the best ever cookies & cream cookies

I've been neglecting my roots lately. And no, I'm not talking about my hair. Those are so far gone that labeling my overgrown roots as ombre is totally passable. 

Let's put the hair drama aside, I'm talking about my baking roots. 

Like many a home baker, my journey through the wonderful world of sugar started with pre-made cookie dough. Looking back, I shudder at the very thought of cookie dough that isn't congruent with my regularly scheduled fantasies of mountains of dough made with fancy European butter, Tahitian vanilla, or twenty plus dollars worth of quality chocolate. You can say I've spoiled myself, I just like to think I take my cookie dough very seriously. 

Given that I haven't posted a cookie recipe in more than a hot second and I was beginning to quite literally feel the absence of brown sugar-laced mounds of deliciousness from the blog, I'm sharing one of my absolute favorite recipes today: the famed cookies & cream cookies. 

These cookies are a total fan favorite. Every baker has an arsenal of perfected cookie recipes, but these are easily the most requested of the bunch. I oblige at every request, mainly just so I can eat some of the cookie dough before I bake them and wrap them up for my friends. Beware cookie dough bingers! This stuff is LETHAL. 

I could write an entire fan fiction about me and these cookies, but to spare you the ranting, I have developed a super helpful list of why you should drop everything and bake these immediately: 

1. Uh, there are COOKIES inside of COOKIES. This is a good enough reason on its own. (Side note: Can we make #cookieinception a thing?) 
2. Because dipping Oreos in milk is the greatest and these cookies are the cookie equivalent of going through a whole sleeve of Oreos and a glass of milk in five minutes flat. 
3. The cookie dough itself is out of this world. Like... eat-four-cookies-worth-of-dough-every-single-time good.  
4. There's cream cheese and brown sugar involved, so these bad boys will stay soft for days and days. This means that you can have a cookie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for five consecutive days without them going stale on you. Caloric hoarding, ftw! 
5. You'll be introduced to the wonderful world of milk powder, which is essentially the MSG of the baking world. 
6. THEY HAVE ACTUAL, REAL LIFE GROUPIES. (I'm looking at you, Ali, Ashley, Abbey, and Brooke.) 
7. Do I need to mention the fact that there's Oreos in them again? 

Just bake the damn cookies. Seriously, you won't regret it. 

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Graham's Notes:

• My special secret to the deliciousness of these cookies lies in the addition of milk powder to the dry ingredients. Milk powder makes creamy, milky flavors more pronounced. Milk powder can be found in the powdered drink aisle of your local grocery store, or by the powdered baby formula. (But please, for the love of God, don't use Similac in these cookies.)
• When baking with white chocolate, I try to stray away from baking chips, as they are generally of pretty poor quality. Unless you're using the Whole Foods brand of baking chips, do yourself a favor and buy individual bars of white chocolate and chop them up yourself. I prefer Lindt or Callebaut. 

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Cookies & Cream Cookies 

• 4 oz. (half a block) cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla bean paste or extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons instant milk powder ** (see note) 
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups coarsely chopped oreos (about 18-20 cookies)
• 1 cup chopped white chocolate 
• sugar for rolling

make: 

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a small bowl, combine oreos with 2 tablespoons of instant milk powder and set aside. 

In the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together the cream cheese and butter until light and creamy, about a minute. Add the brown sugar and egg and beat on medium-low speed for 3 minutes until pale and fluffy. Stir in vanilla. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until combined. Fold in the coated oreos and white chocolate. 

Measure out 1/4 cup portions of cookie dough. Roll each cookie in sugar and arrange on the prepared baking sheets, providing at least 3 inches between each cookies. Bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes, until edges begin to brown but the middle is still relatively gooey! Cool and enjoy with a big glass of milk!  

Pumpkin Spice Cookies & Cream Cookies

Hello (virtual) world, I'm home! 

I hope you guys had a wonderful past few days and didn't miss me too much. ;)  I spent my fall break in New York City and it was an absolute whirlwind. I went on a little food industry tour and visited the Martha Stewart Living, Food52, Food & Wine, and West Elm offices, saw a few shows, visited the Jeff Koons exhibit at the Whitney, met up with some old friends, fainted on a random lady while I was in the emergency room with a friend who fainted at dinner, took a trip out to Valrhona's amazing new L'Ecole du Grand Chocolat in DUMBO, wrapped myself up in lots of sweaters and scarves, and conducted a lot of super scientific research (aka, eating dessert.) 

