Friday, March 19, 2010

Whiskey a Co-Coa



I didn't make it until next week. Last week in the cookie contest, there was a suggestion for a Whiskey, Raisin, and Walnut cookie. I wasn't sure at first, but as others heard about the flavor, they were very interested. I was intrigued.

Inspired by that flavor suggestion and St. Patrick's Day, I decided to try to make an Irish Carbomb cookie. The Irish Carbomb is a shot of half Bailey's Irish Cream and half Whiskey dropped into a glass of Guinness Beer. Liquid is very difficult to add to a cookie and still maintain a cookie texture. I couldn't come up with any way to get all three liquids into one cookie, so I decided to go with the two strongest - Bailey's and Whiskey.

I threw together a chocolate cookie with a little less than a shot of whiskey in the batter. Of course, the alcohol cooked off a bit, but the cookie was left with a nice unusual flavor. I topped the cookie off with a flat icing made of Bailey's Irish Cream and powdered sugar. It added just a little kick of alcohol to the cookie.

I didn't really have any trials in making these cookies. They turned out just like I expected on the first try.



Keith was not a big fan of the cookies - he only thought they were OK. I was pleasantly surprised and thought the flavor was better than I expected. Both Keith and I took the cookies to our coworkers, who all seemed very pleased.

Of course, after making the cookies, I had the perfect idea for making an actual carbomb cookie - so I am going to save that for another day.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

And the winner is...

This week I decided to run a contest on my facebook fan page for a new cookie flavor. The winning idea to be turned into a cookie and the winning entrant to receive a dozen of their cookies for free.

I received a little over 20 entries in 24 hours. There were a lot of very interesting flavor ideas, like: beer and chocolate, whiskey with raisins and walnuts, orange dreamcicle, fluffernutter, and on and on... A few of the suggestions were cookies I had already made, so those were immediately disqualified. I randomly numbered the remaining entries and made Keith choose the winner. He was pulling hard for waffles with maple syrup, but ultimately the winner was Butterscotch.

I actually prepared a couple of butterscotch recipes, since I wasn't really sure how far I could go - because butterscotch is soooooo sweet.

I started with a butterscotch flavored cookie. It was a nice golden color and about the texture of a peanut butter cookie. I used butterscotch pudding in the cookie batter, which added the majority of the flavor and was a trick I came up with a few months back on a different recipe. The cookies were good, but the butterscotch flavor wasn't that strong, so I took the remaining dough and added some butterscotch chips. Boy were these butterscotch cookies! My whole house had a sickeningly sweet smell while they were baking and it was burning my nose a little. The taste was good though.

Then I decided to go a completely different route. I mixed up a batch of plain oatmeal cookies. I used the hidden filling trick with butterscotch ice cream topping. Having only ever bought hot fudge ice cream topping, I expected the consistency to be thick and to melt when baking. When I opened the butterscotch I found out it was actually very runny. Still I forged ahead and what came out of the over was a hot mess! Here's a picture just for your enjoyment:



The cookies basically oozed butterscotch all over the cookie sheet and they barely had any butterscotch flavor at all. Before I saw that the cookies weren't going to work, I had already made up a second sheet in the same manner making an even bigger whole for the filling and putting double the amount of butterscotch. They were even more of a mess. Even after cooling they wouldn't come off the cookie sheet. They broke into pieces, had sticky gooey stuff all over the outside, but they tasted better. With the last bit of oatmeal dough, I just took the easy route and put in some butterscotch chips to make oatmeal scotchies. Not real creative, but you have to work with what you got.

the one in the front was the overall winner from the testers

So I passed along the three edible flavors to the winner, Paige, and she enjoyed the butterscotch with chips the best. Keith also took some to his work and the consensus was the butterscotch with the chips was the best. Out of his coworkers, he found that at least 3 people didn't like butterscotch at all and there was one butterscotch fanatic - who just loved the cookies. I guess it's an all or nothing kind of cookie.

I still think butterscotch is too sweet to make a whole cookie butterscotch flavored, but the lovers thought they were great! I guess that's all that matters.

Until next week...