Recipe! Compost Cookies

Hello everyone!  I have an extra special post today from my cousin!   Sadly, we live on opposite sides of the country and I haven’t seen them in far too long but we keep in touch through facebook and instagram.  Also, she has the cutest weimeraner ever.  Oh, and to say she is an Auburn fan would be an understatement.

She posted these cookies on instagram and I actually thought they were made out of compost!  It turns out they are a brilliant and yummy idea with endless combinations!  The idea is to add 1 1/2 cups of something sweet and 1 1/2 cups of something salty.  I love that combo!

Here she is!

Hi, my name is Anita. I am Meg’s cousin-in-law, and I live in Prattville, Alabama. Yes, Meg has some Southern roots!  (Note from Meg: I love my southern roots!)

Meg asked me to write about a recipe I posted some Instagram pics of, so here goes. Unfortunately, I had already made the second batch, except baking them, so I will try to do the best I can to describe the process.

The link to the original recipe I found is here.

I love to peruse through recipes on my iPad. If they seem too difficult or way too many steps, I immediately go on to something else. I stumbled across this one on Yummly, and it came from the Momofuku Milk Bar. I actually have another recipe from Momofuku Milk Bar in my stash that I haven’t tried yet.

The recipe for their Compost Cookies caught my attention:

1) because of the name

2) because I love junk food.  I am trying to do better about what I eat, but still have lots of failures. I do get out almost every morning and walk 3+ miles, so that helps me feel better when I have my binges.

(Note from Meg: Anita has been doing awesome!  I’m so proud of her for getting healthy!)

So the first time I made the recipe, I decided to go with chocolate chips and crushed pretzels. I learned during this time that it is best to have everything already measured out, etc. and have it close at hand – especially if you are like me and don’t have a stand mixer.

I had my oldest daughter crush up the pretzels and measure them and measure out the chocolate chips for me.  This wasn’t a difficult task for her as she is a college junior (grin). I followed the recipe just like it says and refrigerated the scooped dough for a couple of hours before baking about half of the cookies. Then when I decided to bake them, I put them in the oven for the nine minutes. At this point they looked exactly as it showed in the above recipe, but a little on the pale side, so the timer went on for another two minutes. At the end of 11 minutes, they were gorgeous! And oh, so yummy!

(Note from Meg: oven temperatures seem to vary just the slightest bit!)

So over the next few days I baked the rest of the cookies.

Here is what this batch looked like.

Now, one thought on this, if you don’t have a lot of refrigerator space, I am not sure where you would put all of these cookies.

The recipe says to scoop the dough and let refrigerate for one hour to one week. I have a second refrigerator, so I had more than half of the dough in the second refrigerator, on cookie sheets and pans and anything I could think of to put it on.

These cookies were soooooo good, sweet and salty all in one place!  But I wanted to try them with potato chips and something non-chocolate. I know, I love chocolate, but we have a teenage friend who doesn’t like chocolate, and I try every once in a while to do something without chocolate. So I checked with her to see if she liked the Mike and Ike candies. She said she did, so the plan was forming.

I bought two boxes of the candies and set about cutting each piece into thirds. That took about a box and a half. Then I took some leftover wavy potato chips and crushed them in the bag. Then I got everything else measured out in individual bowls and all within reach and started the mixing process.

I followed the directions and then added the candy and chips. I really wanted to only scoop out one cookie sheet of dough, but then remembered how the dough gets a little hard on the outside and was afraid the bowl would be like that and a disaster, so I went ahead and scooped it all out onto various pans.

This is what they look like after being in the refrigerator for a few hours.

I then waited for a little over an hour for it to chill, then got my oven hot and popped the pan in.

At the nine-minute mark, I checked the cookies. Hmmm. They weren’t crackly like the first batch had been and like the recipe said, but they looked good. They still needed a little more time under the heat, so back in for another minute or two. This batch really spread out on the pan where the first batch hadn’t spread that much. It seems to be a thinner dough for some reason.

But, oh, my!  These taste like gooey sugar cookies with fruity pieces in it. They were still very good!  I still have about two dozen to bake, but will probably do that before we head out for the beach for the rest of the week.  (Note from Meg: Lucky!!)

But don’t hate me for the beach trip, it looks like we are in for quite a bit of rain while we are there. But, hey, a rainy day at the beach is better than a sunny day at home – but home is expecting rain too.  (Note from Meg: Ohh, I think rain during an Alabama summer is the best– especially thunderstorms!)

I hope you will try this recipe.  If you do, let me know what your special ingredients were and what you thought of them.

Blessings,

Thanks Anita!  Boy, I wish I could pop over for a couple of these cookies!  🙂  Can you imagine all the fun combinations you could make?

What’s your favorite salty/sweet combination?