Last week and s'mores cookies

I have not had a lot to do for the last several days. This has been great.

On Tuesday I fixed a friend's computer. It was running slow, so I disabled a lot of processes that loaded at startup. Then I went home to finish baking some s'mores cookies. I am not sure where I originally found the recipe online, but it is the same as the recipe from Ice Cream Before Dinner. With 11 tablespoons of butter this is a sure winner.

S'mores Cookies

11 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temp
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp cinnamon
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1 cup mini marshmallows
4 Hershey bars, broken into pieces
1 package graham crackers, broken into squares

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.
2. In another bowl, cream butter with both sugars until light and fluffy.
3. Add egg and vanilla. Then add the flour mixture. Keep mixing.
4. Fold in chips and marshmallows. Chill dough in refrigerator for 1 hour (or even overnight).
5. Preheat oven to 375 F.
6. Line baking pans with parchment paper. Lay out graham crackers side by side on the pans as close as possible (they should be touching).
7. Place a heaping tablespoon of chilled dough on each of the graham crackers. Press down slightly with fingertips.
8. Bake for 5 minutes then remove from oven and put a piece of Hershey bar on top of each of them.
9. Bake for 5 – 7 more minutes or until dough is beginning to turn golden brown at the edges. Cool on a wire rack.

The way I did the cookies was to break the graham crackers in half (so they were almost squares). I then put a scoop of dough on top of each of these squares. When they were finished, each graham square had a cookie and chocolate on top, which was my original image when I heard s'mores cookies. However, looking at the pictures and recipes online, the way they are usually made is to get the dough to evenly bake over all the crackers and then cut them up so they are more like bars instead of cookies.

I made 46 cookies with this recipe. A box of graham crackers usually has 54 pieces when the rectangular ones are broken in half.

While I like baking cookies and giving them to people, I was inspired to share them at a Beach Newman event because of the following exchange on facebook a few weeks ago. Instead of paraphrasing, I will share the entire conversation. The sister below is a lot like Juliette from Berkeley.

Friend (status update): My sister is actually an alien being with magical powers from the planet Soggisandwichonia and she plans on devouring every cookie in our house as soon as I bake some. Her mind powers compel me. I must leave now. Farewell, Earthlings.
Friend: Hacked
Friend's sister: No, she wasn't.
Me: She is an adult; she can bake her own cookies. Also, anyone from Soggisandwichonia should be eating sandwiches.
Friend's sister: But the sandwiches there are all soggy, I want COOKIES!!! And aliens never reach adulthood; that's why we always rely on Earthlings to do our bidding. Do you bake cookies?
Me: Soggy sandwiches? How did civilization ever develop on that planet? I do bake cookies. Growing up, the Cookie Monster was one of my heroes. I often make chocolate chip oatmeal ones, but recently I made some smores cookies that were wonderful. I should bring some to one of the Beach Newman events.
Friend's sister: It's a very moist climate, and yes, you should! S'more cookies?!:)

So I decided to bring cookies to our meeting on Tuesday. While I knew my friend would be there, I did not know her sister would be there as well. I have not seen her since January.

Since I did not have anything pressing to do on Wednesday, I cleaned my room. I found some paperwork I was looking for, threw some stuff out, and did some laundry. It has been a while since I saw this much carpet in my room.