You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Cookies’ tag.
Sometimes* I get these cravings.
*Who am I kidding? Always!*
Serious, serious cravings. For chocolate. Rarely do I crave anything besides chocolate.
Except coffee, grapefruit, and peanut butter.
I pretty much crave these things constantly. I’m sure I’m not lacking nutrients found in chocolate, it’s completely mental. What evs, dude. I like chocolate!
I have the most epic chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe ever, but it’s kind of an involved process.
These cookies, however, are very similar in texture and chocolatey goodness, but they come together in a snap.
So when it’s 7:30 on a school night, and I NEED some tasty morsels, I can whip these up and be in bed by 9:00.
As an added bonus, these cookies have chia seeds.
So we can basically call these healthy. Even though they’re chocolate chip cookies.
I love sound reasoning.
Lined up and ready for consumption!
These cookies taste best on the day that they’re made, but they’ll keep pretty well in an air tight container for a few days.
Chia Cookies
from YummyMummyKitchen.com
1 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tbsp chia seeds
1/4 cup butter at room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup natural peanut butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 to 3/4 cup chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate chips with excellent results)
Preheat the oven to 350F.
Mix together the oats, baking powder, flour and chia seeds.
In a stand mixer or with a beater, beat the butter and brown sugar until fluffy. Add the peanut butter, eggs and vanilla, and mix until combined.
Add the oat mixture to the butter mixture, and add the desired amount of chocolate chips. Mix until well combined (with a wooden spoon or your hands).
Scoop dough onto stoneware pans or lined baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes.
Serve warm with coffee (or grapefruit or peanut butter 
) or milk.
So! What do you crave?
And the winner is…
Susan Scalise!! Her favorite kind of cookie is homemade peanut butter cookies.
Congratulations Susan! Please email me your address at mommajo28 {at} gmail {dot} com
Thank you to everyone who entered, and Happy New Year everyone!
I’m so excited to announce that for my very first giveaway, someone is going to get this fabulous OXO “Be A Good Cookie” spatula!
Look at how adorable this is:
After using it I can legitimately say that this is my new favorite spatula. Because the silicone edges are flexible, I can use it to scrape down the sides of mixing bowls,
but it’s sturdy enough to handle even the thickest of cookies.
More importantly, though, this spatula is on a mission. OXO is helping two of their very own raise awareness and funds for kids’ cancer research. In their own words:
Cookies for Kids’ Cancer was founded by two OXOnians (OXO employees), Gretchen and Larry Witt who were inspired by their son Liam’s battle with pediatric cancer. All forms of pediatric cancer combined claim the lives of more children in the United States than any other disease – more than asthma, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis and AIDS combined.
They were shocked to learn that the main reason over 25% of kids diagnosed with cancer do not survive is because of a lack of effective therapies. And the reason for the lack of effective therapies was simple: lack of funding.
This year, we are thrilled to announce a formal partnership with this organization so close to our hearts, one that will enable us to play an even larger role in the movement to find a cure for pediatric cancer. In 2011, on top of our personal efforts to support this worthy cause, OXO will donate up to $100,000 to Cookies for Kids’ Cancer.
Please visit the Good Cookies site for more information and ways to help. It can be as easy as buying a spatula for your own kitchen, or as involved as hosting a bake sale. Your involvement is up to you, and you can make a difference!
Entering the giveaway is simple.
- Leave a comment telling me your favorite kind of cookie
- Tweet or post this giveaway to Facebook, and then tell me about it in the comments for an extra entry
- The deadline to enter is Friday, December 30th
The winner will be randomly selected and announced on Saturday, December 31st. United States entrants only, and unfortunately no PO Boxes.
**Disclosure: I was given two Good Cookie spatulas by OXO–one to keep and one to give away. They also provided postage to mail the prize to the winner of the giveaway. What I decided to say about their product was completely up to me and unprompted by OXO. I am not getting paid to use or endorse any products.
These are a very special treat.
That I’ve been making just about weekly this month.
Let me explain.
I’m spacey. Flighty. Some may say forgetful, I say I just get excited sometimes.
So excited that I forget to take pictures.
And then I forget to take pictures of the final product when I make them again.
So, third time’s the charm, right?
And may I just say how sad it is that I’ve just had to make these treats three times.
So, so sad.
Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches
Serves 16, overnight freezing recommended
1 cup butter (just cooler than room temperature)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups flour
2 1/2 cups oats, ground into flour (I’ve used blenders and food processors to grind, both work well)
2 cups chocolate chips
1 or 2 pints of your favorite flavors of ice cream
Preheat oven to 375F. Cream butter and both sugars, then add eggs and vanilla and beat until just combined. I like to mix the baking powder and baking soda into the batter before the flour, just to make sure they get incorporated fully. Add the flour and ground oats, then the chocolate chips. Mix fully until everything is evenly disbursed.
