I began with the Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies because the recipe did not mention how many cookies it would yield, and the ingredients are not exactly pantry staples of mine. If the yield was low I would be off to the grocery store for more supplies! The ingredients included unsweetened baking chocolate, condensed milk, Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip muffin mix, and Dove Milk Chocolate and Caramel Candies. The only two ingredients included in this recipe that I keep in my house are pecans and butter!
I started to mix up the cookies and quickly discovered that the mixture was rather dry, which is when I began to question whether "Betty Crocker Chocolate Chop Muffin Mix" meant just the mix, or the mix prepared as noted on the package. The only liquid in the recipe was melted butter and condensed milk? Really? Puzzled, I made a test cookie. It had some compression issues and was fairly friable, but it baked ok. My son and I cut it in half and tasted it (sans chocolate caramel topping). My son said it tasted really good and I decided it was far too sweet (it should be noted it was 8 o'clock in the morning), but I decided to proceed according to my original interpretation of the recipe. There followed a difficult couple of hours of compressing the dough into balls, baking them for 8 minutes, popping a Dove chocolate onto each one (sometimes strategically over an area that was falling apart), cooking for another 2 minutes, then swirling a knife in the chocolate to "ice" the cookie. Luckily, the recipe makes plenty of cookies for tournament taste-offs so there was no need for another go-round. Finally, they were all done, and it was on to scrubbing the caramel and chocolate drippings off the kitchen table so that we wouldn't find Oliver (our dog) on top of it when we returned from our outing to my parents-in-law's house to not return a crock pot (please refer to Sunday's post for further details).
After a restful lunch and a quick run in the surprisingly chilly/windy weather, I embarked on the Cowboy Cookies. Cowboy Cookies are made with peanut butter, oatmeal (I used rolled oats, because why would cowboys use instant?), chocolate chips, and a slew of typical pantry ingredients, which made me wonder about how well-supplied cowboys must have been out there on the range. Or, as my husband pointed out, are they just supposed to taste like cowboys? Regardless, the recipe mixed up quickly (even though it included a bit of sifting), and the dough formed nice, easy to roll, dough balls for baking. In fact, my son and I kept up with the baking easily, and managed to roll all of the cookies in advance of available oven space, which facilitated cleanup during the later baking stages. It should be noted that the recipe for Cowboy Cookies makes a very respectable amount of cookies with very little fuss. They are light, crispy, and flavorful.
Cowboy Cookies were labeled as Cookie A (and "contains peanuts" for allergy sufferers) and Turtle Fudge Chocolate Chip Cookies were labeled as Cookie B (and "contains pecans" for allergy sufferers -- kind of a bad day for anyone affected by both peanut and tree nut allergies). Here is a picture of both (Cookie A on left, Cookie B on right):
My husband tasted both cookies and said, in a very serious tone, that "This is going to be the closest one yet. These are both great cookies." My coworkers were, of course, delighted with the offerings. The supports of the Turtle Chocolate Chip Cookies were vociferous, claiming things like "it's like fudge and cookies had a baby" and "I mean, these are SO delicious". Perhaps one voter put it best with the written in "Yum!" next to the circled vote for them. The end results were 10 for Cookie A and 16 for Cookie B. I prefer Cowboy Cookies, but then, I was there for the construction of both.
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