Completing homemade bonbons is pretty simple — but does take a good amount of time. Allow a minimum of four hours to finish the process.

Wet Team:

• 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
• Chocolate for melting (We used the nearly all of the dark chocolate Pound Plus from Trader Joes and half of the milk chocolate, so, a lot. Use white chocolate, milk, dark, semisweet, bittersweet — or a combination, like we did! The ratio was about 2:1, as we used twice as much dark than milk chocolate.)
• Ice cream (We used up all the random ice creams in the freezer — chocolate, cookies and cream, coconut, and others. Feel free to use sorbet, rice-based ice cream, coconut-based ice cream or soy-based ice cream.)

Dry Team:

• No dry team!

Hardware:

• Double boiler (two pots, one that fits inside the other)
• Four pie tins
• Two ice packs from your local market. These are given at the meat counter to those getting volatile and temperature sensitive meats. I accumulated some at my local Whole Foods when I bought some lox and was concerned about the heat ruining it. If you can’t find a good ice pack, then make one! Two days before attempting the bonbons, fill two gallon sized zip top bags with ice and a bit of water. Stick in freezer. You just made ice packs!
• Two spoons for dipping the ice cream into melted chocolate
• Wooden spoon for stirring melting chocolate
• Knife and cutting board for chopping chocolate
• Ice cream scooper
• Freezer safe tupperwear and wax paper for storage — if there’s any left!!

Hardware needed for bonbons

Hardware needed for bonbons: cake pan and ice pack

First, place your ice pack on the counter and a pie tin on top of it. Using your ice cream scoop, get a ball of ice cream and release it onto the pie tin, aiming for a place directly above the ice pack to keep the ice cream as cold as possible during the scooping step.

Prepping ice cream for bonbons

Make sure your pie tin is on the ice pack or the ice cream will start to melt.

Now, repeat! Scoop all the ice cream you want to turn into bonbons into the cold pie tins. Once a pie tin is full, quickly move it to the freezer to help the balls stay shaped.

Butterscotch ice cream waiting to be made into bonbons!

And now, you wait. While you are waiting, you can prep your other bonbon needs. Start off  by chopping the chocolate for the coating. You can see the ratio of dark:milk chocolate in the photo below. Choose any ratio that sounds good to you, but make sure to chop more than you think you need so that all the ice cream balls get properly covered.

Milk and dark chocolate for tempering

So, you’ve waited. And waited. And waited. Can you pull them out yet?

Well, has it been two hours? No? Go talk a walk and stall for time.

Oh, it has been two hours? Great! Let’s do this.

Turn on the heat of your double boiler (remember to have water in the lower pot). Once the water is simmering, add the shortening.Stir with your wooden spoon until melted and begin to add the chocolate. Remember, if you’ve separated your chocolate like we did, add some of each type to the pot. (Unless, of course, you want to do some entirely milk chocolate bonbons and some entirely dark chocolate bonbons.)

Melting butter for chocolate tempering

After the shortening is melted, add half of the total chocoalte to the double boiler.

Tempering chocolate

This is a tricky part. Tempering (melting) chocolate is very subtle and volatile process. Do not leave this unattended or you may come back to a scorched chocolate covered pot! Ack! Don’t go watch a show, don’t let the kitties distract you too much, but try to stay at the stove, stirring the chocolate and shortening. At first, it won’t look like it is melting, but it is. Just give it a few minutes of your time and you will be rewarded with a shiny, delicious and non-cracking shell for your bonbons.

Tempering chocolate for bonbons

Good! You’ve made it this far. Keep stirring. Your chocolate is properly tempered when it takes on a shiny lighter color, minutes after the picture below.

Tempered chocolate!

This would be a great time to set up your area — get an ice pack out of the freezer and set it to one side of the tempering chocolate. On the other side, set the other ice pack (this is where the previously shaped ice cream balls will rest until covered in chocolate).

Set up for coating bonbons in tempered chocolate

To get started on covering the ice cream, just kinda scoop one up, and gently place it into the tempered, warm chocolate.

