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Sunday, May 4, 2014

Wookie Cookies with Julie and Ivy

May the Fourth be with you!

As some of you may know, today is something of an unofficial holiday for Star Wars fans, and as Star Wars first premiered in 1977, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do a feature on the blog in honor of it! This features a recipe I've been curious to try pretty much as far back as I can remember, and I'm not actually sure what took me so long to sit down and say alright, today we are going to do this.

And never fear, Julie and Ivy haven't totally taken over the blog! I've got two new posts plans that don't feature either of our favorite girls from the 70's, ahaha.

But without further ado, let's get on to the recipe! I mean, what exactly is a Wookie Cookie?



I first saw Star Wars when I was about five years old. My dad is definitely something of a fan, and while I would hesitate to say that anyone in this household is a truly psychotic Star Wars fan, we all do genuinely appreciate the movies.

Or, you know, at least the original three movies. I will fully admit I'm a snob about that.

Anyway, we've had The Star Wars Cookbook probably since it was first published in 1998. I'm not sure where we got it from, or why someone thought to give it to us, or why we purchased it for ourselves if it wasn't a gift (actually, now I'm wondering if we grabbed it while in Disney World at the Star Tours gift shop), but it's intrigued me since we got it. The book features a variety of pretty basic recipes - chili, hamburgers, dip, cookies, toast, etc. - and most feature cute pictures featuring Star Wars action figures either modeling or interacting with the completed dishes.

I'm not really sure what most of the recipes actually have to do with Star Wars except that their names were easily turned into puns based on certain characters and locations - Han Burgers seem to be a pretty basic recipe - but the recipes are easy enough that a kid could probably make them without too much parental intervention, which I figure is a good thing when you're trying to sell a cookbook based on a movie that's popular with kids and adults. It's out of print now, but it's readily available on secondary markets if you've got an aspiring chef who likes Star Wars.

As Wookie Cookies are the titular recipe, it seemed to make sense to give them a shot. If you want to try them out yourself, you can find the recipe here on StarWars.com! You start the same way you start most cookie recipes by separating the dry and wet ingredients.


The major addition here to make this different from a regular chocolate chip cookie is a teaspoon of cinnamon to the flour.

Once you've got all that geared up, you cream the butter and sugar together, add two eggs and vanilla extract, and then beat that all together before adding in the flour. The butter is supposed to be at room temperature, which makes it a lot easier to work with by hand when incorporating the flour. I still feel like I got a bit of an upper body work out, but it really wasn't too difficult to work with.


This is when the good part comes in: one cup of milk chocolate chips, and one cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I was hoping this was going to be a pretty chocolately cookie.

 
I used a scoop to make mine a relatively even shape, and they baked in about ten minutes, just like the recipe said, which is always a nice thing.

The one thing is, they didn't really look like the cookies featured in the book.

The ones on the cover seem much flatter and chocolatey-er.

I was slightly disappointed to discover that these aren't quite the cookies they seem to be in the pictures. They're a lot cakey-er than the pictures suggest they will be, like a normal, well baked chocolate cookie, and while the cinnamon is tasty, the different chocolates are a little too subtly different in flavor to really be that noticeable. Maybe it would be different if you used dark and milk chocolate?

That said, they were definitely tasty cookies with a really nice texture. The recipe makes a lot, too, depending on how big you're making them. I've got more than enough to send them up to a friend and bring some into work tomorrow, and that's after my family snacked on several after I made them! Overall, this was a fun recipe to make that wasn't too challenging, and produced a treat that was different enough to be interesting, even if it wasn't necessarily the cookie I thought it was going to be.

Thanks for reading! Let's hope it doesn't take another decade and a half to get me to try another recipe from this book!

I wonder if the new movies coming out will mean a new cook book?

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the salute to Star Wars! Definitely a blast from my past, and oh how I loved Mark Hamill.

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    1. He is pretty excellent! Here's hoping the new movies are good! c:

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