Nutella-filled Cookie Tarts for Fall

Mmmm Nutella!  I have noticed several posts on facebook about the *surprising* evils of Nutella.  It’s not the “healthy” food we thought.  Or is it.  I always knew that something that yummy couldn’t possibly be healthy, so I don’t feel that I was led astray by advertising.  I don’t even remember discovering the deliciousness of Nutella until I was a grown-up.  Ah well, someone special brought me a treat the other day….2 jars of Nutella!  And all of a sudden I felt a crazing* for Nutella and cookies. Together. In one bite.  I was just going to spread it on a plain cookie, then sandwich it with another cookie, but then I started looking at photos of Nutella-filled cookies, and more goodies made with Nutelllllllllla 🙂  I had fun.  Then I decided to kind of adapt a bit and try spooning the chocolaty sweet into cute little pastry shells, but made from cookie dough.  I grabbed the idea from Chef Cathy here and adapted the cookie dough recipe a bit from Lilaloa who has great cookie recipes.  And boy did it turn out well!!  (Not like all of my experiments!)  Chef Cathy calls them Cookie Pies, but I just have to call them Tarts, because that’s what they look like, a good-old Canadian butter tart shell, in miniature!         (* a crazing is a crazy craving!!  I just mispelled that and thought it quite clever!)The cookie dough recipe:

Makes about 40 mini tarts

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup of white sugar (a heaping cup, or 2/3 cup)

1 egg

1/2 tsp. each of vanilla and orange extract

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. baking powder

2 cups of all purpose flour

Beat the butter and sugar together.  It might be nice to use room temperature butter, but mine was fairly cold, and it still works.  Add in the egg and beat a bit more.  Add in vanilla and orange extract, and any food coloring if you want.  I added some orange coloring, but it came out very pale-looking!  Throw in the salt, and keep mixing.  Sprinkle the baking powder over the batter, then one cup of the flour and mix.  Add in the last cup of flour and mix.  (Or you can do it the traditional way!)  The dough was fairly stiff and just a bit dry, so I worked it a bit with my hands at the end.  No need to chill!

Roll out the dough, and use a round cookie cutter that is a bit larger than the openings of a mini muffin pan.  I used a scalloped one.Cut out the rounds and gently press them into the mini muffin tin.  (I used the rounded handle of a spatula to ever so gently tap them down a bit).  I had greased the pan for the first batch, but later found out that that wasn’t necessary if it is a non-stick pan.I didn’t push the shells all the way to the bottom of the cups, and that seemed to work great.  Now with  2 teaspoons, fill each shell with Nutella, about a teaspoon each.  I used a small teaspoon (baby sized) and acutally twirled the Nutella into the shells a bit after these ones were sticking up a bit too much, and that worked well.Out of the cookie dough, I used a very small cutter and cut out some maple leaves to pop on top.  The cutter was from one of those linzer cookie cutters that fell apart, so now I just use the middle cutter-outter piece for tiny cookies.  Or you can just crumble up some dough and sprinkle it on top, which is what Chef Cathy did!  Now bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.They popped out of the pan after sitting a few minutes, very nicely and were golden enough and had cute little bottoms!Have a bite!!! or two!I decided that I like them cold, instead of warm out the the oven.A sprinkle of cinnamon on the plate was nice, too…I originally just baked up half of the dough, and thought I would save the rest for something else.  But these little cuties disappeared so quickly and were so yummy, the next day I baked up another batch!  That’s why I’m kind of guesstimating that the recipe made 40 mini tarts, we ate them so fast, and a fair bit of cookie dough was munched up, too, so that’s the closest I could come for a number!  These would look super on a Canadian Thanksgiving Table next week!!  Or on an American Table in November.  Or on anyone’s table at any time this fall!  If you like Nutella, I’m pretty sure you will like this easy recipe! 😉

The 5 Minute Individual Chocolate Chip Cookie Midnight Snack

Oh, forgot to mention that it’s a Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie.  Mmmm….what a lovely new recipe I have found!

The other night I was searching on Pinterest for brilliant ideas to add to my online idea-board stash….and I was feeling kind of hungry.  And then suddenly I found this recipe….just the thing to test out for a late night snack!

It turned out to be the perfect Midnight Snack for One…..or for Two, if you feel like sharing! 😉  There’s nothing like a hot chocolate chip cookie with a cold glass of milk….except a hot chocolate cookie that is ready in 5 minutes or less!

See if this convinces you….