Scooping ice cream into tempered chocolate

Lower ice cream ball into the melted chocolate

Using one of your two spoons, hold the ice cream ball in place and, with the other spoon, scoop chocolate over the top and along the sides to completely cover the ice cream.

Gently cover the ice cream balls in chocolate

Once you are satisfied with an ice cream ball, carefully lift it out of the chocolate, and, using your other spoon, scoop the ice cream out onto the waiting cool and clean pie tin.

Gently lift the chocolate covered ice cream

I would not recommend sliding the coated balls out of your spoon and onto the pie tin, instead, use your other spoon to guide the delicate thing. As your spoon will already be coated in melted chocolate, the bottom of your bonbon could loose a layer of chocolate if you just let it slide. Gravity is not a friend in this case.

Place the coated ice cream balls onto a clean (but cold) pie tin

As soon as you’ve filled a pie tin with as many bonbons as you can fit, stick ‘em in the freezer again. Yes, again. We need to wait for the chocolate to set. But don’t fret! Soon, you’ll be eating your lovely ice cream creations! Stall around for two hours.

Once the bonbons have set (yay!) you can transfer them to a tupperwear. Layer ‘em in it with wax paper in between the rows. The picture below is from several days after the making, and, as you can see, one of the bonbons was stabbed by someone (ahem) trying to determine the flavor of ice cream inside.

Storing bonbons is easy -- tupperwear + wax paper is all you need

Zucchini Cranberry Bread

Wet Team:

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 2 2/3 cups sugar
• 3 cups shredded zucchini
• 4 eggs
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 tsp vanilla

Dry Team:

• 3 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp baking powder
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp ground cloves
• 2/3 cup coarsely chopped nuts
• 2/3 cup cranberries

Heat oven to 350′ degrees. Grease muffin pans.

Mix shortening & sugar in a large bowl, and cream. It should look vaguely like this;

Now get ready for the real fun; prepping the zucchini! If you have a ridiculously huge zucc like I did, then this should prove entertaining, and hilarious.

To prep the zucchini:

1. Wash the skin
2. Cut into rounds
3. Cut rounds into sections so the zucc gets evenly destroyed in the chopper
4. Pile a bunch of zucc strips into the chopper
5. Chop! Chop! Chop!

Add the shredded zucc, eggs, and water to the batter.

Carefully  add in flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, cinnamon, cloves & vanilla.

With a wooden spoon, wrestle in some nuts and cranberries.

Using a releasing ice cream scoop, evenly fill your muffin cups. This recipe is modified from a zucchini loaf recipe, which calls for 60-70 minutes in the oven, but these muffins were ready in about half the time. After 20 minutes I checked these consistently every 5 minutes until the Toothpick Of Truth inserted in the center came out clean, and in the case of these muffins, about 30-33 minutes.  Let the muffins cool slightly.

Flip pan of hot muffins upside down onto a clean tea towel while the muffins cool.

These muffins didn’t rise much (probably because this recipe is intended for a loaf) but the flavor is worth the goofy looking muffin tops.

The original recipe can be found at the ever useful Baking Bites, and check out Crepes of Wrath for her (successful!) attempt.

To make your homemade Thin Mints, get together these ingredients:

Thin Mint Batter (for chocolate coating see below):

Wet Team:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

Dry Team:

• 2 1/4 cups AP flour
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Hardware for project:

• Measuring spoons
• Mixer
• Baking sheets
• Parchment paper
• Double boiler (easy to make from two pots)
• Two forks
• Large spoon for mixing
• Knife

First, cream sugar and butter until fluffy and then add milk and extracts. Don’t be concerned if the batter looks curdled and icky — just keep beating and beating until everything comes together.

Now add in the dry team. If you are using a mechanical mixer, make sure to turn it off before adding the dry team to prevent poofs of flour all over the place.  Take time to scrape down the dough off the sides of bowl.

Once the dough forms a ball in the mixer, pull it out. You should have something like this;

Divide the dough ball into two equal sections (I just eyeballed it). At this point you must make a decision: two logs or four? Both Baking Bites and Crepes of Wrath did two logs, but we decided to make four. Does it make a difference? Yes and no. Yes, because a larger log’s cookie has a better chance of being chewy, while the smaller log’s cookie will likely have a crunch. Following? Yes? Okay.

