Caramel Filled Chocolate Cookies

These are some of my favorite cookies, I am in the mood for some and couldn't believe that the recipe hadn't been posted yet, so here it is:

 Caramel Filled Chocolate Cookies Ingredients:

1 Cup butter, softened
1 Cup white Sugar
1 Cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour (May need more, the dough will be sticky and adding more flour helps reduce that sticky-ness and doesn’t seem to “ruin” the cookies)
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
48 chocolate-covered caramel candies (aka rolos, this is one bag)

 Beat butter until creamy, gradually beat in sugars, add eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, soda, and cocoa. Slowly add flour mixture to butter mixture. Cover and chill at least 2 hours (this does not necessarily need to be done, does help some though.) Preheat oven to 375º Make a ball of dough, I use a small ice cream/cookie scoop, and insert an unwrapped rolo into it, I have found a bit of oil on your hands helps this is sticky dough, and roll it around between your palms to cover the candy, and then place on a baking sheet (parchment paper has become a friend to me for making cookies) and bake in the oven for 8 minutes, let cool 3 to 4 more minutes before removing to wire racks.

Layla Made Crepes.

For dinner Last night, we had some Crepes, and Layla helped. It has been awhile since I had made them and looked up a recipe and used this one from Allrecipes.com I will type it out also, just cause I can:
1 1/2 cups Flour
1 Tbs sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
sift/mix these well, then add the liquids
2 cups milk
2 Tbs melted butter,(I used vegetable oil)
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla
Now mix it all till a nice smooth runny batter.
You will need a heated skillet, or a crepe pan, I don't have one so I use a cast iron, also in the past have used a square electric skillet and that has worked well easy to maneuver. take about a 1/4 cup amount of batter and put in the skillet and with a nice circular twisty wrist action motion let the batter coat the skillet. Then let it cook for a little bit, this part take some practice, depending on the heat it may go faster but when the edges look dry, this will make sense if you try it, I like to peek and check to see how brown it is and flip when it is the desired color, now cook the other side to how you like it.
You can fill this with whatever you want.
And Layla helped and so this is what you really want to see:

Oh, look what I made, Egg in the nest Extremely good.

Okay, I am super lazy and here is a link. Egg in the nest recipe.

Spooky Dirt.

This is a perfect Halloween recipe for a group party thingy. (Modified from a Dirt Dessert Recipe  aka How I done it.)

So to start get your ingredients ready:

2 packages of cream cheese, 8 oz each(softened)
1 cup powdered confectioners sugar
3 boxes pudding, vanilla or chocolate (I use chocolate)
4 cups Milk
16 oz or so Whipped topping (thawed, the amount is variable, it used to come in 12oz, now 8oz, I used two.)
Chocolate sandwich cookies (you know, Oreo cookies, real or fake doesn't really matter) I buy more than one package just in case.
Vienna Finger Cookies or something similar
Black Frosting
Little zombie candies(optional)

The first thing I did was to cream up the cream cheese in the stand mixer, then I measured the powdered sugar and added it. I let that go until it is nice and smoothe, stopping to scrape the paddle and bowl as needed. Next in a separate bowl mix the 3 boxes of pudding with the 4 cups of milk,(this is thicker than the directions of 2 cups of milk per box) and then add it to the cream cheese sugar mixture and let it get well blended.
Next we need to crumble up the chocolate cookies, I did this in the food processor and it works nice for that. In the container you will serve this in, I used for this a 97 cent foil pan from Walmart you could do it as a trifle or in just about any thing, put a layer of cookie crumbs down.
Now is the time to add the whipped topping to the pudding mixture fold it in till completely, perfectly mixed. Then decide how many layers you want, to be easy you can just add half of the pudding mixture to the dish, then a layer of half of the remaining crumbs, then remaining pudding, then top with crumbs. But I do nothing simple and this makes plenty of creamy goodness that I had 3 or 4 layers, and comes in the reason I have extra cookies on hand because it is hard to divide in thirds or fourths or whatever it was and I always short the top layer of cookie crumbs, so I went back to the processor and threw in more cookies to fill in where the pudding was showing.
Now is the Halloweenery part, I wanted to make this take on a cemetery look if you couldn't tell, and so I found vienna finger cookies that I think look a little like headstones and divided them and scraped out the filling with a knife (not licking them Like I think my wife thought I did) and using a toothpick and some black decorating frosting we had on hand I wrote, R I P, you could probably get more creative with this like writing R U Dead or something, but I couldn't think of anything like that at the time, and had a hard enough time writing with a toothpick that , R I P, was plenty for me.
Now you can place the "tombstones" in any pattern you want, but I had also some zombie patch kid candies I wanted to appear to be leaving the ground and walking to the front for some reason so I left an isle. And if you place the cookies in a differing heights and angles it will look more like an old spooky Cemetery.
You don't necessarily have to decorate this like this, I usually do not, but I made it for a party in October, and couldn't help my self.
*note this is being posted by me both here and at my personal family blog

Chicken Lip Empanadas!

Well I just posted a recipe at our family blog, and then thought, I should have put it here so here is the link.
http://ginnyandrick.blogspot.com/2012/04/chicken-lip-empanadas.html

Deliciousness in a mug!

For starters, I found this on the internet, unfortunately I have no memory of where. I wrote it on paper by hand and then tried it later. It is yummmmmmy.

Nutella Mug Cake

1/4 cup self-rising flour *
1/4 cup sugar (regular white granulated sugar)
1 egg
3 TBSP cocoa powder
3 TBSP Nutella
3 TBSP milk
3 TBSP oil

Mix all ingredients well in a mug (extra tall mug works best **)

Microwave for 1 1/2 to 3 minutes - in our microwave it works best at 2 minutes, start with 1 1/2 minutes and check it if it is still not done, add 30 seconds at a time until done.

If you want you can add whipped cream on top. We tried it with and with out, personally I like without better.


* To make self-rising flour: for each 1 cup of all-purpose flour add 1/2 TBSP baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt - mix well, keep in a container to use as needed.

** If you only have regular-sized mugs, just place a plate under the mug so you can still eat the parts that overflow. It will look like a volcano of Nutella cake!


Enjoy!!!

Yummy Chocolate Chip Cookies

From the kitchen of Abby Schlag

1 1/2 cup butter (softened)
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp vanilla
2 eggs
6 cup flour {recipe actually originally has 4 cups, but Abby told mee-Marcia-to add more, and after trial and error, I came to 6 cups.}
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
4 cup (2 bags) chocolate chips

Cream: butter, sugars, vanilla, and eggs.

Add flour, soda, and salt (it will be very dry and crumbly like)
Add chocolate chips (Marcia does this by hand [I suggest maybe a robot]){Marcia likes to use one bag semi-sweet and one bag milk-chocolate}

Marcia flattens out dough by hand on parchment paper and then cuts it into equal sized portions. Bake as many ad you want and freeze the rest, so you can bake as many as you want later.

350* for 11-13 minutes {Marcia discovered that it really turns out to her liking best when sticking to only 12 minutes, allow 10 minutes to sit on the cookie sheet before moving unless you intend to eat right out of the oven, but after 10 minutes, they are still warm}

Makes about 6 dozen


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone[iPod actually, and I only added the stuff in brackets and am posting this because nobody else would and I just recieved it in the mail today finnally and I make no claim to it and do not know who Abby is and if you are Abby thanks for the recipe.