As you may remember from last year, before Christmas I find myself laden with way too many leftover cookie ingredients from Halloween and Thanksgiving cookie and dessert experiments. This year’s Thanksgiving Leftovers Cookies are completely different from last year’s because I have been experimenting with different varieties as well as different brands of chocolate this year. Apparently, throughout the past season, I also have suffered from a slight addiction to coconut, and made way too many recipes based around the s’mores concept, leading to random amounts of leftover graham crackers taking up way too much prized real estate in my pantry. Does anyone actually eat graham crackers by themselves? I know I sure as hell wouldn’t; it seems like it’s more of a thing for babies. Something to keep them preoccupied, so they won’t chew on your cell phone or car keys. Maybe I should just start leaving random half empty boxes of graham crackers on the doorsteps of people who have kids. Would that be weird? Thankfully there are no more hanging out in our house, but that doesn’t mean that next week I won’t decide to create yet another s’mores concoction, which will of course, leave me with at least half a box of the dry and quite frankly disgusting cracker/cookies yet again. I mean really, are they a cracker, or are they a cookie? They’re just weird.
Ingredients:
- 1 Cup Unsalted Butter, Room Temperature
- 2/3 Cup Granulated Sugar
- 2/3 Cup Light Brown Sugar, Packed
- 1 Egg, Room Temperature
- 1 Tablespoon Vanilla
- 2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 Teaspoon Kosher Salt
- 1 Nabisco Honey Maid Honey Fresh Stack (1/4 Cup Graham Crackers), Pound into Fine Crumbs
- 1/3 Cup Ghirardelli Classic White Baking Chips
- 5 HERSHEY’S Snack Size Candy Bars, Roughly Chopped
- 8 Squares Ghirardelli Intense Dark 60% Cacao Evening Dream Bar, Roughly Chopped
- 2 Squares Lindt EXCELLENCE A Touch of Sea Salt, Roughly Chopped
- 1/3 Cup Roughly Chopped Trader Joes’s 72% Dark Chocolate Pound Plus Bar
- Almost an Entire (6-oz.) Bag of Trader Joe’s Shredded Sweetened Coconut
- 1 Cup M&M’s Halloween Milk Chocolate Candy
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Sift flour, baking soda, and kosher salt in a small bowl; set aside.
- Cream butter and sugars on medium speed for 3 minutes.
- Add the egg, and then mix for 1 additional minute.
- Add the vanilla, and then mix for 1 additional minute.
- Slowly add the flour to the wet ingredients, mixing on low speed just until combined.
- Fold in all of the additional ingredients with a silicone spatula.
- Using a cookie scoop, drop the batter onto a Silpat or parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Allow to rest on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes, before removing to a baking rack to finish cooling completely.
- Store in an airtight container.
Suggestions:
- This recipe will make approximately 5 dozen cookies.
- Throw in whatever chocolate you have available in your kitchen. Mix and match; get wild, get wacky, get super funky chocolaty.
- There are a lot of “extras” in this cookie dough, which will make it difficult to stir. Make sure to use a heavy-duty silicone spatula or a wooden spoon.
Improvements:
- Sprinkle the cookies with sea salt before baking.
- Throw some random chopped dried fruit into the cookie batter; raisins, dried pineapple, dried apricots, or even a few Craisins.
- Add nuts; nuts make everything better.
Ingredients:
- 1 Cup Unsalted Butter, Room Temperature
- 2/3 Cup Granulated Sugar
- 2/3 Cup Light Brown Sugar, Packed
- 1 Egg, Room Temperature
- 1 Tablespoon Vanilla
- 2 Cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
- 1/2 Teaspoon Kosher Salt
- 1 Nabisco Honey Maid Honey Fresh Stack (1/4 Cup Graham Crackers), Pound into Fine Crumbs
- 1/3 Cup Ghirardelli Classic White Baking Chips
- 5 HERSHEY'S Snack Size Candy Bars, Roughly Chopped
- 8 Squares Ghirardelli Intense Dark 60% Cacao Evening Dream Bar, Roughly Chopped
- 2 Squares Lindt EXCELLENCE A Touch of Sea Salt, Roughly Chopped
- 1/3 Cup Roughly Chopped Trader Joes's 72% Dark Chocolate Pound Plus Bar
- Almost an Entire (6-oz.) Bag of Trader Joe's Shredded Sweetened Coconut
- 1 Cup M&M's Halloween Milk Chocolate Candy
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Sift flour, baking soda, and kosher salt in a small bowl; set aside.
- Cream butter and sugars on medium speed for 3 minutes.
- Add the egg, and then mix for 1 additional minute.
- Add the vanilla, and then mix for 1 additional minute.
- Slowly add the flour to the wet ingredients, mixing on low speed just until combined.
- Fold in all of the additional ingredients with a silicone spatula.
- Using a cookie scoop, drop the batter onto a Silpat or parchment paper lined cookie sheet.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Allow to rest on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes, before removing to a baking rack to finish cooling completely.
- Store in an airtight container.
Thanksgiving Leftovers Cookies – Part I
