Tasty Dessert Kits - What does this home cook think? #TastyInsiders #Ad #LooksTasty

Disclaimer: I received this product at a discounted price in exchange for my honest opinion. 

Check out my first unboxing video showing off the two cookie kit flavors I got to try, Campfire S'mores and Cookies & Creme Come True. 

I'm a fairly decent cook but my original love was baking so I was all for anything that would save me time and effort in making cookies. In this post, I'll cover my thoughts on the Campfire S'mores variety and share my thoughts on Cookies & Creme when I make them later this weekend. 

My thoughts on the product packaging - I like that it contains everything I need (except for butter and an egg) in individually wrapped packages. I liked that it was a box that had perforations to open like a treasure chest so you could keep everything contained until needed. Didn't have to pull everything out to get at something on the bottom of the box. I ordered these boxes from Walmart for home shipping so they were slightly dented but still intact. 

I like how it clearly shows on the front of the box that each kit makes 12 cookies and that you would still need butter and an egg. On the back, it spells out what this kit includes and what you will need. Super handy reference in case you also need to pick up those wet ingredients while at the store. I also appreciated the detailed step by step instructions with pictures. 

Along the side of the box, there are suggestions for other things you can do with this kit. This particular box suggests Electric Pressure Cooker Apple Crisp, S'more Nachos, and S'mores Cookie Cups. Then once you open the package, assuming you don't have remedial tearing skills like I did, you can find recipes for those dishes printed on the inside of the box front. 

Having individually wrapped ingredients was super helpful for my OCD self because I could put aside what I wouldn't need until later and keep my workspace organized. I also liked how each packet was labeled with what it was as evidenced below for the packet of marshmallows. This also helped ensure that as contents naturally get tossed around, you don't have spillage and pieces of the kit mixing. Only thing I'd like to see changed in this part is that the large pack of cookie mix pictured on the left in the above photo wasn't as clearly labeled as the others. The included kit items list referred to it as "Cookie Mix" but the first direction in the recipe calls it "Graham Cookie Mix." This led to some confusion while baking.

Time to gather the not included ingredients that I already had in my fridge. Celebrity chef Rachael Ray has said that she doesn't like baking because it involves such precise measuring. On the other hand, it's one of the reasons I love it. I use Land O'Lakes butter and get tons of help with their printed measuring guide on the wrapper. No having to try and shove cold butter into a measuring cup. So much nicer to just cut through the stick right on the line marking what you need and then unwrap that cut section. Even if you throw away the whole wrapper when starting a new stick, just use another stick from the box to measure your current butter stick. No waste and easy measuring without having to scrub greasy butter out of a measuring cup. 

This kit calls for softened butter. A handy trick for quick softening of butter is to put it on a plate in the microwave for about 10-15 seconds. Don't go much longer or you'll end up with melted butter and might as well give up on the cookies and have some popcorn. Every once in a while like in the case of pie crusts, a recipe will call for truly melted butter but 95% of the time, it will ask for softened butter so that it mixes in with your other ingredients easily.

Okay, now we have all the ingredients together in one place or what's known in the cooking world as mise en place (French for everything in its place). It's much more efficient to start any cooking project by gathering everything you'll need in one place before you begin. That way you're not letting something overflow or burn because you're digging in the drawer for a certain spoon. Let's get to baking!

Now here is where I found the directions to be confusing. Figures it would be on step 1, right? Aside from "Heat oven to 375°F," the first direction says: Beat butter, egg and Graham Cookie Mix with hand mixer until blended. Freeze dough 15 minutes. Reserve 1 Tbsp. Graham Crumbs for sprinkling over baked cookies. 

Now of course that I write it all out, I see that it mentions "sprinkling over BAKED cookies" but at the time I thought the "Graham Cookie Mix" meant you combined the butter, egg, white cookie mix, and the Graham crumbs in the bowl to be beaten together. In my mind, the reserved crumbs I saved in a small bowl was for the rolling each cookie in after portioning them out for baking as mentioned in the 2nd set of directions. What was probably supposed to happen is that the entire bag of graham crumbs went into its own shallow dish to be used for rolling around the portioned cookies with that little bit saved for sprinkling. Ahh well, no harm no foul as the flavors were still all there and what I added didn't affect the composition or baking quality of the cookie. It may have even been an improvement since I didn't have any leftover to make for gritty sprinkles on top that are the first thing that would hit your tongue. Yep, that's my story and I'm gooey marshmallow sticking to it!

