Peanut Butter Oatmeal Rounds

This is an interesting post (to me anyway)! I started this blog essentially to be able to look back on recipes I've made and understand problems I had, ways I dealt with those problems and how the recipes came out so that I could try to make all my recipes better in the future. Well on my new journey through my favorite cookie recipe book I have come to the third recipe and it is one that I've, not only made before, but posted on! I didn't remember that I had posted on these previously until after I had completed them this time around and I was compelled to look back to see what I had thought before. So, the first time I wrote about these cookies I thought they were absolutely terrible! Of course, to be fair, it appears as though I MAY have added too much flour that time. Anyhow, SOMETHING had to have gone awry last time because now these may just be my favorite cookies. The only thing I purposefully changed about this recipe is that I used mini chips instead of full sized ones. I like the smaller pieces of chocolate because the flavor and meltiness is more evenly distributed instead of the large gooey pieces that tend to overwhelm the other cookie flavors. If you like chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, and oatmeal cookies, these cookies are clearly the end-all be-all. I couldn't find the BH&G authorized recipe online, but if you google the post name with Better Homes and Gardens you *might* just find it somewhere.

Fudge Ecstasies

I have made another batch of cookies. There is a trend here and I will let you in on the secret. I have decided to bake every cookie out of my favorite cookie book, the Better Homes and Gardens Ulimate Cookie Book. I've started at the beginning with the Pumpkin Pecan cookies and although I have already baked a number of the other cookies before I am going to (try) baking straight through from cover to cover. So these are the second cookies in the book, Fudge Ecstasies. Since I am planning on making all of the recipes in the book I no longer feel comfortable posting the full recipes, but whenever possible I will link to the BH and G site that HAS the recipes (although you may have to sign up for free to actually get them). Otherwise, I HIGHLY recommend purchasing the book. If you can find it spiral bound buy that one. I have used mine so much it is coming apart at the seams.

Fudge Ecstasies

These are pretty much exactly what the name implies.  More chocolate than you can shake a stick at! While warm these cookies were pretty much just like eating a ball of melty chocolate with a non-melty exterior. Once cooled they were like fudgey little brownie cookies.  I sometimes don't like the over-the-top chocolatey chocolate desserts, but the use of a portion of unsweetened chocolate in these made them rich and intensely cocoa flavored while still leaving me wanting more after I was done (for better or worse!). While they did not have the chewy texture all my very favorite cookies have, I found them to have much more substance than the Pumpkin Pecan cookies.  All in all a make-again cookie!

Pumpkin Pecan Cookies

Hello! After a long hiatus and a lot of life changes I am back.  Again. Seven days after my last post I FINALLY went into the hospital and gave birth to my fabulous baby boy early the next morning.  Thereafter followed a long break-in period (about 10 months) and then I finally had enough sleep and sanity to start baking again. Of course it has taken me til now to actually get back to the blog. Baby Snugs is doing great now, a big honkin 14 month old boy who can run and eat and all kinds of cool stuff.  So on with the cookies! These ones are from my favorite cookie book (The BHG Ultimate Cookie Book).  I'm actually quite amazed I hadn't made them before given our love here of everything pumpkin.

Pumpkin Pecan Cookies

• 2 c. flour
• 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp ground allspice
• 1 c. butter, softened
• 1 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 c. canned pumpkin
• 1 c. toasted chopped pecans
• 1 recipe brown sugar frosting

1. Preaheat oven to 375.
2. Stir together first 5 ingredients.
3. In large bowl beat butter on high for 30 seconds. Add sugar and beat until combined. Add egg and beat until combined. Stir in pumpkin, pecans, and flour mixture.
4. Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet.
5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until bottoms are light brown. Transfer to a wire rack until cool.
6. Frost with brown sugar frosting.

Frosting: Melt 6 tbsp butter with 1/3 cup packed brown sugar over medium heat until butter is melted. Remove from heat and mix in 2 cups powdered sugar and 1 tsp vanilla. Stir in enough hot water to make frosting a spreadable consistency.

I took a little liberty with the frosting (it hardened a bit and I didn't feel like reheating it) and piped it on. The cookies were pretty yummy. The frosting was very sweet. The cookies themselves were a cakey kind of cookie. I left the pecans a little on the larger side and their toasty crispness contrasted nicely with the smooth frosting and the pillowy cookies.

