Late Night Milk & Cookies in San Francisco & NYC

 It's always a nice surprise when your out and about and you stumble upon a place serving late night milk and cookies. Let's be real - it doesn't matter how old you are, everyone gets excited over milk and cookies doesn't matter what time it is. Over at Buckshot in the inner Richmond of San Francisco on a Tuesday night with my girls and we decided it was the perfect hour for milk and cookies which were heated up on a frying pan and served with those old school mini cartons that bring back fond memories of elementary school lunches....

Mmmm....mmmmm

 On a recent trip to NYC I came across a new bakery in Hell's Kitchen with late hours called Schmackary's where I stopped for milk and cookies. While Buckshot (above) had one choice of cookie and milk (makes sense because first and foremost is a bar and game room) Schmackery's  had several unique flavors of cookies such as the 'Deep Dish Banana Peanut Butter Cookie' (below).

 or the maple bacon cookies...

 While the banana peanut butter deep dish cookie was tasty and I finished it with my milk, I prefer the simple, standard chocolate chip cookie on a frying pan from Buckshot's in San Francisco. In a silly way, it's a little like a metaphor for life. You can go all over the place and have these fancy experiences and try unique flavors of life, but at the end of it all, when you listen to your heart you really enjoy the good'ol simple stuff like the classic choc chip cookie at a bar with a carton of milk.
Cookies & Milk in San Francisco? Buckshot 3848 Geary Boulevard
New York? Schmackery's at 362 West 45th Street

Celadon's Delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies

One recent evening, after our little enchilada feast, my roommate Celadon made some delicious chocolate chip cookies! She is a big fan of the Tate's Bakeshop Chocolate Chip Cookies so she decided to make a version of them. While Tate's are normally thin and crisp, Celadon's cookies had the perfect amount of chewiness while still maintaining a little crispness around the edges.

Celadon's Delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies

(Tate's Bake Shop recipe: Makes 4 1/2 dozen)

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose pour

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup salted butter
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two baking sheets.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. In another large bowl, cream the butter and sugars. Add the water and vanilla. Mix the ingredients until they are just combined.
3. Add the eggs and mix them lightly. Stir in the flour mixture. Fold in the chocolate chips. Don’t over mix the dough. Drop the cookies 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets using one tablespoon measurements.
4. Bake them for 12 minutes or until the edges and centers are brown. Remove the cookies to a wire rack to cool.

Oatmeal Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chunks

There is nothing like a mountain of cookies to get you excited. On Sunday evening I decided to use up my box of Irish oatmeal to make some good'ol oatmeal cookies, loaded with extra goodies. I also tried to make the cookies a little more healthy that your usual buttery ball. I prefer to use chopped dark chocolate pieces than mini chocolate chips because I have found that the dark chocolate pieces are more fun to eat and they have a much stronger taste than their little mini chip counterparts. With a cold glass of milk or a warm cup of tea, these cookies are a prime dessert. In an effort to make them healthier I switched butter with olive oil. The challenge was then keeping the batter together to make nice round balls. They don't have that comforting buttery taste that most cookies have, but are packed with flavor and taste great!

Oatmeal Cookies with Dark Chocolate Chunks
(Makes 36 cookies)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup softened butter
3/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup regular sugar
1/4 cup fake eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups quick cooking rolled oats
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup chopped dark chocolate pieces
1 cup raisins

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Whisk together the butter, olive oil, and fake eggs in a large mixing bowl.
3. Add in the flour, brown sugar, sugar, baking soda, salt, vanilla extract and cinnamon. Mix until everything is incorporated. Add in the oats, walnuts, raisins and dark chocolate pieces.
4. Roll heaping tablespoons of the batter into balls and place them 12 to a sheet. Bake for 15 minutes and then cool on a rack for a few minutes. Enjoy!

Cake Art Coconut Macaroons with Almonds and Chocolate Frosting

One of my best friends, Erica's, mother runs a wonderful baking supplies store in our home town, San Rafael, California. It's called Cake Art Supplies and this is my second time making something from a mix from the store. The first item I made was from a Cake Art mix for the most delicious brownies I've ever had. For my birthday, Erica sent me a box with a mix for coconut macaroons and another brownie mix! These macaroons were hands-down the best I've ever had. They stayed moist for a whole week and they were perfectly gooey and delicious. I added some sliced almonds to the mixture and while the macaroons baked I made some chocolate frosting to drizzle over them. These were very tasty and everyone who tried one couldn't stop at just one!