Scoop cookie dough onto stoneware pans or cookie sheets. Bake for 10-15 minutes, rotating pans halfway through if you’re using two racks. Allow cookies to cool completely!!
Place one cookie upside down on a sheet of plastic wrap. Drop a small scoop of ice cream on top, then spread it gently with a butter knife. Place another cookie on top, and then wrap with the plastic wrap. Continue until all the cookies are gone (or you realize it’s 10:30 and you have to work the next day).
Allow sandwiches to freeze overnight or at least a few hours before serving.
And because I worked so hard to get the step by step pictures, here they are!
Butter + sugar = magic
Oats becoming
oat flour
Workin’ the dough
I did not eat the dough. Much.
Big Dipper coffee ice cream. Possibly the best ice cream on the planet!
So, how has your August been?
It’s no secret that I read a lot of blogs.
Like, a lot.
Like, opening Google Reader after a vacation is pretty scary.
I just like to learn! And I’m fascinated with other peoples’ lives. And people take extraordinary pictures.
One of my favorite blogs is dig this chick. And some of my favorite posts of Nici’s are Hump Day Nuggets. Little nuggets from the past week. A lovely collection of photos and snippets of stories.
I’ve always wanted to copy this style, but never felt like it would be right for me to do so. It’s so uniquely Nici’s voice! Recently, though, she began encouraging other bloggers to adopt her crazy awesome Nuggets, and I may have squealed a little bit. No big deal.
So, here are my nuggets from the past week or so…
Our garden is finally–finally–blooming!
Basil–used in homemade tomato sauce just last night
Garlic, curing in the sun before I will eventually roast some in the oven
Baby eggplant and zucchini peeking through the leaves
I didn’t get pictures of the red tomatoes, because we eat them as fast as they ripen. Oh mama, they’re good!
Have you ever eaten broccoli flowers? I hadn’t either, and now I’m contemplating letting all the broccoli go to bloom. Eating flowers is fun.
Beer can chicken getting smoky and juicy next to corn on the grill.
Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that turned into ice cream sandwiches
Don’t worry, that post is coming soon
I fell in love with my friend Jayann’s earrings. Fortunately, she sells them at the Farmers Market
Did you catch the Oula Flash Mob on Saturday?! It’s one of my life’s goals to be part of a flash mob someday.
Lovely little nuggets. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep up with them every Wednesday, but I am pleased I get to share them with you today.
What are your favorite moments/memories from the past week?
Yes, I said salted caramel peanut butter cups.
I make some things that impress me, but I know it’s a really great sign when my husband is impressed. It hardly ever happens. I mean, he likes the things that I make, but he doesn’t really get excited about them like I do. It’s just the difference in our personalities. I get excited about every thing, and he gets excited only when it’s truly excellent. I can live with that, especially because it’s a good indicator that I’ve just made something that needs to be shared.
Except I can’t share these with you. Because we ate them. So I’ll do the next best thing and tell you how to make them.
I started with the Pioneer Woman’s Caramel Sauce Recipe. I love that I can pretend it’s healthier because it’s made with half and half, instead of cream.
Just ignore the butter. Because it’s really not that much.
This sauce only gets better as it cools in the fridge. If you can wait a day before making the peanut butter cups, you won’t regret it.
I couldn’t wait. They turned out fantastic.
This is my double boiler. MacGuyver style. All you have to do is make sure that the water in the sauce pan doesn’t touch the bottom of the heat safe bowl.
Pour a cup of chocolate chips into the bowl, and set the heat to medium.
Stir pretty constantly, and line a cupcake tin with cupcake papers.
Spoon a thin layer of chocolate into each paper, spreading it out to make sure it covers the bottom. Then put it in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes. Just until the chocolate is really solid.
When the chocolate is ready, grab your peanut butter. You’ll also need a spoon.
I found that the back of a small spoon worked the best to spread the peanut butter over the chocolate. It allows you to use as much or as little peanut butter as you’d like, and the shape of the spoon allowed me to leave the chocolate in the paper.
At this point, you’ll want to add another cup of chocolate chips to the double boiler and melt it. You can simultaneously keep an eye on the chocolate and perform the next few steps.
Caramel sauce. Mine still hadn’t totally thickened yet. I had it in the refrigerator, and then the freezer for a minute, so it was cool enough to not melt the chocolate.
If you had told me two years ago that I’d be putting salt in a sweet treat, I’d have cried. “Salt doesn’t go in chocolate or caramel! That would ruin it!” No, Past Me, it only makes it better. I promise! Something about the salt really enhances the flavor of the caramel and the chocolate. And you don’t use very much.
You really do need a course grain for this though. Table salt would get lost very quickly, and you run the risk of over salting. With the big grains, you only need a few granules on each. Sprinkle a few right in the caramel.
