Recipe: Red Velvet Cookies

One of my favorite cakes...other than chocolate...was always Red Velvet, which is a close cousin of chocolate, if you didn't know. And as per request from a good friend of mine (because apparently I owed her cookies), here's a recipe for  to-die-for Red Velvet Cookies!

Red Velvet Cookies

makes 36 cookies

What you will need:

• 3 cups + 2 tbsp all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (room temp)*
• 1 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs (room temp)
• 2 tbsp milk
• 3 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp red food coloring
• 2 cup white chocolate chips**

*if using salted butter, omit 1/2 tsp salt

**can substitute with regular chocolate chips or anything you want!

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a separate medium-large bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside.

Using a stand mixer with a paddle attachment (a hand mixer will work fine), cream butter on high until smooth and creamy. About 1 minute. Remember to scrape down the sides and bottom of your bowl whenever you need to. 

On medium speed, beat in your granulated sugar and brown sugar until combined. Then beat in your eggs, milk, and vanilla.

Add your food coloring and mix until there are no longer any streaks of color (or no color) visible. The red color should now be incredibly intense and the dough should still be quite runny, however feel free to add more food coloring to intensify the color even more if you'd like.

Pour in your dry ingredients. With your mixer on low, mix your dough until just combined. You do not want to over mix.

Still on low speed or by hand, mix in your white chocolate chips until thoroughly visible throughout your dough. Your dough will still be rather sticky, so cover the bowl with plastic wrap or aluminum foil and refrigerate for AT LEAST an hour. THIS IS MANDATORY or your dough will be way too soft.

Prepare two baking sheets and line them with either parchment paper or silicon mats. Gather 1 - 1 1/2 tbsp of dough and roll into a ball. Place them on your baking sheet about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake for 10-13 minutes.

When you take them out of the oven, they would have only spread just a bit. Using your clean fingers or the back of a spoon and gently flatten them while they are still hot. Also while they're still hot, use some extra white chocolate chips and push them into the top. This gives a little more contrast to the red cookie. Have them cool on the cookie sheet for about 5-10 minutes, then transfer them onto a wire rack to cool completely.

I swear, these are some of the best things I have ever made. They're basically a little cake in cookie form; aka heaven on earth (so my coworker says). 

...you're welcome Hilary <3 

Recipe: White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

The weather has been pretty gloomy around here lately. It's wet and rainy, but this is my kind of weather! I know not everyone's crazy about rain showers and the end of summer, but that's okay because I have the perfect pick-me-up. Who doesn't love White Chocolate Macadamia Nut cookies?!

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

makes 24 cookies

You will need:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) *unsalted butter (room temp)
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs (room temp)
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp almond extract
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 cup coarsely chopped salted macadamia nuts

*If you do not have unsalted butter, it may be substituted with regular butter. However, omit the 1/2 tsp of salt.

Begin by preheating your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mats.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Cream together your butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy. It should look something like this. Make sure to use a rubber spatula to scrape the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Add your eggs, vanilla extract, and almond extract. Mix until well combined. Your mixture should loosen up a lot and become runny.

Add your flour mixture and mix until just incorporated. You do not want to over-mix. The dough should start forming right away and on it's own. Once combined, scrape the sides and bottom of your bowl.

Add the white chocolate chips and coarsely chopped macadamia nuts. Fold them in with a rubber spatula until they are thoroughly incorporated within your dough.

Gather two tablespoons of dough into a ball and tear it in half. Place the torn side of one half face down onto your lined cookie sheet, and place the other half on top with the torn side facing up, like shown above. These are rather large cookies so place them about 2 inches apart for spreading.

Bake your cookies for 12-13 minutes or until the edges are slightly golden. They will remain puffed up and appear undone when you take them out of the oven. Let them sit on the cookie sheet to cool for 10-15 minutes. The cookies' residual heat will finish off the insides and it will begin to flatten out. Transfer them onto a wire rack to finish cooling (but they taste the best when warm).

Quite a few people have been asking me for these lately, so I'm glad I finally found the time to make them!