Cake Art Coconut Macaroons with Almonds and Chocolate Frosting

Ingredients:
1 pound Cake Art Coconut Macaroon Mix
5 ounces boiling water
3/4 cup sliced almonds
5.5 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
3 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 375, cover two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Stir in the boiling water into the macaroon mix and let it stand for 5 minutes. Stir in the sliced almonds.
3. Spoon the batter onto the cookie sheets and bake for 15-18 minutes, or until macaroons are golden brown on top. Let cool on a cookie rack.
4. While macaroons are cooling, microwave the cream and chopped chocolate on high for 3 minutes. Stir and microwave for longer if necessary.
5. Dip the bottom of the cooled macaroons into the melted chocolate and drizzle the chocolate on top. Enjoy with milk or tea!

Celadon's Coconut Cookies

My roommate made the most incredible coconut cookies last week and these are definitely one of my top four favorite cookies! In no special order my top four favorite cookies are: Levain Bakery, Ben's Cookies in London, Andy's White Chocolate Chip Macadamia Nut and now, Celadon's Coconut Cookies. These coconut cookies were perfectly chewy and moist and tasted great with milk! She found this recipe by Rachel Ray and adapted it to make these perfect cookies.. Enjoy!

Celadon's Coconut Cookies
(Makes 36 cookies)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups coconut chips

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 375°. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar at medium-high speed until creamy, about 2 minutes. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Beat in the flour mixture on low speed. Stir in the coconut chips.
3. Place rounded teaspoons of dough about an inch apart on the prepared cookie sheet. Bake until the edges are golden, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cool on a rack.

Thumbprint Cookies with Strawberry Jam for Sarah's Birthday!

For my good friend Sarah loves everything raspberry and strawberry so I decided to make some strawberry filled thumbprint cookies for her birthday. These cookies are delicious and I remember the first time I made them as a kid with my mom; we used the Williams Sonoma Cookbook for Kids and they were super fun and easy to make. I found this recipe on the Joy of Baking website, a new site that I will definitely be frequenting more often now that I have an electric mixer. I was looking for a raspberry jam but unfortunately Trader Joe's was out, not surprising, so instead I found a fantastic strawberry jam with real chunks of strawberry. The wonderful thing about these cookies is how flexible they are, you can use a variety of nuts in the batter and any jam for the filling! It's hard to go wrong with these addictive buttery bites.

Thumbprint Cookies with Strawberry Jam

(Makes 40 cookies)

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup white sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups walnuts, finely chopped
1 cup strawberry jam

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and place the rack in the center of the oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a bowl, cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until light and fluffy, about 2-4 minutes.
3. Add the egg yolks and vanilla extract and beat. Add the flour and salt and beat just until incorporated. Mix in the chopped walnuts with your hands or a spatula.
4. Roll the dough into ball about 1 inch wide and place on the baking sheet. With your thumb, lightly press down in the center of the ball to make an indentation. Fill the thumbprints with 1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon of jam.

15. Bake for 13-15 minutes, or until the cookies are slightly golden and the jam filling has set. Let cool on a wire rack. ENJOY!

Elaine's Delicious Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Ritz Sandwiches

While visiting my boyfriend's family over the holidays, his mother, Elaine, made the most fantastic and so simple desserts! The concept is perfect: two ritz crackers sandwiching a layer of creamy peanut butter and the whole lot drenched in melted chocolate and left to harden. Sound addicting? Chocolate and peanut butter can do that to you. I definitely ate most of these chocolate Ritz sandwiches of goodness and I am still thinking about them! I realized how wonderful Ritz crackers are (I promise this is not a paid advertisement) but seriously, they go wonderfully with cheese, dips, peanut and chocolate! Ritz crackers are definitely an important provision. They can be stored in an airtight container. Elaine gave us a little container of them for a New Year's party, but they didn't last with me in the car.

Ingredients:

Ritz crackers

Creamy peanut butter

Chocolate bars or chocolate chips

Butter

Directions:

1. Make little happy sandwiches of Ritz crackers and peanut butter.

2. Melt the chocolate and butter in a steamer over a pot of boiling water.

3. Using tongs to hold the sandwiches together dip them in the melted chocolate and twirl them to coat. Place on a sheet of wax paper to cool and harden. Enjoy!

                              

Celadon's Delicious Ginger Snaps

This was one of those exciting moments where you come home and you can smell the baking from the hallway and you feel super lucky when you realize that it's actually coming from your apartment and you have the coolest roommate in the world. And then you come inside and there are even some cookies on a plate that are holding little signs that say "Eat Me." Okay, they weren't holding signs but regardless these were DELICIOUS, yes all caps, and were perfect with milk. They were just a little bit crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside and the perfect amount of ginger wonderfulness. My roommate, Celadon, found this recipe for Ginger Crinkles on the Homesick Texan food blog and in the winter spirit she whipped some up one night after finishing finals. Celadon used turbinado instead of refined sugar. These cookies look so pretty and taste even better! I polished off a container of these before flying home. Just make sure to have some milk or chai tea or ice cream to enjoy with the cookies. Also, these cookies harden easily so make sure to store them in a super air tight container otherwise they can become to hard to bite into. When kept in airtight containers, they can last about a week and a half and still be chewy on the inside.

