Oreo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies

Have you ever been eating a chocolate chip cookie and thought to yourself, "You know what would go really well with this?  An Oreo!"?  Well, you should've.  It's fantastic.  Putting Oreos into other things is often delicious: cookies 'n' cream milkshakes/candy bars, deep fried Oreos, and, as it turns out, chocolate chip cookies with Oreos in the middle of them.  These are delicious and ridiculously decadent.  Each cookie has between 2 & 3 normal chocolate chip cookies' worth of dough around it, with an Oreo in the middle.  I ate half of one and now I have a sugar high.

picky-palate.com/2011/01/06/oreo-stuffed-chocolate-chip-cookies/

As usual, I halved the recipe; I only got 9 cookies out of it.  I also ran out of brown sugar, so I substituted white sugar + molasses.  I used half real Oreo cookies and half Simple Truth brand chocolate sandwich cookies (which are like Oreos but with an ingredient list that contains mostly things I'm familiar with).  The real Oreos got softer & squishier, while the Simple Truth cookies kept their shape a little more; if I hadn't eaten them side-by-side, I probably wouldn't have known the difference.  It's also possible that these differences are what happens when you eat one fresh out of the oven and one 15 minutes later (despite the knowledge that you'll probably feel sick after eating the second one -- to be fair, I only ate 1/2 of each).


1 stick butter, softened (half melted)
1/8 cup brown sugar
7/8 cup white sugar
1 tsp molasses
1 egg (or 1 egg substitute)
1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
5 oz chocolate chips
9 Oreos (give or take a few)

Mix everything but the Oreos together as if you were making normal chocolate chip cookies.  Take each Oreo and completely cover it with cookie dough.  Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes.

Italian Herb Bread

I love baking bread.  I get to squish dough.  It makes the whole apartment smell delicious.  It makes me feel like a real baker, and I can multitask while it's in progress.  My bread usually doesn't turn out spectacularly, but it's not bad.  This recipe turned out ridiculously well though; we ate half the loaf before it had even cooled.  It's soft, fluffy, with just enough herbs to be tasty but not overwhelming.  The crust is thin and not too crusty.  I think I'm getting the hang of the steps of making bread.

First, the recipe: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/italian-herb-bread-i/

Which I halved and tweaked into:

1 packet active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
1.5 tsp salt
1 tbsp Italian seasoning
1 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese (the dusty kind)
3/4 cup unbleached all purpose flour (I find this sometimes dries recipes out, so I didn't want to use too much)
2 cups bleached all purpose flour

I basically followed the instructions on the page, with a few tips I've learned from other bread attempts.  First, fill the bowl up with warm water then dump it out, so that when you pour the water + sugar + yeast into it, the bowl doesn't make it too cold.  Add the flour slowly -- after the first 2 cups or so, add it about 1/4 cup at a time, so you don't end up with too much.  As you knead it, you'll end up putting more into it to keep it from sticking to your hands.  I have a habit of pacing around the apartment while squishing the ball of dough, rather than kneading it on a counter top, which means I only have to worry about it sticking to my hands and not the counter.  Make sure you actually do roll the dough in the oil when you're leaving it to rise, or it'll get a gross dried-out outside that doesn't squish nicely back into the rest of the dough; same about remembering to dampen the towel.  I found that this bread flattened out a little after I shaped it into a loaf; I'd recommend making it into a ridiculous looking tall-and-skinny loaf so it ends up a little taller than mine did.  Super tasty bread!

Cinnamon rolls

Found this gem while browsing the baking subreddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Baking/comments/1ig2fl/mini_cinnamon_rolls_not_all_perfect_but_delicious/

I halved the recipe & it made 8 totally delicious cinnamon rolls.  They weren't hard at all to make.  I skipped the glaze -- I like icing better, and these were plenty decadent without it.  They also only needed about 8 minutes in the oven.  They were perfect when they were hot & fresh out of the oven; the filling gets a little crumbly once they cool, but it's still delicious.

Here's the recipe with instructions.

Dough:
2 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 tbsp butter, softened/melted
3/4 cup milk (I used almond milk and it was fine)

Filling:
4 tbsp butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar, packed
3 tsp cinnamon (+ a dash extra because it's delicious)

Combine all the dough ingredients in a bowl.  Spread the dough out in a rectangle-ish shape on a not sticky surface (I used a plastic cutting board).  If you're making the full recipe, you may want to make 2 rectangles instead.  Make the filling.  Spread it all over the dough, getting it as close to the edges as possible (especially the long edges -- you can leave a little bit of dough exposed on the short edges).  Roll up the dough into a tube (put the long edges with all the goo on them at the ends of the tube).  Slice the tube into whatever thickness you want your rolls to be (mine were about 3/4 inch, & I got 8 from the half recipe).  Bake at 400 for 8 minutes or until done looking.

Edit: If you're going to eat these after they cooled (I had 2 for breakfast and am snacking on the other 2 now), you could definitely get away with less filling, since it just crumbles all over the place and is super sugary.