Add another layer of chocolate, gently pressing to make sure that is spreads all the way out to the very edges.
Then add another few granules of sea salt. I only went with four or five per cup, since these won’t dissolve. You get a great zippy bite with each one.
Get those babies in the freezer, but only for about five to ten minutes this time. You don’t want to break your teeth.
The first time I made these, I didn’t have caramel sauce. They were good, but these…These are just over the top delicious! Store them in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator. And don’t forget to share!
Peanut Butter Cups with Salted Caramel
Makes 12 individual cups
2 cups chocolate chips, separated. Dark chocolate would be heavenly, so I’ll try that someday.
1/4 cup peanut butter (or any nut butter)
1/4 cup caramel sauce
1 tbsp sea salt (course grain)
Melt one cup of chocolate in a double boiler, stirring often to prevent burning. Line a muffin tin with paper liners. When the chocolate is completely melted and smooth, spoon a thin layer into each cup. Gently press the chocolate to the edges of the paper.
Place chocolate cups in the freezer for about 10-15 minutes.
Add the other cup of chocolate to the double boiler. Stir often.
When the cups are set and hard, use a spoon to spread peanut butter over the chocolate. Then drizzle the caramel sauce on top of the peanut butter.
Sprinkle a few grains of sea salt on the caramel, and then spoon another layer of chocolate on top. Garnish with a bit more salt, and place the cups in the freezer for about 5-10 minutes.
No Bake Cookies have been a tradition in my family for as long as I can remember. Perfect for when you’re absolutely dying for chocolate and peanut butter but are too lazy to put things in and out of the oven (read: PMS). Also perfect for when you’re craving the absolute unhealthiest cookie ever. It happens sometimes. Everything in moderation, right?
We were having one of those days, and my sisters were kind enough to do the “hard work” while I took photos. See if you can tell whose hands are whose…or whom’s…or hoooos…
Lots of sugar
And butter
Cocoa powder
And melting
This is making me hungry
Oh man, and the peanut butter
And then the peanut butter melts in the chocolate, and it smells amazing
And then it gains volume
Vanilla just makes everything better
Oh goodness. I know what I’m doing later.
This is too easy
They even make your refrigerator smell good
If you have the patience to wait for them to cool, they peel right off the parchment. I don’t always have the patience. It’s chocolate and peanut butter! Don’t judge, you know you do it too 
I like looking at the bottoms, because they’re so perfect compared to the haystack-like tops
And in my mouth it goes!
1 3/4 cups Sugar
1/2 cup Butter
1/2 cup Milk
4 tbsp Cocoa Powder
1 cup Peanut Butter
3 cups Oats
1 tbsp Vanilla
In a saucepan, combine the sugar, butter, milk and cocoa powder. Bring this mixture to a gentle bowl, then add the peanut butter and stir until just combined. Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients. Drop spoon fulls of batter onto parchment paper and place in the refrigerator or freezer until chilled.
Happy no-baking!
My husband and I aren’t speaking right now.
Ok, that’s a lie. We’re totally speaking and on great terms, but if we weren’t speaking, it would be because he doesn’t like my balls.
That’s a lie too. He doesn’t like Mama Pea’s balls. More specifically, Tina’s adaptation of Mama Pea’s balls.
Confused yet? Don’t worry. This recipe is the opposite of confusing.
Flour, pumpkin and peanut butter. Incidentally, it’s the pumpkin that makes Nick turn his nose up, and what drew me to the recipe in the first place.
Then some powdered sugar and regular sugar. See why this is so easy?
Oil and vanilla. (No eggs!)
You could add pumpkin pie spice, as the Tina recipe calls for, but for some reason, I liked the combination of these spices better. (This was the first link I found when I realized I didn’t have pumpkin pie spice on hand. I made them again using regular pumpkin pie spice, and they were super good, but not as good as the first batch.)
Chocolate chips, of course.
I have been hand mixing more dough in the last month than I have in the last year! Sheesh! ;)
It comes together quite nicely.
Then you scoop out spoonfuls and roll them into balls.
(Give or take on the 18 minutes)
And then you have dough balls! The only good thing about Nick not liking these, is that it means more for me and the little man.
I’m not going to post the entire recipe because I had nothing to do with it, other than showing you. And because you should check out Carrots’n'Cake and Peas & Thank You. Those ladies are fabulous!
Now, who wants to have a ball?
The title pretty much says it all. While staying with family over the Christmas weekend, I spent one morning in the kitchen making cookie after cookie. There have been a few iterations of style, but the basic concept of sugar cookie + Nutella + candy canes = get in my mouth! stayed pretty constant. I had a lot of fun, and these cookies made great gifts. They’ll also make nice New Year’s Eve treats. Although candy canes are seasonal, peppermints are not, so if you need these cookies in July, it shouldn’t be too hard to pull off.
