Chocolate Chip Cookie Cups

This guest post comes to you from my friend Maggie. Maggie and I were roommates at Elizabethtown College. I had the privilege of being a bridesmaid in her beautiful wedding last year. We share a mutual love of baking and she has quite possibly the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I know. When I started the blog, I immediately went to Maggie and asked her if she would be interesting in writing some guest posts. Maggie and her husband Preston live in Lambertville, NJ.

Back in the summertime, Amber and I took a trip to the mall before heading out to see a Maroon 5 concert (the concert was amazing, by the way). After shopping for awhile, we decided to stop and get a snack at the Nestle Toll House stand. I chose to get a chocolate chip cookie cup. Basically it is a chocolate chip cookie, shaped into a cup and filled with chocolate. A couple of weeks later, my husband and I were on vacation and passed by another Nestle Toll House store. I immediately made him stop so I could get another cookie cup and so he could see what I was raving about it.

Chasing the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie (Part 1)

I've long been on a journey to find the recipe for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. You know, the kind you can only buy in bakeries and wonder whether the cookies can truly be homemade and not chemically altered or manufactured. They have have the perfect ratio of chips to cookie, are chewy yet crisp and the chocolate is always gooey no matter the temperature.

I've tried dozens of recipes for chocolate chip cookies over the years. As a child, I grew up baking the toll-house cookies on the back of the Nestle chocolate chip package. I've tried the Neiman Marcus cookie, the Jacques Torres and dozens of other recipes. My friend Tara makes an awesome chocolate chip cookie using vanilla pudding in the mix. It's fluffy and light and though she's given me the recipe, I can't replicate the cookies to taste as good as hers. I made her promise to give me a tutorial so we'll consider that Part 2 of the series soon to come.

Peanut Butter Toffee Ice Cream Sandwiches

Yesterday I sat at my desk in a moment of panic thinking, "ugh, I need to bake tonight, what can I make?" Wednesdays mean two hours at the gym after work and baking would require a trip to the grocery store. I knew I wouldn't make it home before 8:30 so I wanted something quick and simple. Ding Ding! In pops my daily e-mail from Martha. Stewart that is, and yes we're on a first name basis. Every day she sends me cookie recipes and I like to believe the recipes are sent to me, and me alone. Yesterday's cookie of the day was Peanut Butter Toffee Cookies...she had me at peanut butter. A relatively short list of ingredients? Sold.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Stuffed Cupcakes

When I first told my friends that I had found that it's possible to stuff RAW cookie dough inside a cupcake, no one believed me. "It's true," I said, "I saw it on a food blog." Knowing that my friend Rachel was coming home from Virginia to celebrate her birthday, I taunted her with the delicious possibility of such a cupcake.

I've tried cookie bottomed cupcakes and oreo stuffed cupcakes but never a cupcake stuffed with RAW dough. How was this possible? Would the chocolate chip cookie stork drop a ball of baby cookie dough inside my cupcake? Does the cookie monster take responsibility for this?

No. It's simple. You freeze the cookie dough.