French Macarons

Not to be confused with coconut macaroons.

Have you ever seen these little cookies? I think they are becoming trendy. Maybe they'll be the next fad. Like cake pops. But better.

Max and I first tried macarons last year when I bought a box of them from a local French cafe. We were instant fans. We have been wanting to try making some for awhile, but I'd heard they are tricky. So we studied up a little before attempting to make them.

I don't know what all the potential pitfalls are, but I thought they were actually fairly easy. Our batter came together just fine, and piping them onto the pan was easy enough (although messy). I have large tube cake decorating tips, but I imagine you could just cut the corner off of a zip lock bag and that would work fine.

We did have one problem when it came to baking. Our first pan of cookies, baked on a dark teflon coated pan, came out perfectly. Our second and third pans, light-colored aluminum pans, came out gooey and we couldn't get all of them off the pans without destroying them. We cooked them longer, but I think we still didn't cook them long enough. They looked set, but they sank as they cooled. So make sure you wait till they are brown around the bottom edges. Next time, we'll err on the side of overcooking instead of undercooking our cookies.

If you're interested in trying them, these are helpful resources.

Demystifying Macarons (PDF -- Includes recipe we used)
Joanne Chang demonstrates (YouTube)




We added lemon zest to our batter and made lemon buttercream frosting and lemon cream cheese frosting to go on them. I preferred the lemon cream cheese frosting because it wasn't quite as sweet. I also tried using some leftover chocolate ganache frosting I had in the fridge and it went together surprisingly well. I think some kind of a raspberry frosting filling would have been fantastic. Maybe we'll try that next time.

There are so many flavor possibilities with macarons that I can't wait to try them again!

Danielle's Baked Sugar Cookies

I would've make these cookies when the recipe came up originally but I had just made sugar cookies with a different recipe. I haven't made sugar cookies again until yesterday. Actually, Max made them, but I can review them.

I thought the cookies tassted pretty good, but I thought they were a little too soft. They tended to fall apart. Max and I also agreed that they needed more sugar. I know a lot of people don't like their cut-out cookies to be too sweet because you're just going to put frosting on them, but we say bring on the sweetness. I mean, they are sugar cookies. I think a sugar cookie should be sweet enough to eat on its own without the frosting.

The dough was a little difficult to work with the first time we tried. We chilled ours for somewhere between three and four hours, and it got too soft by the time we had the dough rolled out and cut. We had a hard time getting them on the cookie sheet. However, Max made another batch today after the dough had chilled overnight and he said they were a lot easier to work with.

As you can see in the picture, we didn't made the lemon glaze frosting. We like traditional, butter and powdered sugar frosting. To us, sugar cookies just aren't real sugar cookies without a big thick layer of thick sugary frosting.

This was a decent sugar cookie recipe, but I think I'll stick with my other recipe that is my current favorite.

Cami's Monster Cookies

I've been a huge fan of monster cookies for a few years now. I used to dislike peanut butter but somehow I started to like it when I was pregnant with Calder. I think this is a good recipe, but honestly I didn't follow the recipe like I should have. I was moving a few days after making it and I thought it would be a good way to get rid of some oatmeal and other things in the cupboards. I ended up not having enough oatmeal so I added more flour. I had fewer M&Ms so I added more chocolate chunks. They turned out great and tasted amazing. I brought them with us to visit family and they've been a hit. I will definitely make these again. Maybe I'll even use the real recipe next time.

Danielle's Monster Cookies

This recipe makes a TON! I baked about a dozen good-sized cookies, and I still have a large tupperware full of dough in the fridge. But it seems like the dough will keep well in the fridge/freezer so this batch will last us awhile.

These are very tasty cookies. I was a little skeptical when I read the recipe, but they came out really well. The texture of the cookie is just like I like it -- a little crispy on the outside (although they didn't really stay crispy) but chewy in the middle. And I love the oats, peanut butter, and chocolate together.

Max thinks these would be better with just M&Ms (replacing the chocolate chips with M&Ms), but I don't really care if it's chocolate chips or M&Ms as long as there's plenty of chocolate! I personally like chocolate chips because I can buy better quality chocolate, but one advantage of the M&Ms is that they don't melt and spread all over.