It was wonderful. Alas, I am back in New Orleans, which means I get to immediately go back to destroying my kitchen all in the name of food blogging. I just scheduled out the next month or so of desserts I want to make and the list is absolutely wild. Like, I-was-super-conscious-about-people-looking-over-my-shoulder-while-I-was-writing-it-all-down-and-judging-me level wild. 

In the meantime, we're going to keep things a little more classic around here. Can we all agree the pumpkins are the best part of fall? Because they are. While I'm not crazy fond of actual pumpkin desserts (I prefer to use them for more important purposes), pumpkin spice is where it's at. 

The stretch from October to April has always been my favorite time of the year, mainly because of all of the special festive holiday items that fill up my cart at the grocery store. I don't need these things, and frankly I never buy m&m's at any other time of the year, but there's just something about a special flavor or color mix that instantly makes me reach out and grab a few bags to "try."  I use that term loosely. 

Case in point: Pumpkin Spice Oreos. See, I was pretty certain that these would be absolutely disgusting when I saw these, but Nabisco really delivered. It only took me a taste of one cookie to get the mixer out and bake cookies with them. 

I have a few specialities when it comes to baking. You know, the recipes that people will ask me to make for them and continue nagging me until I finally cave in. Cookies & Cream Cookies are one of these. There's something so intoxicating about these cookies. It's probably the fact that there's a bunch of cream cheese and two cups of crushed up Oreos in the dough. Or maybe it's because I roll them in sugar before baking (because they obviously didn't have enough sugar in them in the first place). Whatever it is, they're *insert expletive of choice* delicious. While my traditional recipe is what I bake most often, this pumpkin spice version gives the classic cookies & cream cookies a definite run for its money.

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PUMPKIN SPICE COOKIES AND CREAM COOKIES

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

• 1/2 cup cream cheese, softened

• 1 cup brown sugar, packed

• 1 egg

• 1 tsp. vanilla

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

• 1/2 tsp. salt

• 1/2 tsp. pumpkin pie spice 

• 3/4 tsp. baking soda

• 1/2 tsp. baking powder

• 2 cups Pumpkin Spice Oreos, chopped 

• 1/2 cup cinnamon chips

• sugar, for rolling

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and cream cheese until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the brown sugar and egg, mixing for 3 minutes more. Mix in the vanilla. Add all of the dry ingredients and combines. Fold in the chopped cookies and cinnamon chips.

Roll the cookie dough into balls, then roll them in sugar, and place them on your prepared baking sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes, do not overbake. 

Stroopwafel Cheesecake + Hagelslag Cookies

That's right, today you're getting not one, but two Dutch-inspired recipes! And a really long post about the book that ruined my life and why Amsterdam is the greatest place on earth. Read on! 

Embarrassing confession time: I've only read three books. Seriously, how sad is that. Outside of all required school reading, the only books I've ever read for pure personal pleasure have been The Perks of Being a Wallflower, The Hunger Games, and The Fault in Our Stars. As you can tell, I'm really into dramatic young adult fiction, which is pretty fitting considering that I'm a dramatic young adult. Okay, maybe I'm a little older than 18, but we can let that slide. 

Let's talk about The Fault in Our Stars. The alternate title of this book is The Book I Read in Four Hours Flat. Also: The Book that Left Me Sobbing in my Seat on a Transatlantic Flight and Confused One Too Many Air France Flight Attendants. Or how about: The Book that Killed Me and Made Me Feel All of the Feel Ever to be Felt. Yeah, that one. 

Just in case you have been living under a rock for the past two years, TFIOS is the magnum opus of the brilliant John Green and is the most genuine of love stories of two cancer-stricken teens that meet in a support group. Sounds dreary, right? It's not. I mean, you'll cry about six or seven or fifteen times, but it transcends the usual sappy cancer plot that you're used to. It's wonderfully charming and smart, teaches a lot about both the importance and fragility of life, and makes you want to love the way Gus and Hazel love. It's pretty great. The book was adapted into a major motion picture this summer and was released on DVD this week. I watched it last night and cried... again. (All of the feels, remember?)

I will refrain from posting spoilers on the rare chance that you're one of the few people that aren't familiar with the story/didn't read the book/didn't even bother to see the movie, but a good chunk of the film takes place in Amsterdam. Coincidentally, I bought this book in the Amsterdam airport and read it on the day I left Amsterdam, which left me more emotional damage than I would've liked to boarded a nine hour flight with. Fate, right? 

