Candied Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

As a co-workers favorite food is bacon, we decided to go with a bacon themed carry in and I made Candied Bacon Chocolate Chip cookies adapting a recipe from Tablespoon posted by Kristy of
The Girl Who Ate Everything.   They were delicious and the bacon added a tasty element to the cookies, but nobody could actually taste any bacon.

Made 2 1/2 dozen cookies

For Candied Bacon

• 8 slices center cut thick bacon
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Preheat over to 350 degrees, place foil on a baking sheet, lay the bacon flat, spoon half of the brown sugar on top, put in the oven for 10 minutes, flip bacon over and spoon the remaining brown sugar over the top of the bacon and bake another 10 minutes, or until bacon is is crisp.   Allow to cook and cut into small pieces.

Cookies:
2 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup butter, slightly softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 TBSP vanilla extract
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (1 16 oz pkg)
2 TBSP Milk

Normally when baking cookies, I will cream the sugar and butter together first and sift the flour, but my son was doing the mixing and put everything in a bowl and blended everything but the chips and bacon with a mixer and once well blended added them in.  There may have been a difference in the texture, but I couldn't tell.

Reduce oven heat to 325 degrees,  Line a baking sheet with parchment, spoon large heaping rounded tablespoons on to the baking sheet and bake 12-13 minutes and take out oven but allow to cool on the baking sheet.  (We like a soft chewy texture, if you like a crispier cookie leave in a minute or so longer).

I am a follower of the blog Girl Who Ate Everything and if you are looking for scrumptious recipes she has a plethora for all types of foods and I haven't tried a recipe yet that I didn't like:)

Recipes on Tablespoon by The Girl Who Ate Everything
Blog of The Girl Who Ate Everything

Disclaimer:  I have no affiliation with Tablespoon or The Girl Who Ate Everything or Chocolate Chip Cookies, I am just a follower/fan

Cake Mix Jello Cookies

Combine two favorite desserts into one fun quick and easy treat!

 I had seen this recipe for Jello cookies but decided to try a quicker and easier route.  They turned out a bit heavier than regular cookies but still tasted light and cakey with a slight taste of the Jello flavor (this is the 2nd batch; the first one was devoured before I was able to take pictures of them).

In choosing a cake mix, consider the Jello flavor you want to combine it with and the color of cookies you want to try to achieve.  For the above I used yellow cake, orange Jello and orange juice.  For my first batch I used a white cake mix, blue Jello and water and they came out a lovely light blue color, but less flavor so I used juice in this batch.

Recipe:

• 1 box cake mix
• 1 3oz package of Jello
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup oil
• 1/4 juice or water
• Baking parchment paper or non-stick coating spray.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.   Line a cookie baking tray with baking parchment paper or spray with non-stick coating.

Mix all ingredients, drop by heaping tablespoons onto cookie sheet and bake 8-15 minutes.

The size of your "heaping tablespoons" determines how many cookies you end up with, but I ended up with 24 using smaller (baking 10 minutes) and 18 using huge tablespoons (baking 15 minutes).

Happy Crafting!

CHEWY CHOCOLATE CHIP OATMEAL COOKIES

This recipe is part the Mom's Crazy Cooking Challenge hosted by Tina where each month a different food is posted and participants make a recipe of another blogger and all are posted at the same time.   For further details, click here.

This month's challenge was chocolate chip cookies and I chose a chewy chocolate chip oatmeal cookies by Jessica at How Sweet It Is  as the addition of oatmeal makes it sound more healthy than just a regular cookie.
It had a nice flavor and the texture was someone between a cookie and a chewy muffin.

I made larger cookies and it made 15.

Preheat oven to 375.

Ingredients: 

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar 
• 1 egg 
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 
• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 
• 3/4 cups rolled oats
• 1/4 teaspoon salt 
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 1/4 cups chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate chips, could use
• 1- 2 tablespoons milk (optional if dough is crumbly)

Allow butter to come to room temperature, then cream together until smooth (I don't own a mixer so I used my hand blender, but in the past have used a fork).

 

 This is what is looked like when blended.

Add egg and vanilla for about two minutes or well mixed.

Stir in flour, baking powder, salt, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, then add the oats.  If it is still crumbly add 1 tablespoon of milk, if needed add 1 more tablespoon of milk.

Fold in chocolate chips.

