Banoffee Button Cookies

When we went to London, we went to the Hope and Greenwood chocolate store. We bought these amazing banoffee buttons. It was hard to not eat them all on their own. If you don't want to pay for shipping from London, just use chocolate chips and banana extract. I made half with nuts and half without. I preferred the ones with nuts due the nice crunch. Come back on later this week to see another recipe I made with these buttons.

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup banana buttons

3/4 cup chopped walnuts, if desired

Instructions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Melt butter in a saucepan. While the butter cools, mix together sugar, vanilla, and egg. Add in the melted butter. Gradually mix in flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir in chocolate buttons and nuts.

Bake for 12 minutes.

Yields 2 dozen

San Francisco Cookies... Again

Yes, I did go a little crazy with cookies in San Francisco... I did a lot of walking to make up for it, though!

Chocolate Lab

After a tasty dinner at the sweet and savory cafe by Recchiuti, I tried the cookie plate (just $5) that included a cocoa nib meringue, cherry shortbread, coconut macaroon dipped in chocolate, mud pie cookie, and a double chocolate cookie. All of them were amazing!

TCHO

I was a little disappointed with the batter cookie ($2.50) I got at TCHO. The cookie looked great with lots of chocolate, dark chocolate disks throughout, and sea salt on top. There was a hint of cinnamon through cookie that I didn't like.

Chocolate Cake Brownies

This brownie recipe comes together quickly and makes a chocolatey and cakey brownie. It definitely kicked my chocolate craving for the day!

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup light brown sugar

Pinch of salt

2 eggs

1/4 all purpose flour

Instructions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray an 8x8 pan with cooking spray.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a small saucepan on low heat. Then add sugar, salt, and vanilla until combined. Allow to cool before beating in the eggs one at a time. Next add in the flour. Pour the batter into the pan.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes.

Cool before cutting into squares.

Yields 16 brownies

San Francisco Cookies

A few more reviews from my long weekend in San Francisco...

The Cheeseboard

This unbelievable pizza parlor and cheese shop also has a few cookies. For $2.00 their large chocolate chip cookie was a good value. It had plenty of large chocolate chunks and had an oaty taste due to the wheat germ mixed in. The cookie was good, but not as good as their pizza!

Andronico's

The bakery in this grocery store had an amazing selection. I zeroed in on the chocolate dipped shortbread ($1.99 for a large cookie) and the chocolate chip and snickerdoodle cookies (99 cents each). The shortbread was very buttery, and the chocolate dipped portion really made the cookie. The chocolate chip had plenty of chocolate and was super chewy. The snickerdoodle was just OK.

The Cookie Department

I found Cookie Department cookies at Andronico's, but they are available at random stores throughout the city. I tried the Great Full (vegan sweet potato wellness cookie) and the Chocolate Chip Nookie. Both cookies were good (not amazing), but I like the bonus health factor. At $2.99 each, they are a bit pricey.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

It's always fun to try a new chocolate chip cookie recipe, and this recipe created (as the name implies) a thick, chewy cookie.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1/2 teaspoon baking powder 
1/2 teaspoon baking soda 
1/2 cup unsalted butter softened
1 cup packed dark brown sugar 
1/8 cup granulated sugar 
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 
1 cups semisweet chocolate chips 

Instructions
No need to preheat the oven since the dough needs to be refrigerated.
Sift the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda together into a large bowl. Set aside.
Beat the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar in a bowl with a mixer. Beat in the egg, and then beat in the vanilla. Gradually add the flour mixture and beat until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips. Press plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the dough and refrigerate at least one hour.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Drop heaping tablespoonfuls of dough onto prepared baking sheets, about 2 inches apart. Bake about 12 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool 10 minutes on the baking sheets, then transfer to racks to cool completely.
Yields 18 cookies

Berkeley Cookies

A couple of weeks ago Mr. Sleuth and I took a little spring vacation to San Francisco. We had an amazing long weekend, and of course I tried a lot of cookies along the way.

Cinnaholic

This Berkeley cinnamon roll bakery allows you to create hundreds of kinds of cinnamon rolls with different flavors of frosting and toppings. You can customize your own or pick one of their recommendations. I selected the chocolate chip cookie dough cinnamon bun ($5.50) with vanilla frosting, mini chocolate chips, and chunks of cookie dough. AMAZING! I absolutely will be going back next time I'm there. I bought a cookie ($2) to go, which was soft a full of chocolate chips, a must try as well.

Hopkins Street Bakery

Also in Berkeley, I stopped by this small bakery and tried a giant peppermint chocolate cookie ($1.75) and their signature Freakout cookie (85 cents for a small one). The chocolate base for the peppermint cookie was just OK, but the bright green peppermint chunks were throughout. It's great to satisfy a mint craving, but I won't get it again. The Freakout cookie had pecans, raisins, macadamia nuts, and chocolate chips. There were a few too many raisins in this cookie for me, but the rest was good.

Love at First Bite

This bakery specializes in cupcakes, but there is a small selection of cookies as well. For $2.25 I bought the cowboy cookie (coconut, pecans, chocolate chips), which was soft and slightly underbaked. I was hoping for a bit more chocolate flavor and some crunch from the pecans.

Ritz Thin Mints

A colleague introduced me to this quick way to make Thin Mint copycats. Don't worry about the cracker taste coming through too much or being too salty. Besides the more crumbly texture, you can't tell a difference between this and the original Thin Mint. I used melted Nestle chocolate and mint chips, but you could also melt chocolate and add a couple of drops of mint extract. My friend used mint chocolate candy melts. Either way, it's dangerous how easy these are to make!

Ingredients

24 Ritz crackers

1 1/2 cups chocolate and mint chips

1 Tablespoon Heavy cream, if necessary

Instructions

Melt chocolate over double boiler. If necessary, use heavy cream to thin out the chocolate. Remove melted chocolate from the heat.

Dip each cracker in the melted chocolate. Place dipped cracker on a cooling rack (with wax paper or parchment underneath) while the chocolate cools and hardens.

Store in the refrigerator or freezer.

Yields 24