The original recipe is not mine and I found it here. However, I did alter the ratios slightly and adjusted the proportions to fit my needs.

This is probably one of my favorite cookies to make and from what I've heard it's a lot of my friend's favorite too hehe.

Valentine's Day Munchies: Green Tea Macaron

And here is the first of many reposts from my old Tumblr that I felt was worthy of sharing. 

With Valentine's Day coming up right around the corner (less than a week away - yikes!), I figured that I'd repost some of my old recipes. Besides, what better way to tell someone "I love you", "I'm in like with you", "You're kinda cool, I guess", or "I haven't found a reason to hate you yet" than desserts!

First of all, let me tell you, that you are so lucky to find quality cooking grade matcha powder for under $10 (I found some for $8 in Japan Town, SF a while back). The current can I'm using contains about 4 tbsp of this potent stuff, and cost almost $16! But I guess when you remember how much store-bought macarons are, it isn't that bad. And I've got to tell you, these tasted absolutely amazing, especially the ganache filling (which was probably my favorite part). 

Green Tea Macaron

with Green Tea, White Chocolate Ganache

• 1 1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
• 1 1/2 cup almond flour/meal
• 1 tbsp matcha powder
• 3 room temp eggs
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar

Sift the confectioner’s sugar, almond flour, and matcha powder into a large bowl and mix the sifted dry ingredients until combined.

Make sure the eggs are at room temperature before whipping them. Whip your egg whites at high speed and add the sugar approx. a fourth(1/4) at a time when the egg whites become white and foamy. Continue adding that amount of sugar as the eggs continue to thicken to ensure that all of the sugar is dissolved into the eggs. Whip the eggs until stiff peaks form. They shouldn’t really budge when your mixer is lifted and should maintain it’s shape and volume.

To combine the dry ingredients with the meringue  first pour half of the dry mixture into the meringue and begin gently folding with a rubber spatula. When combined, add the other half and continue. This portion of the process is the most crucial to getting a nice looking macaron. You do not want to over mix, nor do you want to under mix. You have the proper consistency when the batter ribbons off your spatula (almost like flowing lava).

Scoop your batter into a piping bag with about a 1/2 in tip or a Ziploc bag with the corner cut to that diameter. Pipe about 1-1 1/2 in circles onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper or a silicone mat. (To achieve nicer looking circles, I traced circles on the back of my parchment paper as stencils.)

When you are finished piping onto your baking sheet, bang it on your counter top…HARD. You want to do this a few times while rotating your pan. This is what gets the air bubbles out of the batter. 

Another very important step is to now let your piped macarons sit out for at least 15 minutes - 2 hours so they can begin to form their outer shell. (I let these sit out for 15-20 minutes.) At this time, preheat your oven to 300 degrees. When you put your macarons into the oven, only bake one pan at a time to ensure that the heat is evenly distributed. Bake for 20-25 minutes. When they are ready, allow them to completely cool before removing them from the pan.

While your piped macarons are sitting out, take this time to make the Green Tea, White Chocolate Ganache! The ingredients are:

• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 4-6 oz white chocolate
• 1 tbsp matcha powder

Coarsely chop the white chocolate and place it in a heat resistant bowl over a little bit of simmering water in a small pot. Stir occasionally until completely melted. 

While you are melting the chocolate, in another saucepan, heat the heavy whipping cream and stir in the matcha powder. It’s a good idea to sift the matcha powder as you add it into the pan, for matcha powder can be somewhat difficult to dissolve completely. The heavy cream/matcha mixture does not need to boil, but it does need to be fairly hot. 

Pour the heavy cream/matcha mixture into the bowl of melted white chocolate and stir until completely combined. Let sit to room temperature, then put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to allow it to continue to thicken. When done so, you can pipe as is if you’d like, or opt to mix with an electric mixer until somewhat fluffy. This will lighten the color. 

Pipe onto your cooled green tea macaron shells and you’re good to go! (:

You could really tell how potent that matcha powder really is just from the color! I, for one, really love the taste of green tea, but of course you can't have too much. Feel free to adjust the amount of matcha powder depending on your taste.