Chocolate Chip cookie dough cheesecake bars

Whoa that was a mouth full to say!  I have been addicted to soo many blogs lately including The Girl Who Ate Everything.  Somehow, I stumbled on a previous post of a recipe for two of my favourite things: cookies and cheese cake.  How could I not try this recipe????

my first attempt!

I take no credit for this amazing dessert, in fact if you'd like to see her post you can click here.
The recipe itself comes from The Essential Chocolate Chip Cookbook.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cheesecake Bars

Crust
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
5 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
2/3 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325°. Butter a 9″-square baking pan (not quite sure why since you are lining it with paper but I did anyway).  Line pan with parchment paper, leaving enough to extend over the sides. Butter the parchment paper. Combine graham cracker crumbs and butter until crumbs are moistened. Make sure you mix it well so that the crust isn't too crumbly. Stir in chocolate chips.

Press crust mixture into bottom of pan and 1 inch up sides. Bake for 6 minutes. Set pan on wire rack to cool.

Cookie Dough 
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Using an electric mixer , mix butter, brown sugar, sugar, salt, and vanilla extract at medium speed until smooth. Decrease mixer speed to low and add flour (gradually add the flour as I only added a little more than a half cup). Mix just until incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips. Set aside.

Filling
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
10 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature

Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar just until smooth. Add egg and vanilla extract, beating just until blended. Pour batter into baked crust. Drop cookie dough by teaspoonfuls over the top of the filling. It will seem like a lot of cookie dough but you want some in every piece. Bake about 30 minutes at 325 degrees, or until set. Transfer to wire rack.

For chocolate topping, melt 1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips in a double boiler or in the microwave.  Add about 1/2 tablespoon of butter if necessary to make chocolate smooth. Drizzle over top of bars.

Cool bars in pan completely, about an hour.

Using the edges of the parchment paper, remove bars from pan. Cut into bars, keep cool in the refrigerator and serve.

 looks soo yummy!!!  Unfortunately too late to try it tonight! :(

I can't wait to bring it to school tomorrow to test out!!!

What to do with left over egg yolks

So as my title says, I had quite a few egg yolks left over from the macarons. Its not very often that you see recipes with yolks so I did a google search and found 2 things which I wanted to try.  1 was chocolate mousse and the other was Normandy butter cookies.  Well those of you who know me will guess which one I chose: The Normandy cookies.  For those of you who are lost, I lived in France for a couple of years and lived in Normandy in particular!

I am not thrilled with the consistency of these cookies as they are very gritty looking and you can see the yolk bits in the picture.  I assure you that they taste ok. I hate wasting food which is why I get people to taste test them anyway even though it looks sketch.

I was supposed to cut them in circles but I am in the middle of packing my stuff and all my cookie cutters are packed away so I made rectangular shapes (some are not as rectangular as others!).
Not a bad recipe all in all. Just be sure that if you use it, you shouldn't worry about the dough not sticking together because after you take the dough out of the fridge, it is easy to mould the cookies in your hands.  Just be sure and have some space because this gets messy!

Sablés Normands * Normandy Butter Cookies (scroll down to see who posted it)

 These sablés will keep for several weeks in an airtight container.

INGREDIENTS
1-1⁄4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
5 tablespoons superfine sugar (NOT confectioners’ sugar)
2 large egg yolks
3 oz. softened butter (I use salted butter. If you use unsalted, I would suggest you add a bit of salt to the recipe. I've tried it with unsalted butter and without added salt, per the original recipe, and it really seems to be missing it.)

DIRECTIONS
1. Place the flour into the bowl of a food processor. Add the sugar and pulse for a moment to mix. Then add the butter and the egg yolks. Process until the dough begins to gather together. If it seems too dry to stick together, add ice water, 1⁄2 teaspoon at a time, through the feed-tube. It will look kind of granular but, when you turn it out of the food processor bowl, you should be able to gather it together into a ball. Flatten it slightly into a disc-shape, which makes it easier to roll out. Wrap the disc in plastic wrap or a plastic bag and refrigerate for an hour.