Simply put, Amsterdam is my favorite place in the entire world. Never in my life have I been in an environment more perfect. No really, it was like my biggest fantasy had unfolded itself and materialized right before my eyes. The vast history, the unsuspectedly amazing food, the masses of people buzzing past canals on pretty matte black bikes, the beautiful architecture, the boutiques of the de 9 straatjes, everything — it was like my Pinterest boards had come to life. Most importantly, the people. How the hell is everybody so attractive in Amsterdam? No really, it was like the ultimate representation of my "type" appeared before my eyes every time I passed somebody on the street. Hot damn. Get me back there, ASAP. 

In the meantime, let's focus on the food. Since my visit, I have been dreaming up the perfect Dutch-inspired desserts. I've been developing and testing recipes since June and finally found two that I have fallen in love with. Considering the release of The Fault in Our Stars this week, I couldn't think of any time to share my recipes and my love letter to the city that stole my heart. 

First, I decided to make a Dutch-inspired cheesecake, complete with a Daelman's Amsterdam cookie crust, a cinnamon and stroop infused whipped cream, and plenty of stroopwafels for garnish. In case you're unfamiliar with stroopwafels, they are two ultra-thin wafer cookies filled with stroop (a Dutch syrup) or caramel. They serve these hot on the street throughout the city and they are absolutely stupid delicious. Throw them on top of the perfect cheesecake et voila!

But I didn't stop there. (Don't you know me by now?) Amsterdam is full of amazing chocolate shops that sell chocolate anything and everything. But the real star of the Dutch chocolatiers is hagelslag, which is essentially just the Dutch's answer to the chocolate sprinkle. I know what you're thinking, "Graham, they're just sprinkles." Blasphemy! Number one, what's wrong with sprinkles?! If you don't like sprinkles, we can't be friends. Shame on you! Secondly, hagelslag aren't just sprinkles. They're of a much higher quality than the tradition chocolate jimmies available in America; they're actual chocolate, over 35% cacao by law. Essentially chocolate crack. The Dutch traditionally put hagelslag on their morning toast, but I decided that they'd be even more delicious acting as a sprinkly envelope for my favorite sugar cookies.  (Y'know, or straight out of the palm of my hand.)  I can't even begin to express how amazing these cookies are.

Thanks to the geniuses behind World Market, these traditional Dutch ingredients required for recreating these recipes are readily available essentially anywhere. So no excuses, I challenge you to rent The Fault in Our Stars, have an emotional breakdown, and then stuff your sorrows with one (or both!) of these Dutch-inspired desserts. Okay? Okay. :) 

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Stroopwafel Cheesecake 

Amsterdam Cookie Crust:

• 2 cups finely ground Daelman's Amsterdam cookies (a little over one box)  
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted

Cheesecake Filling:

• 16 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 pint sour cream
• 1 lemon, zested
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Cinnamon Maple Whipped Cream: 

• 1 cup whipping cream
• 3 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• stroopwafels 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease and flour an 8-inch springform pan.

In a medium bowl, combine the melted butter, ground cookies, and cinnamon until homogenous. Press the crust mixture into the bottom and an inch up the sides of the prepared pan. Refrigerate crust while making the filling.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth, about 1 to 2 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, making sure the mixture is thoroughly combined between each addition. Gradually add the sugar and beat until smooth, about two minutes. Scrape down the bowl and add the sour cream, lemon zest, and vanilla extract. Mix until smooth. Pour the filling into the prepared crust. 

Wrap the bottom and sides of the springform pan with aluminum foil. Place pan in the center of a wide rimmed baking sheet. Fill the baking sheet with boiling water, making sure the water reaches about halfway up the sides of the pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes, until set around the edges but still a bit jiggly in the center. Cool in the pan for 30 minutes before transferring to the fridge to set for at least 4 hours, preferably overnight. 

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip together all ingredients until the whipped cream forms desired consistency. Remove the cheesecake from the pan and top with whipped cream and stroopwafels. 

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Hagelslag Sugar Cookies

• 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup sour cream
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons whole milk
• 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• hagelslag for rolling 

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the sugar, sour cream, and melted butter in a large bowl and whisk. The mixture will form a smooth paste. Mix in the vegetable oil. Stir in the egg, milk, and vanilla. Whisk until the mixture is smooth. Gently fold in the dry ingredients.

Refrigerate the dough for at least 15 minutes. 

Scoop out tablespoons of dough and roll in hagelslag. Place on baking tray and bake for 10-12 minutes. Cool. Eat. Repeat.