Do you ever have a dream about a particular food and you just have to make it afterwards? I have these from time to time and ironically I found out after talking to my dad that he does too, so it must run in the family! They’re usually these food inventions, something funky you know you haven’t eaten before but you just have to see it into reality.
I know many people don’t like hearing about other people’s dreams, but tough shit, this is important!!
So in this dream, I’m at one of “those” local places that’s famous for something. You know the kind, probably a regional favorite, the place where tourists are told to go visit on Food Network or Travel Channel, maybe an article. They have one crazy item that you just HAVE TO HAVE that always sells out first thing on a saturday morning. This was one of those places. It was a cafe that was out east somewhere, and there was a lady who had been running it since like the eighties.
(Side note, they had coffees that were named after people and there was one named after me, which happened to be my favorite, the Cafe Noisette.)
Anyways, their “one thing” were these cookies. They were huge and purple, and they had big chunks of what appeared to be white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts. In addition, there were those colored foil covered chocolate eggs. The little ones, you know? The color of the foil matched the cookies. They were ridiculous. And the idea was you bust them open and eat the chocolates, unearthing them like a paleontologist unearthing bones.
I woke up before I could try them but I was just entranced, I had to make them!! So obviously, upon waking my clarity of mind said foil inside a cookie was a batty idea that lends to a terrible eating experience. So when I went to the store, and wandered around the candy aisle long enough, I found Jordan Almonds, which were perfectly shaped and colored and I figured would add some heft and still allow for that weird treasure hunting experience.
For the purple color, I thought…well…we could go with food coloring, but why not go more natural? (In hind sight after baking a test batch, you’ll really want to go with some food coloring.) So I figured let’s try blueberries, they’re delicious and would have a lovely flavor with the white chocolate chips (yeah not so ew after all right?). But I wondered, is there blueberry extract??
Turns out, if you want an extra boost of blueberry flavor, try coriander!! Apparently they have some of the same lanolin, a terpine (if you don’t know what a terpine is just ask a proper stoner and they’ll go on a diatribe about terps.) I found that here:
Link!
But yeah the coriander very much brings out the flavor of the blueberry, highly recommend it in your next blueberry based dish!
So for the blueberries, I started out with a little sugar and water in a pot, got it to almost simmering and added a bunch of blueberries. Like, two handfuls to about a half cup of water and a half cup of sugar. I simmered this down until all of the blueberries were fully squished down into a kind of sauce, adding a few shakes of coriander into the melange. Then I threw it all through a food mill to strain it. I’m sure you could use cheese cloth or a strainer of sorts, be creative. If you’re looking for exact science and measurements, you’ve come to the wrong place, we’re all about experimenting and adjusting here! Anyways, that blueberry whatnot became after straining and cooling, kind of a syrupy consistency of blueberry goodness.
So after that came finding the right cookie recipe. My thing was, I already knew what I wanted for the rest of the ingredients, so I just needed something…basic. Nothing wild.
Well if you’ve ever had the idea to go looking online for a basic cookie recipe, you’ll know what I found.
There’s either Basic Sugar Cookie III on like All Recipes or Marmiton, which don’t look at the comments, it’s either people who are going “Great recipe!” or some wise ass going, “WELL I always use cinnamon AND cardamon cause that’s what GRAMGRAM used to do, and she was the SHIT. THESE COOKIES ARE A LIE!! ADD TWO MORE CUPS OF SUGAR AND EXACTLY THREE SECONDS OF VANILLA!!!” (Seconds??).
Or you get “Those baking blogs”, The Art of Baking with Bessica Bakerly, who then proceeds to tell you some heartwarming bullshit about her precious kiddos who just wanted to bake with mommy around the holidays and her hubby who always wolfs down the whole tray of (apparently) fifty cookies she just made. Which like, I’m all for heartwarming but lady, I’m two espressos deep, sitting on the toilet scrolling madly looking for a basic starter to a cookie recipe, not your life’s story. (Yeah I realize what I’m doing here, shut up, this IS about the story and not the recipe, I never promised you this would be quick LOL, we’re here for the journey.) Side note, if you want to bypass the bullshit on sites like that and get to the recipe, try this browser plugin:
Link!