2. Preheat oven to 375°. Butter one large or two small baking sheets or line them with parchment paper.

3. Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1⁄4-inch (I find this easiest to do if I sandwich the dough between a couple of pieces of plastic wrap or a zip-top bag that I've opened on 3 sides) and cut into 1-1⁄4-inch to 1-1⁄2-inch circles using a smooth or fluted round cutter.

4. Arrange the sablés on the baking sheet(s) and bake until just turning golden, about 10 minutes. Cool on a rack before serving.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
1. Do NOT use margarine in an effort to conserve on fat and/or calories. I’ve tried to make this recipe with a few different brands of margarine and, to be honest, the results were absolutely not worth the effort of baking them to begin with; the texture and the taste were completely wrong. Make them right and just eat a few, then give the rest away. Your family and friends will be extremely grateful.

2. These cookies will be somewhat soft and fragile when you transfer them from the baking sheet to the cooling rack, so be careful. They’ll firm up as they cool.

3. LET THE COOKIES COOL COMPLETELY before you taste them; it will make a surprisingly big difference in both taste and texture.

Yum Yum!

EDIT: as of Monday March 19th, the sablés were taken to work and eaten up like vultures!!!! 

Chocolate Macarons: Take 1

 Today, being that I am off for March Break,  I decided to do something that I've been meaning to try for a while but just haven't had the time. Macarons.... These delicious treats are becoming increasingly popular over the years with the origins coming from France. My devirginizing moment with Macarons was back when I was teaching in France in 2007. It was my roommate's birthday and she had never been bowling so my other friend and I took Melissa on a devirginizational tour.  We tried things she had never done before and came across "Grand Mere Auzou".  Now Auzou is my FAVOURITE chocolate shop in Rouen.  I love love their 'larmes de Jeanne d'arc' (Joan of Arc's tears in English).  They are a yummy version of chocolate covered almonds with little extra yumminess!

Anywho, on with my story.  Melissa, Tamar and I had our very first Macarons in Rouen on that special day in February and we all fell in love.  So light and fluffy yet so full of goodness!

Moving along to 2012.  Since I've been back, I keep saying 'one day' to all the French things I want to recreate. Today was the day! I set off to the grocery store to get the ingredients and thanks to Choco Paris' recipe I was off to the races!

Disclaimer:  I am not one of those blogs who shows you the best possible result.  As much as I love those professional blogs who show you their 500th batch when all the kinks have been ironed out, I do appreciate those who tell you what their problems were so that you don't continue to have the same mistakes!

1st batch had slight problems.  I started out dropping the batter on the wax paper rather than piping it into a blob.  I now see why this was important as the macarons are supposed to be smooth on top.  Secondly, I was supposed to wait 20-30 minutes before putting them in the oven but didn't.  This might be why the cracking was on top....  

2nd batch was a bit better and most have the frothy bottom that is the trademark to macarons but still have cracking on the top which I don't really understand considering they were left out for a good 30 minutes before being put in the oven.

Now on to the filling.... heat cream then pour it onto the chocolate, add a little bit of butter and voila..... Ummmm newsflash, the cream didn't rise and it is still very much liquid.  The recipe called for heavy cream.  The heaviest that I could find in the store was whipping cream at 35%.  Maybe it wasn't thick enough....  Tomorrow I will test out the filling and if it hasn't thickened by then, I will whip it to see if that works.  Otherwise I have no clue, do you?

March 12th update:

 After refrigerating, the filling became hard enough that I could spread the filling onto the macarons.  Voila!

Some came out looking pretty nice!

One of my best ones up close!

All in all, I am quite pleased with my first attempt!  I am usually pretty lucky with my baking, having never had to do a recipe twice unless I wanted to!