Miss Yunks learned about the Secret Recipe Club from Jen at Beantown Baker. Last month, Jen participated in the Secret Recipe Club and the concept sounded like a fun way to learn about new blogs and recipes.
I signed up immediately on Amanda’s blog, Amanda’s Cookin‘. Amanda organizes this secret club by assigning each member a different blog. Bloggers can then chose any recipe from their assigned blog to post on the assigned day at the assigned time. The Foodies at Work were assigned The Vanderbilt Wife. The Vanderbilt Wife was a new-to-me blog. I perused her recipe list and finally settled on her Chocolate Drop Cookies. The Vanderbilt Wife followed Betty’s Crocker’s recipe for these cookies. I intended to do the same, but you know about my tendency to deviate from recipes. It’s really hard to stick to the ingredient list if I think I can make a change that will result in a tastier treat. I picked this recipe because it seemed simple and I thought I had all of the ingredients in my kitchen; I had all of them except for buttermilk. I started to make my own buttermilk, as I’ve read other bloggers have done, and looked up that recipe. Pour one tablespoon of distilled vinegar into a measuring cup, and then pour in milk until the total liquid reads one cup. Wait 10 minutes for milk to curdle. Well, I didn’t actually have distilled vinegar or milk. I had white wine vinegar and vanilla almond milk, so that’s what I used. The almond milk mixture got clumpy after 10 minutes, so I poured it through a strainer and then measured the 1/3 cup milk that these cookies required.
I followed most of the rest of the recipe, except I didn’t add any nuts. Then, I realized I didn’t have the unsweetened baking chocolate I thought I did. Instead, I used about four ounces of bittersweet chocolate chips. The recipe only calls for two ounces of unsweetened chocolate, but I didn’t believe two ounces of chocolate would produce a chocolate-flavored cookie. I learned from my mom that it’s (almost) always okay to double the amount of chocolate in dessert recipes.
I dropped my chocolate cookie dough by the tablespoon onto my cookie sheet. The cookie dough looked more like chocolate frosting than any cookie dough I’d ever seen. Nine minutes later, my first batch of chocolate cookies was done. I tasted these plain chocolate cookies and they weren’t very full of flavor, even with the extra chocolate. My small oven forced me to make three batches and I took the opportunity to experiment with each one. My second batch had milk chocolate chips and semi-sweet chocolate chips. My third batch had cinnamon, chili powder, and cayenne pepper with mini semi-sweet chocolate chips on top.
Chocolate Drop Cookies
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Drop Cookies
Mexican Spiced Chocolate Chocolate Chip Drop Cookies
Batch #2 was my favorite, the chocolate chocolate chip. The Mexican spiced cookies were tasty and I do like the contradicting sweet and spicy flavors, but I prefer a sweet chocolate in my dessert. The plain chocolate cookies just didn’t do much. I would make this recipe again adding in the chocolate chips, m&ms, nuts, or random other candy pieces.
12 Comments
I prefer sweet chocolate as well. They both sound fabulous though!
Fun! From just looks, I like the Chocolate Chocolate Chip Drop Cookies best.
Excellent looking cookies.
I love how you varied the recipe with each batch. I think I’d have liked the second one best, too.
What a great idea to vary the recipe with each batch!
Yum, these look amazing! Love the cinnamon-chili-cayenne version…that sounds so tasty!
Love chocolate so I love chocolate cookies. I really want to make these for my class who love chocolate, as much as I do.
That’s so cool that you tried different versions of the recipe. They all sound delish.
This is my first month in The Secret Recipe Club and it’s so much fun! I’m just loving all the new blogs and recipes I’m seeing. Both versions of your cookies look wonderful.
I feel like I need to defend myself in saying this was one of the first recipes I ever posted on my site, several years ago. There’s no way I would post something straight from a cookbook anymore! I hope you’ll come back and give me another chance.
Try the pumpkin cookies!
Fun idea to vary the batches.
Jessie
Look great! Perfect for evening tea-time…. am going to try these soon!
Ruchi
The dough does look like frosting – how funny! The end product looks delicious though!
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