Living in New York and being borderline poverty stricken doesn’t really give you many reasons to celebrate—except for holidays. Fall is just the beginning of my favorite trio of holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. All holidays quasi focused on food and entertaining with friends. I love throwing a good ol fashioned southern charm holiday party. This past Christmas my friend (and future roommate) Jonah brought me the most interesting cookie combination- pumpkin cookies. These little treats had a soft cake-like consistency on the inside but were almost crunchy on the outsides. Now that it’s fall (and you can find something pumpkin at every Starbucks you pass on the 5 block walk to the subway), I figured it would be a perfect backstage treat to take to the opera. These cookies were gone long before the curtain even rose!
When 30 pumpkin pecan chocolate chip cookies disappear in 10 minutes you know you’re onto something… I started to muse about what other pie fillings could work with a fusion of chocolate chip cookies. One of my favorite impulse buys from trader joes has to be the chocolate covered powerberrys… I love that strange taste of chocolate and blueberry. Naturally it was the first thing I thought about as I stood in the baking aisle looking lost at the pie fillings. Blueberry chocolate chip cookies? Why not!? SO of course i went on an adventure, had some friends over to be my ‘test subjects’, and started to create some Pie inspired cookies.
To begin you’ll need to follow that basic cookie recipe we all remember from our childhood(or as my sister and I called them- ‘santa cookies’):Basic Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes around 24-30 cookies) 1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 stick butter softened
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 tsp Vanilla 1 tsp baking soda 1 cup milk chocolate chips For your “pie variations”: Pecan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies: 1/4 tsp ground ginger 1/8 tsp nutmeg 1/8 tsp ground cloves 1/2 cup pumpkin puree 1/2 cup chopped pecans Blueberry Pie Chocolate Chip Cookies 1/2 cup Blueberry Pie Filling 1/2 cup Trader Joes Powerberrys Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Assemble the dough like normal. Using a hand mixer beat the butter until it is smooth. Add in the sugars until everything is crumbly and incorporated. Add in the egg, vanilla, and you’re choice of pie filling and blend. In a separate bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda, and any remaining spices. Slowly incorporate them to your batter making sure you don’t go too quickly or you will have flour ALL over the kitchen. Stir in your chocolate chips and whichever additions you have chosen(pecans or powerberrys). Bake for 16-20 minutes or until things are looking crispy. They will have almost a muffin like consistency in the middle. Cool for 2 minutes and enjoy! I was so pleased with how each version turned out that I may experiment with cherry filling next time—-or figure out how to make strawberry pie filling? But for now 2 batches of cookies within a week is way too much for my planet fitness membership to handle! ~Charlie
Thrifty Foodies 