Saturday, October 13, 2012

Cookie Bowl Mayhem, Take 2

We've all seen these. In fact, we've seen these on our blog before, but we have had quite a few submissions of this project since I bring you (imagine fanfare music and cymbals) Cookie Bowl Mayhem, part 2. 

The Original Pin
This has been pinned by so many people with the caption "Mold cookie dough to up-side-down muffin tin and, Viola! Cookie bowls!" 

Well...captions on Pinterest pins don't always tell the whole story behind a pin (which they shouldn't...that's what the awesome link of the picture is for) and so people follow the caption rather than clicking through to the link and this is what they end up with:

The Pinstrosities
"My sweet boyfriend tried to surprise me after a long day or school and work by preparing a wonderful dinner and dessert.  When I came home, the house was filled with smoke and his face sagged with disappointed.  He reluctantly pulled out his rendition of the cookie bowls he bravely attempted from Pinterest.  When we finally scrapped the last of the crispy chunks off of cupcake pan, we were able to eat the cookies...not filled with ice cream, but in crumbly chunks.  It's the thought that counts, right? One day, when we work up the bravery, we may reattempt this fail.  For now, we're still trying to use the ice pick to chip the burnt cookie off of our oven." -Staci

"My boyfriend saw this on Pinterest and just KNEW he could do it!! Well, he didn't.. lol.. He is blaming me because I told him to use Pam to help with it sticking.. I forgot it was a non stick pan we were already using =) Also, I think maybe because we used pre-made cookie dough instead of making it ourselves.."  -Somer

"My father LOVES ice cream. So for Father's day I decided to make him some really nice ice cream cups I had pinned.  Easy right? It was going to be my first pinterest project! Well I am not known for my cooking skills, and this epic failure didn't help. See attached photo. 
Things that went wrong - 1. My Dad's girlfriend is gluten free, thus I used a rice flour combo. Apparently this type of flour makes things more runny. 2. I should actually have read the recipe instead of just following the instructions. Apparently it is not just a simple cookie recipe. Whoops.
Needless to say there was melted dough all over the bottom of my oven which started to burn (again, I am not a good cook and didn't think to check the oven often) and smoke filled the kitchen. My two year old had just gone down for a nap so I ran around the house like a mad woman trying to open windows (Wisconsin winter!) and start fans so that the smoke alarms wouldn't go off and wake up my daughter. Then what do you do? Pull the dripping, hot pan out of the oven and get it all over everything else? So I took a cookie pan and tried to slide it under the muffin tin, which made it spill and smoke more. I ended up having to wash muffin tins, cookie sheets, my stove top, the floor, oven mitts, my hands and arms, and racks, door, and bottom of the entire oven. 
Nice job, eh?" -Elise



"I posted this on my FB last night after my attempt to cook this. A friend told me about your site and said I should share this. So here it is ;) it was still YUMMY!" -Steven and Alison
"My friend Maureen and I attempted to make these awesome looking Cookie Bowls by spreading cookie dough over the flip side of a muffin pan (here is the link We were super excited, so we didn't bother with using the cookie dough recipe recommended on the pin, and instead we used pre-made cookie dough from the grocery store. I think that was our first mistake. We spread the cookies over aluminum foil on the muffin pan and they looked great (see first attachment). We did not, however, use non-stick aluminum foil or grease our foil in any way. That was mistake number 2. We put them in the oven and anxiously waited for the timer to go off while simultaneously drooling over the ice cream we had just bought to put in the cookie bowls. We were pretty surprised when we opened the oven (see second attachment). We freaked out, upset that we hadn't followed the recipe exactly. We let them cool and pried them apart from the foil. They tasted great, but we had a hard time getting the cookie bowls off of the foil. When we did succeed, the bowls fell apart and were pretty useless. The mangled cookie bits went great with our ice cream though!" -Samantha

"My gf and I attempted at making these "easy to make" cookie bowls.....well you can see how it turned out haha." -Jason

Not what they were after at all. Do you remember from last time what the issue was? 

The type of dough. Too many people see the original pin assume you can just plop any chocolate chip cookie dough on the pan and have those beautiful cookie bowl ice cream cups. Well....not quite.  You need to have a stiff dough. Regular chocolate chip cookie dough will NOT work as it spreads way too much while cooking. A great dough to use for this is sugar cookie dough. If you follow the link to the original site they have a dough recipe right there for you. What throws people off though is that it is a sugar cookie recipe...not a chocolate chip cookie recipe, and they see chocolate chip cookie bowls. 

For these to work you MUST have a stiff dough, a dough you can roll out and cut with a cookie cutter. Regular Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough is just too sticky for that. But if you want chocolate chip cookie bowls what do you do? There is a modified recipe here:, or you can do what I do and just add chocolate chips to the sugar cookie dough!  It works great. I know because I've tried it a few times now. Here's what I do:

  • I mix up the dough from the original site (not my favorite sugar cookie recipe, but it's the recipe that works the best with this I've found), following all the directions. Don't just throw in all the ingredients at once...add them as the directions say. You will end up with a better result if you follow the directions. I made it the first time and just added everything all at once and missed the "Add flour mixture to butter mixture, 1 cup at a time" part and threw in all the flour and there was too much...only I didn't have any more eggs to help add moisture so I ended up adding more butter and some mayo to help get the consistency right.
  • Roll the dough out. I put between 1/4 and 1/2 a cup of flour on the counter (or table) and then roll the dough out. 

