2013 Super Bowl Desserts

It's that time of year again: the Super Bowl is upon us! With the commercials and a Beyonce halftime show, this year's event should make for an entertaining evening. In keeping with my personal tradition, I'll be baking some desserts to represent the teams. 

To be frank, when I heard that Baltimore made it to the Super Bowl, I was less than excited. While I'm not a huge football fan, I grew up in Cleveland and the infamous Art Modell moved the Cleveland Browns to Baltimore for the 1996 football season. That left our fair city without a football team until 1999. To say that Cleveland is still bitter is an understatement. At least we got to keep our team name, colors, team records, etc. Needless to say, I'll be cheering for San Francisco this Sunday.

Top left: Fortune cookie recipe from Martha Stewart
Top right: Gold dipped fortune cookies from Cake Appreciation Society
Bottom: Dipped and sprinkled fortune cookies from Share Dessert Company

To get back to the desserts, when I heard that San Francisco would be playing, two desserts came to mind immediately: fortune cookies and chocolate. My family visited San Francisco several years ago and we stopped by a fortune cookie factory. According to the NY Times (and Wikipedia), fortune cookies were "introduced by the Japanese, popularized by the Chinese, but ultimately ... consumed by Americans." You could go the Martha Stewart route and bake fortune cookies from scratch. Or you could go the easy route and decorate store-bought fortune cookies with edible glitter or team-colored sprinkles.

As for the chocolate, Ghirardelli is an obvious choice. Bake anything with Ghirardelli and you're golden. Maybe dip some fortune cookies in Ghirardelli chocolate!

Top left: Berger cookie recipe from Blue-Eyed Bakers
Top right and bottom: Berger cookie feature in The Washington Post

Another reason I was hesitant for Baltimore to make it to the Super Bowl is that I didn't know if they had a signature dessert. Seafood: yes. Dessert: I was hoping it wasn't a Maryland crab cupcake. Fortunately, Baltimore is home to the decadent Berger Cookie. It's a vanilla cookie dunked in chocolate ganache. DUNKED!

So my Noodles started thinking, what if this year I combined the cities into one dessert? Bake the uber-delicious Berger cookie and dunk it in a ganache made with Ghirardelli chocolate? Sounds like the perfect game plan to me!

Don't forget to wash down your Super Bowl treats with a little craft beer! San Francisco has all sorts of good beer to enjoy. Anchor Brewing and Lagunitas should be pretty accessible. While there are microbrews available in the Baltimore area, I'm going to suggest Flying Dog. They're in Maryland and an hour outside of Baltimore. Plus, their labels are pretty entertaining.

What are you bringing to this year's Super Bowl party?
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Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

AKA...John's favorite cookie.

Last week, John was in Kentucky for the Appalachia Service Project with our parish. With an 8 or 9 hour drive from Chicago, I knew they would need some treats. Sure, they already had two passenger vans worth of snacks, but there's always room for something made with love :) 

Plus, I have a little history of baking these cookies for John. While dating in college, he went on the March for Life with a group from SLU. Not one to pass up an opportunity to bake, and show my affection, I sent a batch of cookies with him to Washington, DC.

Which is one of my not-so-secret secrets to a happy relationship: Small, unexpected gestures to show your love for the other person.

Be that surprising them by baking their favorite cookies. Picking up a 6-pack of their favorite hard to find beer. Or just making dinner and cleaning up the dishes so he or she can relax after a long day.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
From a package of Sun-Maid raisins

Ingredients
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup milk
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon (or a little more if you're like me)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups quick or old fashioned oats
1 cup raisins

Directions
Preheat oven to 350*.

Beat butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, milk, egg and vanilla until light and fluffy.

Stir together flour, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. Use a whisk to make sure they're combined properly.

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix well.

Stir in oats and raisins. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets. I like to line mine with parchment paper for easy clean up.

Bake 12 to 15 minutes, until golden at the edges but still a little undercooked-looking on top.

Remove from cookie sheets and cool on wire racks.
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2012 Super Bowl Desserts

It's that time of year again! Time for hilarious commercials, more snacks than you can imagine, a hopefully decent halftime show, and oh, right some football! The Super Bowl is this weekend and I'm pretty excited about the festivities! 

In keeping with my personal tradition, I'll be baking some desserts to represent the teams.

In recent years, I baked cupcakes based on each city's culinary specialties. My favorite being Super Bowl XLIV (2010)'s match-up between New Orleans and Indianapolis. I baked Banana foster cupcakes for New Orleans. And a Midwest favorite, chocolate peanut butter, for Indianapolis. I also made peanut butter banana and chocolate with vanilla buttercream. I was especially proud of the logos made with melted chocolate piped on waxed paper.