My little bowl of reserved graham crumbs.

Another tip for any sort of food prep involving eggs is to crack your egg into a separate small bowl first before adding it to the big bowl's mixture. It's a lot easier to dispose of a bad egg or random piece of shell when it's the only thing in the bowl. It wasn't until recently that I saw a tip on a cooking show that advised cracking your egg flat on its side on the counter rather than against the side of a bowl or pan. It really makes a difference for breaking open evenly and keeping the shell halves intact.

Now that we have all of our first step ingredients (and some extra) together in the bowl, it's time to use the handheld electric mixer to combine. I usually use a metal mixing or plastic mixing bowl when making my cookies (as I occasionally also mix by hand) and I think I much prefer that over using this glass bowl. I had to stop in the middle of mixing with the beaters to scrape down the bowl sides and reincorporate a lot of the dry ingredients back into the rest of the mixture. Once I did that a time or two, the mixture came together a lot easier.

I'm used to making several dozen of each cookie type I'm baking so to see such a small blob seemed so unusual to me. Once I recalled that this box only makes 12 cookies, it felt more proportionate. For freezing the dough, I transferred the newly mixed blob into a freezer bag and made sure to squeeze all the air out and seal the bag. I laid it flat on top of items in the freezer and set our trusty Amazon Alexa to keep a 15 minute timer. 

Any good cook/chef will take the opportunity to also clean as you go while cooking. Having nothing to do toward the cookies while waiting out this timer, I used the time to clean the mixing bowl, small egg bowl, and beaters. Always easier to clean while the mess is fresh so you're not having to scrub dried on whatever off your dishes later. Plus it reduces clutter in your workspace since we no longer needed those items.

Thank you Alexa for letting me know 15 minutes of chill time is done! I was relieved to find that the dough blob was easy to remove in one clump from the plastic bag. My usual cookie recipes often call for chilling the dough but I don't bother. I wanted to make sure to follow the instructions as best I could for this and I do think it helped when measuring out the individual cookies.

Time to move on to Step 2 in the directions. But first, we mise in place! For this set of directions, I needed a baking sheet covered in parchment paper (I could have also used non stick foil but parchment paper was recommended in the directions), the chilled blob of dough, the bowl of reserved graham crumbs, the chocolate discs, and later the marshmallows and kitchen shears. This post is not sponsored by Ziploc. :) I would like to give a shoutout though to these baking sheets from the Food Network I found at Kohls. I use them for almost everything I bake in the oven and with some Reynolds Wrap non stick foil they have held up beautifully through it all!

Step 2's directions instruct us to scoop the chilled dough into 12 mounds, using 1 Tbsp dough for each mound; flatten each into 2-inch round. Place 2 Chocolate Wafers on center of each round. Mold dough around wafers to completely enclose wafers. 

These chocolate wafers were pretty big compared to the dough mounds so I was a little surprised we were instructed to use 2 for each cookie. I overlapped the wafers but it was still hard to fit the dough completely around them. It's a good thing the dough was pretty pliable and finishing off with a roll between my hands helped smooth out the mounds again into a rounded ball shape.

Remainder of step 2 says to Roll in remaining Graham Crumbs in shallow dish; place on parchment-covered baking sheet. Let's hear from my fellow bakers! Are you team push the cookie around with your hands to coat or team shake the entire dish to make the cookie roll around on its own? I found as the supply of Graham Crumbs got very limited, it was easier to shake the entire dish so that the cookie picked up the remnants along the sides.

Once we have the stuffed with chocolate and rolled in graham crumbs dough balls arranged on our parchment paper covered baking sheet, it's time for their first trip to the oven. The instructions say to Bake 8 to 9 minutes or puffed and lightly brown around the edges. If you're unsure of the time needed and especially when making something new, it's easiest to put something in to bake for the minimum time in the range listed. Can always add more time later if necessary. I decided after 8 minutes that the cookies weren't quite browned enough so I put them back in for another minute.

This was after 8 minutes - looked more like Honey Grahams than Graham Crackers

Okay so let's see, we've got the graham cracker and the chocolate, what else do we need to make S'mores? Ahh yes the marshmallow! The final part of step 2 calls for cutting each marshmallow lengthwise in half, then cut each marshmallow piece crosswise in half using kitchen shears. Basically a bunch of words that means cut each marshmallow into 4 equal pieces. Great opportunity for a little math lesson on fractions if you're making this treat with your kids. Now when they ask "When are we ever going to use this in real life?" you have an example that their brains and their taste buds will remember. The kitchen shears easily cut through the soft marshmallow so I can see this being a step a child can handle with some supervision on sizing.

