Cookie Carrie

March 4, 2014 · 8:00 am

Pink Lemonade Blondies

I bought this seasonal cake mix last season.

Then it sat in my cabinet…. See how dented the box is? It had been pushed around my baking cabinet for months.

I finally broke it out and made these amazing blondies. Then I typed up this post and then realized that the flavor is no longer in stores and no one would be able to make them, so I stored this recipe away until it would be relevant again. *sigh*

But now here we are and here we go! 🙂

These are seriously SO easy. No mixer is needed. If you can stir some stuff in a bowl, you can make these!

Pink Lemonade Blondies – adapted from this recipe by Sally’s Baking Addiction

Blondie Ingredients:

1 box of pink lemonade cake mix (seasonal item)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/3 cup milk

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup sprinkles

Icing Ingredients:

4 oz powdered sugar

4 1/2 tsp milk

1 packet Crystal Light on-the-go drink mix

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*. Spray pan with non-stick spray. (I used an 8×8 pan, but a 9×9 would work, or even a round pan if that’s all you have.)

2. Mix together cake mix, oil, milk, egg, and sprinkles. It should be thick and sticky.

3. Press evenly into the pan and bake for 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven when the edges start to brown.

**The center might not look fully cooked, but that’s okay.**

4. Let them cool for at least 30 minutes. (That under-cooked looking center will set up and be wonderfully perfect if you let it cool completely!)

5. Mix together powdered sugar, milk, and drink mix packet. Pour icing over blondies and spread evenly with a spatula. Let the icing set up a couple hours.

6. Cut into small pieces to share, or large pieces to devour. 🙂

These blondies are sweet and tart and pink and pretty. I can totally imagine them at a little girl’s birthday party!

Everything But The Kitchen Sink Cookies

My little brother is across the country doin’ his thang in the navy. But it’s almost his birthday, and I needed to bake him something, so I had to mail it!

I have sent him brownies in the past, but I figured cookies share better and can be transported more easily, so I wanted to bake him up some cookies this time.

I thought about it for WEEKS trying to come up with something fun and awesome for him, and I couldn’t decide what to make that would be both new and awesome and woo his heart over. (Although as long as it has sugar it’s really not all that hard to do.)

In the end I decided since I couldn’t decide on a flavor, I would just do as many as I could. I made him Everything But The Kitchen Sink Cookies.

Never heard of them? Well, as the name suggests, there are a lot of different flavors and textures mixed into these!

Everything But The Kitchen Sink Cookies – adapted from my Perfect M&M Cookies recipe

Ingredients:

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 sticks (1 cup) salted butter

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup each: chocolate chips, oats, coarsely chopped pretzels, broken up potato chips

(You can really add anything you want here. Mix up the salty and sweet!)

Directions:

1. Beat together sugars and butter. Add eggs and vanilla, scraping the sides of the bowl down halfway through.

2. Add salt, baking soda, and baking powder, then slowly add the flour.

3. Now it’s time to choose what you want to mix into these cookies! I chose chocolate chips, oats, pretzels, and potato chips. If I had nuts then I would’ve added those too. Other fun ideas – cheese crackers, cranberries, candy bits, yogurt raisins…

4. Mix the fix-ins in by hand. I did the potato chips last because I didn’t want to over-crush them.

5. Refridgerate the dough overnight. This part suuuuucks. But seriously, it melds the flavors together so much better. Do it. Plus, cold dough is easier to work with.

6. Make tablespoon sized balls of dough, then squash them flat with the bottom of a drinking glass.

7. Bake for 10 minutes at 350*. When they come out they will look all puffy…

8. …then once they cool (let them cool on the pan) they will flatten out and set up.

My brother loved them! And didn’t even know they had potato chips in them until I told him. Haha…

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Tagged as chips, chocolate, easy cookies, oats, pretzel

February 7, 2014 · 12:00 am

Crab Claw Cookies

Every year I bake sugar cookies for the crab feed at my mother-in-law’s church. They host a dessert live auction. My silly grandpa-in-law bids on (and wins) them every year. Haha…

I do something different every time. You can see the past years’ cookies here and here.

This year I was stumped for an idea. UNTIL I went to another crab feed and saw these adorable headbands the volunteers were wearing. They looked something like this. I immediately knew what I was going to make and which cutter I was going to use.

Here is my sketch… Do you recognize the cutter?! It’s a Christmas light bulb!

I outlined with a thick black line (buttercream)…

…then filled them in with a dark bright red.

These couldn’t be any easier. Which worked out well for baking with a tiny baby in the house. More time for snuggles!

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Tagged as buttercream, crab, icing, red, sugar cookies

January 28, 2014 · 8:00 am

Princess Baby Shower Cookies

These pretty pink cookies were for a friend’s baby shower. We learned she was baking up a little girl when I made these cupcakes.

