Fudge Striped Shortbread Cookies

One of my husband's favorite cookies are Keebler Fudge Stripes. I decided that I'd make him some super special Fudge Striped cookies for Valentine's Day. You start with a simple shortbread cookie recipe and then add some melted chocolate, not nearly as daunting as I thought they might be.

To make your own Fudge Striped Shortbread at home you will need:

For the Cookies:

2 sticks of softened butter
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (you could also use 1/2 cup regular sugar and add in 1 tsp vanilla flavor instead)
2 cups flour (plus extra for rolling out your cookies/dusting your cookie cutters)

For the Fudge Stripes:

1 cup chopped dark chocolate
2 Tablespoons butter or coconut oil

Start by creaming your butter and sugar together in a bowl. Once the butter is light and fluffy and all the sugar us mixed in, add your flour and mix until incorporated. Pour your dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth. Make your dough into a disk shape, cover with plastic wrap and allow to chill for about 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees (F). Take your dough out of the refrigerator and roll it out to about 1/4" thick on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin.

Select your cookie cutters (I chose the heart shapes above) and cut out your cookie shapes. Some of my heart shaped cutters are quite large, so I used a smaller cookie cutter to cut out another heart in the center. I will admit, one thing I never liked about fudge stripe cookies is that they have a hole in the middle, I want MORE cookie, not less. If you agree with me, then you can leave all of your cookies without the center cutout.

Place your cookies onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and bake for 20-25 minutes, until they just start to brown a little around the edges. Once done, take out and place on a cooling rack until completely cool, mix up your chocolate for dipping while you wait.

I melt my chocolate in the microwave, but you can use a double boiler if you like. Just put your chopped up chocolate into a microwave safe bowl and add your butter or coconut oil. Microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring between each. It takes about 1 minute 30 seconds for all of my chocolate to melt (I stir as much as possible each time, if you need another 30 seconds don't feel bad-it happens).

Once you have your cooled cookies, dip the bottoms of each cookie into the chocolate and place them back onto some parchment (I even put mine on a cool baking sheet and then stick them in the refrigerator to help them set up faster). To make the stripes, I put the remaining chocolate into a sandwich bag, snip off a teeny tiny corner of the bag and use it to pipe on the stripes. These don't have to be prefect, because they are delicious either way. If you don';t want to mess with stripes, you can also just dunk the entire cookie in chocolate!

If you want to see some more "in progress" shots of these guys you can check them out on my Instagram. Happy Valentine's Day!

Perfect Pizza

Recently the hus and I have taken it upon ourselves to start making pizza. Not just any pizza, either. It's amazing. I'm going to give credit where it's due- I saw the dough recipe on America's Test Kitchen, and they nailed it. Fair warning: this is a make ahead recipe (the dough has to chill out overnight), but it is more than worth the wait.

To make this awesome pizza at home you will need:

a food processor (mine is a 7 cup, but I'd recommend a slightly larger food processor as mine is barely big enough)
food scale (flour is measured in oz, not cups)

16.5 oz bread flour (the flour makes all the difference, sometimes I mix a little bit of whole wheat flour in--about 2-3 ounces. Just make sure your total weight of flour is 16.5 oz)
1/2 tsp. active dry yeast
2 tsp. sugar
1 1/3 cup ice cold water, that's right, ice cold

1 Tablespoon oil (canola is what I use)
2 1/2 tsp kosher salt


Toppings: I use 6-8oz mozzerella cheese per pizza, tomato sauce of your choosing, and any meats or veggies your heart desires!

Start by putting the flour, yeast and sugar into the bowl of your food processor. Put on he lid and while the processor is running, slowly add in the water through the hole in the top until it is all incorporated. Let the dough mix about 30-60 seconds after all the water has been added then turn off the food processor and let the dough rest for 10 minutes.

After those ten minutes, add in the tablespoon of oil and the salt, mix the dough an additional 30 seconds in the processor, then turn out onto a greased (not floured) surface and knead by hand another minute or so. Form a nice ball and place it into a greased bowl. Refrigerate overnight. The dough will slowly rise in the refrigerator and you get a very smooth dough for forming--and a nice chewy New York style crust!

Take the dough out of the refrigerator an hour before you start assembling the pizzas so it can warm up a bit. I generally clean off the counter and separate the dough into two equal balls before I let it warm up ( this can speed up the process a little and I want my pizza ASAP!).

Lucky me, has a husband that worked in pizza places while he was in high school so he is pretty good at tossing our pizzas by hand. If you don't have this talent, you can also just press out the dough with your hands on a lightly floured surface, leave a little extra around the edges for that yummy chewy crust handle we all love :) Our pizzas generally come out about 18-20" in diameter, if you like a little thicker crust you could make a slightly smaller pizza.

Move an oven rack to the top of your oven (about 6 inches from the top) and preheat to 425 degrees. In a perfect world you would have a pizza peel and a pizza stone and be able to cook your pizza directly on the stone. We've done it on a pizza pan, as shown above. It comes out pretty darn delicious either way. Being close to the top of the oven forces the heat that hits the top of the oven (heat rises) to reflect back down onto your pizza. It only takes about 12 minutes for your pizza to fully cook! Make sure not to load it down with too many toppings, the dough is really spectacular and yummy!

Wait about 5 minutes after removing from the oven, slice up and enjoy! We make this almost every week now, with new toppings every time :)

Easiest Mug Cake Ever

Anyone looking through the recipes I have posted here in the past may notice that I have a bit of a sweet tooth. I also like things to be easily accessible. Enter this awesome mug cake, introduced to me by some of my coworkers.

To make this at home you will need:

1 box Angel Food cake mix
1 box any other flavor cake mix (I used spice cake)
1 microwave safe mug

To start out, you will mix together your 2 boxes of cake mix. I usually put mine in a large freezer bag (you can store it in the bag for a short period of time, I usually put mine in a small Tupperware container.

I've seen this recipe on some other sites called 3-2-1 cake. The reason for this is that once your cake mixture is created to make your cake you use 3 Tablespoons of the mix, 2 Tablespoons water and microwave your cake in a mug for 1 minute on high. I let mine sit in the microwave an additional minute or 2 to cool.

I have tried several cake flavors, and I have to say that you will probably be disappointed with any kind of chocolate cake. It just doesn't have the chocolatey flavor when mixed with the angel food cake. My favorites have been carrot cake and spice cake. Fruit cake mixes (lemon and strawberry) have also been tasty. You can also add frosting or whipped cream to your final cake--I like strawberries sliced onto the lemon cake MMMM.

This is a great option if you like dessert but don't necessarily want a whole cake sitting on your counter tempting you. It makes about 24 servings of cake and each serving is around 100 calories (without frosting added). Also, since you mix it with water only there is no added fat or oil-- you can feel a little less guilty. :)