These cookies are colossal and studded with dark chocolate chips and stuffed with a melted dark chocolate truffle inside. So melty. So mega good.

I used Lindt Lindor dark chocolate truffles but you could also make them with milk chocolate morsels and truffles if you prefer.

Now gather all the players to get going on the dough. Flour, butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Glorious! If only I could eat it all just like this.

Once the dough comes together, mix in 2/3 of the chocolate morsels. Scoop 12 even mounds of cookie dough onto wax paper. Wrap each truffle with a mound of cookie dough and seal together. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and then use the remaining morsels to stud the tops of the cookie dough balls. Place them four at a time on a baking sheet because these beauties bake up big.

Bake those babies into big beautiful cookies. Like 5 inches big.

Break into them when they are still warm for a melty mouthful.

Enjoy!

Oh Shih Tzu! How cute are these puppies?! I made these for my mom's birthday this week. She's been wanting me to turn her little puppy pie into a cake pop and I finally attempted them this past weekend. Surprisingly, they ended up being way easier than I thought they would be.

But first I needed reference so I made a quick pencil sketch of the sweet little baby face in question.

And because I wanted to get as close to her likeness as possible, I worked the sizing out on the computer starting with different size circles. I took a picture of my sketch and emailed to myself to lay over the circles in a graphics program called Indesign. The faces are slightly larger than the circles to allow for the size increase when the round cake balls are dipped in candy coating. Once I had all the sizes, I picked the one that would work best with the sprinkles I had on hand.

In this case, black sugar pearls for eyes, brown rainbow chip sprinkles for noses and pink confetti sprinkles for tongues.

Now to make the cake pops. First mix crumbled cake and frosting together and then roll into balls based on the size you need.

Here are my basic cake pop instructions if you need them.

Once I had the starting size, I used the puppy drawing as a guide to hand shape the puppy heads. Just lay a sheet of wax paper over your reference and shape the cake ball to fit. I also used a lollipop stick to press holes into the shaped cake balls where the eyes would be. I did this for reference after they are dipped.

The slight impression helps me know where to quickly place the sugar pearls for eyes because you want to do this while the candy coating is still wet.

Then place the rainbow chip sprinkle in position for the nose and the confetti sprinkle in position for the tongue. (You could do these two steps after the candy coating sets by attaching them with a dot of melted coating, but the eyes look better if they are inset into the coating slightly as opposed to sitting on top of the surface if that makes sense.)

Holy Shih Tzu. The before and after. Now let me show you how easy it is to go from one to the other.

This is all done with toothpicks and a little time. Start with the mustache and eyebrows area and dip your toothpick in coating and draw on the pop to build up dimension. Do all your pops and let them dry before layering on more as needed. Fill in around the nose and overlap the top of the confetti sprinkle. Then just keep drawing on lines of coating with the toothpick. Once you've built the face up to look like your pup, then apply more coating with a toothpick on the sides for floppy ears. Let dry.

And if you have a little Maltese, you could stop right here. : )

But my mom's Shih Tzu has black markings like a little mask. This is the fun part.

All you need is a black edible ink pen. Maybe two if you are making a bunch. Just use the pen to draw on top of the pop mimicking your dog's markings as much as possible.

(These are Americolor Gourmet Writers and you can get them in brown if you need them, too.)

Usually when I use these pens I recommend drawing on the surface very lightly like use a paint brush, because when you press down too hard, the candy coating can start to clog the pen.

But for these pups, I like how it looks when the pen is not solid black. It helps give the illusion of different shades of black hair. So I wasn't as worried about the pen clogging up.

And if draw too much on, you can use a toothpick to gently scrape some of it away.

Look at these little baby boos. To finish the look, just dot the eyes with more of the melted white candy coating.

I'm so happy with how cute they turned out.

And … they're puppy approved! Sweet little Sugar Pie loved them. And my mom did, too!

Enjoy!

These cookies scream fun and festive for the Fourth of July. I wanted to try making sugar cookies that were striped, but without having to pipe them with royal icing because I think I would have made a mess with that. So I took the concept of pinwheel cookies and instead of rolling up the dough, I layered it flat. Want to see?

Okay, first I divided some sugar cookie dough into three equal parts. I used this recipe and removed it from the mixing bowl, just before it all came together. Then I placed 1/3 of the dough back in the bowl and added a few drops of white icing color. You could go with the natural color of the cookie dough here, but I used white to make it a little brighter.