The original recipe advised refrigerate for 30 minutes, remove and roll into big 1 1/2 inch balls that are 2 inches apart for 9-11 minutes

Instead, I used tablespoons to drop heaping tablespoons on parchment paper without refrigerating and they were done at around 8 minutes, but could vary depending the oven - I would recommend checking at 8 minutes.





Be sure to check out the other participants recipes below.  Next month;'s challenge is mashed potatoes and will be posted November 7th.  If you would like to join the party, visit Mom's Crazy Cooking.

Have a yummy weekend!

Demon Eyed Turkey Cookies

Were fun to make and messy to eat.  The front one is a baby turkey and the back one is the mama.

A former co-worker used to make turkey cookies out of Oreos, Vanilla Creme Drops and Candy Corn.  My son doesn't care for most of those ingredients so I switched it up a bit and came up with above.  We had a good laugh at how the cinnamon candies made the turkeys looks possessed, thus they have been nicknamed the Demon Eyed Turkey Cookies.

Makes 12 turkeys

Items used:

• 1 pkg of 24 slice or break and bake cookies (I used Snickerdoodles) or pre-packaged cookies or 12 Oreos
• 12 to 24  bite sized candies (I used Snickerz)
  
• 1 can of frosting (I used Vanilla)
• 24 Red Hots Candies 
  
• Candy Corn

Bake the cookies according to the package and allow to cool.

Frost the cookies

For the Mama (or Daddy) Unwrap the bite sized candy and push a candy corn on each side.

Apply frosting to the top of the candy allowing it to go over the front a bit.  Press two candies in the frosting to make they eyes.  Then press on candy corn in the center to make the beak.  This will make the head.

Apply frosting to the bottom of the head or to the top of the body and press them together.

Place body on the top a frosted cookie.  Take another frosted cookie and press it to the back of the body.  Put candy corn all around the back of  the cookie to make the tail feathers.

To make the baby turkey, use only 1 candy and press the candy corn on each side and the center of the bite candy and frost the top and add the eyes.   Do the cookies as indicated in the above step.

15 Minute Sea Creature Cookies

For when you want to bake special cookies and take and/or serve, but just don't have the time. Clean up is minimal as you slice the cookies on parchment paper right on the baking sheet and mix the food coloring right in the can of frosting. Items used:

• Refrigerated sugar cookie dough
• 1 can vanilla frosting
• Gummy sea creatures
• Blue Food coloring
• Baking Parchment paper
• Knife

I used a bag of octopus and there were 10 of them and ended up with 13 cookies, but you could use any type of gummy sea creatures. Our local Walmart has sharks and even some "Finding Nemo" ones.

Preheat oven to temperature indicated on package, place baking parchment paper, slice into 1 inch slices and place approximately 2 inches apart then place in oven to bake according to package.

While cookies are baking, open up can of frosting and add approximately 15 drops of blue food coloring and mix in the can using knife.

Remove the cookies from the oven and allow to cool, or you can speed up the process by sticking them in the fridge for a few minutes if you have shelf space.

I know, cookies are not suppossed to be square - the reason these turned out this was as that I left the dough out of fridge too long before slicing them - wait until you are ready to start the project before taking out of the fridge to avoid this.

Once cookies are cool, frost them with the blue frosting.

Put your sea creature(s) on the top and you are done!

Faux Thin Mints out of Ritz Crackers

I saw this receipe at

http://littlebirdiesecrets.blogspot.com/2009/03/make-your-own-thin-mints.html

and had most of the ingredients, so I thought I would give it a try. The taste was surprisingly similar to the Thin Mints that you buy from the Girl Scouts, but was chewy. Who would have thought a cracker could me made into a cookie!

I tweaked the ingredients from the original recipe as I did not have Milk Chocolate Chips by using the full bag of Dark Chocolate Chips and adding 2 TBSP margarine and 2 TBSP milk.

Ingredients:

• 1 bag Dark Chocolate or Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
• 1 box of Ritz Crackers
• 2 TBSP Margarine
• 2 TBSP Milk
• 2 TBSP Peppermint Extract

My recipe resulted in 30 cracker/cookies.

Melt the margarine and chocolate chips in a double boiler (or the equivalent) then add in 2 TBSP peppermint extract and mix.

Add in 2 TBSP milk and stir until fully mixed.

To coat the crackers, I put them in the chocolate and lightly turned them over and covered each with chocolate with a spoon, then put on a parchment lined piece of wax paper to cool. After they cooled off for about 5 mins, I stuck them in freezer for about 10 minutes then served them.