Oatmeal Sandwich Creams

Now HERE'S a cookie you can really sink your teeth into! Forget the Little Debbie's, these things are serious. Two delightful oatmeal cookies with a sweet, fluffy cream filling sandwiched in between. This is the second time I have made these cookies and even though the recipe makes a LOT (see photo below) they don't seem to hang around the house very long. This recipe came from a fall holiday magazine from Taste of Home. My sister brought this magazine to me when I was laid up in the hospital last September from my lung collapse.

Oatmeal Sandwich Creams

Ingredients:

• 1-1/2 cups shortening
• 2-2/3 cups packed brown sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 4 cups old-fashioned oats

Filling

• 3/4 cup shortening
• 3 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 jar (7 ounces) marshmallow creme
• 1 to 3 tablespoons milk

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°In a large bowl, cream shortening and brown sugar. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Beat in vanilla. Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and nutmeg; add to creamed mixture. Stir in oats.
2. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 in. apart onto lightly greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire racks to cool.
3. For filling, in a small bowl, cream shortening, sugar and marshmallow creme. Add enough milk to achieve spreading consistency. Spread filling on the bottom of half of the cookies; top with remaining cookies. Yield: about 4-1/2 dozen.

Mapledoodles

Ah ha! I am writing a blog post. I have made COOKIES! Ok, I have been making cookies for months, but now I am actually going to post the recipe and a picture or two. I know it has been a long time. I know I am bad at blogging. But let's forget all of the blaming and finger pointing and get down to business, shall we?

So, I haven't blogged since May of last year and a lot has changed. Well, very little has changed so far, but I expect things will change much faster by the end of the month... My most important baking project to date: the timer on a brand new baby boy is set to go off the 26th of the month! So yes, of COURSE I have been baking and eating. How ELSE do you make sure your baby grows right??? For now though, he is still snug in his little belly cocoon, waiting, I'm sure, until his arrival will cause the most hubbub. Also, maybe he heard that once he comes out, he won't be able to have any cookies or chocolates for MONTHS! That sure would keep me from making an appearance.

Now that we are up to speed, let me tell you about these Mapledoodles. This is another recipe from my Better Homes and Gardens Ultimate Cookie Book. They are actually called Honeydoodles, but they have a note to try maple syrup in place of the honey, so I had to. Favorite and I have recently discovered the unabashed joy of partaking in the consumption of Grade B maple syrup. All you ever see in the stores is Grade A, and one would assume that giving syrup a grade of "A" would mean it is simply better. Let me assure you, this is not the case. If you are a fan of putting corn syrup on your pancakes, go ahead, continue drowning your breakfasts in Grade A "maple" syrup. Let me tell you though, if you like actual maple flavor, if you want to REALLY KNOW down in your bones that your syrup ran through the veins of a delicious New England maple tree, you have GOT to do yourself a favor and demand all Grade B, all the time. Enough rhetoric! On to the cookies!

Mapledoodles
Ingredients:

• 1/3 c. butter, softened
• 2/3 c. honey, maple syrup or dark corn syrup
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp cream of tartar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 ½ c. all purpose flour
• 1 tbs granulated sugar (optional)
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon (optional)

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 375. Lightly grease a cookie sheet; set aside. In a large mixing bowl beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add honey, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg until combined. Beat in flour.
2. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto prepared cookie sheet. If desired, mix cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle over tops of cookies. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until edges are just firm. Immediately transfer to a wire rack and allow to cool.

Since I had chosen the maple option for these cookies, I did not sprinkle them with the cinnamon sugar mixture. The cookies came out light and cakey with just a hint of maple flavor. I was worried they were a bit boring (even though they WERE tasty) so I decided to frost half of the batch with some maple cream I had in the refrigerator (which is really just smoothly crystallized maple syrup) and I topped them with finely chopped walnuts. Favorite commented that the new incarnation was “tasty. Not better than the other cookies, just a different cookie.”

Best Oatmeal Cookies Ever

Sometimes I like to try new recipes so I can experience new tastes and textures, but sometimes you have the urge to just find the best of a particular recipe. I know there are endless posts on the best chocolate chip cookies, for instance. This urge is what led me to try these so called "Best Oatmeal Cookies Ever" found here.

