Coconut Cream Pudding Cookies with Toffee & White Chocolate Chips

I must admit, I arrived a little late to the game, when it comes to pudding cookies.  I have seen recipes involving pudding circulating the blogosphere and Pinterest for awhile now, but had yet to try them until this past February.  That is when I spotted the strawberry creme pudding at the grocery store and knew that I just had to make a cookie out of it!  And they were crazy delicious and, despite the horrific pictures I took, have become one of the most popular recipes on my blog!  After the success of those cookies, I knew it was only a matter of time until I tried more delicious combinations.  

I am also new to the incredible world of coconut cream.  Growing up, my only exposure to coconut was an Almond Joy candy bar...and I am not a fan at all!  So I have always kind of avoided the stuff.  However, a couple of months ago, my friend Tatum brought a coconut cream pie to a church activity and I took a small piece, just to give it a taste.  Well one taste was all it took and I was hooked!  I chose the coconut cream pie over the Oreo and Reese's pies!  There isn't much I would take over either peanut butter or cookies and cream, so that is big for me.  I fell in love with the flavor of coconut cream!  So when I saw coconut cream pudding the other day, I could not wait to create a delicious cookie with it!  I couldn't be happier with how these turned out!  Now I must admit, they don't taste like that incredible coconut cream pie I tasted months ago.  However, the pudding gives them an incredible flavor and makes them moist and delicious!  Two of my most favorite things in the world are toffee and white chocolate, so there was no doubt they were going into these things!  Oh these are good!  I want a batch right this minute!  Too bad its almost 11 o'clock at night...I guess I will settle for a bowl of cheesecake ice-cream...that's better right?!

                               

Coconut Cream Pudding Cookies with Toffee & White Chocolate Chips

1 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

3.4 ounce package coconut cream pudding

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2-1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 cups white chocolate chips

1/2-3/4 cup toffee chips 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare baking sheets by spraying with non-stick cooking spray or lining with parchment or baking mat.  In a medium bowl, combine the butter and sugars.  Mix until fluffy and add eggs one at a time, mixing between each addition.  Add vanilla and pudding and mix well.  

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.  Add it to the pudding mixture and mix until well combined.  Stir in the white chocolate and toffee chips.  Drop by rounded tablespoon onto the prepared pans and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, being careful not to over bake.  

Recipe Source:  The Unsophisticated Kitchen

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Chocolate Lover's Dream Cookies

It has been nearly another week since my last post!  Am I the only one that ever feels like life is impossible to catch up on?!  I know I'm not, but for some reason right now that is where I am at.  I can't seem to get my head on straight lately!  And time is just flying by!  I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but my husband is graduating from dental school next month and we are moving our little family clear across the country to Chattanooga, Tennessee!  We are super excited about this new adventure we are about to embark on, but also really overwhelmed at what it takes to make a move of this magnitude!  We are also really sad to be leaving this city in Arizona that we have made our home.  Needless to say the next 8 weeks of life are going to be full of stress, anxiety and lots of other emotions.  To get me through this phase, I am going to need lots of sugary, rich desserts...just like these chocolate lover's dream cookies.  These are delicious little morsels of chocolatey goodness!  As the name implies, they are chalk full of chocolate...a base that delightfully tastes like a chewy brownie,  dotted with chunks of my personal favorite, white chocolate chips and then of course, semi-sweet (or in my case, milk chocolate) chips as well!  Perfect!  It took me about 10 cookies, before I realized that these were infinitely better when dipped in a cold glass of milk!  They were super easy to throw together and are literally a chocolate lover's dream cookie! 

Chocolate Lover's Dream Cookies

6 Tablespoons canola oil
1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup baking cocoa
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup vanilla or white chocolate chips
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips (I used 1/2 milk chocolate and 1/2 semisweet & loved the result)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, beat the oil, butter and sugars until well blended.  Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Beat in vanilla.  Combine the flour, cocoa and baking powder in a medium bowl; gradually add to oil mixture and mix well.   Stir in both kinds of chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto greased baking sheets or baking mat.  Bake for 12-15 minutes or until edges begin to brown.  Do not over bake!  Cool for 1 minute before removing from pans to wire racks to finish cooling.

Recipe Source:  Taste of Home

I am linking up at these great parties!

PS...How was your Easter?!  Ours was fantastic!  We attended church, had friends over for dinner and dessert, and just spent time together as a family.  It was a really nice weekend for us!  Though this has nothing to do with food, other than the fact that Easter is a day to eat an amazingly delicious meal, I had to share this picture of my sweet kids in their Easter best!  My 2 year old is a bit of a stinker and REFUSED to let me take a good picture of her, so this one featuring her non-smiling glare, is literally the best one I got!  I hope your Easter was as good as ours!

Peanut Butter-Banana Whoopie Pies

My family has been hit majorly hard with a bug this past week!  I was sick the entire time we were in Disneyland!  We have been home for days and I still can't kick this thing!  I was even stuck in bed on my birthday for the whole day!  I didn't even have the strength to make myself a cake!  It was a sad sad way to enter the last year of my 20's!  I guess I will just have to find another excuse to make a decadent and yummy dessert!  Anyways, this sickness has caused me to be useless in about every facet of life right now...except laying on the couch and ingesting rather large amounts of popsicles...I've got that down okay.  I have not cooked a real meal for my family in what seems like an eternity!  I'm hoping to get back to that tomorrow.  So for tonight I will leave you with these delightful little whoopie pies that I baked up several weeks ago.  I think peanut butter and banana are a match made in heaven and these combine both flavors perfectly.  This was my first experience with whoopie pies and I thought they were a pretty fun little treat to throw together, and I'm excited to try out many more combinations!  Enjoy!

