Cranberry Rocky Road Cookies: The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap!

Happy holidays, everyone! :) I'm back home for winter break and have one online final and a paper before I'm officially done with this semester. I've already moved out of my Boston apartment and will soon be making my journey to The Middle-of-Nowhere, New Jersey for a 6-month internship. I said my bittersweet goodbyes to all my amazing Boston friends this weekend, and I have to say this has been the best semester EVER. I made some wonderful new friends and got even closer to old ones, which makes it terribly hard to leave. Love you all so much, and thanks for an incredible year!

On the bright side, a few positives of leaving Boston are 1) a great new job, 2) [hopefully] great new friends, and 3) more time to blog!!! Which brings me to...

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap

 This year two amazing food bloggers, Julie at The Little Kitchen and Lindsay at Love & Olive Oil, arranged an international cookie swap for food bloggers to network, exchange information, and best of all, cookies! I can't think of a better and tastier way to connect with other bloggers out there.

I was scrambling to come up with a recipe for this event, since I usually don't ad lib on baking recipes, but I was really stuck on the idea of chocolate and marshmallow because it was my favorite ice cream as a kid. Somehow this transitioned to rocky road, then dried cranberries were thrown in the mix, and huzzah! Cranberry rocky road cookies were born. These were very quick to whip up and are the perfect holiday cookie for both chocolate lovers and fruity dessert lovers to enjoy.

Cranberry Rocky Road Cookies

Makes: 4 dozen cookies  Prep: 15 minutes  Total: 30 minutes

Ingredients
1 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 cups baking soda
2/3 cups cocoa
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup dried cranberries
1 cup mini marshmallows
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped

Directions
Preheat oven to 350.
Place softened butter in an electric mixer and beat for 30 seconds until whipped. Add in sugar, eggs and vanilla and beat for 1 minute. In a separate bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda and cocoa and mix well. Add dry ingredients into the mixer in four parts and beat for 2 minutes.
Next, chop whole walnuts before measuring. Add walnuts, chocolate chips and dried cranberries into the cookie dough and beat for 1 minute.
Scoop dough with a tablespoon and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12 minutes or until the dough is risen and remove from the oven. Add a few mini marshmallows to each individual cookie. Bake for another 2 or 3 minutes, remove from the oven and let cool.

Double Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies & Shake Shack Burgers: A NYC Weekend

I spent this past weekend in New York City with three of my best girl friends from school to celebrate our friend Dana’s birthday. The morning I left, I made a gigantic batch of these double chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, bringing half for Dana and leaving the other half for my other friend’s surprise party I had to miss. We lucked out with some beautiful weather, fun nights out, and an all around fantastic trip. New York can be dirty, unpleasant, and overwhelming, but it’s truly one of a kind.

There are thousands of hole-in-the-wall restaurants, each one better than the next. On Saturday, we took a leap of faith and tried a Venezuelan restaurant, suggested by Dana’s sister. This was a first for everyone, and it didn’t disappoint. Venezuelan food is awesome! It got me even more excited to dive into South American cuisine in a few weeks when I’m in Argentina. Here are a few photos from our meal.

Yoyos (fried plantains stuffed with white cheese)

Arepas (corn flour buns grilled and baked with shredded beef, black beans, fried plantains, and white cheese)

The biggest food adventure of the weekend was my relentless search for Shake Shack. If you haven’t heard of Shake Shack, then you need to get on your game. I discovered it about a month ago when my boyfriend sent me a link to this article from Serious Eats. It describes a lengthy competition between In-and-Out Burger (from Cali), Five Guys (based in DC), and Shake Shack, a newly emerging high-end fast food burger joint in NYC. The judges unanimously agreed on Shake Shack as the clear winner, and ever since I’ve been fantasizing about its juicy goodness.

Saying this burger did not disappoint would be a gross understatement. I waited with my two friends Garam and Shai for a full hour in a horrendous line and missed our 5:30 Chinatown bus back to Boston. (Luckily we caught the 5:45.) This burger is absolutely the most delicious, juicy, beefy, saucy creation I have ever had the pleasure of consuming. Do yourself a favor and book a ticket to New York ASAP – just be prepared to stand in line, and remember good things come to those who wait.

And now, what you’ve most likely been waiting for, (unless you already skipped this and went straight to the bottom of this page), my recipe for double chocolate peanut butter cookies. Enjoy!

Double Chocolate Chip Peanut Butter Cookies
Makes: 2 dozen cookies  Prep: 10 minutes  Total: 20 minutes

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips 
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup peanut butter

Directions
Preheat oven to 375. Combine butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract. Stir dry ingredients, including cocoa powder and peanut butter, into the bowl and mix well. Add eggs one at a time, then chocolate chips and mix until the dough is light and fluffy.
Scoop tablespoon-sized spoonfuls of dough, roll into a ball and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes and let cool before serving.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownie Bars

I have finally purchased and started reading Anthony Bourdain's novel Kitchen Confidential. Being a student I rarely have time to read for fun, and honestly I'm a tough sell on books. I need to be fully absorbed in the first 50 pages of a book or else I'll never finish it. (It's a terrible habit, I know. I blame this on being born in the "video game era", a generation raised on cheap thrills and the birth of the Internet.) But because of my ever-growing curiousity obsession with the food industry, I was hooked on Kitchen Confidential at the introduction.

My favorite story so far is Bourdain looking back on his childhood vacations in France and recounting the moment he bravely and triumphantly swallowed a live oyster fresh out of the water, much to the disgust of his younger brother, and learned that "food had power." In his words, "It could inspire, astonish, shock, excite, delight and impress. It had the power to please me... and others. This was valuable information."

If I had to choose one recipe that signified the moment I thought of food as more than just food, it would be these brownies. A staple recipe of my mother's, this dessert began my love affair with food. It's the first sweet I loved, the first thing I baked, and the first food I was ever praised for by my peers. The biggest joy in cooking for me is knowing what I create makes people happy. This is my go-to last minute dessert, partially because I've never met someone who doesn't like them and mostly because they are the easiest. And how can you go wrong with anything that begins with "chocolate chip cookie dough"?

Wanna know the best thing about this dessert? I'll let you in on a little family secret... It's the Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, just put in brownie form! Now you're probably thinking, how unoriginal. BUT! The key to these melt-in-your-mouth doughy treats is how you cook them. You have to catch the timing just right so they're a little underbaked. That way, even the 3-day old leftovers have that gooey, fresh out of the oven taste.

If your mouth isn't watering at this point, something's wrong with you.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownie Bars
Makes: 24 brownies  Prep: 10 minutes  Total: 30 minutes

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat oven to 375. Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Add butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract. Mix well. Add eggs one at a time, then add chocolate chips and mix until the dough is light and fluffy.
Spread the dough into a 9x13 greased baking dish and bake for 20 minutes. Remove immediately and let cool before cutting.