I changed the recipe around a LITTLE. I added more cinnamon than called for (and ground it fresh instead), I left out the ginger because somehow I was out, and put in 1/2 tsp of cloves in its stead. I also decided against letting the raisins soak forever in the vanilla egg mixture, and simply added a very small quantity of milk to the raisins in a very small saucepan and heated gently until it plumped the raisins up. After all that, I don't know if these were the best oatmeal cookies EVER, but they certainly are friggin fantastic. I brought most of them into work with me and instead of simply disappearing (which is what baked goods tend to do at work) people were actually coming up to me and asking, "What is in these cookies?! They are amazing!" This recipe is copied over from the above linked website almost verbatim so the comments included are the originators, not mine.

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, room temp
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, well beaten
• 1 TBSP (yes tablespoon) vanilla
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp cinammon
• 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 3 cups oatmeal (quick cooking or old fashioned, not instant)
• 1 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips (optional)
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat to 350 F
2. The key is to soak the raisins. This makes all the difference in the world. Beat eggs and vanilla together and then add the raisins, stir. Soak for an hour or two. I just walked by a few times and stirred it while I waited.
3. Cream butter and sugars with mixer. In a seperate bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda, cinammon, ginger & nutmeg.
   
4. Stir the dry ingredients until well blended.
   
5. Add dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix well. Now add in the egg & raisin mixture (I used my hands). Then add oatmeal and chocolate chips/nuts and combine well.
   
6. Form into balls on cookie sheet.
   
7. Bake 10 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet for 2-5 minutes or until firm enough to transfer to wire rack.

Browned Butter Hazelnut Drops

This is a pretty homely little cookie, and I wasn't too thrilled with them at first bite, but they grew on me. I liked the nutty richness of the dough. These cookies are very dense with no spring to them, but they are not hard or brittle. It really is just like turning a delicious nut into a chewy cookie dough.

Browned Butter Hazelnut drops

1/2 c. butter
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 c. milk
1 1/2 c. all purpose flour
1 cup toasted hazelnut flour
1 recipe browned butter frosting

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Heat butter in saucepan over medium heat until it reaches the color of light brown sugar, stirring frequently. Remove from heat.
3. Stir in brown sugar and milk. Stir in both flours until combined.
4. Drop by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten slightly with the back of a spoon.
   
5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges just begin to brown. Let stand for 1 minute on cookie sheet before transferring to rack to cool.
6. Cool entirely before frosting.
   

Italian Cocoa Honey Spice Cookies

Um yum, yum. These cookies are good! They are a little different style for me, I usually go for chewy sweet cookies with or without delicious chunks, but these were more like a tea cookie, denser, toothy, almost like a cross between a cake and a biscuit. They were also more richly chocolatey than I expected considering the only chocolate in here is cocoa powder and the only fat (!) is from the almonds.

That's right. I am on a diet so that I am not mistaken for Godzilla when Favorite and I make our momentous trip to Japan at the end of the month. That means I had to break out my "Perfect Light Desserts" book when Favorite's parents came over this past weekend.

Italian Cocoa Honey Spice Cookies

3/4 c. cocoa
1 1/2 c. flour
1/3 c. sugar
1 cup whole almonds, processed until fine
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp baking soda
1/3 c. water or red wine

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Combine all dry ingredients in a large bowl.
3. Make a well in the center and pour in water and honey.
4. Incorporate wet mixture until a soft dough forms.
5. Break dough into 6 pieces and roll each piece into a 12 inch log on a lightly floured surface.
6. Use the palm of your hand to gently flatten the logs and then slice the log diagonally to make 2 inch diamonds.
7. Place on parchment 2 inches apart in every direction.
8. Bake cookies for about 15 minutes or until they are well risen and feel firm but springy when touched.

So the recipe makes a note of being sure not to overcook them because they don't have much liquid and, again, not fat but what's in the almonds. I actually ended up taking mine out at ten minutes and though I was a little nervous that they would be liquidy somewhere in the middle, they came out perfectly. They were in fact firm with a little give, but not dry at all.