Peanut Butter-Banana Whoopie Pies

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup mashed ripe banana
1/2 cup buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Filling:
1 package (8 ounce) cream cheese, softened
1 cup creamy peanut butter
3 Tablespoon butter, softened
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Additional confectioners' sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.  In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  In a small bowl, combine banana and buttermilk.  Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda.  Gradually add to creamed mixture alternately with banana mixture.  Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets.  Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until set.  Cool for 2 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely.  For filling, in a large bowl, beat cream cheese, peanut butter and butter until fluffy.  Beat in confectioners' sugar and vanilla until smooth.  Spread filling on the bottoms of half of the cookies, about 1 Tablespoon on each.  Top with remaining cookies.    Dust with additional confectioners' sugar.  Store in the refrigerator.  I would suggest removing pies from the fridge about 10 minutes before consuming. They are much more delicious when closer to room temperature than cold.

Recipe Source:  Taste of Home

I am linking up at these great parties!

Strawberry Creme Pudding Cookies

As mentioned in my last post for the Strawberry Cream Pie, I am sharing 2 more amazing and perfect for Valentine's Day desserts this week.  Before I get started on the recipe for these sweet little cookies, I must first publicly acknowledge the atrocity of these pictures.  I was off my game that day...big time.  I tried about a million different set-ups (poses doesn't seem like the right word when you are talking about cookies), but I just couldn't get the lighting (or anything) right with these!  It was putting my frustration level at an incredible high.  Now, I understand there is a an easy fix to that...make the cookies again and start over with the photo shoot.  Here's the deal...I can't make these again...because I don't think my hips and thighs can take another inhalation of a second batch.  That is right...I ate almost the whole entire batch of these cookies!  They were so amazingly delicious that I could not stop eating them!  I had made 2 small bags to give to some friends, but only one made it out the door that first day.  The second bag sat on my counter for another day and since my stash was gone and I was still feeling the intense need to eat these, I opened that up and ate those too!  Seriously.  I have problems.  So you see, I cannot make these again, because I will eat them...all of them.  Pudding cookies are my new favorite thing.  I had never used a box of pudding in cookies before, but after trying some several weeks ago, I have been thinking of lots of new combinations, and when I saw Strawberry Creme pudding at the grocery store, I knew I wanted to create a cookie utilizing it.  My most favorite type of chocolate is white, so it was a no brainer that I would throw some of that in there.  I thought these were just delightful!  I think you should make these, and I believe that  if you do make them, you just might excuse me for my sub-par pictures.

Strawberry Creme Pudding Cookies

*I added a few drops of red food coloring to my cookie dough.  I was hoping that the pudding itself would give the cookies an intense pink color...it didn't.  The food coloring didn't give it that either, but it did help them to be a little more on the pink side...still not what I was going for, but the taste was, so I figured that was okay.  So play with the color as much or as little as you would like.

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 sugar

2 eggs

3.4 ounce package instant Strawberry Creme pudding

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1-1/2 cups white chocolate chips

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Prepare a baking sheet by lining with parchment paper, baking mat or by spraying it with cooking spray.  In a medium size bowl, or in the bowl of a stand-mixer, combine butter and sugars.  Mix until creamy.  Add in the eggs, vanilla and pudding and mix until well combined.  If you want to add food coloring, add it at this point and mix.  In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt. Whisk together and then add it to the pudding mixture.  Mix until the ingredients are combined.  Fold in the white chocolate chips.  Drop the dough by rounded tablespoon onto the prepared pan.  Bake for 10-12 minutes or until set.  Let cookies cool on the pan for several minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe Source:  Adapted from Two Peas and Their Pod 

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

 I baked these sweet things up a couple of weeks ago, and I'm not quite sure what has taken me so long to post them.  They are good...really good.  These are the second of the two decadent peanut butter desserts that I mentioned in this post a couple of weeks ago.  I don't know about you, but I love me a good peanut butter cookie.  Now stuff one of those peanut butter cookies with a mini Reese's peanut butter cup, drizzle it with some milk chocolate, and that good peanut butter cookie has now become down right irresistible.   Like I said, these are really good.  Make them!  Please!

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

*Just a couple notes about this recipe.  The dough needs to chill in the refrigerator for about an hour before baking, so make sure to plan ahead.  Also, it says to bake on an ungreased cookie sheet, but I always grease because I am terrified of stickage (yes I just made that word up), and they turned out beautifully.  Also, the original recipe said that reduced-fat or generic brands of peanut butter are not recommended for this recipe.  I don't know why...just thought I should pass that along to you, lest you make these and they turn out bad and I am blamed...haha!

Makes about 3 dozen

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 package (13 ounce) miniature peanut butter cups

Drizzle:

1 cup (6 ounce) chocolate chips (the original recipe called for semisweet, but I used milk because that's   the best chocolate there is...in my ever so humble opinion.)

1 Tablespoon creamy peanut butter

1 teaspoon shortening

In a large bowl, cream the butter, peanut butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Beat in egg and vanilla.  Combine the flour and baking soda; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.  Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until easy to handle.

Roll into 1-1/4 inch balls.  Press a miniature peanut butter cup into each; reshape balls to make sure the chocolate is completely covered.  Place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets.  Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned.  Cool for 2 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.  

For drizzle:

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate chips, peanut butter and shortening; stir until smooth.  Drizzle over cooled cookies. 

Recipe Source: Taste of Home 

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