So you have either two or four dough balls.

The next step is important (!!) so get out a clean ruler (no, I’m not kidding) and move the dough balls to a clean large surface. You want to roll each of the balls into logs; this is done by applying pressure equally along the ball and rolling your hands gently, so that the dough rolls into a log-like thing. Keep doing this! It’ll be awkward, especially if you’ve never rolled dough before.

If you’ve opted for only two logs, aim for 1 1/2 inch diameter, but if you’ve opted for four logs, aim for 1 1/4 inches. My baking partner and I were (ahem) pretty casual about consistency, and in the end we paid for those casualties.

Once you are happy with your logs, wrap them in plastic wrap and freeze for 2+ hours. Don’t skip this step! When working with chocolate batter it is important to cool it off considerably –why?– because the melting point of chocolate is lower than our body temperature and thus the batter will become sticky and too pliable from the warmth of your hands. We want this batter to stay cool enough to maintain a shape and not get all over your hands.

After you’ve patiently waited (and waited and waited), pull out the logs, a favorite knife and your clean ruler. Unwrap logs and slice precisely, aiming for 1/4-1/3  inch thick pieces. Again, we were pretty casual with this and after baking some of the pieces were crispier than others, so if consistency is important to you, use a ruler!

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and place Thin Mint slices for baking. The cookies do not spread, so feel free to squish ‘em in. As you can see below, did just that:

Bake your homemade Thin Mints in a 375` oven for 13-15 minutes, rotating the baking sheets half way through the cooking time. Depending on how thick or thin your cookies are, expect crisp (or nearly crisp) cookies. Look for a slight change in color around the edges at the 13 minute mark, and definitely pull them at 15 minutes, even if the cookies do not look done yet.

While your cookies are cooling (yay!), prepare your double boiler (see above for link and explanation) and chop your chocolate and butter for coating these bad boys.

Chocolate coating ingredients:

• 20 ounces chocolate (We got a combination of milk and dark chocolate, while Crepes of Wrath uses only milk chocolate)
• 1 cup butter, soft

Tempering chocolate hardware:

• Double boiler
• Parchment or wax paper
• Forks
• Large spoon for stirring
• Knife

Note: The original recipe calls for only 10 ounces chocolate and 1/2 cup butter, but at the suggestion of Crepes of Wrath, we doubled our chocolate and butter portions to have plenty and some for left over chocolate-creations (yay, chocolate disks!).

Stir the butter and chocolate mix with a large wooden spoon to prevent it from sticking and burning at the bottom of your pot. As the concoction melts, add more chopped chocolate and butter. Once most of the chocolate and butter is added, it ought to look something like this:

After a bit more stirring, now is the time to dip your cookes in the tempered chocolate! Whee!

As casual as this sounds, it works; I just dropped four cookie rounds into the melted chocolate, flipped ‘em with a fork until fully covered with yummy chocolate goodness, and then finagled ‘em out of the double boiler onto a waiting parchment paper section. Expect splashes, messiness, and chocolate drips!

As the tempered chocolate level gets low, add more chopped chocolate and butter until done, stirring continuously.

Take lots of pictures while your friend does the work of dipping cookies into tempered chocolate. Attempt to make bad jokes to make him smile while you snap away.

Expect some air bubbles. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to prevent them, but I would imagine that giving ‘em a final tap and shake after coating in chocolate, and the bubbles will pop. If someone has a better suggestion, please let me know in the comments. Ours ended up having dimples and were kinda funny (but so so yummy):

And just to show you that not all of them came out so lovely, here were some of my favorite goofy looking ones (and therefore were eaten first). Not only were there air bubbles, but uneven chocolate application, and finger prints (ahem, not my handy work):

Once the cookies are coated and cooled put the ones you don’t immediately eat into the freezer for 2+ hours to harden the chocolate coating. I used a large square tupperwear and layered the cookies with parchment paper layers.

