Key Lime Frosted Cookies

Confession.  I'm borderline obsessed with key lime, and while I love my momma's crazy good key lime cheesecake, I wanted a quick-fix dessert that could satiate my summertime craving, without taking a whole day to prepare!  My good friend, Erin, brought an orange version of this cookie to Pennsylvania when she and her hubby came to visit, and I was hooked!  When thinking through a seasonal desserty snack to bring to a bible study, I couldn't keep my mind off these cookies.....but why not do a key lime version????  Anyways, they were an absolute hit - a great combo of sweetness and tang - definitely not for the faint of heart! 

Cookie

- 1 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 cup softened butter
- 1 cup light sour cream
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 2 eggs
- 4 cups flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup key lime juice
- 3 tbs lime zest

Set your oven to 375 degrees.  Start making the cookie batter by blending the sugar and butter until fluffy, and then add the sour cream, vanilla extract, and eggs, making sure it all comes together well.

Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl, and then incorporate they dry ingredients into the wet.  Don't over mix, or the batter will get a bit tough.  Lastly, add the juice and zest.  Using a small ice cream scooper, drop batter onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet, spacing them about 2 inches apart to allow room for spreading.

Place sheets into the oven for about 10-12 minutes, rotating midway through the baking.  The cookies will be soft when finished baking, and there actually shouldn't be too much browning around the edges.  Allow time to cool on a rack while you whip up the frosting.


Frosting
- 1/4 cup softened butter
- 3 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbs lime zest
- 3 tbs key lime juice, or to taste
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- pinch of salt

Combine all of the frosting ingredients in a bowl until all of the lumps and clumps are gone.  Frost the tops of the "mostly" cooled cookies, allowing the slightly-warmer-than-room-temp cookies to soften the frosting, melting the wonderfully tart topping all over the ooey, gooey cake-like cookies.......then TRY to not eat the whole batch :)  Hope you enjoy this little recipe to kick-start the summer!

Traditional Fruit Crisp

Everyone loves the classic cobbler, and what's great about this one, is that I use a mixture of frozen and fresh fruit! Now of course you don't have to use frozen, but think about it.....frozen fruit is fruit that's been harvested while it's at it's ripest, and then flash frozen so you can use it anytime of the year! And.....I royally hate peeling and slicing peaches, to be honest, so that might be the real reason for the frozen fruit :) So, here's a wonderful classic that is so easy, you can whip it up last minute! All the ingredients are one's you'd have already around the house. I've also experimented with many different combos of fruit, so just use what you have hanging around! The bulk of this recipe came from my wonderful mother-in-law, Beth, and from my grandmother-in-law, Duval Lee. Love ya'll and thanks!

Crisp Topping
- 6 tbsp butter, room temp
- 3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
- 2/3 cup flour
- 1/4 cup rolled oats
- 1/4 cup chopped pecans (or sub with more oats)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix all topping ingredients together with hands, mashing, until coarse and crumbly. Set aside while putting the fruit part together.

Fruit Part (for lack of a better name...)
- peaches - frozen or fresh, enough to fill a small casserole dish
- a small package of blueberries
- 1/2 cup sugar, more or less based on the sweetness of the fruit
- 2 tbsp flour

Mix all of the fruit filling ingredients together. Just as a note, if you plan on using frozen peaches, I've found it's nice letting them come to room temperature before mixing with the other filling ingredients so you can drain off some of the excess liquid, or you'll end up with soup! Put the fruit mixture into a buttered baking dish or small casserole dish, and top with the crumble mixture. Bake for about 45 minutes, until the juices are bubbling and the topping is slightly browned and crisp! Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.....mmmmmmmm!

 

Decadent Chocolate Cheesecake

Some people say that you should never mess with a classic.  In the baking world, this translates to: don't mess with really good plain cheesecake - ie.  stop making funky flavors and messing with the original!  The graham cracker crust, the smooth cream cheese filling, the sour cream topping.  There was a time in my baking life that I believed this wholeheartedly, but no more!  Especially when daring to make a chocolate cheesecake, there's a huge potential of over-doing it - when the chocolate masks the fact that it's actually cheesecake you are eating!  While this recipe has LOADS of chocolate in it, you will find there to still be a light filling and a strangely familiar crust, considering it is also made with graham crackers...just chocolate ones!  So, dare I say, break out of your shell, and dare to be blown away by a *tasteful* rendition of the classic!

Crust

- 2 packets of chocolate graham crackers, crumbled in the food processor
- pinch of salt
- 2 tbs cocoa powder
- 4 tbs granulated sugar
- 1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (3/4 cup), melted

Heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Mix all the dry crust ingredients together in a bowl, then add the melted butter, stirring until combined.  Dump the mixture into a 9 - inch springform pan, pressing the crumble down with your fingers, and allowing the crust to travel up the sides of the pan, about half way.  Place in the oven, baking the crust for about 10 minutes - be careful to not over bake!  Because it's chocolate, you can't see any browning, so keep alert with your nose :)  Remove from the oven and allow to cool while you whip up the filling - reduce the oven temp to 300 degrees while you're at it.

Filling

- 8 oz bittersweet chocolate
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp instant coffee granules
- 3 bricks of cream cheese (24 oz), room temp is best
- 4 tbs cocoa powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
- 3 eggs, room temp
- To decorate, a chocolate bar

Melt the chocolate first, giving it time to cool off on the counter (I put the chopped chocolate in a glass bowl and heat it in the microwave in 30 second intervals, stirring in between, until most is melted and then just keep stirring it until it's smooth).  In a separate bowl, mix the sour cream, vanilla, and instant coffee until the coffee has dissolved - set aside.  In a stand mixer (or with a handheld mixer), beat the cream cheese until smooth, then add the cocoa and salt.

