An easy and sweet recipe with the spirit of Valentine’s Day in mind. With February being the month of love this is a great treat to make. It is a simple recipe that I got from my mother for red velvet cookies and cream cookies. So if you are struggling to figure out what to get or make your significant other, this sweet treat is the perfect gift.
Introduction:
Hello everyone! Welcome to my first blog post as I relive my first real baking experience in an attempt to make Red Velvet cookies. Before we dive in I’d like to just start off with a little introduction so you know a little more about me and what I want to accomplish with this personal blog. So here goes… My name is Briana and I am in my last semester of the Emerging Media graduate program at Loyola University. No, not the one in Chicago. I guess they’re famous for making it pretty far in the NCAA college basketball tournament a few years ago and stole all the Loyola shine. There are four Loyola’s across the country, but I attend the one on the east coast, in Maryland. Lucky for me, I get to experience all of winter! (that was sarcasm). Speaking of basketball, I play on the women’s basketball team at Loyola and it has been a great experience. I have gotten to experience some amazing opportunities such as traveling to new places and making incredible relationships. But, I have also been a little spoon fed. For those of you that know, when you are a division I athlete, besides being on scholarship, you get a lot of other perks that non-athlete students don’t. For example, one of the greatest perks is our meal plan. When you get to college you get to choose between four different meal plans, and you can pick based on what you are willing to pay for that semester. Well when you’re an athlete they pick the most expensive and highest meal plan you can get. So basically it’s unlimited. It’s almost nearly impossible to run out during the course of a semester (although I have had a few teammates that have) I won’t name names, but they could definitely eat! Having an almost unlimited meal plan is highly convenient, because you basically get to eat for free everyday, unless you get tired of school food and want to spice it up a bit and get chipotle off campus. Since I have been at school I have never felt the need to cook, because I never really had too. I had everything I needed right at my finger tips without having to spend the money for it. But, I am down to my last semester of school and have realized, Oh Shit! I have no idea how to actually make a decent meal for myself. I mean yeah, I know how to cook some noodles in a pot and put easy mac in the microwave, but can I actually live off of that for the rest of my life?? So unfortunately I am being pushed out of the nest and forced to fly. It’s time to face the harsh reality of adulting. It’s time to start learning how to cook on my own and I am excited to learn and share my experiences with all of you who are interested in learning with me too
Grocery Shopping:
So what’s on the list?
1 red velvet cake mix
8 tablespoons of melted butter
1 Egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4oz cream cheese softened
2 cups crushed Oreo cookie chunks
½ cup white chocolate chips
½ cup chocolate chips
Ingredients for Red Velvet Cookies and Cream Cookies
So when I said I was new to this, I meant I am new to everything which includes grocery shopping. I went grocery shopping for the ingredients above with my boyfriend who is also pretty new to the whole cooking and grocery shopping gig. It was an eventful experience to say the least. On average I guess for a normal person is should take like maybe 15 to 20 minutes to find eight ingredients, but nope not us. We were in the grocery store pushing an hour plus. I must have gone down the same isle three or four times looking for the same item. And the butter took us for a complete roundtrip around the grocery store. I asked an employee who pointed me down the same isle I had just been in for 15 minutes to retrieve the item I was just looking for. We went to Weis for the groceries but I’m pretty sure you can go to any local grocery store to get these ingredients. Even though it was a hassle finding everything in a timely manner, it was great learning experience and it made it even better to have a goofy partner. If you are a beginner grocery shopper, I would recommend going with a helpful friend that is willing to wander around the store with you and maintains a good attitude. If you’re shopping partner is huffing and puffing and is rushing you to find everything quickly, then just make that trip to the grocery store by your lonesome. Next time I make a trip to the grocery story, I need to find an efficient grocery shopping system that works for me that gets me in and out so I don’t have to do that dance again.
Cooking Red Velvet:
We are back in the kitchen and we’ve got all of our ingredients and here are the instructions:
Combine the cake mix, butter, egg, and vanilla. Beat until soft dough forms. Add the cream cheese and beat again. Stir the cookie chunks and chips by hand. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes. Roll into balls and place on baking sheets.
Bake at 350 degrees for nine minutes. The cookies will seem under done but will continue to set up as they cool. Let cool on baking sheet for two to three minutes.
Baking the cookies was much more fun than I thought it would it would be, but it also took a lot longer. One thing that I learned and would now recommend while baking/cooking is to always make sure your cooking space is organized and clean. I had shit all over the place. I had the bag of red velvet cake mix and a leaking cracked egg sitting next me when I accidentally knocked over the vanilla extract with my elbow because I forgot to put the cap on. There are many tips and tricks to making cooking easier. To make the process run more smoothly, I made the effort to clean up my space as I went along. Being a beginner, you have to be a little creative. I’m pretty sure for the mixing process I needed one of those electric beaters to mix the ingredients together, but I didn’t have one of those. Instead I did it manually and used a whisk, but then my arm got pretty tires so I just switched to my hands and did it that way. Sometimes you have to get a little down and dirty to get the results you want. I have red velvet cake mix all over my hands and finger nails but I didn’t mind because it seemed like it did the trick. Just make sure you wash your hands in between using other utensils and ingredients. After all the ingredients are mixed together and looking scrumptious, you should put the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes so that it hardens and it is easier to roll into balls. The 30-minute intermission was my favorite part about the cooking process. Since there was no reason to be in the kitchen during that period of time, my roommate and I sat down and played a not-so friendly and super competitive game of Mario Kart on the Wii. I lost but it’s okay, I’ll be coming back for more. I mention this because I think it’s important that when you have downtime in between cooking or baking you should fill the time with something fun or creative to do instead of just waiting around. Once the intermission was over my roommate and I got out the cookies sheets, sprayed them with pam (this is IMPORTANT don’t forget the pam), and we got to rolling up the dough. This process we struggled with a little bit because we were unsure of how big to make the cookie balls. So we experimented on three different baking sheets. On two sheets we made the dough into medium size and larger and on the third sheet we made them smaller to see which ones would cook the best. We burnt the small cookies. So if you decide to make these lovely red velvet cookies roll the dough up into medium size balls for the best results. You place them in the oven for around nine minutes, but the oven in our kitchen is on crack, meaning it gets super hot super fast, so we cooked them from around five to seven minutes. Since it is such a short amount of time, you should check on them frequently to make sure you don’t burn the cookies. Everyone has a different oven so you may need to cook them a little longer or shorter, it all depends on how hot your oven gets.
Review:
I really surprised myself for my first go-around. Yes, this was a fairly easy recipe to follow but I’m really proud of myself for not burning the cookies or forgetting an important ingredient. The cookies were a real hit! My roommate ate seven of them in one sitting and they are even talking about making them again shortly. I brought a batch over to my boyfriend’s house for Valentine’s and he absolute loved them. I had to stop him from eating all of them because I promised my teammates I would let them try some too. They never got any. Besides burning the one batch of small cookies (we call them the experimental batch) they turned out pretty freaking amazing. I 10/10 recommend trying these out. One thing I don’t enjoy about cooking is seeing your hard work disappear in a matter of 20 minutes. I spent about 2 hours in the kitchen making these cookies and then BOOM! They were all gone right before my eyes. I now know how my mother feels on Thanksgiving when she slaves in the kitchen for hours and we all eat in a matter of 15 minutes. Okay, maybe not to that extent but that’s how I felt along those lines. All in all, I am very happy with the result and can’t wait to try out my next recipe! If you have any suggestions, please don’t hesitate to comment and let me know what you think I should make next. Peace!
RookieCookie 