Mix the dough just until the color is incorporated and then place dough on a sheet of plastic wrap dusted lightly with flour. Shape dough into a flattened rectangle and wrap up to chill. Repeat with remaining dough, using a few drops of super red icing color next and then royal blue.

When the dough is chilled and firmed up a bit, roll blue dough out on parchment paper so it is 1/4 inch thick and the shape is about 4 X 10 inches. Slide parchment with blue dough to the side and roll the white layer on a new piece of parchment paper roughly the same size. Place on top of the blue layer of dough and remove parchment. Repeat with the red dough.

Also, the 4-inch width in the instructions above, is to accommodate these cookie cutters that I was using. You basically need the dough to be wider than the length your cutters. I’ll show you why in a minute.

Once the three layers of dough are rolled and layered on top of each other, you can gently and evenly roll it lengthwise to make the dough even longer … about 12 inches long.

Then divide the rectangle equally into four smaller rectangles.

Now stack those sections on top of each other. Here you can see why the height of the layered/stacked cookie dough needs to accommodate the width of the cutters you are using.

(Note: If you want to try these, I would recommend making another batch of the cookie dough recipe. I had just enough to spell “4th of July” with a few extra striped letters. There was however, plenty of leftover dough. I just couldn’t reuse it for the striped cookies because I would have had to reroll the extra dough.)

Once the dough is stacked, place it in the freezer for a few minutes to firm up.

Prepare some cut pieces of parchment paper to individually lay each slice of dough on.

Remove dough from freezer and use a bench scraper to slice through the stack. You may need to slice a couple and then refreeze it so it’s firm each time. Transfer the sliced dough to a piece of cut parchment and roll dough again slightly to press together. Repeat and then place the slices on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and put in the fridge or freezer to firm up before cutting the letters out.

Here you can see how the cutters all can fit within the sliced/layered cookie dough.

When the dough is firm, use a letter cutter to cut out the dough. And use your fingers to press the dough down inside the cutter as you lift it out. Do this slowly and carefully so you don’t accidentally separate the strips of dough as you remove the cutter.

Once all the letters are cut out, place back in the freezer/fridge to firm up again before baking.

It worked! Yes! and YAY! Because I didn’t have a backup plan if they didn’t.

Once the cookies cool, you can leave them like they are or pipe and outline them with white royal icing to define the edges. I went with icing.

Like so.

YAY! Again, I’m glad this worked out like I pictured it in my head. Things don’t always do.

Now, for all those scraps. Since I couldn’t use them for more letters, I just re-rolled the dough together.

It makes a cool pattern if you don’t over mix the dough and then you can just cut out some cute little stars and pipe those with royal icing if you like also.

EXTRA NOTES:

* The cookie cutters I used are from Sweet Sugarbelle. It doesn't include numbers, so I just hand cut the 4 to match the style of the letters. * This is the rolling pin I used. I love it because it makes even layers of rolled cookie dough. * I used this cookie and royal icing recipe. Make two cookie batches if you want more than a dozen letters. Also, you only need to make a half batch or really even a quarter batch of the royal icing since you aren’t using much. * If things aren't working out, just make sure the dough is chilled and firm. It will help immensely. * And if some of the blue dough gets on the white dough when you slice it, you can gently scrape the thin layer of blue off of the white with a knife when the dough is chilled and firm. * Laying the sliced dough on smaller individual parchment sheets is super helpful and gives you more flexibility. * Don’t feel like you need to make letters. You could use the same technique and just make striped stars for instance. * Try these with other colors for a completely different theme.

Enjoy the Fourth!

These Cheesecake Cookie Bars dotted with white chocolate chips and sprinkled with raspberries are a perfect sweet treat to kick off summer. The recipe is from What’s Gaby Cooking's brand new cookbook. I met Gaby a few years ago and she is just the cutest. And a force when it comes to food. She was in town a couple of weeks ago for her book signing so I stopped in to give her a hug and say hi. And of course, I had to bake something from her beautiful book, which was also photographed by my chocolate loving friend, Matt Armendariz. These besties are a dynamic duo so check them out.

The recipe calls for easy ingredients. Always a win. Eggs, butter, vanilla, sugar, brown sugar, flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. And let’s not forget the stars. Cream Cheese, white chocolate chips and fresh raspberries.

Pretty!

Once you mix up the cookie dough, stir in most of the white chocolate chips.

Spread a little more than half of the cookie dough in the bottom of a 9 X 13 inch baking pan. Spread the cheesecake layer on top after that. Then crumble the remaining cookie dough on the very top.

Sprinkle more white chocolate chips and raspberries on the top and bake away!

