The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am constantly on a quest to make the best chocolate chip cookies. It's my husband's favorite treat and there's so many different ways to make it. Crispy, Chewy, Cakey, with nuts.... the possibilities are endless!

So when I found a recipe online for brown butter chocolate chip cookies I decided to give it a go. Half the butter is browned, meaning melted in a pot and let boil until it turns a rich caramel color. After a little cooling, it's ready to use in the recipe.

These turned out great! Chews and crisp along the edges and nutty from the brown butter. It really lends a great depth of flavor to the cookies. They're not too sweet, the perfect texture, a big hit!

But, since I never leave good enough alone, I decided to jazz them up a bit. So I dipped them in melted chocolate, then sprinkled them with fleur de sel and......Bacon! Chopped up cooked bacon. Yup.

I only had enough chocolate to dip about half the cookies, but they were so rich and decadent that you really can't eat too many. Wow. These were sooooooo good! Successful experiment for sure.

Pie Social and chocolates

Sunday was the 2nd annual Pie Social, a competition to benefit the San Francisco Community School. There's a band, pie tasting, and lots of auction items. The judges are all local experts from the food industry.

The Verdi Club ballroom

I entered last year and it was a lot of fun! Although I didn't win, I did make it into the top ten. So I figured I'd give it a try again this year. I baked my go-to favorite pie, Bourbon chocolate chip pecan, with an added twist: bacon! I used both cooked chopped bacon in the filling, as well as bacon fat instead of butter. It gives such a smoky, salty flavor that complements the sweet filling well. I also added a bit of maple syrup. Yum!

my pie: Bourbon Bacon Pecan

Pie tasting- over 30 varieties!

We arrived at the Verdi Club to enter in my pie, actually 2 pies, one for the judges and one for tasting. The event had a band, refreshments, auction items to bid on, and lots of pie! There was actually another entry just like mine. And I thought I was being so original!

The judges hard at work

Slicing up all those pies!

I'll be honest, since this is a fundraiser for a school, there were tons of kids running around like crazy. I wasn't such a fan of that, so we spent most of the time outside. I just wanted to know who won! So after a lot of waiting, I went to check on the results, and they had already announced the winners, and I wasn't one of them. Too bad! I think I'll stick to cupcake competitions in the future.

After it was over, we explored the neighborhood a bit. We found a cute chocolate shop and factory, Charles Chocolates. They offer tours and tastings during the week, but we just bought some chocolates to take home. And a meyer lemon pate de fruit that I ate right there in the shop.

They were all so cute and delicious! We got a honey bunny, a fleur de sel caramel, an espresso ganache, and a passion fruit heart, my favorite. We also bought a bag of hazelnut truffles to share with our friends. Super yummy! I love discovering new treats, and I'll definitely go back for the tour soon. So even though I didn't win the pie contest, I still went home with a prize.

Baking suggestions

So yesterday I was wondering, what should I bake this week? Without specific inspiration, sometimes it's hard to come up with something to try. So I asked my online friends for their suggestions. I got quite a few interesting ideas!

Apple Pie
Carrot cake
Cheesecake
Red Velvet
Black Forest
Orange Creamsicle Cake balls
Pecan Pie cupcakes
Banana Cream Pie Cupcakes
Strawberry cupcakes with coconut frosting
Cream cheese brownies
Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
and
Meat Cake

Well, that's a lot of suggestions! My goal is to keep on baking new things, to expand my abilities. Most of those things I've made before, with the exception of banana cream pie cupcakes and the cranberry oatmeal cookies. Yes, I've even made meat cake, and cupcakes. And I'll never do it again, unless I'm paid very well. Meat is a lot more expensive than flour!



After all that, I decided to modify a few of my recipes to create a new one: peanut butter-chocolate chip-bacon cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Yum!

I used my go-to peanut butter cupcake recipe, added the candied maple bacon from the maple bacon cupcake recipe, threw in some chocolate chips, and topped it all off with a new chocolate frosting recipe.

The bacon gets roasted in the oven, with a sprinkling of maple sugar on each side to caramelize it. It's so sweet and crispy and salty! I also used some of the bacon drippings in the batter in place of butter.
The cupcakes turned out great, but the peanut butter kind of overpowers the bacon flavor. Even though there are chunks of bacon in the cupcakes, it's not a strong flavor.



I used a new frosting recipe as well. I'm never satisfied with my chocolate frostings, so I've been trolling the web for a new one. I found this recipe on many food blogs, so I don't feel bad about re-using it. It's pretty much the same as most chocolate buttercream frostings, but it's made in the food processor instead of a stand mixer.

Much quicker, but a bit messier to get it out of the bowl. It also makes a lot of frosting, I had enough left over for at least 3-4 more cupcakes.

All in all, these turned out pretty great. A quick dash of glittery sprinkles on top, and done!


So thanks to everyone for your suggestions, I'll save some of them for another time when I need inspiration.

Martha Cupcake Challenge #27- Maple (with a twist)

So, due to requests from Jason's coworkers, I decided the next challenge would be Maple cupcakes, but with a little twist: bacon! Bacon cupcakes are the trend now, but I made them years ago. I used Martha's Maple cupcakes as the base, then adjusted them for my purposes. These came out great!

First, I made candied bacon, which is just bacon, baked with brown sugar until caramelized and crispy. However, I used maple sugar, to intensify the maple flavor in the cupcakes. These smelled amazing! I did sample a bite or two, and they were sweet and salty and crunchy and yum! The important thing is to save some of the bacon fat to use in the cupcakes.


So, making the cupcakes, I added the bacon fat, and used half brown sugar and half maple syrup, instead of all maple syrup as the sweetener. Then I folded in the bacon crumbles, so each cupcake is filled with crunchy morsels.
They baked up great, smelled amazing! Then I used a maple buttercream, which was a bit too thick, I should have thinned it a bit, but it was the perfect amount for 24 cupcakes. I topped each cupcake with a piece of candied bacon, for that added crunch, and to identify what's inside.


I get the craze with bacon, and paired with maple, it's really good, but I don't personally care for the combo. However, what the crowd demands, they get!