And viola! You have homemade Thin Mints, and you didn’t have to offer your first born as exorbitant payment! Make sure to adorn with a fresh sprig of mint and elaborately sprinkle with chocolate pieces. Take dozens of pictures at a series of angles, and pick your favorite to show off to friends and family. ^_^

To make this more entertaining for all of us, here’s some photo-instructions of the process.

Kitchen Sink cookies

Original recipe found here — a great base for modifying.

Wet Team:

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg

Colorful local eggs

Dry Team:

• 3/4 cup AP flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 3 cups oats
• 1 cup nuts, chopped
• 1 cup cranberries (or chocolate chips)

Vanilla extract, baking soda, cinnamon, salt

Kitchen Sink Add-ins

Combine wet team thoroughly until butter and sugar mix is light and fluffy (this is called “creamed”). Add dry team and mix until incorporated. Now add in oatmeal, nuts of your choice (I added 1/2 cup each of walnuts and pistachios), and cranberries (or chocolate chips). The dough should be a thick consistency when everything is added.

Batter consistency

Using a releasing ice cream scoop, measure out 1/4 cup portions onto a greased cookie sheet.

Formed balls of Kitchen Sink cookie dough

Between your palms, use your Hulk Hand Patented Smashing Technique and mash the dough into cookie-shaped ovals until the thickest part of the cookie is no more than 3/4 inch.

Thickness of Kitchen Sink cookies

Bake @ 350′ for 13-15 minutes. Take the cookies out at the 15 minute mark even if they look soft and wet. Remove from oven and let cool on baking sheet for 5 additional minutes. Transfer to a wire rack until cookies completely cool. Enjoy with a glass of cold milk (or milk substitute)!

Stage cookies elaborately on the table with a glass of milk. Take dozens of pictures, and post only one.

Kitchen Sink cookies with milk

The great thing about Kitchen Sink cookies is how flexible the recipe is;

Instead of pistachios and walnuts, substitute in pecans, peanuts, macadamia nuts, or any other nut combination. Just make sure the nuts are chopped or properly sized, and the ratio of nuts to batter stays the same.

Instead of cranberries, substitute in milk, dark or white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, raisins, dried mango, dried apple, dates, dried prunes, or any other chopped dried fruit. Even feel free to add coconut to your Kitchen Sink cookies!

The important thing is ratios. Keep the ratio of nut:fruit:batter in proportion and your cooking time will not change much with the variations of ingredients.

Enjoy your homemade faux-Oreos with a cold glass of milk!

Original recipe found here — ours differs in method a bit.

Step 1 — Cocoa cookies:

• 1 1/3 cups  cocoa powder (Dutch-process if possible)
• 1 1/2 cups AP flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Combine wet team (butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla) and mix. Add dry team (cocoa powder, flour, salt, cinnamon) and mix until incorporated. Chill in refrigerator for 1 hour — and don’t skip this step! Whenever working with chocolate or cocoa powder, it’s best to keep it cool. Why? The melting temperature of chocolate is lower than our body temperature (98′F) so chocolate will melt slightly when held in the hand (M&Ms, anyone?), thus it is a good idea to keep the chocolate cool so it doesn’t turn into a sticky gooey mess while forming it by hand. Once cool, form dough into heaping tablespoon-sized balls and flatten in palm until 1/2 inch thick. Place on nonstick cookie sheet, but not into the oven, yet! Cool yet again in refrigerator for ~30 minutes on the cookie tray (you will be rewarded for your patience).

Now, preheat oven to 325′ F and bake for 20 minutes.

If you’d like to stamp your cookies, see Step 2, otherwise skip to Step 3.

Step 2 — Stamping the cookies:

Materials:

• Stamp (clean and dry — to clean the stamp properly wash with soap and warm water,  rinsing well. Pat dry  and pull off any fuzz that may be hitchhiking.)
• Cloth (clean and dry)
• Oven mitt
• Fork

The cookies need 20 minutes total to bake, but if you’d like to stamp your cookies, a-la-Oreos, you’ll want to pull them out at the 10 minute mark. Once the cookies are pulled, position your stamp so that it is parallel with the cookie sheet, with the stamp imprint facing the cookie. While holding the cookie pan with an oven mit, slowly press the stamp into the middle of the top of a cookie. Pull smoothly away from the cookie, trying to keep the stamp parallel with the cookie sheet. This will ensure that your imprints are not right-side heavy (or top-side heavy).