Remove from the oven to cool and then chill in the fridge before cutting into bars. OMGoodness! look at those beauties. And so so good, too!

Enjoy and check out Gaby’s book, Everyday California Food … it’s full of deliciously simple and fresh recipes you’ll love. And she also has a line of salsas and seasonings at Williams-Sonoma, too.

Enjoy these refreshing cookies for Father’s Day! They’re jumbo sugar cookies decorated with royal icing and they’re a fun way to tell Dad he’s the best pop around.

First off make some cookie dough. I used this Sugar Cookie Recipe from Bake at 350. It’s a keeper and I use it whenever I make sugar cookies. The recipe makes 9 of these jumbo cookies. Ten if you rolled them a little thinner.

I used this awesome rolling pin to roll out the cookie dough. A new fave I recently bought from Food52. It rolls perfectly even, quarter-inch-thick cookies. I have always used a rolling pin and added those thick rubber bands on the ends to help keep my cookie thicknesses the same, but this one is much more convenient and I love it so far.

Now, I’ll admit that these cookies are not the quickest to make because of the multiple colors and drying time needed, but I couldn’t resist trying to make them after this soda pop pun popped in my head. If you’re a cookie decorating pro, they’ll probably be a breeze for you, though. I’m not, so I made a template for my idea to make the decorating easier.

I highly recommend downloading this template for yourself if you decide to give them a go.

* Cut out the soda can from the paper template with scissors. * Roll out cookie dough and use a straight edge to cut the dough into rectangular shapes based on the size of the template. * Then cut out the corners of the can from the paper template and use a knife to cut the same corners off from the dough. I always roll my dough on lightly floured parchment paper so I can easily transfer the cookie cut outs to a baking sheet when they are ready to go in the oven.

Bake them at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes and let cool completely.

Now for the next step. I used the same template and cut it into sections to use as a piping guide. Just trace each section on the cookie with a black edible ink pen. This was super helpful for me because there is no way I could have gotten them all to look similar without it.

Now, you’ll need some royal icing. You can use the same recipe from here.

I left some of the icing white, tinted some gray and then tinted three shades of green to get started. If you're careful and good at cookie icing planning, you can get all the colors you need out of one batch of icing.

These cookies really need to be made over two days, so you can also just make a second batch for the remaining colors when you’re ready …especially if you’re like me and not good at judging how much of each color you’ll need.

Here’s my piping order. (And I basically just played around with icing consistencies to avoid having to pipe the outlines and then come back and fill in with flood icing. To thin icing, you can add a little water and to thicken it, you can add a little powdered sugar.)

Okay, first I piped the lid and bottom of the can using tinted gray royal icing.

Then, with all my green shades ready to go, I started with the lightest color green in the middle of the can and then filled in the medium green on either side of the light green while the icing was still wet to give it a seamless look. And I repeated the same thing with the darkest shade of green. (Note: As I completed each section, I added a few dots with alternating shades before moving on to the next shade of green.)

Toothpicks are super handy. I used them to even out the icing where there were empty spaces and also to help create pointed ends. Just gently pull it through the icing as shown in the last picture above.

Now let dry. Dry. Dry. Dry. I would recommend drying overnight.

Now, we’re on to day two. I used white icing and tinted blue, yellow icing and more gray icing to finish the cans.

For the words, I used the same template and cut out the word soda as one piece and the word pop with the circle badge as a second piece.

Then I could easily place each word in position and trace right on top of the cookie with an edible ink-writing pen. I used Sweet Sugarbelle’s pens here because they have a really thin tip.

You’re best … I tried to do mine to pipe these words around the other letters.

Oh and I used tipless decorating bags to pipe everything by the way. They’re pretty handy. But me and lettering… not so much. I’m definitely not great at this. But when I would mess up, I would just wipe the icing off and start over until I got something that was readable. Let the words dry some and then you’re on to the the big letters…

Soda Pop!

I made the blue icing with a thicker consistency so it would not spread, but would also not need to be outlined. Because that would have been a disaster.

Pipe inside the lines and then tint some icing yellow and pipe inside the circle. Outline the lid with more gray royal icing and let everything dry.

When dry, I added a little highlight detail to the big letters by lightening the remaining blue royal icing with white icing color and using a small paintbrush to gently paint highlights on the letters.

For the final touch I used an orange edible ink-writing pen to write inside the circles because after piping the white letters I knew I wouldn’t be able to make them look straight enough. The pens are much easier to control and you could even use them for the other small words if you want. Here’s the color assortment for reference.

You’re so da best Pop!!! Enjoy and Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!