I Have a Coffee Problem

I’m a little bit obsessed with coffee. It’s become a  joke in my life – my friends will ask me how many cups I’ve had(typically 5+), I’m generally downright grumpy if I haven’t had any, and the best part of my day tends to be the half hour I get to sit and drink coffee in the morning with my friends. Given the crazy reality that is the school I go to, lack of sleep is common, and coffee is the easiest (and most legal) way to keep up with the work and be awake in class. After you realise this at 14, there’s no going back. Prep school: where you act like a college student, but without the booze. or the frat parties. or really any of the fun things about being in college.

Send help. I’m tired and stressed and require six cups of coffee to feel anything.

Though at the beginning, most kids take their caffeine with about 75% milk and sugar, I’ve actually come to like what coffee tastes like(yay!). I also like what cookies taste like. So I decided to make coffee cookies. These took a surprising amount of trial and error- but I think I’ve actually hit the right proportions now. These cookies take a hint from the Milk Bar cookies, with the use of “crumbs” and milk powder. I really was trying to get the cappuccino feeling.

Cappuccino Cookies

yield: a lot. I think it was supposed to be 48, but I have a bad habit of eating the dough, so I ended up with ~40

Ingredients:

Crumbs(If you want, double this recipe but keep the cookie recipe single)

40 grams skim milk powder

40 grams AP flour

2 tbsp cornstarch

3 tbsp/35 grams sugar

pinch of salt

~1/4 cup butter, melted

+60 grams skim milk powder (to coat the crumbs after baking)

90 grams white chocolate

Cookies

1 3/4 cups +2 tbsp butter, softened

1 1/2 tbsp white/clear corn syrup or glucose

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 1/2 cups white sugar

4 1/2 cups AP flour

3 tbsp skim milk powder

2 tsp salt(if using unsalted butter)

1/3 cup instant espresso powder

5 tbsp fresh coffee grounds

2 whole eggs

2 egg yolks

2 tsp baking soda

2 tbsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups white chocolate melting wafers/chips

Okay, let’s get caffeinated. Grab a cup of coffee to get you through this.

First of all, make the crumbs. Measure all the dry crumb ingredients together and whisk that shit together. Keep whisking until it all looks the same.

Hey, look at that! I learned how to make my own gifs! Now I can show you how to do this shit! (plus it’s kinda cool)

After all that is whisked together, make sure your melted butter is not boiling. Decent temperature? Congratulations. Drizzle that all over the dry ingredients.

Diabetes in a bowl.

Using a spoon or spatula, then just mix that all together. Try not to taste test it. Keep mixing until you have clumpy bits and sandy bits, there will be a large variance.

It should look like this. Spread the little clumps out on a cookie sheet and bake in a 250 degree preheated oven for 20 minutes. Congratulations, your house will smell like Pillsbury cookie dough.

When they’re cool, toss the crumbs with remaining skim milk powder. Then, coat them in the white chocolate.

For adding the white chocolate, I tend to go with the dump-and-mix method. Because I’m lazy.

After the crumbs and chocolate are mixed, it’ll look pretty unappetizing. no worries. Spread the crumb mixture out on a parchment-ed baking sheet and let the chocolate solidify. you can toss the crumbs every 10 minutes or so if you want, to keep from big chunks forming, but I honestly kinda like those. You do you.

When the chocolate is solid, the crumbs are ready.

Now that that’s done, let’s actually make the cookies. I know, I know; they’re a lot of work. But I promise they taste good.

Start off with sifting your dry ingredients(flour, baking soda, various forms of coffee, and milk powder. put aside for now.

Cream together the butter, sugars and corn syrup. If you have a stand mixer, use the paddle attachment. Let it beat at high speed for 10-15 minutes-it should look like this by the end:

See how fluffy it is? That’s what creamed butter and sugar should look like.

Stream in the eggs with the mixer on low, one at a time, and then the yolks . Scrape down the bowl, and mix again for 30 seconds on the lowest speed. Add the vanilla, and let it incorporate. With the mixer still on low, add the flour combination, 1 cup at a time. This will keep it from exploding in your face and getting flour all over your kitchen. When all the flour was added, stop the mixer. By hand, fold in the crumbs and chocolate chips. Put the dough in the fridge for at least an hour, but it’s better if you leave it overnight.

When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. roll balls of dough ~1 generous teaspoon. If the dough has warmed up, chill the rolled balls for 15 minutes. Bake in the preheated oven for 12-14 minutes. The cookies will still be very soft when they come out of the oven, but let them sit on the hot cookie sheet for 10-15 minutes of complete baking. After, transfer to a wire rack, or eat warm. Preferably with a cappuccino.

Go forth and be caffeinated. With a sugar high. With this much energy, the world is your oyster.