Repeat!

Once you feel comfortable stamping, try experimenting! Press a fork gentle into the dough to make a series of lines. Stamp a single cookie multiple times to create a more complex image. We chose a crescent moon stamp which ended up looking like a “C” — fine with us! Could it stand for cinnamon?

Put cookies back into oven for remaining 10 minutes. Remove and let cool.

Step 3 — Creamy filling:

• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
• 3 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Combine butter and shortening until fluffy (this takes longer than you’d anticipate), then beat in powdered sugar and vanilla. Once the filling is together, you have two options for getting it onto half of the cookies; (a) put into a pastry bag or freezer-safe zip top bag with the tip cut off for piping, or (b) use a releasing ice cream scoop size 40 — roughly equal to a rounded tablespoon. I opted for the #40 releasing ice cream scoop because it’s easier to be consistently concise (say that three times fast!).

Add frosting to the flat side of the cookie

Your cookies are made, stamped, cooled and frosted. For each sandwich, take an unfrosted cookie, place gently flat-side-down onto a frosted cookie. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can put filling on two cookies and gently press together to make a triple stuffed faux-Oreo! Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator, but try to eat at room temperature.

Viola! You’ve made homemade Oreos! Enjoy with a cold glass of milk (or your favorite milk substitute) for dipping.

Fact: faux-Oreos are better than store bought

Peanut butter filling and shortbread cookies covered in melted chocolate

To make the homemade delights, follow the steps below (original source here):

Step 1 — Shortbread cookies:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 cups AP flour
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp milk

Preheat oven to 350′F. Combine wet team and mix until fluffy (milk, sugar, softened butter, vanilla), add dry team (flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon) and carefully mix. Form into tablespoon-sized balls and flatten in palm until 1/4-1/2 inch thick. Place on nonstick cookie sheet, bake for 11-13 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Remove cookies from oven, but leave on cookie sheet.

Next, take your thumb or a measuring spoon and make indents in the center of each cookie. Do this while the cookies are still warm (but not too hot to hurt your thumb). Be careful not to press too hard or the cookie will split and crack. Let shortbread cool completely.

Step 2 — Peanut butter filling:

• 1 1/2 cups creamy peanut butter
• 3/4 cup confectioners’ sugar
• generous pinch salt
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 8-oz semisweet chocolate

Combine peanut butter, sugar, salt, vanilla and cinnamon in the mixer. Mix until fluffy and light brown in color, and then put in microwave for 1 minute increments until hot. Transfer PB mixture into a pastry bag (or a freezer zip top bag with the corner snipped off) and pipe logs onto waiting indented shortbread cookies.

Shortbread cookies with peanut butter filling

Chop the chocolate into smallish pieces. Do not use chocolate chips, as they have additives to help the drops maintain their shapes. Set up your double-boiler and add 3/4 of chocolate. Info on how to make a safe double boiler here. Melt chocolate, and once tempering is complete, lower cookies into melted chocolate with a fork, gently turning the cookie over in the chocolate. Then carefully remove the chocolate coated cookie and place on a cookie cooling rack so the excess chocolate can drip off. You’ll want to keep adding chunks of chocolate to the melted chocolate to keep the level high enough to completely cover the cookie. (Hey, I didn’t say it wouldn’t be messy!)

Covering tagalongs in melted chocolate

Adding tempered chocolate

Let the melted chocolate drip dry

Note that the chocolate changes color and texture when dried. See the cookie in the left row, three back? That’s about right. If it remains shiny once dry, you have successfully tempered your chocolate!  Hurrah!

Finally, enjoy your homemade Tagalongs with a cold glass of soy/rice/cow milk!

Yum!

I’m a big fan of baking with cinnamon. I’m also a redhead, so this is a bit of a bad pun. This blog is intended to chronicle some baking adventures and share baking pictures and recipes. All pictures you will find on this site are taken by me, unless otherwise noted.

I hope these recipes and pictures bring inspiration to you! Bust out that cinnamon and GET BAKING!