I recommend, if you are not being too cheap with calories or time, that these cookies with drizzled with melted dark chocolate.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Rounds

I know. They look rather unimpressive. This time I will not blame my camera, or my lack of photography skills. These cookies really were quite underwhelming. I had in mind when I picked up the recipe that they would have the chewy, toothy sweetness of an oatmeal cookie while incorporating some delicious peanut buttery flavor. These fell flat. Granted it may be my fault... the recipe calls for 1 cup and a quarter of flour and I may have lost count (using only my quarter cup since my full cup was eggy) and accidentally added a cup in a half. Or it may have been the fact that I used one of those "only contains peanuts" peanut butters. Perhaps the recipe assumed that my peanut butter would already be sugared and salted. Either way these cookies came out too dense in a dry peanut buttery way and I actually had to add a good amount of salt (considering it's a cookie) in order for the flavor of the peanut butter to come out. Still, the idea of a peanut butter oatmeal cookies with chocolate chips still has a hold on me. Maybe next time I will try a different recipe.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Rounds (from The Ultimate Cookie Book)

3/4 c. butter, softened
1/2 c. peanut butter
1 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. packed brown sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/4 c. all purpose flour
2 c. rolled oats
1 c. chopped cocktail peanuts or chocolate pieces

1. Preheat oven to 375.
2. In a large bowl, beat butter and peanut butter on medium to high speed for 30 seconds.
3. Add granulated sugar, brown sugar, baking powder and baking soda. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl as necessary.
   
4. Beat in eggs and vanilla until combined.
5. Beat in as much flour as you can. Stir in remaining flour, oats, and peanuts.
6. Drop dough by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 10 minutes or until edges are light brown.
8. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool.
   

Amigurumi Owl

This little guy goes by the name Filbert. He is my latest creation from a book Favorite bought me of patterns called "Tiny Yarn Animals". I put this guy together as a gift for my mentor at Pilgrim station who took me under his wing and taught me the ways of nuclear. Little Filbert was shipped off along with some good old Tollhouse Cookies and some sugared molasses cookies the recipe for which I stole from the TWD Crowd. The molasses cookies tasted delicious, but I had a problem with the spreading and over baking just like the Cookies with Boys Blogger. I ended up adding an extra 1/2 cup of flour to the recipe to get the right texture and baked them for the minimum amount of time. Because of the trials and tribulations of those that came before me I had thankfully done a few single cookies as test batches. I recommend this approach until you find an amount of flour and bake time that works for you.

Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies
Dorie Greenspan

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour (plus 1/2 cup or so)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
pinch cracked or coarsely ground black pepper
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses (not blackstrap)
1 large egg
1/2 cup sugar, for rolling

1. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, allspice and pepper.
2. Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add the brown sugar and molasses and beat for 2 minutes or so to blend, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add the egg and beat for 1 minute more.
   
3. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing until the flour and spices disappear. If some flour remains in the bottom of the bowl, to avoid over-beating the dough, mix in the last of the dry ingredients by hand with a rubber spatula. You'll have a smooth, very soft dough.
4. Divide the dough in half and wrap each piece in plastic wrap. Freeze for 30 minutes, or refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (The dough can be kept refrigerated for up to 4 days.)
5. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
6. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats. Put the sugar in a small bowl.Working with one packet of dough at a time, divide it into 12 pieces, and roll each piece into a smooth ball between your palms. One by one, roll the balls around in the bowl of sugar , then place them on one of the baking sheets. Dip the bottom of a glass into the sugar and use it to press down on the cookies until they are between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick.
7. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the tops feel set to the touch. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and, if the cookies have spread and are touching, use the edge of a metal spatula to separate them while they are still hot.
8. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to room temperature.
   
9. Repeat with the second batch of dough.

Key Lime Shortbread Cookies

So, once again I have been away from the blogging world for a while. Let me catch you up to date. First off, I have been without a job now since December 18th, which is a little slice of heaven, and while enjoying my freedom I have baked these Key Lime Shortbread cookies. I know it probably seems weird to make such a tropical sounding cookie during the middle of the winter, but I was grasped by the Imp of the Perverse when I saw the bag of key limes in the store. There is no other explanation. The cookies themselves were tasty enough, light, crisp, with a little hint of tartness, but it was the icing that made them into little bursts of sunshine! The icing was made only of confectioners sugar and the fresh key lime juice and it just exploded with juicy flavor as it melted instantly on your tongue. This recipe came from my Land o lakes cookie recipe book.


