Mushroom Chocolate Cookies

Little Thumbs Up : Baking and Cooking event, selected ingredient for the month of May is "MUSHROOMS"

Little Thumbs Up, is an event organized by Zoe from Bake For Happy Kids and Doreen from my little favourite D.I.Y. , where an ingredient is selected each month and everyone is welcome to join in by using the selected ingredient either in your bakes or in your cooking pot. I am the host for this month, and my selected ingredient is "MUSHROOMS". Please do join us, cook or bake any recipes using Mushrooms as one of its ingredient, post it in your blog within this month, (only new and current posts), and link to Little Thumbs Up, in the thumbnail linky which is provided at the bottom of this post. To find out more details on Little Thumbs Up, please click here.

While this month's theme is MAY : MUSHROOMS, the selected ingredient for June is Curry Powder or Paste and will be hosted by Everybody Eats Well In Flanders. Cook  or bake any of your favourite curry dish, and link that up in June which shall start on 4th June.

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Yes, you have read the title of the post correctly! It is Mushroom Chocolate Cookies! And no, it is not one of those cute little cookies that looks like cute little mushrooms, but these cookies actually have real mushrooms in them!

I was just playing around when I google from the internet for mushrooms sweet desserts, well, I was surprised that there are quite a number out there, something that I never thought about, until that moment when I decided to try my luck and see whether is there any sweet desserts with mushrooms as one of its ingredient. One thing I've learnt is that, there's a mushroom called Candy Cap Mushrooms, which are dried and used for dessert making, because of their maple-like taste! Imagine that!  Mushrooms with a maple taste, how I wish I could get my hands on some of these! Since I do not know where to get dried Candy Cap Mushroom, and I really doubt that I could get it over here in Malaysia, I will just have to settle for these cookies that uses fresh mushrooms! I am really, really curious as to the taste of fresh mushrooms in chocolate cookies. So the only way is, to bake these cookies, even at 33 degrees C in a blazing hot kitchen!  Are these good? Read on to find out!

Mushroom Of The Day : Brown Button Mushroom

I use fresh brown button mushrooms. They are chopped coarsely and mixed into the batter ....

... along with some golden raisins and chopped walnuts. The original recipe uses sour cream, but I have substitute with homemade yoghurt and only use 1/2 cup instead of 3/4 cup, because the batter is very soft and if I used up all 3/4 cup, it would end up like a cake batter.

Drop teaspoonfuls of batter onto prepared pans, spacing them 2" apart.

These cookies do not spread much. The texture is crispy on the outside and soft in the centre. Since we do not like soft cookies in my house, I have baked these cookies longer, maybe 10-12 minutes longer, rotating the cookie sheets in between, until they are crispy.

There, Mushroom Chocolate Cookies! Would you have known that these chocolate cookies have fresh mushrooms in them, by the look of these cookies?  I definitely can't tell. Well, how about if you have munch on one, can you tell? Read on the reaction from my family, of course I did not let them know that there's fresh mushrooms in the cookies, until later!

Review from the family :
After munching on one piece of these cookies, here's the response :
Son : Yum! One more please!
Me : Can you guess what's in the cookies?
Son : Raisins and nuts.
Me: There's one more ingredient.
Son : (crunch, chomp, chomp, crunch). No idea, but can I have another one?
(The son ate the cookies fresh after baking, when the cookies are still crispy, and surprisingly, good).

Daughter and hubby : Both of them ate a few, trying to figure out the mystery ingredient, and still could not guess what that ingredient is. When I finally told them that it's mushroom, they were very surprised and could not believe that there's mushrooms in the cookies, asking me whether was I joking!

My review : Unfortunately these cookies do not stay crispy for long, later in the night, when we ate it again, they have turned soft and tender! Just as stated in the recipe "They will stay beautifully moist and tender for days". These cookies are actually quite nice, just like regular soft chocolate cookies. But advisable to finish them as soon as possible, since they contain fresh mushrooms, I don't think they can keep for much longer than a few days. I guess these are really for those who love chewy or soft cookies, but not for my family, we still like crispy cookies the best.

Note : This recipe was originally from "The Mushroom Cookbook" by Sybil Henderson, published in 1968. 

These cookies looks like just like any other chocolate cookies. For fun, bake a batch of these, let the family guess the mystery ingredient, and I bet that, nobody would know that there's mushrooms in the cookies! Haha! Have fun!

I'm linking this post to Little Thumbs Up event, hosted by Joyce, kitchen flavours, organized by Zoe from Bake For Happy Kids and Doreen for my little favourite D.I.Y.

To join us, simply bake or cook any recipes using the ingredient for this month MUSHROOM.  Submit your post by linking to the thumbnail linky provided at the bottom of this post. 

• Your submission must be a current and new post.
• Mention Little Thumbs Up in your post, and submit your post to the thumbnail linky to the host of this month, Joyce from kitchen flavours, and link to Bake For Happy Kids, and my little favourite D.I.Y. 
• Feel free to display Little Thumbs Up badge in your post.
• Last date of linking will be on 31st May 2013.

Mushroom Chocolate Cookies
(source from : here, original recipe from this book)

1/2 cup butter (add 1/4 tsp salt if butter is unsalted)

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1-1/2 tsp vanilla extract

60gm unsweetened chocolate, melted

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp soda

1/2 cup yoghurt

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 cup coarsely chopped fresh button mushrooms

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add egg, vanilla extract and beat thoroughly. Stir in chocolate, Sift flour, soda and salt (if using), and add to creamed mixture alternately with the yoghurt. Mix well and add remaining ingredients. Drop from teaspoon at least 2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake in moderate oven at 350F for 12 minutes or until done. Remove from pan and cool. They will stay beautifully moist and tender for days.