Here’s the recipe with a few of my own tweaks:

5 Minute Individual Deep Dish Chocolate Chip Cookie

1 Tbsp. melted butter

1 Tbsp. brown sugar

1 Tbsp. white sugar

1/8 tsp. salt (or a big pinch)

1 egg yolk

1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 cup white flour

2 Tbsp. chocolate chips

Melt the butter in a small micorwave-proof dish or bowl.  Add the sugars and salt and lightly beat in the egg yolk with a fork.  Add the vanilla and then the flour, a bit at a time while stirring. Stir just until mixed.  Add the chocolate chips and mix in.  I’m afraid that I already have this recipe memorized.  Oh, a note: you can cut down a tiny bit on the sugar, and another: don’t use whole wheat flour!  Microwave on high power for 40-60 seconds….I found that 40 seconds were just right.  Now pour a glass of milk and dig in!!   (I found this recipe on a site that wasn’t a proper blog or anything, so that’s why I didn’t post the link).This is what it looks like right out of the microwave!Share a bite!I was fairly pleased with the texture, it’s not exactly like oven-baked, but it’s yummy nonetheless.  Quite addiciting….don’t ask me how many times I’ve already “tested” out this new recipe…

The perfect quick snack for a chilly autumn evening! (and for breakfast and for lunch and for an after-school snack….)

Sand Dollar Oatmeal Cookies and Mexico

I was drooling over some incredible photos of sand dollar cookies on pinterest lately.  I love sand dollars (and cookies!) and I really wanted to make some, but knew I didn’t have the time for those fancy things.  Around midnight one night, I was baking some cupcakes for my daughter to take to school, and some oatmeal cookies.  I had remembered that there is a dairy-challenged kid in her class, so I thought I would make some dairy free cookies for that little someone.  Pulling out an old recipe book of my Grandma’s the other day, I had happened upon a recipe for oatmeal ice box cookies, and yay, no dairy!  So I mixed them up and put them in the freezer to chill.  So as I was baking them (at 1 am),  I thought maybe I could transform these plain oatmeal cookies into sand dollars.  Leaving some of the dough overnight in the fridge, I determined to try it out.

These cookies really spread out when they bake, so patting them into ovals and making cutouts in the raw dough didn’t work, they just spread back together.  Making a star shape on the top of the raw cookie with bits of dough didn’t look too bad, though.  Next I tried cutting out circles as soon as the cookies came out of the oven.  Ah, I think this will do the trick.  I used the end of an icing tip to make the holes, it worked great.  Decided not to do the dough designs on top, took too much time.

Very humble looking cookies, I admit.  I wasn’t too crazy about the taste, but everyone else seemed to really like them.  I think they needed some cinnamon and pecans!!

Right before the party I quickly melted some white (vanilla) candy melts (kind of like white chocolate) and piped on a simple flower shape and then sifted confectioner’s (icing) sugar over the cookies.

 They were very fast to make, and I think they turned out cute!!  I was very pleased when some of the kids exclaimed “Sand dollars!!”  yay, that made it all worth while  😉

And yes, these cookies were made for a party!!  (not just for us to munch on!)  Stay tuned to see what party they were made for!!

And now you are wondering what these cookies have to do with Mexico??  Well, other than the fact that sand dollars abound on some of the beaches in Mexico and one time we collected a bunch of live sand dollars on a beach there, and my dad was crazy enough to let us keep them, pack them into a Pringles tin and travel hundreds of miles with them hidden under the back seat….making the van smell a bit fishy……other than that……….nothing.

I just really wanted to link up with a post my friend Amber who lives in Mexico did about their Independence Day celebration on the weekend!!  I knew she would snap some awesome photos of what goes on in their town for Sept. the 16th and thought that maybe you would like to check them out, too!!  🙂  It looks like they had a great time!!  I love the “carnival eggs” that they sell to smash on your friends’ heads!!  They are painted so adorably.  (We used to buy those in Guatemala, but on a different holiday….always lots of messy fun!!) 

oops, I almost forgot to include the cookie recipe:

Oatmeal Ice Box Cookies Recipe from Vi MacDonald  (dairy free)

1 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 cups oatmeal

1 cup shortening

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream the shortening and brown sugar and salt.  Add the oatmeal and flour and soda.  Beat the egg with the vanilla and mix into everything else.  Roll into a log shape, wrap in wax  paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled (overnight is good. if you are in a hurry, put in the freezer for awhile).  When ready to bake, cut slices, and either pat into the shape you want, or roll into a ball and flatten with a fork.  Bake. (my recipe didn’t give baking instructions, so I guessed:)  at 350 for about 9-12 minutes for large cookies.  Don’t let them get too brown.  Then pop them out of the oven, and while they are still on the cookie sheet, punch out holes for sand dollars (5 holes each cookie).  Let sit for a minute, then transfer the cookies to cooling racks.  When they are cool, ice with icing, melted chocolate, whatever, and dust with confectioner’s sugar to make the sand dollars.

When the kids came home the next afternoon, they said that the house smelled like those mini doughnuts that you buy at fairs!!  I’m thinking about trying them again, but rolling the dough into balls then into a mix of cinnamon and sugar, then it would really smell like mini doughnuts!! yum.

Enjoy!!