I made babies similar to these, but knew I wanted her smiling instead of screaming.

And since she is going to be the first girl baby in our group, and will be SO SO spoiled, they had to be princess themed. Diamonds and tiaras. 🙂 After outlining the tiaras, I painted them with silver luster dust mixed with a few drops of vodka. It turned them from grey to silver. Much more appropriate for princess attire.

I also threw in some mini hearts because they are easy and good fillers for a party when not everyone will take a larger (normal) sized cookie.

These were the first cookies I’ve made in a long time, besides my Christmas cookies. (Which, for the record, didn’t get finished… and the ones I did finish never got photographed so they never got shared. Meh.) It felt good to make cookies again, but my skills are definitely a little rusty. I’m not gonna lie – there were a lot of re-dos, and a few tears shed… and my husband standing behind me reassuring me that I’m being too hard on myself and that I’m just out of practice. *sigh* I seriously don’t know what I’d do without him. ❤

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Tagged as baby shower, buttercream, crown, grey, hearts, icing, pink, Princess, silver, sugar cookies

January 7, 2014 · 8:00 am

Cookies and Cream Blondies

Hello friends!
Remember me? That girl that used to bake and blog about it?
*sigh*
So I had this baby. (Who I’m so completely in love with by the way.)
I’m also back to work full-time, which means basically no time for sugar, butter, and flour.
BUT. My brother was home for Christmas, and I promised him I’d bake him something.

Cookies and Cream Blondies – adapted from my favorite blondie recipe

Ingredients:
2 sticks butter (I use salted)
2 cups packed brown sugar (I used light)
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
Dash of salt
2 cups flour
Entire pack of Double Stuf Oreos, crushed

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Melt butter. Beat with brown sugar until smooth.
3. Beat in vanilla and egg.
4. Add salt, then stir in flour until fully incorporated.
5. Mix in Oreo crumbles by hand.
6. Spray a 13×9 pan with non-stick spray, then pour batter into pan. Spread the top as even as possible.

7. Bake for 20 minutes. Let cool completely before cutting so that the ooey gooey inside can set.

At first I thought I out too much Oreos in it because the batter was SO thick. I was worried it wouldn’t bake up well.
WOW I was wrong. These were amazing!
My brother claims that they are his favorite thing I’ve ever made. 🙂

5 Comments

Filed under Misc

Tagged as blondies, oreos

January 6, 2014 · 1:06 pm

I am Cookie Carrie

After some thought, I have decided to change my blog name from “Carrie’s Creations” to just Cookie Carrie.

I realized it was a tad bit confusing having 2 different names that people know me under, so hopefully this will simplify things.

As always, you can find me on :

Facebook – facebook.com/cookiecarrie

Instagram – cookiecarrie

Twitter – cookiecarrie

Pinterest – icookiecarrie

Thank you all for hanging around through me absence! I promise a new treat is coming your way this week. 🙂

Christmas Pizookies

I was designated dessert for our family Christmas Eve dinner. Sugar cookies weren’t going to work, and my mom was “cheesecaked out,” which vetoed my first idea.

After scouring one of my beloved Pinterest dessert boards, my husband and I came up with the idea for these Christmas Pizookies. (If you don’t know what a pizookie is, here is my original pizookie post.) They are a chocolate cookie base with peppermint and white chocolate chips, topped with peppermint ice cream.

Christmas
Pizookies – recipe adapted from foodnetwork.com

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 sticks butter (1 cup)
2 eggs
2 tbsp vanilla
2 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup peppermint chips (like these)

Directions:
1. Beat butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, salt, and baking soda. Slowly add to wet mixture.
3. Stir in chips by hand.
4. Let dough chill for at least 2 hours.
5. Press dough into ramekins or shallow dishes.
6. Bake at 325* for 20-30 minutes, checking every couple minutes for doneness. You want them to be dry looking but not necessarily all the way baked through.
7. Top with a scoop of peppermint ice cream while still warm.

I ended up being crazy busy when it came time to put these together, so my husband got everything ready per me calling out directions and measurements. He did a great job!

Hope you love these as much as we did. 🙂

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Tagged as chocolate, peppermint

November 12, 2013 · 8:00 am

Funfetti Blondies

Sometimes you see a recipe and think, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

This is not one of those recipes.

This recipe, you do have time for. This is the easiest recipe ever.

These took about 5 minutes to get from my cabinet to my oven.

So in total, you can have these in your mouth in about an hour.