  • You need to roll the dough out to about 1/8". I never have a ruler handy, so I use my finger as a measuring device...this is about how thick I roll it out. 

  • Next I pull out my chocolate chips. I never think to buy mini ones, which would work better for this, so I have to modify my full size chips. 

  • I use my ulu knife (just because it's easy...but any knife will work) to chop up the chips into smaller pieces. 

  • Next I sprinkle the chopped bits onto the rolled dough, and then I roll the rolling pin over the dough once to press the chips into the dough. I then use a jar lid to cut out my circle. 

  • Spray your muffin pan with cooking spray (mine's just about it doesn't mist anymore, rather is spits it out you can see in the picture below) and then drape your dough over the muffin tin, placing the top of the dough (the side you pressed the chocolate into) face down on the pan. I don't ever press the dough to the pan, it forms just fine as it cooks.

Ignore the loveliness that is my Pam spit upon pan...I need a new can of Pam. And...I'm not one to throw away a pan that still cooks fine, even if it is stained and not brand new looking (which grosses people out as I've learned from some ever so pleasant comments...I think they missed my misconceptions post, oh well...I can safely say I probably won't ever have to cook for them). 
  • And then bake until done! I got excited about the cookie bowl and pulled it out and ate it...realizing as I was swallowing the last tasty morsel that I didn't take a picture. looked like the last picture I posted up (only with smaller chocolate chunks) here's what your finished bowl will generally look like:

So it really does just have to use the right dough. I have never tried using the store bought sugar cookie seems like it'd be too sticky, but maybe not. Anyone tried that? 


  1. I always wondered if that would work! Thanks for making it easy for all us Pinsters!

  2. I saw these and was going to attempt to make it with my own cookie recipe. However, in reading through all the comments on the link, everyone emphasized using the recipe posted, so I did and I had yummy, pretty cookie bowls! : )

  3. I was wondering about this pin, sometimes when I make Chocolate chip cookies they come out thin and crispy, (like the picture above,) and I thought about this --
    if it would work on a the cupcake pan? Using a diffent type of cookie dough is a smart thing to do, the dough for making sugar cookies is much differnt then Chocolate chip cookie dough.

  4. Ok, I care not for the cookie bowls. I am deeply smitten with your cutter/mortar thingy!

  5. haha I LOVE how several of them are guys making for their girlfriends! Cudos guys!! Also, how almost everyone's issue was using a pre-made cookie dough..cause that's exactly what I would do to save time! LOL!

  6. Thanks for this one! I was going to try it this week, and I would have probably ended up like most of the others.

  7. Anyone know/think whether a shortbread cookie dough would work? Since it keeps its shape, at least in my own experience (usually I only have the materials on hand to make a simple shortbread cookie! When I'm too lazy to go out and get eggs and stuff!). You could sprinkle in the chips at the end...

    Just a thought :)

    1. Shortbread dough is very soft and buttery. I would not.

    2. Sorry, but Rebekah is wrong. The recipe provided by Wilton's is almost exactly like a shortbread cookie recipe, except that the shortbread cookie dough that I use has confectioners sugar rather than granulated sugar - which actually would work better. Both recipes call for the same amount of butter, flour and egg.

  8. Now what to do with the roll of cookie dough that I bought at the store? (It's not like I'd eat it with spoon straight out of the wrapper - no, not me - never been known to do that!) Question tho - what if I wanted to do a chocolate version of this? My gut tells me to use cocoa, but in what proportions? I'm also thinking of using chopped up dried cherries rather than chips (tho I suppose one could use peanut butter chips as well if going the chocolate route). Would the cherries be too sticky to work with? Any ideas?

    1. That roll of cookie dough that you bought? Pizookie! Spread the dough out on a cookie sheet or cake pan and bake it until is is almost done. Pull it out of the oven, scoop some ice cream on top and enjoy! That's one of our favorite desserts. We make it with homemade cookie dough and with the refrigerated cookie dough and it's great either way.

      I would assume you could add cocoa to the dough, but I'd try just a very small batch and do a test bake first before mixing up a whole huge batch. And I don't see why the cherries wouldn't work. Sounds yummy!

  9. I used Lil Caesar's White Chocolate Macadamia Nut frozen cookie dough and it worked fine. The only problem is that I wanted them to brown up some which made them more crunchy; probably would have been better if I took them out sooner.

  10. Ok what I've never understood is why do it on the outside of the baking cups instead of the inside?? I've been making these for years, but I just put the dough inside the cup! While cooking, it puffs up and fills the cup, but as soon as you take it out of the oven it cools, deflates, and makes a perfect bowl. I use store-bought dough and it works just fine. No mess, no nasty cleanup.

  11. It sort of works fine with regular chocolate chip cookie dough (for example I used Pillsbury just tonight!) if you put your dough on top of the "mountain" (not going around the sides). If you center it right, it will expand and cover the sides of the cups almost perfectly.
    Most likely it will not be as perfect as the sugar cookie dough version but you still get a decent bowl that tastes much better in my opinion :) (Pillsbury chocolate chunk cookie dough is the best!)

