Kool-Aided Cake Mix Cookies Combo Batch

Around winter holiday season, chocolate-covered cherries tend to float into my consciousness. Another chocolate and cherry concoction has also been staring at me recently when I open the freezer: ice cream with cherries and chocolate chips "H-E-B Select Ingredients Creamy Creations Cherry & Chocolate Limited Edition Ice Cream". One yummy I wanted to buy so I could add chocolate chips and make cookies with is a cherry-chip cake mix. Unfortunately, have heard the supply is spotty "Betty Crocker Super Moist Cherry Chip Cake Mix".

The basic cooky recipe uses cake mix, eggs, and oil. For flavor and color enhancements, I added a package of Cherry Kool-Aid and 10 drops of red food coloring. Another cooky variation is a chocolatey covered one. BTW, I used Black Cherry Kool-Aid for my "Kool-Aided Cake", an experiment. It turned out so well that I rationalized that Kool-Aided cookies could turn out well. View the video for full details of preparing one, two, or three types of cherry-themed cookies.

While thinking about implementation, I decided that chocolate in a form or two would be interesting. My recent foray into chocolate coating and also chips with mint themes inspired me to borrow from those ideas. The intention, besides making tasty cookies, was to improve on similar processes. Additional ingredients for this combo-batch cooky recipe are red food coloring, chocolate chips, and optionally, white chocolate "bark".

Because of the nature of dough stiffness, I recommend using a tilt-head mixer. If you use a pastry blender, wire whip, or hand mixer, stamina would be helpful. Another helpful item is a cooky press for shaping and dispensing cooky dough pieces. Or you can use a tablespoon-and-spatula method.

Cooky Press Thoughts—Disks

I misplaced my Wilton cooky press container, which showed the baked cooky shapes for each disk. The images for the following models look mostly similar.

• "Preferred Press Cookie Press, 13-Piece"
• "Wilton Cookie Pro Ultra II Deluxe Cookie Press". View the useful image of the disks.
• "Wilton Cookie Pro Ultra II With 3 Bonus Disks. (20)"

Cooky Press Thoughts—Dispenser Trigger Squeezes

Using 1 1/2 trigger squeezes of the cooky press yields suitable size cookies.

• "A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch"
• "Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter"

For the cookies for "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies", I used two trigger squeezes per cooky. I think the heavier cooky made chocolatey dipping more awkward and used a lot more coating. The yield was fewer than I liked. I'll use 1 1/2 trigger squeezes when using a cooky press.

Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies

My journey started out as intent to make chocolate-covered mint-flavored chocolate cookies. Such examples are Girl Scout Thin MInts, Hill Country Fare Fudge Mint Cookies, and Fudge Mint Cookies (Back to Nature brand).

This cooky recipe uses cake mix, eggs, oil, mint extract, and chocolate chips. The ingredients and methodology are very similar to "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies". The biggest differences are the cake mix flavor and chocolate chip use.

I visited mostly video sites for melting chocolate and also methodology for coating the cookies. I bought a dipping tongs gadget. Some unknowns going in:

• Cautions about melting process (temperature, durations, microwave vs. double boiler)
• Number of cookies I'd get from my favorite cake mix cooky recipe
• Tablespoon-and-spatula dispensing of dough vs. cooky press
• Baking time—chocolate cookies not as easy to spot browning edges
• Amount of chocolate for coating the cookies—enough vs. too much

The yield was 40 baked cookies. The 12 ounces of melted chocolate chips was nowhere enough—only 12 cookies well-coated and 2 half-topped. Why'd I so badly underestimate the amount of chocolate I needed?

• My inexperience (clumsiness) with coating methodology and failure to revisit sites on baking day
• Too-late thoughts about scraping excess chocolate back into bowl, resulting in overcloaked cookies
• Fear of breaking cookies while coating, thus, handling them gingerly during dipping and transporting

What happened to the 26 unadorned cookies? Most of the remaining cookies wound up in my Plan B sandwich cookies that I didn't think of until three days later. Visit "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies" for details.

On to the cooky making!

Implements

• Pastry blender or electric mixer
• Bowls for mixing wet ingredients
• Bowl for mixing dough
• Rubber spatulas
• Cooky spatula
• Cooky pan(s)
• Cooling rack(s)
• Spoons
• Dipping tongs
• Parchment paper
• Measuring spoons
• Resting plate

Ingredients

• 1 box of chocolaty cake mix
• 1/3 to 3/8 cup of oil (I forgot that my standard recipe uses 1/3 cup. Results were acceptable.)
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 teaspoon of mint extract
• Chocolate chips or other chocolate form for coating (Note: I severely underestimated the amount of chocolate I needed. I managed to coat only about 1/3 of the baked cookies.)

Dough Process (Using Pastry Blender or Electric Mixer for Combining)

For mixing this few-ingredients cooky dough, I used a manual pastry blender. For parceling out the dough onto baking pan, I initially used the method of measuring spoon and spatula, then switched to a cooky press. A cooky press is fast if the dough is single-texture consistent. It's not appropriate if the dough has chocolate chips, nuts, or other items too big to fit through smallish disk holes.

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Mix oil, eggs and mint extract in a large bowl. (Most of the times, I usually break each egg separately into the bowl before adding the other wet ingredients.)
3. Mix in the cake mix.
4. Parcel out tablespoons of dough onto pan, leaving ~1" margins for baking expansion.
5. Bake each batch for up to 7 minutes. (Because the dough is chocolate, checking for browning edges is not helpful.)
6. Cool for ~ 2 minutes before using cooky spatula to transfer them onto cooling rack(s).

Chocolate Coating Process

1. Set aside a large surface for this process. It's also helpful to have a plate for resting dipping tongs, spoon, or fork for handling the cookies.
2. Lay out parchment paper for laying chocolate-dipped cookies onto.
3. Melt chocolate chips or other chocolate forms in a medium bowl until syrupy.
4. Coat each cooky separately, lightly scraping excess chocolate before transferring onto paper.
5. Carefully pull parchment sheet or partial sheets of coated cookies onto rack or pan, and place inside fridge to cool and harden the chocolate.

How long before melted chocolate sets? From "Chocolate-Dipped Cookies"—"Refrigerate until the chocolate just sets, 10 to 15 minutes." From looking at my camera's pic date stamps of cooky refrigeration and bringing them back to the kitchen island, 40 minutes passed. (I probably did some other task during that time.)

Resources for Melting Chocolate and Dipping Items

• "Dipping Cookies, Pretzels, Cherries in Chocolate"
• "Dipping Cookies, Pretzels, Cherries in Chocolate Part-2"
• "How to melt chocolate in microwave : How to melt chocolate"
• "How to Melt Chocolate, the Right Way! - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph"
  This site provides corrective action if the chocolate misbehaves in the melting process.

Cooky Stats

Yield: 40 ~3" diameter unadorned cookies
 12 fully coated (each ~2 ounces, 189 calories)
 2 half-coated (each ~1 1/4 ounces, 129 calories)
 26 unadorned (each ~2/3 ounce, 65 calories)

Note: I used a cooky spatula to divide the coated cookies.

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Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies