Chocolate Sugar Cookie {Recipe}

What's the closest thing to heaven on earth in food terms?  That's right, chocolate or chocolat or cioccolato, depending on the country.  It's important to know how to say and spell it in other languages so you can order it in the event of an emergency in say, Italy. 

I adore chocolate.  The richness melts in your mouth and lingers on your taste buds.  My favorite cake is a dark chocolate cake with milk chocolate caramel frosting.  Cookies are better with buds of chocolate morsels swimming in them.  Even coffee is better when made with hot chocolate and served with a side of my favorite chocolate waffles and chocolate maple syrup.  If you are one of the weird people like my husband that prefers any flavor to chocolate then this post is not for you.

These cookies will make you love sugar cookies all over again.  (I hope.)  Their rich flavor was accidental.  I wasn't paying attention...look something shiny!...I love rainbows.  Whoops!  Did it again!  So, I wasn't paying attention and I added more cocoa powder and sugar than I had originally intended.  The result was heavenly.  So perfect to me for a sugar cookie.  Sweet and bakes up perfectly with intricate cookie cutters (as long as the dough is chilled).  Perfect for say, Teacher's Appreciation Day, Mother's Day, Graduation Day, or "I deserve chocolate because life can be so vanilla".  All topics for future posts I hope.

So getting on with it:

Ingredients

2 cups of flour
1 cup of cocoa powder
1 cup of unsalted butter
1 3/4 cup of granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder (optional--see here)

As normal, cream butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Add eggs and vanilla, one at a time. Mix well after each addition. Mix dry ingredients a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix until flour and cocoa is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.  You can use your clean hand to help incorporate if needed.  Then roll it out between wax paper as previously mentioned here.  Refrigerate until firm. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven (or just a nudge less) for about 7-8 minutes.  Remember what I said about the lemon cookies.  The chocolate ones definitely taste better on the softer side.  Cool completely before decorating with your favorite royal icing recipe.

My unoriginal royal icing recipe: (also a mistake, but turns out it is yummy)

1/4 cup of water
4 cups of powdered sugar, measured then sifted
2 Tablespoons of meringue powder
Pinch of cream of tartar
1-2 teaspoons of clear vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients in a bowl with an electric mixer/standing mixer on medium high speed for 5 minutes.  After that you can thin it down using the 10 second rule and color it.  Keep it covered with a damp cloth or plastic wrap at all times.  It crusts quicker than you can say Jack Robinson.

The teeny army of decorative touches to add to cookies.

Make them and tell me what you think.  Have a delicious week!  Stay tuned for some desserts for this busy week!


Not my most beautiful specimens but some of my most tasty!



Good Friday

When I originally started this blog, just about a month ago, I intended it to be a place I would share not only desserts, but also tid bits of my life.  Interestingly, in the last month I have become more distant in sharing my feelings and thoughts with those around me.  In many cases, justifiably so.  But I'm going to try to be more open anyway.

As the name insinuates, Lost and Searching for Dessert, I'm in search for some answers.  Mostly, I've been searching lately for answers on what I should be when I grow up.  I thought I knew.  About a year ago I thought I had it all figured out.  Even as recently as January, I had it all figured out.  After all, I'm 28 years old.  I've been going to school for years.  I'd chosen a prestigious career.  A career that would give me notoriety, respect, and leave me an expert in my field.  I would have the privilege of naming my discoveries and authoring several, hopefully many, papers in my field of science.  It would be a career full of pride and self-love.  Something most of us want.

However, this career has always been my back up plan.  It's not really what I had longed to do.  Originally, I had wanted to be a doctor, a cardiologist or a neonatologist.  Unfortunately, a series of poor decisions on my part and treacherous conditions presented to me made that dream impossible.  So, being a Christian, I prayed about what to do.  I asked the door I should walk through to open.  The road to this career was the only thing that opened.  Naturally, I jumped at it.  I loved it at first for so many reasons. 

Like a mirage of a lush oasis, those reasons have revealed themselves to be nothing more than parched sandy dunes.  My creative desires, my passion for medical science, have both be tugging on my heart strings.  While I've been evaluating what to do I've revealed some of my thoughts of both sides of the argument to friends and family.  The responses have been shocking, depressing, and out right disrespectful.

Several friends have told me exactly what to do, apparently thinking to know me better than myself.  That's been painful because it has shown me how little they actually know of me and my passions.  Obviously, I haven't done a good job of truly representing myself.  Furthermore, my lifestyle changes have gone completely unnoticed by some of these individuals.  I keep finding throughout my personality changes in life that my past just won't die.  "You hate (insert research, baking, working, hospitals, people, etc. here).  So you should be (insert scientist, business woman, baker, stay at home mom, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, etc. here)."  Worse than that are the people that tell me I'm a fool for even contemplating following my dreams.  I'm throwing away my future, my degree, my life.  I'm blinded by faith.  I'm an idiot.  I obviously am not an expert in my field and I don't know what science is, they've said.  When I've offered to explain or show my evidences, I'm cut off.  The slander begins all over.  The lack of respect begins all over.

This weekend has been especially difficult and depressing.  It's hard to see the light in all this darkness.  I'm destraught about doing what I feel God is telling me to do, what He is not telling me to do, and about making a choice without my pride getting in the way.  And as I sat in church this weekend feeling sorry for myself and more confused than ever, I heard a women say, "You have to go through the sorrow, pain and despair of Good Friday before you can experience the joy of the Resurrection."  Wow.  Maybe this is my Good Friday?  It gave me hope.  That combined with some delicate vanilla cake and sugar cookies, gave that blip of bliss to help me soldier on one more week.

Lemon, Vanilla, and Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Vanilla Vertical Cake with Red and Aqua Hydrangea Flowers

Spring! Celebrated with Chocolate Sugar Cookies

 Oh I love the warmer weather!  The flowers are scratching their way through winter's decay into the honey lit mornings.  The breeze carries the bouquet of hycinth mingled with fresh rain drops.  New life can be seen exploring, tasting the first rich green clovers of the season.  Spring brings new beginnings.  Also, new experimentations with sugar cookie recipes. 

Sweet baby bunny early in the morning!  Captured with Iphone.



Here was the first attempt with that!  Chocolate sugar cookies...with disco dust!  I won't post the recipe yet.  One, because I didn't write it down and I'm not sure I remember it.  Two, it needs another tweek or two. 

See how fun they look! 

I found a delightful place to order the disco dust offline, for cheap.  I've loved the possibilites with it since I first saw it on Marion's blog, Sweetopia.net.  She has lovely tutorials on how to use it.  The only things that bother me about it are: 1. It will get EVERYWHERE.  It ended up on a shirt and pants of my husband's and they weren't even in the room at the time.  2. It doesn't come off the cookie easily in the areas where you don't want it.  I wanted to preserve as much of the excess dust too and since it gets everywhere it was a bit of a lost cause.  That being said, I LOVE it. 

I put it on cakes and cupcakes first.  See... 

Just a shimmer!  I had to.  I'd just bought it!

Don't think you can tell well in the pic but it's sprinkled all over.

There are so many possibilities with sugar cookies.  I'm going to try several different flavors too.  Keep checking back to see how they turn out and to get the recipes yourself!