I’m sure there’s one for firefox too.
The third type of recipe I find is like extra as shit and promises either nuclear meltdown or spiritual nirvana; things like: “THIS COOKIE RECIPE WAS USED IN A HOSTAGE NEGOTIATION!!!” Or “ALL OF YOUR METABOLIC PATHWAYS WILL OPEN AT ONCE AND YOU WILL BECOME A PURE ENERGY BLOOD MIST IF YOU EAT THESE COOKIES!!!” and “THE UN WILL ISSUE SANCTIONS ON YOU IF YOU MAKE THESE!!!”. My favorite, the ones with the screen name or name included: “BABS20269’s EXTREME CHOCO CHIP MAMA SLAPPERS” “DARLENE’S MEGA CHUNKY CHOCO-LUDES!!” or like anything to do with inserting “Crack” into the title.
SO! With that being said, I went to the most trustworthy place to find a good cookie recipe. The back of the chocolate chip bag! They always have the most perfectly generic version of the recipe, so it’s a great place to start if you want to tweak a few things and get creative.
These tasted amazing, the only thing I did differently to the recipe was add about two or three tablespoons of my blueberry syrup. So the dough was just a little extra sticky compared to your typical chocolate chip recipe, but that’s why the step where you let it hang out in the freezer or fridge for a while before you bake them is important.
The only thing that I’d do differently is just add some food coloring, because they ended up looking blue/green and not as purple as the dough initially did. They were a lovely mild blueberry flavor, which worked well with the macadamia nuts, and the white chocolate gave it this nicely creamy light flavor. Kind of a fun springtime or summer version of the chocolate chip cookie.
Side note about the Jordan Almonds:
These are really kinda optional. The main point is to have some crazy creative fun here. Go wild and throw something else fun in there like corn nuts. Who am I to judge you on dream cookies? The feedback I got from the most recent taste tester was that the Jordan Almonds are "surprise danger chunks" and they did not like them due to paranoia of tooth risk. So proceed at your own pace. I think those little Robins Eggs chocolate eggs would be awesome but it's May while I'm writing this and those are hard to find.
The Recipe:
Dream Cookies
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 sticks/1 cup butter - sofffttend...leave it out for a few Sade songs
1/2 cup sugar - I'm not going to say granulated cause if you try to use rock candy like good luck you crazy mofo.
2/3 cup PACKED brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tb blueberry sauce - see below or like...just don't okay.
A few drops of food coloring, purple or blue. Your pick! You're the princess! ;D
2 large eggs
1/4 cup-ish of macadamia nuts
1/4 cup-ish of white chocolate chips
I say ish for those last two cause that's kind of on you how crazy you wanna go with the chunks.
1 handfull of Jordan Almonds
Butter plus sugar. Cream it. Add wet ingredients, eggs are wet so do those too. Add flour and salt and baking soda. It might be a lil extra sticky because of the extra wet from the blueberry sauce but if that's scary just add a lil flour until it's not so sticky. Also keeping in mind, it's going to need a lil time in the fridge or freezer if you're impatient like me. Add chunks before putting in frigo or freezer.
Distribute in portions on a cookie sheet whatever size you want. They will expand a touch, so unless you want cookie slab then space em out a bit. Bake at 350 for about fifteen minutes. That'll depend on how big you make them. Just watch em.
Sauce for blueberriness:
1/2 cup of water
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup blueberries
1 tsp ground coriander
Get the water and sugar to a light simmer and add the blueberries and coriander, just keep cooking those down until it's almost a syrup (it'll thicken as it cools). When it's safe enough of a temp to work with, throw it through any kind of sifting device like a food mill or colander.
ET DEGOUSTEZ, MECS!
If you have extra blueberry goo, some fun ideas to use it are:
1. Crepes!
2. Pancakes
3. Plus whipped cream
4. In face.
5. Ice cream! :D