Cookies, Cookies Everywhere.
Posted: December 17, 2011 Filed under: Food, Recipes | Tags: cheesecake, cherries, chocolate, cocoa goodness, cookies, cream cheese, granola, love grown foods, macaroon 46 Comments »I don’t know about you, but Christmas just screams cookies to me.
I’m normally not the biggest fan of cookies. I’d rather eat muffins or ice cream. But this time of year, I can’t get enough! They are my favorite holiday dessert. To kick off the season, Ellie from Fit for the Soul was kind enough to send me some delicious cookies.
She made macaroons and was so kind to send them to me since I’ve never tried them before! Oh my gosh, these are fantastic!! Thank goodness for the rest of you, she has the recipe up on her blog. They are like the inside of an almond joy!! Thanks so much Ellie!
For more holiday cheer, we had our annual cookie exchange. Well, really it’s my mom’s but I always get excited to make the cookies and receive them as well. One of our classic holiday recipes is for spritz cookies. I love pumping them out and decorating them.
Obviously I had to try every cookie we received. One of my mom’s friends always makes these nutty, fruity crumble bars that are amazing. Definitely my favorite of the bunch. I’m gonna try and get the recipe so I can tinker with it and then share it on here.
Lastly we have my cookies. Or at least this is the first cookie recipe I’ve decided to share with you. Believe me, if I shared everything I make on this blog, I’d have no time to talk about running. Anyway, my friends over at Love Grown Foods challenged the Love Grown Bloggers to a cookie recipe competition. Of course I had to enter! I’ve got some stiff competition. Lindsay’s “Kiwi” Cookies, Heather’s “No Bake Granookies”, Chelsey’s Mint Chocolate Mocha No Bake Cookies, just to name a few. Do you see what I’m up against?! I don’t know if I can beat them and all the other delicious sounding cookies I’ve seen, but this is what I came up with:
Chocolate Cherry Cheesecake Cookies (adapted from Cooking Light)
Cookies:
- 2 1/2 tablespoons softened butter
- 1/2 cup sugar or measures-like-sugar stevia
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 cup white whole wheat flour
- 1/4 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup almond milk + 1 1/2 teaspoons vinegar or lemon juice (to make “buttermilk”)
Topping/Filling:
- Cream Cheese Frosting (you won’t need all of it, though I highly recommend making an entire batch and using it on other things!)
- Cherry Preserves
- Love Grown Foods Cocoa Goodness Granola (optional, only because I don’t think any other chocolate granola lives up to the love grown brand so substituting may yield less-than-optimal results)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. In an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until well blended. Add the vanilla and the egg, and continue to beat until combined. Combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the buttermilk to the wet ingredients, beginning and ending with the flour mixture; mix after each addition. Scoop rounded teaspoons of dough onto the baking sheets. Bake for 10 minutes.
Prepare the cream cheese frosting. When the cookies have cooled, spread cream cheese frosting on top of the cookie. Next, spread cherry preserves on top of the cream cheese frosting. If you want to make sandwiches, add a dollop of cream cheese frosting on the bottom of one half and cherry preserves on the bottom of the other half, then press together.
However, if you want to really take these up a notch and bring some LOVE into it, you can do what I did:
The obvious choice. The best way to eat it. Topped with Cocoa Goodness Love Grown Granola!! It’s creamy, slightly tangy, fruity, sweet, and crunchy. All on one soft, chocolatey, heart shaped cookie. I think (hope!) we have a winner here!
Bring it on, LOVEr’s!
What is your favorite flavor to combine with chocolate? I had so many ideas for these. Luckily I left most of the cookies unfrosted so I can make other combos! I want to try these with crushed candy cane, peanut butter, orange jam, hazelnuts, every other love grown granola… not all at the same time though!
Do you have any tried and true family cookie recipes? Spritz cookies, almond crescents, and magic cookie bars. They probably all came off of the sidebar of a package at some point in time, but it doesn’t matter because they remind me of family!
Holy deliciousness! These cookies sound like the bombbb
I’m not a huge fan of chocolate, but when it’s with PB? That’s a different story haha
Everything looks so good!!! I love cheesecake, more than the average person
My favorite chocolate combo would be strawberries or hazelnuts!
Macaroons!! I’ve never had ‘em but they look awesome, and so do your chocolate cherry cheesecake cookies. Mmm. I love chocolate on its own, nice and dark and more than 85%.
i love the mint and chocolate combo
def one of my favs. i also love almonds and chocolate. drooool!
Coconut macaroons are my favorite!! Thanks for reminding me that I need to make a batch!
You had me at cheesecake! Great entry, Tara! I love hazelnut, peanut butter and orange with chocolate!
Oh wow, this post is bursitng with sugary, sweet, cookie goodness
Everything looks superb, and I think your recipe is impressive!
I am on such a Mint and chocolate kick right now.. so obviously those work for me too!
I seriously NEED to try Love Grown granola. If it’s anything like it sounds like, it’s gotta be delish.
I like combining PB with chocolate (I’m boring). In a different sense, I love combining white chocolate with “cookies” (such as a Hershey’s Cookies ‘n Cream bar).
We never really make homemade cookies, we just stick to cupcakes
oh man, those look good Tara! WOW! this is going to be a tough one. Wish we could taste them all!
That’s why we need to have a love grown party!!! It would be the most epic food fiesta ever.
Oh my YUM! Everything looks amazing.
I looove cookies during Christmas time. They just seem to taste better this time of year.
Combining peanut butter with chocolate is, of course, one of my favorite things ever. But I also love pomegranate and chocolate- so yummy!
Cookies galore! Coconut & chocolate is one of my fave combos!
Cheesecake in cookie form? I love this idea!
Every year my family makes gingerbread cookies and shortbread using my Nana’s recipe. It doesn’t feel like Christmas without baking these cookies!
Chocolate + pb = my favorite!
My family fav. cookies are no-bake cookies! You make them on the stove with oats, chocolate, and peanut butter.
Great recipe girl! I love cookies too this holiday season! Hey, they ARE santa’s favorite food! So it works! I love all my grandmas authentic italian cookies…..they are the bomb!!
oh my gosh, insane cookie madness, i love it!! i think some raspberry/chocolate combo’s would be darn tasty…but i like really anything with chocolate, how can u go wrong?!
It’s the same way in my house!!! My mom makes hundreds of Christmas cookies (sugar cookies shaped like stars, sugar cookies shaped like trees, heart shaped gingerbread, peanut butter blossoms, chocolate mint bites, almond jam thumbprints, peppermint meringues, chocolate covered pretzels) and gives a plate of them to everyone. We don’t ever even have a pie for Christmas dessert because we just eat cookies.
Your spritz cookies look really fancy!
Chocolate cherry cheesecake cookies? DELISH!
Those cookies look awesome!!! I love chocolate and pb, chocolate and mint and chocolate w/ strawberries!
Wowza, those cookies look so good! I need to get baking.. I like PB or peppermint with chocolate the best. I made peppermint patties with my mom and they are deliiish.
o my goodness those cookies look AMAZING and it just so happens i have all the ingredients!! I know what i’m doing today!!
These cookies look fabulous! I love anything with cream cheese frosting!
Believe it or not, I haven’t done ANY of my Christmas baking yet! I’m doing it all on Thursday and Friday!
Chocolate is amazing with almost anything! I really love it with coffee, raspberry or peppermint. Your cookies look incredible though, and it’s such a cool idea to combine cheesecake and cookies in one. I love mixing and matching desserts!
holy crap- that looks so decadent and good. dang girl! You’ve got some serious competition but with THAT, you have nothing to worry about
OMG we make spritz too!!!! it’s definitely so much fun making the shapes and dying the dough haha. Our pump kind of sucks though so last year we had spritz-blobs…yeah. Those choco-cherry cheesecake things look like CRACK too! that’s probably my favorite chocolate-flavor combination, I say your recipe wins!
