More cookies! More mugs!
June 24, 2023 12:26 PM
Remember my cookie in a mug post that I made a couple of months ago? Well, I still had some milk left over from another recipe, and even though this cookie requires no milk, it's pretty tasty to eat it with a glass of milk.
The last time I made this, I concluded that the wider the mug, the better. So I took out my huge Borgata mug, and I made the cookie in it. I cooked it for just 40 seconds, and then I even took it out and put it on a plate so it wouldn't keep cooking inside of the warm mug.
It was really good! I feel like this recipe is a winner! The bottom of the cookie was actually a tad undercooked, so I don't think I needed to take it out of the mug, but slightly undercooked cookies are pretty tasty in my opinion. I even made it two more times this past week!
When I went to make the cookie a second time this week, I realized that I had left my container of sugar at my boyfriend's place, so I ended up making this with brown sugar and powdered sugar. It wasn't bad, but I think white sugar is better here. I knew I could get by without the white sugar, but you know what, it's okay to have extra sugar. I know I'll use up the sugar eventually. It's not like it's expired chocolate syrup that's been sitting in my fridge for over 5 years.
So...I bought more sugar. And then I thought, let me switch things up and make a cake in a mug instead. Using the powdered sugar reminded me of the cinnamon swirl mug cake that I've made in the past, and I had a tiny bit of milk left, which is perfect for a little mug cake.
I just bought one of those bags of sugar from Aldi, which seemed perfectly fine, but later that day I noticed that there were grains of...something on my living room floor, and when I went to inspect it I realized it was the sugar. Huh. I went to pour the sugar from the paper bag into my sugar container and then I saw it. There was a hole in the bottom. 😱
It's fine though, I just had a bunch of sweeping to do, and I should probably do another sweep later.
Also, I started making the mug cake, and I realized it doesn't even call for white sugar! 🙃 It's just brown sugar and powdered sugar. Why did I buy extra sugar?!
...to make the cookie a third time. That's why. I'll never get tired of desserts in mugs.
Cookie in a mug
April 15, 2023 2:35 PM
I've made plenty of cakes in a mug before, but a few weeks ago I saw a video for a chocolate chip cookie in a mug. I love desserts in mugs! And I love chocolate chip cookies! I had to try it. And then I had to try it again. And again. And again.
Hey, I really like making meals for one. I can just keep iterating!
Attempt 1: The first one that I made actually didn't turn out so well. I used one of those Corelle mugs, and I found that it was a little too narrow. After cooking it in the microwave for a minute, it still seemed undercooked. So I cooked it a little longer. It still seemed undercooked, but when I started to eat it, I realized that the middle was way overcooked.
It was also way too sweet. I bought a milk chocolate bar and just crushed that into little pieces, but I definitely should have just gotten a bag of the classic semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Okay, so not great, but I could make adjustments. The video said to use a shorter, wider mug, and I just happened to have this cute little mug as free swag from work.
Attempt 2: Apart from the switch in mug, I also used less sugar. I bought a bag of dark chocolate chips, and I cut the brown sugar down to just a tablespoon.
Just coming out of the microwave, this looked much better. The top wasn't too goopy, and it settled into a nice cookie texture after I let it cool for a few minutes. But the middle was still really hard! I think 60 seconds was a little too long.
The sweetness level was good though, but I think it was a little too chocolate chip-y for me. I still didn't have the semi-sweet chips, and I also think using mini sized chips would have been better. (But I wasn't going to buy another bag of chocolate chips)
Attempt 3: Alright, this time I only cooked it for 50 seconds, and that definitely helped! I also only mixed a single tablespoon of chocolate chips (as opposed to two in my earlier attempts), but I still added a few on top once I had mixed everything together. Much much better cookie to chocolate chip ratio this time. But man, I need a better strategy for not overcooking.
Attempt 4: This time I cooked it for 45 seconds (but I really should have done 40), and then once I let it cool for a couple of minutes, I pulled it out of the mug and put it on a plate. I figured that being in the warm mug just kept cooking it longer, so I wanted to prevent that. I think it helped! And it allowed me to take a slightly different looking picture, which is a plus.
My latest attempt was certainly my best attempt yet, but it was still overcooked in the middle! I think I'll have to try something completely different for my next attempt. Maybe I'll use a much bigger mug.
For now, I'm going to take a break though. This recipe called for an egg yolk, so every time I made it, I accumulated an egg white. By the end of the week, I decided to just cook all the egg white and eat it with rice and some soy sauce. Honestly? It was pretty good. I just really like eggs.
Sweet things
March 26, 2023 11:10 PM
If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know that I'm not really a baker, or even just a person who makes desserts. I don't even make simple things like chocolate chip cookies or box brownies. But in my quest to get rid of everything in my pantry, I've hit the point where I have to start going through all my baking ingredients.
So I think it's finally time to start conquering my fear of dough.
Uhh, not bread dough though. Let's start with cookie dough. Can you believe that I had never made chocolate chip cookies from scratch before?! My sister has her own special recipe that everyone in my family uses, and they make cookies all the time. So I never really felt the need to make my own cookies. But I had some leftover chocolate chips from the last time my sister visited me and I wanted to use them up.
I looked into a few different chocolate chip cookie recipes, and I settled on the one from The Novice Chef. It seemed easy enough. I only really had about 1/2 a cup of chocolate chips, so I cut the recipe in half (except for the egg because I'm not about to just use half an egg). As I went to for the cookie dough balls on the baking sheet, it was kind of a mess. I have no idea how I was supposed to roll it up into a ball. It was all sticky so I just ended up plopping messy mounds of cookie dough onto the sheet. I was a little worried when I put them into the oven, but they turned out okay!
Just okay. Not amazing. I'll have to try a different recipe next time. Maybe my sister's?
So, I've made pancakes plenty of times before, but I usually stick to oven pancakes, because I find them so easy and convenient. I decided to try some more traditional pancakes though. I had some leftover ricotta from the various pasta dishes I've made recently, and I wanted to try ricotta pancakes, since the idea of them sounded so intriguing.
And man, it was a lot of work. And the pancakes turned out...also okay. I don't even think it quite makes sense for me to include them in a post about "sweet things" since they weren't that sweet and I didn't have any maple syrup, but whatever. I just sprinkled sugar on top of them as I was eating them. Close enough. I'll stick to the cinnamon swirl oven pancakes next time.
I'm realizing that I could have titled this post "things that involved a hand mixer" and I guess baking and hand mixers just go hand-in-hand! (thanks sister for being the reason I even own one in the first place!)
Anyway, I was browsing facebook when I saw a recipe for some really simple no-churn ice cream, and I thought it looked so good so I saved it. This Oreo ice cream only calls for three ingredients, and I already had some sweetened condensed milk!
This one actually turned out really well! It definitely has an extra creamy taste to it, which is different from most ice cream I get from the store, but I liked it a lot!
Finally, the only dessert I (used to) know how to make. Delicious as always. And I will keep making it at least a few more times, just to get through my expired cocoa powder.
