Bun in the Oven cookies are cookies with a brownie hidden inside!  I didn’t like the original name, Pillow Cookies.  Or the alternate, Brookies.  Of course I asked for help from my facebook friends on a much cooler name!  Tyler said I should just call them Cookies with brownies inside.  Sigh…no fun! I was looking at them and thought, it looks like a cookie is carrying a brownie love child.  I know, I know….. So I must give credit where credit is due!  Thanks to my old high school friend, Michelle (McKeal) Stafford, for the name of this cookie!  I didn’t invent the idea of the cookie though, I got it off of Bakerella’s website.  But the recipes I’m going to share with you are ALL ME!  Like I said, I give credit where credit is due.  I made Heath Toffee chip cookies with a Blondie brownie inside.  Really though, you could use any combo of cookie and brownie flavors.   Oh, and these guys are really big, they only make about 8-10 cookies.

So, first you need to make a cookie dough.  This is my tried and true basic recipe.

2-1/4 cups All Purpose flour

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Salt

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside

1 cup Butter flavored Crisco Shortning

3/4 cup Brown sugar

3/4 cup White sugar

2 tsp Real Vanilla Extract  (if you use imitation, I can not be held responsible for the results, hehe)

Mix above ingredients with an electric mixer until, well, it’s all mixed.  Now you need 2 eggs.  Add them ONE AT A TIME  not sure why but it makes a difference.  Mix well before adding the 2nd egg.  Then slowly add the flour mixture until it’s all incorporated.  I actually needed to add a bit more flour, only for the purpose of these particular cookies.  So maybe about…..  1/4 cup or so.  You don’t want these puppies to spread out too much.  Then add in your Heath Toffee chips (or whatever you chose) then put all the dough in an air tight bowl and place in the fridge for at least 1 hour.  I left mine overnight and it was fine.

While that’s chilling, make your brownies.  I used a Butterscotch/Blondie type recipe.

1/4 cup Butter flavored Crisco

1 cup Brown sugar

2 tsp Real Vanilla

1 egg

3/4 cup All purpose flour

1 tsp Baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Heat oven to 350.  Grease 8×8 pan.  Add brown sugar, vanilla and egg into mixer, melt the shortening then add that in the bowl and mix together.  Stir in flour and baking powder.  Pour into pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.  Sometimes it seems like it’s still undercooked but the outside keeps getting darker and darker.  Be careful now, take it out before it burns, trust me, if it still seems not done, just wait till it cools.  It’s fine :)

Ok, so brownies are cooled and cut into  little 1 inch squares, and cookie dough is chilled.  Now for the fun!  Turn on the oven to 375 and cover your baking sheets with parchment.  Take a 1/3 cup measuring cup and pack it full of dough, use a spoon.  Then turn out the dough onto your parchment and make an indent with your fingers.  Place a brownie in the indent and just kind of squish it down, bring the sides of the dough up and roll it all until the brownie is covered and you have a big dough ball.  Don’t place any more than 4 onto the sheet or they’ll stick together.  Bake for about 15 minutes, then let cool on sheet.  Place on cooling rack once you can get it off the sheet without it totally falling apart :)  And then eat!  But if you eat more than one, you’ll probably get sick, I’m just sayin’.  Let me know if you make these and what you think!  Like I said, any kind of cookie and brownie combo will do!  Ok, now for some pictures!

This past 4th of July weekend we took a trip down south and went to Gangala cave.  As I’m typing this, I’m kind of thinking I need to post pictures of stuff as soon as we’re done with our trips, because my mind is going blank right now on what exactly we did :(    Well, it was a cave anyway, a pretty cool one too!  I’ll bet I have such a hard time remembering is because the tour was conducted in Japanese, so I’m not 100% sure what we were seeing!  Oh well, so here are some pictures anyway, enjoy!

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Army week.  The Ball kicked it off, but I’m now just remembering I didn’t blog about the rest of the weeks festivities!  We started off with a big family bbq at the beach followed by dragon boat races then kayak races.  That was hilarious!  Each battalion on the island (there are about 5 or so) needed to come up with a team.  Most of these guys and gals had no idea what they were doing, much to our amusement :)

A couple of days later we went back up to the beach to watch the chariot races.  I was asked to judge the races, I guess that’s what happens when you stand around and look like you have nothing else to do :)  Oh yeah, Tyler’s place of duty (meaning where he has to be everyday for work) was the beach.  Every single day that week.  It was awesome!  So anyway, each BN had one team.  Except one, who had 5 teams because they misunderstood the directions.  Whatever.  Then those teams were tasked to make their own chariots.  Those were interesting!  Here are pictures of some of them…

We won by the way!!  Because of skill, not because I was the judge, promise :)  This was all over and done by 7:45am.  Then later in the afternoon was the tug of war.  Now this one Tyler was on a team so we were all pumped about watching this one.  Until they set up the ropes, and then the heavens opened up and rained.  Big time.  But the show must go on, and boy did it!  Tyler’s team did at least 6 pulls, and came in a very close 2nd place.