Stressed

When I get stressed, I get hungry. And so I bake. I haven't baked in quite a while, i have had little homework (actually, i just haven't been doing it all...), I have been managing well at gymnastics and the fall play had not yet taken over my life.

Fast forward to right now. I have an AP environmental science textbook open in a vain attempt at note taking, my math homework and all of it's imaginary numbers make me want to be imaginary, the fall play is in two weeks so I will be having 14 hour school days, we are learning a new tense in spanish, I have two books (one of which I have no started) due for AP english, my drama teacher expects me to be choosing a monologue for an upcoming competition, I am signing up for next semester classes tomorrow and my intra-squad meet for gymnastics is coming up in less that six weeks.

I would say my stress level is pretty high. And so, instead of dealing with these issues and, oh, I don't know...doing my homework, running lines and working out, I decided to make cookies.

Milk chocolate walnut cookies made out of pancake mix. Pancake mix? Yes, pancake mix.

Loosely inspired by this http://newhopemills.com/pages.php?page_id=6, my recipe is as follows (makes about 2 1/2 dozen):

1. Preheat oven to 375 and spray baking sheets (mine weren't non-stick, lame)
2. Cream 1 1/3 cups packed brown sugar, 2/3 cup unsalted butter and 4 tsp vanilla (I ALWAYS make my cookies extra vanilla-y)
3. Add 2 eggs and beat
4. Add 3 cups of, wait for it... PANCAKE MIX!
5. Beat on medium until well incorporated, and this means well, NO LUMPS.
6. Taste your batter...just to make sure its not poisonous(:
7. Fold in desired amounts of goodies--I used 1/2 bag of milk chocolate chips and 1/2 cup walnut pieces but feel free to experiment.
8. Place rounded teaspoon-fulls on baking sheets
9. Bake for 12-15 minutes, shoot for slightly underdone and just let rest before you remove 'em from the pan.
10. Don't tell your little brother the cookies are done until you have eaten the biggest one, enjoy!

And here they are in all their glory, fresh out of the oven and just dying to relieve my stress.




ps, is that not the most excellent apron you have ever seen? Yeah, I thought so.


pps, these would be even more excellent if i had my bff forever to share them with...

the turduken of cookies (an oreo stuffed inside a chocolate chip-less cookie)

(http://ilovemesomefood.blogspot.com/2011/02/double-cookie-love.html)

We've already featured the famous oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies here on ilovemesomefood.blogspot.com, in Heather's lovely post "double cookie love" --------> 
Our lovely friend Jenna baked the cookie featured in that post, and last night I figured it was time for me to take a crack at it as well!

Since there were no chocolate chips available in my household, I decided to just bake the cookies along with the recipe and completely disregard the chocolate chip part of it. I found the official recipe for these puppies here: http://picky-palate.com/2011/01/06/oreo-stuffed-chocolate-chip-cookies/. Apparently this is THE original recipe for the cookies, and all other recipes I read linked back to this one. 

Obviously, they didn't turn out as I hoped because of their...tumor-like shapes. The whole point to these cookies is that the oreos are a surprise!

But as Jenna put it, they look like dainty hats!!

Now, if you're smart, you know that EVERYTHING is best underbaked. That is not a matter of opinion; it's pure fact. That's why these cookies are def best straight out of the oven. The whole top layer of cookie is basically hot, oozing cookie dough! and the cream in the oreo melts in your mouth. ufgpj, so good. 

they're awesomely photogenic the next day though...

oh, and did I mention that I stuffed two of these with THIN MINTS?! yeah, thats right. But only two lucky cookies got to be thin mint-ified, because it was kind of an experiment. Let me just say that those experiments didn't go to waste. I ate both of the thin mint ones, long before anyone else got a chance to try this batch of cookies. mwahaha.

double cookie love

In my personal hell, chemistry honors, this lovely angel Jenna (yes, the one who brought me to Clement street, this girl is a food fanatic) brought me a cookie. She does this quite frequently but this time she baked up something extra special.
She had made some wonderful chocolate chip cookie dough and thought, why not put an OREO in this? and so she did. And it was so good. SO GOOD. It was like an extra crunchy double chocolate chip cookie oreo sandwich of awesomeness. 
You should really go try this right now because cookies make the world go 'round, thanks Jenna :)