Hidden Buddies

Growing up, we had a Valentine's tradition called Hidden Buddies. It was kind of like Secret Santa, but for Valentine's Day. We all would put our names in a bowl and pick somebody else in the family. Mom would fill up a drawer with chocolate hearts and other goodies and we would have to secretly give something to our "HB" everyday during the week leading up to Valentine's Day. At the end of the week, we would go to the dollar store and pick out something special for our HB. Then we would go out for lunch and have the big reveal!

My sister is bringing back the tradition for her own little family (check out her post about HB here), and she talked me into helping her make these cute cookie dough hearts the other night. They turned out to be the perfect little HB gift!

They were pretty easy to make, too. First we made up a batch of egg-less cookie dough (find the recipe here). From there, the steps were pretty simple.

1. Put the dough in the fridge for about 20 minutes, then roll little balls of cookie dough
2. Flatten them down a little.
3. Shape the bottom into a point.
4. Make a cut in the top.
5. Spread apart the top and round the edges a bit.
6. Add sprinkles.
7. Package them up for your Hidden Buddy!

Cookie Dough Brownies

A while back, I found these AMAZING-looking brownies on pinterest (my latest obsession)...

Brownies layered with Cookie Dough topped with Chocolate = YUM.

(You can find the original recipe here.)

There are 3 steps to make these tasty treats...

1. Bake some brownies. They can be from a mix, or made from scratch. I used the recipe from the original post, and they were so yummy! Here's the recipe, in case you don't want to go looking for it:

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1-1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1-1/3 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp salt 

Cream butter and sugar together.  Add eggs and blend well.  Add vanilla, salt, cocoa, and flour.  Don't over-beat.  Pour into a greased 9x13 pan.  Bake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes or until done.  Cool completely.

 

2. Make some cookie dough and spread it over the brownies. To be safe, use this recipe without eggs:

3. Melt about 2 cups of chocolate chips and pour it over the cookie dough. Let the chocolate harden before cutting into your brownies, then enjoy!

Be warned: When I made these for my friends, I got a lot of comments about how sweet they are, so be sure to cut them into small pieces. Unless, like me, you could eat a whole pan of sweet goodness...in that case, cut them nice and big!

The One with Cookie Dough Scoops

Have you heard about the chocolate party my sister, Aimee, is having over at Someone's Gotta Pay?

No?! 

See the chocolatey looking button right over there, under the cupcake? --->

Click on it and go check out the chocolatey-ness: You'll find out about fair trade chocolate and some fun giveaways. Then come back here for the cookie dough scoops...I'll wait.

Along with her blog party, Aimee's also having a real-life fair trade chocolate party, and she asked me to make some cookie dough balls using fair trade ingredients. So I pulled out my sugars and chocolate chips and got to work.

I also had to find my recipe for no-egg cookie dough. It's super easy to make, and you can feel a lot better about eating it without worrying about those pesky raw eggs. I found this recipe on a blog a while ago, but I can't remember where, so you'll just have to read my messy writing!

You really can just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them all up or you can mix them little by little. Either way, it should turn out looking like this:

Now usually when I make little balls of something (cake, cookie dough, oreos, etc...) I dip them in chocolate BUT the dipping chocolate isn't fair trade so I couldn't use it this time. That's why I decided to make cookie dough scoops instead of balls. Making the scoops involves 4 easy steps.

1. Cover a tray with wax paper.

2. Fill your scoop with cookie dough.

3. Dump the dough onto the tray.

4. Repeat until the tray is full.

Bonus Step #5. Enjoy your cookie dough, knowing that the chocolate chips were made by people with fair working conditions and paid a fair wage!

Now, what to do with all of this leftover dough?

Hmm...I can just see it being scooped onto some Ben & Jerry's (fair trade) vanilla ice cream OR being scooped right into my mouth. Either way, sounds great to me!