Our spritz thing died this year too!! Haha we have half blobs, but my mom loves her spritz cookies so she went out and bought one that got really good reviews.
We have an old spritz cookie press that once belonged to my great-grandma, I think! It’s still alive and kicking!
okay so i made those cookies today and they were absolutely AMAZING! love the recipe
and just thought i’d let you know I just added you to my blogroll. I love your blog!!
First of all, I’m so so so excited that you made them already!! For the contest you can “like” the picture of my cookie on the love grown face book page as a vote for my cookie to win! Voting opens tomorrow. That would be awesome
Second, I’m adding you to my blog roll ASAP. I’m so glad you commented on my blog so I could find yours! I’m loving everything you’ve written so far!! Oh and the name of your blog is the best!!
I will totally be voting for them!!! can we vote more than once?? cause they were seriously so good!
I don’t think so, but you can get other people to vote for them! I’m so happy you liked them! The combo of chocolate and cherry is good, and I just thought adding cream cheese on top of that was like the icing (literally) on the cake (cookie?)
wowww your cookies look amaaajeeeng!! And I’m sooo glad and happy to hear that you loved the macaroons!
It was my pleasure, and I had fun makin’ em for you. I wanted to send more but realized that the box wasn’t that big! haha. Have a sweet day full of luv~
I don’t know if you can even call that cheesecake creation a cookie, wow!
Mmm cream cheese frosting! It’s a tough call, but I think I’d have to say that peanut butter and chocolate is my favorite combination. And my mom makes these incredible sugar cookies that for me just scream the holidays.
Cheesecake cookies? Yum!!! I had a cheesecake layered brownie Friday that a recruiter brought in. So freaking good.
Family cookie recipe? Probably snickerdoodles, since that’s all my parents ever made
OMG those look DELISH! yummmm
I would pretty much eat anything with chocolate, but around Christmas I can’t resist peppermint and chocolate. I’m making my favorite cookies like that tomorrow- I can’t wait to eat an obscene amount and not let anyone else touch them
Isn’t Ellie a sweetie? And now I am drooling over those cookies. They look too good. Yay for Christmas cookies!
I love macaroons!!! Ellie’s look deeelicious! And all these cookies!! Cookies make Christmas the absolute BEST time of the year
I sure hope you win because your cookies look beyond amazing. But even if you don’t, the contest was a good excuse to come up with the recipe
[...] of Tara. Vote for her recipe on Facebook! Just go to the Love Grown recipe page and like the picture of [...]
I love mixing everything with chocolate
we had a chocolate mousse wedding cake with raspberry filling, and ohh my was it good!
Oh my gosh, my mouth is watering and I am doing everything within my power to keep myself from licking my computer screen right now. Those cookies of yours look amazing! Normally, I’m like you and will pass on a cookie in favor of ice cream or something, but seriously, I want one of those choco-cheesecake miracles (or 12) right now!
I hope you win! I don’t see how you couldn’t!!!
I think I just drooled quite a bit while reading this. I hope you win! If not at least you have lots of delicious cookies
Omg…these cookies look AMAZING! I love Christmas cookies <3
Бывают же такие чудеса! Посетил яндекс утром и посетил уникальный раздел аренда домов в Симферополе
, что меня сильно присильно шокировало. Я даже и не подозревал, что стоимость на двухкомнатные квартиры в Симферополе
такие фантастически заоблочные и не каждому по карману. В такой ситуации какие бы у Вас чувства были? Просто я попадаю на всякие интересные сайты по любопытности, да и такой цены и предположить никогда не мог.
YAY for cookies! Peanut Butter is definitely the thing I pair with chocolate. And strawberries. And oatmeal. And bananas.