Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake Recipe

I got this recipe from recipezaar.com thanks to April J.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups flour, plus
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Beat butter and sugars together.
2. Add eggs and vanilla.
3. Mix flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
4. Add dry ingredients to the batter and mix until well blended.
5. Stir in chocolate chips.
6. Spread dough into a 15 1/2 inch round pan.
7. Bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

 This is a tried-and-true recipe which literally just came out of the oven.  I'm not sure how it tastes yet, but if it's anything like the cookie dough that I licked off the spatula, then it's delicious!

Some observations that I would like to add, in case you'd like to try this recipe:

• When I make cookies (or pretty much anything, for that matter), I always bring the refrigerated stuff to room temperature first, unless otherwise noted in the recipe.  In this case, it means that I left the eggs and butter out on the counter for a while to warm up a bit.
• I used a 9x13" cake pan, and the cookie cake turned out really thick-- much thicker than what you normally see at the supermarket.  This is just a practice cake for something I'm making next week, but I think I'll use my jelly roll pan, or use less dough.  I don't have the exact dimentions for the jelly roll pan, but it's bigger than the pan I used this time.
• I sprayed the pan with Pam for Baking (which smells really good, by the way) before I put the dough in it.
  
• The dough is really sticky, so I just greased up my hands (clean, washed hands, of course) and used my hands to spread the dough into the pan before I baked it.  It doesn't have to be completely flat either, just try to get it as level as possible.  No need for perfectionism :)
• When baking, the dough did rise up a little along the edges more so than in the middle.  Just thought I'd make that observation, although it was just a little thing; no big deal.
• I baked for 25 minutes, instead of 20, because I like my cookies to be golden brown.  I think they could've gone for another few minutes, but keep an eye out so that they don't burn if you choose to go this route.
• After taking the cake out of the oven, I let it cool for 10 minutes, ran a knife around the pan's edges, and flipped the cake out onto a cooling rack covered with wax paper.

Personally, I love cookie cake, and I hope that I can recreate that cookie goodness that comes from Publix or Kroger and make an equally (or more) delicious home-made version.  I'll let you know how the rest of the cookie cake testing goes, and until then, maybe you can try your hand at this yummy recipe. :)

(That's a big cookie!)

Sweet Stuff

I have two or three cakes (at least) coming up in the month of March, including another anniversary cake, a birthday cake, and maybe another birthday cake.  Until then, I will tide you over with a couple of old pictures from January and early February.  The cake is for my grandma, and the cupcakes were for a "cupcake walk"-- like a cake walk, but each of the kids that won got a cupcake for the prize.

 

My plans for the future include attempting to cover an entire cake with rolled fondant (I've only tried decorations so far) and possibly making gumpaste figurines, so stay tuned for more!

Happy Valentine's Day

I don't really have too much to say about these cookies. Pictures say a thousand words, after all.

I made these cookies for a school bakesale, and made enough extras to give some to my BFF for her birthday, and to put some out at the hospitality table for today's winterguard competition.

Once again, I owe a lot to the fantastic helpful hints in Cookie Craft. I used their sugar cookie recipe, and all their tips about flooding and decorating. The feathered cookies came from an idea in that book too. I wish I could share all I know about cookie decorating with you, but it would definitely be more helpful for you if you get your hands on that awesome book! :)

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

The Gator Cake

I realize that I made this cake ages ago-- and that I never blogged about it. And I am profusely sorry. My only excuse is that I was busy (isn't that always my excuse?), but all excuses aside, I am here right now to tell you-- and show you-- this delicious cake.

First of all, if you don't know the backstory of how the cake was made, and my brothers' contributions, then you should definitely check out this post. Once you've read that, mosey on back here to read the grand finale. ;-)

The cake was a huge success, and everyone loved it (everyone except baby Hartley, who may have just been jealous that the cake had the spotlight for the moment, and not her). Dad mentioned that maybe there was too much green, but everyone else decided that the totally green-ness of the cake was perfect. It's supposed to be like a swamp or something equally earthy that can be found down in Florida.

I used the grass tip to make the boarder along the top of the cake, and a star tip for the bottom boarder. The words are with a #5 tip, I think. And, of course, the gator. He was made with fondant-- I didn't use the MMF because I'm just not happy with it, and as I've yet to find a replacement recipe, I just used some of the store-bought stuff. However, despite the supposed icky taste (I've never tried Wilton's fondant before, only heard the stories), my cousin did eat part of Mr. Alligator. Mmmm.

The cake itself tasted good, though, along with the icing. As mentioned earlier, the first two cake layers I made didn't rise correctly, as you can tell in this photo:

But the cake still tasted good-- just really, really dense at the bottom. Speaking of tasting good, my grandma also made a black forest cake torte which was delicious! Chocolate... cherries... whipped cream... Wow, it was the best, you should've been there. ;-D

All in all, the cake, the party, the mini family reunion went excellently well, and I have a very enjoyable weekend with my family celebrating the various, well, celebrations!

The headless gator.

Football & Cookies

For the third year in a row, I made sugar cookies in honor of the Superbowl.  This year, it was the Steelers vs. the Cardinals.  I'm not a big football fan, but I usually just pick a team so I have something to cheer at. :-)  (And, for the record, I did pick the Steelers.)

These cookies was sort of a rush job, considering I baked them Saturday night and decorated them Sunday morning.  I don't recommend doing that, especially since you're supposed to wait 24 for the cookies' icing to dry completely.  But then, I am a procrasinator.

In order to make the helmets face opposite directions, I flipped half of the helmet cookies over before I baked them.  And, yes, those are chocolate sugar cookies; they aren't burnt.  When I was flipping the helmets over, I flipped the Steelers logo around, too, so it's actually backwards.  Oops.  This is the opposite of what I did with the Bulldogs cake; I inverted the image when I was not supposed to!

These are probably my favorite cookies to date.  (Don't I always say that, though, like about the Webkinz cookies and the Christmas cookies?)  But I mean it this time, and I owe it all to Bakerella for pointing me in the direction of the book Cookie Craft.  Wow.  That book has so many amazing tips and directions and recipes; the process was so much smoother when I made the cookies this time around, from the flooding, to the piping of details.  I do need to buy some more #2 tips and squeeze bottles though.

The cookies were well recieved at the party, and they arrived fairly unscathed (a little smeared, but I stacked wax paper between the layers so the damage wouldn't be too severe).  Of course, they were still delicious, and there were no leftovers for me to take to school today to share with my friends. :-(  I look forward to making more cookies in the future, though, especially after all the awesome help I received from Cookie Craft!