Key Lime Shortbread Cookies

cookie dough:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
1 cup butter, softened
1 tbsp fresh key lime juice
2 tsp fresh grated key lime rind

glaze:
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp fresh grated key lime rind
2 to 3 tbsp key lime juice

1. Beat butter until creamy.
2. Add remaining ingredients to butter and stir on low until a dough forms.
3. Shape dough into two-ten inch long rolls on a floured surface and wrap both logs in plastic wrap.
4. Refrigerate at least 2 hours or until firm.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
6. Cut logs into 1/4 inch slices and space one inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until lightly browned. Allow to set for 1 minute before removing to racks to cool completely.
8. Make glaze by mixing powdered sugar and zest with just enough juice to make the desired glazing consistency. Spoon glaze onto cooled cookies and allow glaze to set.
   

Nutmeg Softies

November is over and December is here! Yes, I know I'm a little late. Everything has been done a little late recently, like this blog post. I made these little cookies the weekend before Thanksgiving. Between work and holidays and Nanowrimo (which Favorite and I both finished BTW, though I will deny it if you ask to see my manuscript) I didn't have time to post, but I still made time for baking. These little guys were a heap of trouble, though, and a testament to why I never make cookies that don't come with a picture. These Nutmeg Softies came out of my BH&G Ultimate Cookie Book. The first thing that went wrong is that I did not preread the instructions, and there were no pictures so when I put together the dough and realized there was no brown sugar, no molasses, no ANYTHING brown and sweet and wonderful, I knew they were not going to be what I wanted. I thought a nutmeg softie would be like a cross between gingerbread and a sugar cookie but with the only spice being nutmeg, boy was I wrong. Next I realized too late that I added 1/2 tbs of baking soda instead of 1 tsp. This was because I was baking at my mom's house. I simply grabbed the spoon that was second biggest and used it. Who owns 1/2 tbs spoons?? I decided to keep going. Then the recipe wanted me to roll and cut the dough like sugar cookies. For whatever reason this dough did NOT come out shape and bake. It was too sticky to do anything but drop cookies. So I altered the instructions a bit and decided to do drop cookies rolled in cinnamon and sugar and squashed a little with the bottom of a glass. I also added way more nutmeg then called for, a whole freshly grated pod, or seed, or whatever nutmeg is, and still found the nutmeg flavor subtle. They got good reviews, (especially since they were so delicate from all that exta baking soda!) but a nutmegy Snickerdoodle was simply not what I had in mind...

Nutmeg Softies

1/2 c. butter, softened,
1/2 c. shortening
1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 c. dairy sour cream
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
4 c. all purpose flour

1. In a large mixing bowl beat butter and shortening for 30 seconds on high.
2. Add granulated sugar, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt. Beat until combined scraping sides of bowl.
3. Beat in sour cream, egg, and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much flour as you can with mixer and stir in any flour that remains. (Dough will be sticky)
4. Divide dough into thirds. Cover and chill dough about 2 hours or until easy to handle.
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. On lightly floured surface roll out 1/3 of dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out dough with desired shapes.
6. Place cutouts on an ungreased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with colored sugar. Bake about 10 minutes or until edges of cookies are firm and bottoms are golden.
7. Transfer to wire rack and let cool.
   

Almond Cinnamon Cookies with Browned Butter Drizzle

In case there is anyone I haven't complained to yet, Favorite has dragged me kicking and screaming into Nanowrimo this year. If you an unfamiliar Nanowrimo stands for National Novel Writing Month. This is basically some cockamamie idea some guy came up with where you force yourself to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I have never written any substantial piece of fiction and the last time I wrote ANY fiction was probably 5th grade. Needless to say, after two weeks of writing, and 25, 000 words under my belt, I am in pain. For those math whizzes out there, 50K in 30 days means 1667 words a day. So after working, Favorite and I sit down every night and bang away at our keyboards until we fall over. Well the other night I couldn't take it any longer. I decided to take a night off and make up for it later. So when Favorite got home and mentioned turning on his computer I said, "Do what you want, but I need to bake cookies." He did question my usage of the word "need", but I assured him it was correct. I decided to make another recipe out of my Holiday Baking magazine.

