Chocolate Chip Hershey's cookie and Cream

Hershey's Cookie and Cream Candy Bar

  White Chocolate makes me think of snow so I associate white chocolate with winter. I found these Hershey Cookies and Cream candy bars on 50% clearance sale the day after Halloween. The Hershey Cookies and Cream bars are a candy bar that is chocolate cookie bits in white chocolate. I wanted to experiment with the chocolate bars and I wanted to make sure that I had enough to bake with. I ended up buying four bags of Hershey Cookie and Cream candy snack size bars. I labelled them "XMAS COOKIE STUFF DO NOT EAT." Magically enough they were not eaten. I also at the time bought Ghiradelli milk chocolate bits. When I stored the Hershey Cookie and Cream bars I also made sure to pair them with four bags of Chiradelli milk chocolate bits so that I would have them for Christmas baking. The last thing anyone wants to do is be in a grocery store around a big eating holiday like Christmas or Thanksgiving! So I had everything ready for my baking day.

   My husband loves these candy bars. So I decided to make chocolate chip cookies with these bars in the middle. They went over very well. I however forgot to take a picture of them after they baked! I was exhausted after baking for 12-14 hours the day before in addition to making a cookie tray, cookie gift boxes and then wondering how we were getting them to the party location. What I like is that when you cut the giant cookie you always will have a bite of the candy bar. I cut these into square cookie bar shape and there were some odd shaped cookie cuts left. The oddly shaped cookies I saved for taste testing and for gift bags. When I presented them on the tray I did so that you could see the middle of the cookies. That way you could tell what was inside the cookies and they looked more tempting. They really looked beautiful! I used the white chip tray from the dessert for a hot day and movie recommendations post.

 When you experiment with new recipes you should try things on sale! That way you don't spend top dollar on ingredients on an experimental baking project that might not turn out well. I tried to make Runt sugar cookies once that was an epic fail but at least I bought the runts on sale. My idea was to make sugar cookies and instead of using decorating sugar I would use pulverized runts as the decorating sugar. The Runts sugar cookies is the only baking experiment that I did that went horribly, horribly wrong! I have had epic fails but they have tasted good! But these runt sugar cookies were gross!  I learned my lesson but not until I had  inhaled runts dust in a rainbow of colors. I probably could have sneezed a rainbow it was that bad! 

   But one should still play with ideas! My best cookie was actually a "throw-away" cookie. I had meant to get English toffee but got butterscotch instead by accident. I thought "oh, no this is another Runt Sugar cookie in the making. But I mixed the butterscotch with Ghiradelli Dark Chocolate and it is everyone's favorite cookie of mine! I never liked butterscotch and it was always too sweet for me. But I had to send something quickly out to my dad. So I made them, sent them to my father and I had some left overs so I sent them to my mother in laws. I thought well they will be at least appreciative that I made cookies for both of them. But I was not thinking that it was going to get the reception that it got! It is legal crack to my mother in law. She always begs me to make them and I usually give her a special take home package just for her. I call them Penny Loves Pop-Pop cookies because I was giving them to my dad who was missing my dog Penny. He also sends my dog Penny Valentine's Day cards and signs them "Love Pop-Pop (him) and Mimi (my mom). I never have called my dad "Pop-Pop" or even a grandfather but I think it is cute. Odd!--but it is cute!

         Ingredients:

2 bags of Hershey's Cookies 'N' Creme Snack Size Bars, 17.1-Ounce (you see three bags worth but you only need two bags maybe three for a doubled recipe).

            2 bags of Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips 

2.25 cups of flour

2 sticks of butter

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon of Pure Vanilla Extract

0.75 cups of granulated sugar

 0.75 cups of brown sugar

2 eggs

Directions

• Sift together: flour, baking powder, and salt into a medium sized batter bowl. Put aside
• Cut up room temperature butter into small pats of butter and place in the mixing bowl. 
• Using the flat blade attachment in mixer cream the butter, vanilla, brown sugar and granulated sugar together.
• Beat the egg in a small bowl with a fork to break up the egg.
• Add the Vanilla extract to the eggs.
•  Add the eggs one at a time to the mixture of creamed butter/vanilla/brown sugar/sugar. Make sure in between eggs to beat the mixture well.
•  Add the sifted dry ingredient slowly folding it into the wet mixture. Run until the dough is mixed thoroughly.
•  Stir in the Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips. Make sure that the stand mixer has the chips through out the mixture by taking using a flat spatula to scrap down the sides.Tips: If the mixture is uneven: fold the mixture by hand if necessary to mix the bottom part of the dough with the top layer. If necessary, run the mixer again.
• Take two Giant Cookie pans and spray them with Baking Pam with flour

• Take some cookie dough and spread a thin layer of cookie dough but leave a gap around the corners. To help your hands from sticking use regular Pam on hands and spatula. 

• Place the Hershey Cookie and Cream bars down in the thin layer of cookie dough. Make sure to leave a gap perimeter between cookie dough edge and the edge of the candy bars. This way when you put the next layer the candy bars will not ooze out of the cookie dough. Remember to leave a perimeter gap between the cookie dough and the edge of the Giant Cookie Pan

• Layer a thin layer over the candy bars but make sure to cover all of the Hershey Cookies and Cream bars. I found a spatula with pam helped to make the layer thinner. Repeat with the other Giant Cookie Pan. 
• Bake for 15-25 minutes at 350 degrees depending on thickness of cookie but it tends to be longer due to the candy bars. Also rotate pans at 12 minutes and evaluate. Bake until golden. 

Pretty easy and pretty tasty! Enjoy!