Ingredients:

1 cup turbinado sugar

1/2 cup oil

1 egg

1/4 cup molasses

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

1/4 cup sugar for dipping

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Whisk together the oil, turbinado, egg and molasses. Add in the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and ginger. Mix until it is all incorporated.

3. Roll the dough into small balls (about 1/2 tablespoon size) and dip in the sugar.

4. Bake until it is slightly browned, about 15 minutes.

Bakery Review: Levain Bakery, Home to the World's Best Cookie. Period.

I don't want to sound like a cookie snob, but I have been around and had some pretty freaking awesome cookies. The cookies from Levain Bakery, however, send me over the edge. They blow all the other cookies out of the cookie batter (corny joke I know). My mom first introduced me to Levain Bakery after she saw the cookies on Oprah. She showed up at work with a bag full of delicious treats from the bakery and I shared it all with my co-wrokers and I went back the following morning to try the cookies for myself. Inside the bakery, 7 NYPD came in and proclaimed "You know it's a good bakery when the cops are showing up for cookies." This small bakery churns out huge, gooey cookies that are crunchy on the outside and smell nothing less than incredible. When my good friend, Maxine, came to visit in the spring time, we went there and she was hooked. Here is a picture of the first time she tried these magnificent and magical cookies.

When Maxine came to visit just last week, she picked up some cookies for us to have as dessert in the evenings. The cookies are $3.75 a pop which is pricey for cookie, but is cheap considering the pleasure it brings and they are huge! It was a wonderful surprise and with milk these cookies are divine. The most talked about cookie at Levain Bakery is the chocolate chip walnut cookie pictured above. This one is also Maxine's favorite. My favorite is the Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter cookies.

Unlike most chocolate peanut butter cookies, where the peanut flavor is condensed in peanuts, the use of peanut butter makes for a more powerful peanut punch and it melts in with the rest of the cookie so it is consistently gooey and not crunchy. The night before Halloween, Maxine and I dressed up and went dancing until the wee hours. I was Where's Waldo and she was a 40's pin-up star. At the end of the night, or should I say in the early morning, these cookies were the perfect completion before going to sleep.

After all that dancing we chose the cookies below over traditional late night pizza without any hesitation. These are finger licking delicious and will change your life. Get ready to have some serious cravings!

Levain Bakery

167 West 74th Street (Between Columbus and Amsterdam)

212.874.6080

http://www.levainbakery.com/

Double Chocolate Cookies with Dried Cranberries and Walnuts

Growing up I had a poster in my room of Seasame Street's Cookie Monter stuffing his face with cookies with a caption that said "Got Milk?" I think it's fair to say cookies are an American favorite and over the years the cookie has developed from classic chocolate chip to an incredible, ever-growing, variety from pumpkin spice to blueberry cream. Regardless of the type of cookie, it always tastes best with a glass of cold milk. I love cookies that are loaded with nuts and fruits giving them flavor and, well, anything with chocolate is usually a winner. I had an old recipe clipping from an August 2007 issue of Gourmet for Cherry Chocolate Cookies and in recognition of the magazine's being 86'd, I decided I would make it and adapt to what ingredients I had. The dried cranberries add a fantastic chewiness and the nuts give the perfect crunch. I made a bunch and brought a plate to work which disapeared within one hour.

Double Chocolate Cookies with Dried Cranberries and Walnuts

(Adapted from Gourmet Magazine's Cherry Double Chocolate Cookies recipe: makes about 3 dozen)

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 pinch salt

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened

1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs (fake eggs work perfectly)

1/2 cup chocolate morsels

1 cup walnuts, corsely chopped

1 cup dried cranberries

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, placing the racks on the upper and third level.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt.

3. In a large bowl, mix together the butter and brown sugar until it is well combined. Then add the flour mixture and mix just until it is combined. Then add the chocolate morsels, pecans and cranberries just until incorporated.

4. On ungreased baking sheets drop two tablespoons of the batter per cookie about two inches apart from each other. Each sheet should hold about one dozen cookies. Gently flatten the cookies using your hands.

5. Bake for 12-14 minutes, switching the level of the sheets half way through. Transfer the cookies to a rack, and cool. Or if you are like me and can't wait, you can bite into one right away and burn your mouth.