I might challenge myself for Super Bowl XLVI by breaking away from the cupcakes. Boston is know for its Boston Cream Pie and New York has its New York Cheesecake. Neither of these desserts are easy to enjoy while watching commercials the football game, so I have another plan.

Banana Cream Pie Cookies by forgivingmartha via Eat Live Run for the New England Patriots.

And Cheesecake Pops by Bakerella for the New York Giants.

If desserts aren't your thing, I have a few suggestions for apps from my arsenal:

• Guacamole
• Spinach Balls
• Fresh hummus with pita chips and veggies
• Chips and salsa

To top it off, don't forget your craft beer! Sam Adams for New England (obviously) and Brooklyn Brewery for New York.

What are you bringing to this year's Super Bowl party?

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Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I considered writing about plumbing today, but with Christmas right around the corner, it didn't seem right. Instead, I'm indulging in visions of Christmas cookies! I'm sure you're busy baking. Or getting ready to devour said cookies!

These aren't exactly traditional Christmas cookies, but I don't care because they're my ultimate favorite. Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. Or rather, peanut butter cookies with seasonal M&M's. If it's Christmas, they're made with red and green. If it's Valentine's Day, they're pink, red, and white. If it's Easter or around my birthday, they're in pastels.

The love of these cookies is similar to John's family's love of guacamole. You can count on them at every holiday.

You would think I would have this recipe memorized by now, but I don't. I have to pull out the recipe copied from my Mom's collection of recipes. As you can tell from my cookbook, I've used this page several times. And to prove my love of these cookies, this is the first recipe copied into my cookbook.

These cookies were also regulars in college care packages. A friend was visiting my roommate one year and she started calling them [redacted] cookies since my last name was written on the Tupperware container they were sent in. When my old roommate got married this summer, I was sure to bring [redacted] cookies to the bachelorette party.

M&M's aren't the only substitution you can make. You can use chocolate chunks instead of chocolate chips. I've had success with crunchy peanut butter instead of creamy peanut butter. Finally, you can mix up the cake mix used in the recipe, but I'm a purist and stick with white.

As for the yield of 6 dozen cookies, I think that's only if you make minature cookies. And who wants that? Not this kid :) I got about 3.5 dozen out of this batch. My bake time was 12 minutes per batch.

How about you? Favorite Christmas cookie? Or year-round cookie?


Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 6 dozen

Note: I also like to use seasonal colored M & M’s in place of the chocolate chips

Ingredients
2 eggs
1/3 c water
1/4 c butter
1 c peanut butter
1 package yellow, devils food, or white cake mix (I prefer white)
12 oz chocolate chips (2 cups or ~1.5 cups M&M's)

Directions
Heat oven to 375 degrees.

Beat eggs, water, butter, peanut butter, and half of the cake mix until smooth. Stir in remaining cake mix and chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls (let's be honest, tablespoonfuls) about 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets (I’ll use parchment paper).

Bake 9 - 12 minutes depending on your oven and the size of your cookies.
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Pour Some Sugar on Cookies

Hopefully by the time you read this post, I will have finally started my Christmas baking. It seems like the oven isn't completely out of commission. We used it on Tuesday night and it seemed to work just fine without the outer glass panel. The panel appears to be decorative and used as a counterweight for the oven door. The inner window is still intact and everything is properly insulated.

So back to more important things. Christmas cookies! John had previously requested sugar cookies with colored sugar sprinkled on the top. I wasn't about to shell out the big bucks for tiny containers of red and green sugar. And you shouldn't either since you probably have everything you need to make your own. Or if you don't, the supplies will still cost you less than the little tubes of colored sugar. It's also perfect if you want to make custom colors.


(Yes, another gratuitous picture with the Christmas tree)

 Ingredients
-White sugar
-Liquid food coloring (I used McCormick, nothing fancy)

Directions
-Pour some sugar in a plastic bag.
-Drip some liquid food coloring on the sugar in your color of choice. Try two or so drops at a time.
-Zip up the bag and shake vigorously for about 1 minute. Also try squishing and kneading the bag with your fingers to get the color evenly distributed.
-Adjust color with additional food coloring and repeat if the color is too light.

I made about a half cup of red sugar using approximately 8 drops. A half cup of green sugar needed about 5 drops of food coloring.

Then you can decorate cookies (or cupcakes) to your heart's content :)

What's your favorite Christmas cookie?
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