How to Build A Cookie Burger

Yeah, I know I promised to reveal Nicole’s Big Milestone, but I have to wait one more day. Or, specifically, until later this afternoon but the likelihood of me posting twice in one day are slim. Leif and Skye are coming over again today, and with a house full of children, it is impossible to squeeze in time for things like that. So tomorrow, tomorrow.

There is a good chance that I will have melted by tomorrow though. It is HOT in the apartment. I reason that it is on the top floor so all of the heat must rise into our home. Plus, we are under the roof, so we get that extra hit of warming sun. But it is consistently 85 degrees in this apartment. And that is not an exaggeration: I have an indoor thermometer. We have an AC in the bedroom, and used to have one I the girls’ room to, but we never put the second AC in and moved it out to LI instead. Big mistake. It gets unbelievable hot in here, and when I use the oven, forget it. If you don’t believe me, ask Ms. Unwellness
. She and Beck came over yesterday and can attest to the fact that it felt like an oven. So today, I am looking for two ACs: One for the girls’ room and one for the kitchen. I can only imagine what our electric bill will be: Right now, with one AC that is usually on just at night, our bill is $240 a month.

These days, pretty much al of my recipes come from Cooks Illustrated. I love that book/magazine/website. Amazing recipes and pretty much everything I make from it is a huge hit. So the Challah bread recipe came from there. It is way to long to type up! The website is one of those that you have t pay for, but the do have a free 14-day trial.

And here is the hamburger cookie recipe:

Hamburger Cookies With A Side Of (French or Freedom) Fries

• 1 big box (12 oz.) Nilla* wafers
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips or about 8 ounces of semisweet chocolate in bar form
• 1/3 cup milk (whole, skim, almond, whatever)
• 1/2 cup sweetened flaked coconut
• 1/2 teaspoon water
• green food coloring
• Red and yellow decorating gels, the kind usually used to write HAPPY BIRTHDAY on a cake (for ketchup and mustard)

If You Want A Sesame Seed Bun:
• Melted butter or gum Arabic
• Sesame seeds, or, if you insist on maintaining the sweet integrity of the cookie you can use marzipan or fondant to create little things that look like sesame seeds.

Directions:

Put about twenty Nilla wafers into a Ziploc or mini food processor and crush into small pieces (not a fine crumb…more like a chunky crumb). This should yield about 1½ cups. Mix wafer crumbs with powdered sugar in a bowl. I will not be pedantic and say what size bowl to use. I think you can figure it out.
Melt chocolate and milk on stove (or in the microwave). Stir to make sure it doesn’t burn. Once melted, pour chocolate mixture into wafer mixture; stir until combined. It will be chunky and kind of fudge-like, like a really thick cookie dough. Cool for 10 minutes. Then, after it has cooled a little, roll this chunky fudgey-like dough into little balls (about one tablespoon each). Then flatten them so they look like little patties.
Combine coconut, drops of water and green food coloring in a Ziplock. Seal bag and shake shake shake till it’s as green as you want.
Now build the burgers. Start with one Nilla wafer, then add the patty, then add a smidgen of green coconut, then add ketchup and mustard. I squeezed the mustard and ketchup in ovals on the patty’s tops, so it sort of dips down on the side of the bun. Put Nilla wafer on top. If you want to add sesame seeds, then melt butter and brush a little on top and drop on some seeds. Or use Gum Arabic, which is an edible adhesive used in baking that is flavorless. You can add flavor to this flavorless gum if you want by adding Colorless Vanilla. But melted butter works just fine too, and is easy.
Ideas that I may try in the future: Using fruit rolls up of a yellow or orange variety and cut into little squares to make cheese. Also, there has to be a gummi candy that can be slice to look like a tomato. And, finally, I bet you can use white chocolate and then color it to make it look like veggie burgers or chicken/turkey burgers.
The Fries:
Make sugar cookie dough OR just buy the rolled-up, ready-to-bake kind. I did the latter for my first attempt. Roll out the sugar dough on parchment paper, then sprinkle sugar all over the tops and then, using a pizza cutter, slice it into thin strips. Then — and this is very important — put the whole thing in the freezer, like you do if you are making cut-out sugar cookies. If you try to separate the pieces before freezing it, it will not work. Once frozen (I think about 15 minutes) then you can lift up the dough and break off the strips. Unbelievably easy.
Put the thin strips on a parchment-paper–covered baking sheet, spaced apart, and cook. When they are done you are going to think “This doesn’t look right” because the pieces are all puffed up and look like fat fingers and not like French fries at all. But that’s ok. As soon as you take them out of the oven, take your pizza cutter and immediately cut the puffed up pieces into thin shoestring-like strips. If you wait too long (just minutes) the cookies will harden and it will be impossible to slice into thinner strips. Also, as soon as you take it out of the oven, you can sprinkle more sugar on it to make it extra delicious and make them look like extra-crispy fries.
* I use Nilla wafers, but I am sure any old kind of vanilla wafer cookie will work.

Pictured above, cookie close-ups. And my Green Monster Smoothie! The thirty-day challenge has not officially begun yet, but I wanted to have a couple of days to try to ramp up my smoothie-making skills. My fruit combining skills begin and end at banana-strawberry. So I am trying to add blueberries and blackberries and orange and everything else. Thinking outside of the fruit box, if you will. The color is not very appealing and the taste is decidedly healthy. Let’s just say my versions won’t be mass marketed anytime soon. I made one yesterday and, this may be a revisionist history, but I had A TON of energy afterward. While watching all four kids, I cleaned the bathroom, organized the bedroom, and cleaned up the entire kitchen. I was unstoppable? Coincidence? We’ll see….