One thing I wondered though is if you have a kit that makes 12 cookies and each cookie gets 1/4 of each marshmallow, why give the user 4 whole marshmallows? 3 marshmallows each cut into 4 pieces would give us enough for 12 cookies. Perhaps a fail safe to give one extra? Either way, Dad enjoyed getting the leftover marshmallow. :)

Step 3 - once you're satisfied with how long the cookies have baked in Step 2, remove them from the oven. I got a chuckle out of how the first sentence in step 3 really says "Remove cookies from oven." Next, top each cookie with 1 marshmallow piece and press gently into the cookie to secure. Note how notably darker the cookies became with one extra minute of baking. They will still be a little soft in the middle so don't push those marshmallows down too hard! Really reminded me of the procedure for those Hershey's Kiss topped cookies.

Hmm, they didn't bother to instruct the user to put the cookies back into the oven before baking an additional 2 to 3 minutes until Marshmallows puff and start to melt. Good thing I picked up some of that common sense at the same time as I ordered these cookie kits. 

I checked mine at the 2 minute mark and decided they needed a little more marshmallow toasting time so back in for another minute. Do you like your toasted marshmallows to be lightly golden brown or burnt to a crisp? Growing up in Girl Scouts, we used to toast our marshmallows over the campfire until they literally caught on fire and looked like a lit torch at the end of our sticks. Somewhere along the way it was suggested to blow on it to put out the fiery marshmallow and the reference to "Foof it!" was born due to the sound of someone desperately trying to blow out their marshmallow flame. Today though I stuck to the golden brown look or it would have burnt the cookies.

Once at this stage, leave the cookies on the pan to cool for 2 minutes. Then transfer the cookies to wire racks and cool slightly. I was very impressed at this point that not only did the parchment paper protect my baking sheets but I was able to use a simple flimsy spatula (ones that you can bend versus one that you can't manipulate) to lift these cookies clean off for transferring to the wire racks. No chunks torn out of the bottom from a cookie that stuck to the pan and even the parchment paper looked like new except for circle imprints where the cookies had been! The cookies stayed together perfectly with no dropping down or sticking to the wire racks either. I always put paper towels or a dish towel under my wire racks when baking. Easy cleanup when you can just bundle up the towel and carry the crumbs over to the trash can.

While the cookies sit on the wire racks, it's time for the final step, step #4. Microwave remaining chocolate wafers in microwaveable bowl on High for 1 minute or until completely melted, stirring after 30 seconds.

The last sentence in the recipe instructions is where get the chance to be creative. While the picture shows the person scooping up some of the melted chocolate with the spoon and layering it over the cookies while on the wire rack sitting inside the parchment covered baking sheet, I suggest instead getting out whatever plate or dish you plan to serve them on, we went fancy with Chinet paper plates, and load the cookies onto there before you drizzle. That way you're not trying to scrub hardened chocolate drizzle from in between the tiny crevices of the wire racks later. Now it's all up to you whether to drizzle cute designs or patterns or to give a little or a lot of drizzle on your cookies. You can be super methodical and make every cookie match or let it drip where it may at random. I personally chose to go with the Jackson Pollack method and held the chocolate coated spoon over the plate and lightly flung it back and forth letting the splashes of chocolate fall where they may. A nod back to those old 80s and 90s Splatter Paint art sets we used to have.

The recipe ends with the line "sprinkle with reserved Graham Crumbs." Due to my confusion at the beginning, I no longer had crumbs left so I skipped this step. The consensus from my taste testers was that it worked out for the better because the taste of graham cracker was there but you didn't have the gritty crumb texture hitting those taste buds first.

And for the grand reveal: 

While campfire S'mores may make you think more of summertime, I can easily picture being more direct with the chocolate drizzle making the tops look like spider webs or spider's legs with a black jelly bean, gumdrop, or tiny licorice piece in the center of the marshmallow for a Halloween themed treat. 

And just like their inspiration, eating these cookies are just as gooey and messy to enjoy! I do offer the tip that if you don't plan on eating the rest soon after to put them in an air tight container that you can lay them all flat on one level to store. We just covered the plates with foil and they dried out quickly.

Thanks for reading! I hope you stay tuned for the next post where I show what it was like to make the Cookies & Creme Come True flavor. Happy Baking!