cookies, which when combined with what I learned during my food science classes in school, hopefully let me make a good recipe for you.

Gourmet Boiled Cookies

I can remember making boiled cookies for a long time. They were always delicious: moist, chewy, peanut buttery, and just a little bit sticky. And to me, they were always "boiled cookies." It wasn't until I got to college that I found out that the rest of the world had a different name for one of my favorite cookies: no-bake cookies.
Then when I was in Switzerland serving my mission for the LDS church, I got a real craving for the cookies, but didn't have the recipe. So I borrowed one from a friend, and tried it out. The result was not anything like what I remembered. They were grainy, hard, and overloaded with chocolate.
After I got married, there arose the occasion to make my beloved boiled cookies for some friends, and just for fun I decided to spruce the recipe up a little. The following recipe is the result.

Red Velvet Drop Cookies

Last week I was asked by a co-worker to make some cookies, specifically red velvet cookies. I agreed, because who can say no to a change to bake some cookies? Anyway, after some consideration, I decided that I didn't want to go through the hassle of rolling out and cutting cookies at work because I would have to bring additional flour, a rolling pin, and my cutters, not to mention only having a half hour for lunch. So being the food scientist that I am, I was confident in my ability to convert a rolled cookie dough into a drop cookie dough, so this morning I weighed out all the ingredients, stuck them in my lunch box, and went to work.

While driving, I thought about the best way to make a drop cookie dough, and came to the conclusion that I would just increase the amount of buttermilk until the consistency was right for scooping. It turned out that I needed 4 times the amount of buttermilk, but the cookies was pretty tasty. Oh, I also baked them in a convection oven set at 350°F, but I think that it would also work the same in a regular oven set at the same temp.

The result was a moist, puffy, cake-like cookie that would be the perfect accompaniment to a tall glass of milk. For a picture tutorial, please see my red velvet cookie recipe.

Red Velvet Cookies

I have a bone to pick with red velvet. One does not simply make red velvet by adding red food coloring to an otherwise vanilla batter and call it good. Red velvet is so much more than it's color. Of course, I can't really blame anyone for this mistake because there is so much misinformation out there on what red velvet actually is. So, to set the record straight, and for my own peace of mind, I am going to set in stone (or bits and bytes) what I firmly believe red velvet to be.

After searching the internet for many red velvet recipes in an attempt to come to some sort of consensus, I concluded that red velvet is a mildly chocolate cake with background notes of both vinegar and buttermilk, also containing some form of red food coloring to heighten the already-present red anthocyanin present in the cocoa powder. There, I've said it. Red velvet is first and foremost a chocolate product. True, it is not as chocolaty as an Oreo©, but it is chocolaty nonetheless.

Well, on to the point of this post. The internet is riddled with red velvet in the form of cakes, cupcakes (shudder), brownies, crepes, pancakes, waffles, cake-mix cookies, etc. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these things (except for the cupcakes. I don't like cupcakes), but I don't have a great love for any of them. What I really wanted was a cookie that I could roll out and cut into shapes, like sugar cookies. And don't you dare tell me that I can just put red food coloring into a sugar cookie. Didn't we already go over the fact that red velvet is chocolate at heart? No, I discovered that if I wanted a rolled red velvet cookie I would need to make my own recipe from scratch. So I did.

One more comment before I begin; it took me many tries to come up with this recipe, mainly because I wanted to get a good amount of chocolate flavor without making the cookie too brown. The solution is to use black cocoa, which is highly dutched or alkalized cocoa, in conjunction with natural cocoa powder. If you don't want to buy black cocoa you could probably get away with just using normal dutched cocoa, but please do not just use natural coca by itself. The flavor just isn't the same.

—Sam