Funfetti Blondies – recipe found here at Sally’s Baking Addiction

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix (I always use Betty)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/3 cup + a splash of milk

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup sprinkles

1/2 cup white chocolate chips (Sally noted these as optional. I opted in!)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*. Spray pan with non-stick spray. (I used a 9×9 pan, but a 8×8 or even a round pan will work if that’s all you have.)

2. Mix all ingredients together except the white chocolate chips, mixing them in last. It should be thick and sticky.

3. Press/spread batter into pan as evenly as possible.

4. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until the edges just start to turn brown. The center will look under-cooked, but that’s okay!

5. Let cool for at least 30 minutes before diving in. Letting it sit and cool will set up the center and make them dense and gooey. (Like a delectable brownie sans chocolate!)

These are some of the yummiest things I’ve ever had. If you’re a funfetti fan, make these ASAP!

My baking itch is back! Now I just need to manage to find time to bake. And I need to come up with good ideas. And I need to get back to work so my hubby and I stop eating everything ourselves. Seriously.

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Tagged as blondies, funfetti, sprinkles, white chocolate

November 5, 2013 · 8:00 am

Milky Way Brownies

Halloween for parents = way too much candy in the house.

I have a solution that might help, at least a little bit. These brownies. They are LOADED with Milky Ways.

Yes I’m a parent now, but my little one isn’t exactly trick-or-treating hard core yet. Soo I kind of cheated. I used these cool Milky Way Bites that I found when shopping at my local Kmart. (The store is closing so there were killer deals!)

If you ARE a parent of a hard-core trick-or-treater and find yourself in excess of Halloween candy, just chop up a bunch of fun sized Milky Way bars (or Snickers or 3 Musketeers, whatever is your thing..) and dump them into the brownie batter. No need to buy special little candy bites!

Milky Way Brownies – adapted from this recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup flour

2/3 cup cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2-3 cups chopped up candy bars (I used 2 whole bags of Milky Way Bites)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*. Line a 13×9 pan in foil, then spray with non-stick cooking spray. (The candy is going to be ooey gooey sticky and you don’t want it to stick to the pan!)

2. Mix together sugar and oil. It should look like slushy snow.

3. Add eggs and vanilla. Don’t overmix.

4. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add to sugar mixture.

5. Mix in candy by hand.

6. Pour into prepared pan. I love how lumpy it looks with all that candy!

7. Bake at 350* for 30 minutes. Check with a toothpick (between candy pieces if possible) to make sure center isn’t too wet/uncooked.

8. Let cool COMPLETELY. Seriuosly. These will be a disaster if you try to cut them while still warm.

If you don’t care about that then by all means – plop some ice cream on top too! I bet that would taste amazing…

The foil lining makes it super easy to just lift the whole brownie sheet out of the pan. Then just peel back the sides and cut away.

These brownies are pretty rich, even without the candy, so cut them into smaller pieces… besides, they share better that way. Unless sharing isn’t your thing. 😉

Look at those gooey chunks… Mmmm…

My poor brother.. he’s going to be so jealous…

P.S.

I know I always say I don’t like chocolate… well I realized I have quite a few brownie recipes on here now, so I added a category “brownies,” which can be seen in the right-hand column of this webpage. Hope this makes it easier to find the brownie recipes you’re looking for!

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Tagged as brownies, chocolate

October 31, 2013 · 8:00 am

Halloween Party Popcorn

This fun purple popcorn was inspired by this recipe that I came across on Pinterest.

Pop some popcorn. I used kernels and a pot on the stove, but microwave popcorn would work too. Maybe just use unbuttered…

Melt purple candy melts (or any color you want) in the microwave. (I wanted my purple a little darker, so I added Royal Purple food coloring to the melted candy melts. )

**Just a heads up – regular food coloring will thicken candy melts – do not add food coloring to them unless you’re doing something other than dipping… when you’re mixing it onto popcorn or drizzling it over something, it’s okay if it’s a little thicker.

While the candy melts are still wet, add sprinkles.

I used Halloween colored quins, an orange/yellow/white non-pareil mix, black dragees, and some white bone shaped sprinkles.

You can also drizzle a second color of candy melts over the popcorn before or after adding sprinkles. I went with neon green.

The recipe that inspired these had candy mixed in. I didn’t have enough mini M&M’s leftover, and nothing else to throw in, so I skipped the candy this time.

I had this popcorn out at our Halloween party, but not much of it was eaten. I also had a chocolate fountain set up and let’s face it – most people will always choose chocolate. 🙂

I packaged up some of the popcorn for our neighbor kids for Halloween night. Can’t really give away homemade stuff anymore because it can’t be trusted. But I knew the neighbor kids would at least be able to enjoy it!

This popcorn is so easy that you still have time to make some by tonight!

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Tagged as candy melts, popcorn, purple, sprinkles