Almond Cinnamon Cookies with Browned Butter Drizzle

3/4 c. butter, softened
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup blanched almonds, ground
2 c. all purpose flour

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
   
2. In a large bowl, beat butter on medium high speed for 30 seconds. Add the sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, and cinnamon. Beat until combined scraping side of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg and vanilla until combined. Beat in ground almonds. Beat in flour.
3. Shape dough into 1 inch balls or use a 1 inch cookie scoop. Place balls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake cookies for 13 minutes or until light brown. Transfer to wire rack and cool.
5. Drizzle cookies with browned butter drizzle.

Browned Butter Drizzle

In a small saucepan heat 2 tbsp of butter until it is golden in color and nutty smelly. Remove from heat. Slowly stir in 1 1/2 c. powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, and enough milk to make of drizzling consistency.

Note: I didn't actually make new Browned Butter Drizzle. I had left over frosting from my Pumpkin Bars and I simply added milk until it was drizzly.

Gingersnap Shortbread Cookies

If you've already read my Pumpkin Kuchen post you should know that I have in my possession a copy of this year's Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Baking magazine and that I want to make pretty much everything in it. That's where the kuchen came from and it's where this recipe came from as well. Gingersnap Shortbread. Just the name brings up all kinds of warm fuzzies. It just sounds like the holidays.

This recipe was really pretty basic, simply a shortbread cookie spiced with the same stuff that goes in gingerbread. The one thing I did not expect though was the molasses. I've never put anything wet into my shortbread and even though the amount was small I was a little worried. Well I should not have been because the cookies were delightful! Crisp and spicy with thick sweet molasses flavor. The recipe below is the one I used (straight from the magazine, I halved mine though) but if I were to make them again I am sure I would use a heavier hand with the spices and maybe even add some nutmeg. I love the whole dessert spice family and I've never encountered "too much".

Gingersnap Shortbread

2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 c. powdered sugar
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1 c. butter (two sticks)
2 tbs molasses
granulated sugar (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 325.
   
2. Combine flour, powdered sugar, and spices in a large bowl.
3. Cut butter and molasses into dry mixture until it resembles fine crumbs. Knead until mixture forms a ball and divide in half.
4. Pat each ball into an 8" circle on ungreased cookie sheets. Form decorative edge with your fingers and dust with granulated sugar if desired.
5. Prick cookies every inch or so with the tines of a fork and slice into eight wedges, without separating them.
6. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes or until bottoms just start to turn golden brown and centers are set. Recut wedges while warm.
7. Transfer wedges to a rack to cool.
   

Chocolate Oatmeal Barley Cookies

Yes, barley. What a magnificent idea! Favorite and I were planning on tasting a very delicious sounding beer which seemed to need an equally delicious chocolate cookie to have with it. I of course turned to my trusty Ultimate Cookie Book, and found a recipe for chocolate oatmeal cookies. They looked dark, rich, and delicious, they used melted chocolate AND chocolate chips, and each was topped with a pecan halve. How could I lose? But, to make them even MORE special, Favorite had the brilliant idea of replacing some of the flour with crushed roasted barley, which he had of course in his brewing supply room. After I stopped beating myself up over why I hadn't thought of that before I got down to making the cookies. I only made a half batch since we also have cornbread, and marshmallows to eat. It was pretty much a typical chocolate cookies recipe, beat the butter and sugar, add the cooled melted chocolate, eggs, and vanilla, and then gradually add in the dry ingredients. I had taken 1/4 of a cup of roasted barely and used the grind feature on my mini prep to render it into dust with a few pieces of hull in there. I put this powder into the bottom of my measuring cup and added flour to make the amount I needed in total. I added this to the batter and then stirred in the oats (chopped a bit in the mini prep because they were old fashioned instead of quick cooking) and chocolate chips. I scooped the dough into heaps on my sheets, topped each with a pecan halve and put them in the oven. The smell was incredible.



