Hello! My name is Audrey and I'm not awesome in the kitchen. My kitchen skills revolve around whatever I can dump in my Crockpot, and even that requires some planning ahead that I usually fail at.
The holiday season, however, inspires me to bake, no matter how bad I am at it. Therefore, I decided to research and try my hand at six different celebrity cookie recipes in an attempt to steal one to use every year and become the biggest hit at the holiday party.
The celebrity cookie recipes we're testing are:
First of all, you'll need to shop for ingredients. I broke down the price of each cookie below, but my total bill (save the honey, cream of tartar, and baking soda I already had) to make all six types of cookies was $74.08 (like $13 of that was just butter lol).
Because I'm attempting six kinds of cookies, and I'm busy around the holidays, my dad came over to aid me in baking. Please keep in mind we aren't particularly good at baking. All of the baking talent in our family went to my grandma, who lives too far away for me to enlist her help with these cookies.
First up was Danny Trejo's Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies.
Danny Trejo's recipe required sifting dry ingredients through a sieve and the only one I had was this comically small one.
After the dough was made, Mr. Trejo wanted us to roll the dough in balls and dip them in a dust made from sugar, cinnamon, and cayenne pepper, which looked and smelled so good, I kept the rest in a baggie that my husband has been sprinkling on top of his Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
The cookies were supposed to go in for 10 minutes, but at around the 8-minute mark, I realized my oven was out to get me because the cookies started to smell burnt (side note: I didn't even know you could burn parchment paper).
While the cookies tasted great, the bottoms were unfortunately burnt. They did not, however, detract from the yumminess of Mr. Trejo's recipe.
After Trejo's Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies were done, we moved on to Mary Tyler Moore's Meringue Cookie.
Meringue, I found out, is just a lot of patient blending. After the mixture is blended and stiff peaks form, the mixture is dolloped onto a baking sheet and baked at 275º for 45 minutes.
When Mary Tyler Moore's almond meringues came out, they were very fluffy, and tasted like you were eating air that an almond had wafted through.
Not a whole lot of flavor, but maybe that's the point with meringue? I'm not a big sweets person so I enjoyed how subtle they were, but to anyone else looking for a cookie recipe instead of an edible cloud recipe, these aren't for you.
We moved on to Michelle Obama's Winning Chocolate Chip Cookie. These were the only cookies with shortening in them and I assume it's what made the batter feel so light and fluffy.
Mixing together all of the ingredients proved to be a bit of a challenge because these cookies were chunkier than the rest with walnuts and three different kinds of chocolate chips in them.
I popped them into the oven, which I set lower than instructed, and on a shorter timer than usual annnnnd...burned them again. My oven and I are currently at war.
Even burnt, Michelle Obama's cookies were a crowd favorite. They mixed a lot of textures and tasted more like a traditional chocolate chip cookie. While I had high hopes these would be soft cookies...they were not, but that could be my oven's fault for charring the bottoms.
I had the forethought to read the recipes and make sure none of the dough needed to chill first before making. I'm glad I did because Cookie Monster's recipe and Meryl Streep's recipe needed one to two hours for the dough to cool in the fridge.
Cookie Monster's Sugar Cookie dough was thick and resembled a crumbly shortbread kind of consistency, but who am I to doubt such an industry expert?
Cookie Monster required you to roll out his dough and cut shapes in them. I only had a circle cookie cutter and a heart, and since Meryl's were literally called "Heart cookies," Cookie Monster got the circle. Since it was fresh out of the fridge, the dough was very easy to work with.
I checked on these cookies so often but still ended up getting a few crispy ones. After they came out of the oven, I was incredibly disappointed because they had, in essence, zero flavor.
Cookie Monster's recipe is an excellent recipe for a cookie you intend to put icing on. It's a great texture and the flavor is a neutral base for you to top it with something sweet. I had powdered sugar that I mixed with a little bit of pineapple flavoring and water to create an icing, then coated them in granulated sugar. It made the cookie 6,000 times better.
Then, we moved on to Meryl Streep's Heart Cookie. The interesting thing about Meryl's recipe is that it has no sugar. All of the sweetness of the cookie comes from honey.
I mixed the dough and then quartered it and wrapped it in plastic wrap to chill in the fridge for the required two hours.
After the two hours, it was basically the consistency of a hockey puck but melted very quickly once I started kneading it in my hands. The dough was very difficult to roll out and get a clean cut in because of the almond slivers.
Meryl's recipe claims it makes five dozen cookies. I'm not sure where she got her cookie cutter, but I had a hard time cutting out eight large heart-shaped cookies, so I can't imagine how difficult 60 would get.
Out of the oven, Meryl Streep's cookies tasted like dog treats. I'm sorry, they did. They aren't bad slathered in preserves, but the cookie itself is dry and tasteless. It could have been because of the no sugar and two different types of flour, which made me raise my eyebrows while I was mixing it.
Last was Snoop Dogg's Rolls Royce Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie. I had really high hopes for this one because I kind of felt like the rest of my cookies flopped hard.
Snoop's recipe was straightforward: mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, and then mix the dry in the wet. Scoop them out and make them.
Snoop did not disappoint! His cookies were soft and the peanut butter and chocolate ratios were perfect. All in all, it was my favorite cookie, but my family of five gave conflicting opinions.
The verdict is:
Make:
Snoop Dogg's Rolls Royce Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookie
Michelle Obama's Winning Chocolate Chip Cookie
Danny Trejo's Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookie
Skip:
Meryl Streep's Heart Cookie
Cookie Monster's Sugar Cookie
Mary Tyler Moore's Meringue Cookie
The last thing I want to mention is to go to your local baker or the baker in your family and give them a handwritten thank you card. After baking cookies all day, I can appreciate how exhausting it is and can now truly taste the love and craftsmanship in every bite.