Scrape down the bowl and paddle, and continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy.  Keep doing this until the mixture has no clumps and is smooth - at this point, you can't over mix!  Add the sugar and beat until smooth.  Now, scrape the mostly cooled chocolate into the batter, and blend until combined well.  Beat in the sour cream mixture.  Add eggs one at a time, mixing completely after each addition, but don't over beat the eggs!

Pour the filling over the baked crust, smoothing out the top with a spatula.  Bake at 300 degrees for approximately 45 minutes (rotating if needed).  Then, turn the oven off and leave the door closed with the cake still in there for 30 more minutes!  Don't open the oven during this time (doing this helps the cheesecake not crack).  After the 30 minutes, take the cheesecake out of the oven an place on the counter to come down to room temp by itself - this takes a few hours!  After it's cooled down, you should store it in the fridge with aluminum foil over it until you serve it, at least about 3 hours (warm cheesecake is not good!).

To decorate, use your peeler to shave curls of chocolate onto the top of the cheesecake.  I do this by placing your chocolate bar on the counter near your oven while whipping up the cake - the warm oven softens it up just a bit so the curls form easily and don't break apart.

Hope this is everything you wished for in a chocolate cheesecake!  Enjoy, and happy indulging!

Chocolate Chip and Coconut Meringue Cookies

The challenge was: bring dessert to bible study that can accommodate a person with celiac disease (ie no gluten, ie no flour) and another person that is deathly allergic to dairy (yup, that means no butter *tear*)...oh, and another person that's allergic to nuts. Individually, none of these things are impossible, but together, I found this to be quite the challenge!

After a while of google-ing without finding anything remotely appetizing or dessert-worthy, I resorted to scouring my many bent-up and flour-covered cookbooks....lo and behold MERINGUE!  No dairy, no flour (score!) and no nuts.  Lets just say, I did a little dance in my 6 x 8 foot kitchen :)

So here it is, from my no-name, wedding present, chocolate cookbook.....I don't think you can get much easier that this :)

- 3 large egg whites (or 1/3 cup plus 3 tbs of egg beaters)
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 tsp cream of tarter
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 cups chocolate chips (and there are some kinds without any dairy, believe it or not!)
- 2 cups coconut
- Cooking spray

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.  Beat the egg whites until they begin to get foamy, and then add the salt and the cream of tarter.  Continue beating until soft peaks form (when lifting up a spatula from the mixture, a peak forms that then flops over into a pretty little "Dairy Queen" curl, and then gradually add the sugar and vanilla.  Then beat until stiffer peaks form.  Using a spatula, fold in 1 1/2 cups of the chocolate chips and all of the coconut.

Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil and grease them with the cooking spray. Drop by small spoonfuls onto the sheets, leaving about 1 1/2 inches between cookies (they don't spread much).  I actually bought a small ice cream scooper for cookies like this - speeds up the process and keeps all of the cookies the same size so everything bakes evenly.  Use the remaining 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to press 3 or 4 chips into the batter of each cookie. 

Bake for 20 minutes until the edges get oh-so-slightly brown, and the top begins to crack.  Don't attempt to move cookies off the aluminum foil until they are completely cooled or they will crumble. 

These simple cookies were quite the success - no leftovers to take back home (sorry John!).  Who knew a dessert without butter could be so tasty???? 

Enjoy!

Aggression Cookies

Weird name, but quite a tasty cookie!  The wonderful molasses-sweet crunch of demerara sugar (also known as turbinado sugar, or "sugar in the raw") combined with the richness of rolled oats - plus you can snaz them up with whatever you have lying around the kitchen (I find that white chocolate chips taste wonderful in these cookies, but nuts or dried fruit could also work).  I have to say, I'm not much a fan of oatmeal raisin cookies mostly due to the raisin part, so these are quite a nice alternative. 

Oh, and in case you were wondering, they are called aggression cookies given that you can punch, smoosh, squeeze, smash, and take all your frustrations out on the dough in order to combine all the ingredients.  You can't over mix it!  Great for kids :)

- 1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
- 1 1/2 cups softened unsalted butter
- 3 cups old fashioned rolled oats
- 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 1/4 cups white chocolate chips
- about 1 cup demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine brown sugar, butter, oats, flour, baking soda, vanilla, salt, and white chocolate chips, if you desire.  Mix/mash/squish/punch with hands until all ingredients are combined.  

Form dough into small balls around 1 inch in diameter.  I find that using a small ice cream scoop works amazingly well for this, and makes the cookies identical in size so they cook evenly.

Pour around a cup of demerara sugar into a bowl (or substitute granulated if you can't find demerara sugar).  One-by-one, place a ball of cookie dough into the sugar, and press to flatten, until it's about 1/2 inch thick.  Flip the flattened dough and press to coat the other side of the cookie with sugar.  Place coated cookies onto parchment-lined cookie sheets, keeping at least 2 inches between the cookies - they spread!

Bake the cookies for about 12-15 minutes, based on your oven, until they turn slightly browned around the edges and flatten significantly.  Turn cookie sheets once in the middle of baking to ensure even baking.  Once done, let the cookies cool a few minutes on the baking sheet before you move them to a cooling rack or a paper towel-lined counter or else they will crumble everywhere - and then you will be forced to eat them :)

I think you'll find these to be quite the crowd-pleaser.  Enjoy!