The first batch, second batch and so on came out and all seemed to have on failing... they were all flat as pancakes!! Again I am having this problem. This time, however, I think I have REALLY found the solution. I had thought before that my dough was too warm, and tried chilling it; I thought that the butter was inferior, so I switched to brand name; I thought I was beating too much air into the mixture, so I became dainty with my beating of the butter. None of these "solutions" seemed to solve my problem, so I tried one more. I turned up the oven. My thought was, well if the oven is lower in temperature than it's saying it is, the heat would be enough to melt the dough without cooking it all the way. If I turn the heat up, the outside should cook faster giving it a better chance to set its shape.



So on my last batch I turned the oven from 375 to 385 and gave it ample time to heat up. I made sure to put the cookies on a sheet that was NOT still warm from the oven and I baked them for 9 minutes, right in the middle of the recommended 8-10. They came out... fatter!








I had used the same cookie scoop to make the cookies and you could clearly tell that the ones baked in the hotter oven were significantly smaller in diameter. They were chunkier, which meant they had more delicious interior to enjoy. I think I have finally found my cookie solution!

Boston Cream Trifle

My sister has already blogged on Boston Cream. It was supposedly a disaster. I didn't try it so I don't know. This spurred something in me though. Like my sister I thought "What could be so hard about cake, cream, and chocolate?" and then I too was bested.

So it started out as a cake but ended up a trifle. Why? Because the cake somehow shattered coming out of the pan. Ok, I say shattered, which sounds like it was crispy and brittle, it was not, but it did somehow still manage to fracture into a million pieces. Trifle it is!

I used a different recipe than my sister. One that used less than a million pots, pans, and bowls. The cake was a white cake. It had a rather thick crunchy shell for some reason though I know I just managed to cook the center through. The pastry cream came out rather well I think. It was smooth and thick and, well, creamy. The recipe called for what sounded like some kind o terrible chocolate frosting so I opted for a makeshift ganache. I heated up some cream, melted chocolate into it until I thought it looked chocolatey enough, then added some powdered sugar. The powdered ugar may sound strange, but I kind of like the quasi waxy texture it lends. It reminds me of the peel offable frosting on a Hostess Cupcake. Anyway, the cake was not difficult (other than getting it out), the pastry cream was not difficult, and the chocolate was not difficult. Even still, it wasn't QUITE right. I don't know what to change, but this tasty dessert remains, for now, a mystery.

As a mini side project I baked up a small batch of the Cinnamon Chocolate Meringuey Cookies that I have made here before. Turns out, you don't even really need a recipe for these. I just wanted to get rid of the egg whites I had left over from the yolks that were used in the pastry cream. So I beat up the whites, added some sugar, dumped in some chopped chocolate, cinnamon, coconut, and chopped pecans, and threw those babies in the oven.

Coffee Chocolate Nut Cookies

Or something...



So I've been trying to catch up on my backlog. If you read my bean past buns post you may notice it is a little anemic due to my need to catch up with myself. Maybe you like that about it since I usually waste your time with many many words and not nearly enough good pictures. As it turns out too many words and too few pictures make boring food blogs. Oh well.


Here are my cookies. These are the cookies I promised to post the other day and didn't. Favorite and I made them a million years ago (re: this past weekend) when his parents came to visit. The cookie is flavored with instant coffee. It is flavored quite strongly so that they actually taste a bit like coffee ice cream. Yum. Then it has chunks of dark chocolate. Since I couldn't find my chocolate morsels, Favorite and I cut up Hershey's special dark bars. Boy, big chunks of chocolate somehow taste way better than chips. The squareness makes it more enjoyable somehow. Lastly there are some chopped up walnuts. Pretty tasty cookies. They went fantabulously well with all of the dark, highly alcoholic beers we sampled on Saturday.

Do-Si-Dos, a Dance with Peanut Butter Cookies

Look at these fabulous peanut butter cookies!!

Did a Girl Scout show up at my door this week?

Was I keeping these in the freezer for a moment of weakness?

No!

I made them in my very own kitchen!


Mmmmm Do-Si-Dos have always been my favorite of the GS cookie selection (I can hear all of you Somoas lovers out there in vehement disgust) and when I found a copy cat recipe for them on the internet I knew I had to try it out. I found a recipe at Baking Bites along with some other GS favorites. The recipe as written makes a crazy huge amount of cookies, so knowing my penchant for eating as many Do-Si-Dos as are set in front of me I cut the recipe down to 1/3. While some comments on the recipe site state these were too salty, too bitter from the leavening, or had filling that was too buttery, I thought they were fantastic!