I baked a few cookies before I chilled the dough because I'm usually not patient enough to wait for dough to be chilled. The non-chilled cookies didn't have as uniform of a shape, but I didn't think there was any noticeable difference between the chilled and un-chilled dough. So if you can't wait, you can definitely get away with baking these before you chill the dough.

With the batches I made with chilled dough, I smashed the cookies down with a spatula about halfway through baking because the cookies were not spreading. I wanted bigger flatter cookies instead of big tall mounded cookies.

Classic Sugar Cookies

This week's recipe is the Classic Sugar Cookies on page 148. I love sugar cookies. These were simple and easy to make. They are a nice, chewy cookie with a delicious lemon glaze. A lot of sugar cookie recipes make a ton and I get so tired of cutting out shapes. This was the perfect amount of dough.

Recipe notes: I didn't want to wait 4 hours for the dough to cool in the fridge so I put it in the freezer for about an hour. I think they turned out great. I did as the recipe suggested and piped the frosting with a small tip. If you don't have a piping bag you can just use a gallon size baggie and cut a hole in the corner.

Melanie W.'s Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these today and just finished cooking them about 15 minutes ago, and I've already eaten at least five. Oops! Cookies sure are good warm though!!

Taking into consideration the other experiences, I made a few modifications to mine and I ended up having the opposite experience as LuAnn and Danielle! I thought the dough was ok but not the best, and my cookies didn't go flat! I wanted to make sure they wouldn't go flat, so I did some google research and found some helpful tips. Keep reading and I'll share the secrets to my success!

From what I read, the temperature of the butter and dough is super important. You need it to stay cold. The recipes said to use softened butter, but I used cold butter straight from the fridge. I also bought expensive butter imported from Ireland, mostly just to try it, and I don't think I'll ever do that again. I don't think it enhanced the flavor at all. Anyway, I creamed the cold butter with the sugars using a hand mixer- this way you have more control over how much the butter is creamed. You don't want to overcream the butter! What I read said blend a little, mash the butter with the beaters, blend a little, and it's ok if there are still a few lumps of butter. Then I stuck the creamed butter/sugar back in the fridge for 10 minutes to make sure it stayed cold.

I made sure my eggs were cold straight from the fridge. Make sure you blend them one at a time, thoroughly.

I added 2 Tbsp. extra flour. This also helps the cookies keep their fluff.

Make sure you don't over mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Mix just until blended. I used my stand mixer for the eggs, vanilla, and dry ingredients, then hand mixed the chocolate chips.

I used less chocolate chips than called for, only 12 oz. Too many chocolate chips can cause more spreading.

I chilled the dough for the full 6 hours. (This seemed a bit excessive, but I did what they said.)

I chilled my cookie sheets. Supposedly warm cookie sheets can cause the dough to spread faster. Honestly, I don't think this made much of a difference. It seemed like as soon as I took the cookie sheets out of the refrigerator they warmed up to room temp anyway.

I have an oven thermometer and I made sure the oven temp was exactly 375.

While I was waiting for batches to cook, I kept the remaining dough in the fridge so it would stay cold.

All in all, something I did worked and the cookies turned out nice. They were slightly crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, and not overly browned. I don't think this is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe- they taste like a lot of others, but they were good.

Ok, this is pretty cheesy because it's just like the picture in the book, but I was having fun with my camera. :)

Danielle's Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these a couple of months ago.

Like LuAnn said, this recipe makes the most delicious cookie dough! A good portion of mine got eaten as dough as well.

I made them at night and it was too late to chill the dough if I was going to get to eat any. So I made some that night and then put the rest of the dough in the fridge. Both ways I made them (chilled and not chilled), the cookies spread quite a bit and were pretty flat. The chilled dough didn't spread as much, but they were still flat cookies.

I don't mind a flat cookie, but I didn't like that the cookies browned so much. Was that just my oven or is it the dough? If anyone else makes them, let me know if you had the same experience. I kept thinking they were burning but they didn't look set yet. Even though they were pretty brown, they stayed chewy, but I still didn't really like the flavor they got from being so browned.

I can't really say why, but I thought the cookies tasted better the day after I made them.

Overall, these were tasty, but this won't be my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. I might make it again some day, but these won't replace my favorite recipe.