There ARE a couple caveats to that glowing review however. For one thing, I used unsalted butter. I thought this was the norm in baking, but in case you want to make these with salted butter, don't. I also cooked my cookies a little longer than the recipe states to achieve the crispness I desired, otherwise the cookie ended up a little chewy, very much unlike the GS version. I also added a little more powdered sugar to the filling than is stated although this was more to get a thicker filling than to change the flavor. Since I was cutting things in thirds I wasn't quite sure my filling ingredients were measured accurately so I just added stuff til it looked right. Even though I made mine thicker I still preferred to leave the cookies in the fridge to really set up the middles so they wouldn't goosh when I bit them. Although, to be fair, this is also how I keep my GS cookies.

So! Next time you get a hankering for some cookies from those little green clad darlings and you haven't seen them canvassing the neighborhood in a while, think about producing some out of your own oven. Just make sure you have a nice cold glass of milk to wash them down!

Cashew Shortbread Cookies

Shortbread cookies befuddle me. I have made many a shortbread cookie and they almost always get good reviews, but they seem to always leave me doubting the final product. Is it too crisp? Too floury? Did I bake it too long? Is the texture right? One of the reasons I find them so confusing is that you are not supposed to achieve browning, which always leaves me worried to overbake which inevitably leads to me underbaking. Also, there are two general methods by which to make the dough and they seem in direct conflict with one another. The first method, the method I generally use, is to use really cold butter and to cut it in to your flour and sugar until it is like sand. Then you mix it with you hands just enough to get the dough to come together, careful not to manhandle it and get the butter all melty. I believe this is in an effort to produce tiny pockets of butter in the dough in order to yield a crisp light cookie. The other method is to use a mixer or food processor to blend the butter into the dry mix until it all holds together. This seems to me that it would end up overblending the mix and making a tighter, less delicate texture to the cookie. I had never actually tried this method before though so I thought it was time to give it a shot. Behold the Cashew Shortbread Cookie!
The recipe for this cookie came out of a Land O'Lakes cookie book. This is an interesting fact because the thing I liked least about these cookies was the butter and I had used store brand butter. I am seriously beginning to doubt the quality of this store brand butter as anything that relies on the butter to come out well (like my ultra greasy Bocca Di Nonna) comes out greasy and has strange results. For example, the first portion of this recipe called for me to brown the butter for the dough (and also some for a frosting that was never made). I have browned butter before, just recently as a matter of fact when I was at my mom's house making browned butter frosting with Dayna. The strange thing that happened was instead of my butter browning, little FLECKS of my butter browned and almost burnt while it left the rest of the liquid golden and clear. This was when I gave up on the browning and poured off the liquid and threw away the bits. I then had to let the butter sit in the fridge for some hours until it hardened up again to make the dough. I then mixed the resolidified, not browned, butter into the rest of the dough ingredients according to the recipe. This was blended together with finely chopped cashews and then rolled into balls (another thing I've never done with shortbread!) before placing them on the cookie sheet. The cooled cookies were supposed to be frosted, but given Favorite's dislike of frosting, I chose to simply push a cashew half into the top of each cookie while they were still warm and pliable.

All in all these cookies came out alright. The bottoms of the cookies spread a little too much and ended up browning, they were a little greasy, and as I suspected they did not acquire the delicate texture I think a shortbread should have. If I were to make these cookies again I think I would try better butter and go back to my old cutting in the butter technique. As a matter of fact, I may just start buying better butter either way as I am tired of my cookies coming out funny and would like to see if my store brand butter is the culprit.

Toffee Chip Cookies

So another item that I am blogging post mortem (they are all gone) are some Toffee Chip Cookies. These, like the coffee cookies from the last post, called for refrigeration and slicing (which again I did not do!) but they seemed to work out with the mooshing method better than the coffee cookies. They were sweet and satisfying and a little crisper than typical drop cookie comes out. I made these with my sister Dayna and we ended up frosting some of them, ok, MOST of them, with a browned butter frosting that made them SUPER sweet but irresistible nonetheless. These were going to get a sprinkling of pecans, but they left the cooling rack at about the same rate they went on so the pecans never happened.