I started with basic sugar cookie dough:
I rolled out the dough and then used my very fancy cookie cutter:
If your cookie cutter isn’t this fancy and complex, don’t feel bad. Just use what you have
Have you ever tried to find cookie cutters right before Christmas?
Mashing candy canes in a bag with a rolling pin is really fun. I’d seriously recommend it if you have any aggression you need to work through.
Since I was using cookie sheets, I lined them with parchment paper and preheated the oven to 400F. I sprinkled crunched candy canes on half the cookies, and left the other half plane, since those will end up as the bottom of the sandwich.
Depending on your oven, how thinly you roll the dough and the baking vessel, it will take anywhere between 10-15 minutes for the cookies to bake through. I hate it when the bottoms turn brown, and I actually like really soft, doughy cookies, so I usually pull them out a little early. Since I was giving these as a gift though, I figured I should put safety first and bake them all the way through. (Now you know how much I love the people who eat my cookies)
When the cookies were cool enough to handle, I broke out the big guns:
And then made magic:
These travel well due to the sandwich set-up, and they taste pretty darn fantastic, if I do say so myself!
But I didn’t stop there, my friends.
Then I rolled little dough balls,
dipped them in the candy cane,
and put them in the oven. The candy canes start to melt,
and when they cool, they have a candy coating:
So they end up soft and moist on the inside, but crunchy and minty on the outside.
You’re welcome.
The balls had to bake quite a bit longer, due to the thickness of each cookie. I think I left them in around 20 minutes, but you can test them periodically to make sure they aren’t burning on the bottom or raw in the center.
Like I said, so much fun with dough! I hope you try these sometime, but if you don’t have time to bake, maybe we could be friends, and you’ll get some for Christmas. In July.
I hope you had a Merry ChristmaHanuKwanzaa! I have lots to share, but I thought I’d start with something I excel at.
Cookies.
That’s right. Miss Health Nut (or Mrs, I suppose) loves making, eating, and giving away cookies. I break all my nutrition and moderation “rules” when it comes to cookies. I can pass up cake, pie, crisp…but cookies? They have to be some pretty nasty looking cookies for me to say no thanks. That’s why I don’t typically bake as much as I used to. (You know, back in the day)
Sadly, there are certain types of cookies that traditionally only appear on my counter during very specific times of year. Sugar cookies are high on of my list of favorites, but I only make them around Christmas and Valentine’s Day. (I always wondered why they aren’t called “flour cookies” since there is a LOT more flour than sugar, but flour isn’t nearly as appetizing I guess.) The great thing about sugar cookies is that they are essentially a blank canvas. You can create endless shapes, flavors, colors, etc. with the basic recipe. I like to make a big batch and do several different styles of cookie.
The ingredient list is short, but the method has to be pretty precise.
2/3 cup butter
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
4 cups flour (plus more for dusting work surface, although powdered sugar works really well for that)
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
5 tbsp milk
Preheat oven to 400F while the dough is chilling, and either get your stoneware pans ready or line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Put your room temperature butter in a bowl. The temperature of your butter is the most important part, and often the hardest part to plan for. It has to be soft, but not runny. Firm, but not cold. You have to take it out of the refrigerator and start the exact moment that it reaches room temperature. Any longer than that, and it will be too soft. Sheesh!
Add the sugar to the bowl.
Mix until course and sandy. This is super easy with a stand mixer, but my mother in law’s egg beaters worked great.
Add the eggs and vanilla and mix. But not too much! It should look something like this:
Nick found this flour on sale, and it was really nice. Light and fluffy, not too dense.
Add the flour, 2 cups at a time. You don’t want the bowl too full of flour when you’re trying to get everything incorporated.
With the last two cups of flour, add the baking soda and salt. If I use salted butter, I only add 1/4 tsp of salt.
Mix just a little bit, and then you need to wash your hands.
Add 5 tbsp of milk (I used skim. My small attempt to make these cookies a little less calorie dense. If you’re a rebel though, don’t worry about it )
You’ll have to do the rest of the mixing by hand. It’s going to take awhile, so if you lifted weights earlier in the day, you might want to ask someone else to do it. My arms were juuuuuust about dead by the end, but trust me, there’s no other way. And you’ll make up the calories you burn by eating dough. (Just be warned that this dough does have raw eggs.)
You’ll be tempted to add more milk. Don’t!! It’s a bad idea. Really! I could never figure out why I sucked at rolling this dough out and had to add so much extra flour. It’s because I got impatient for the dough to combine and added more milk. I always ended up with a sticky, frustrating mess. If you just keep kneading and smooshing with your hands, it will come together and eventually look like this:
Isn’t that pretty? You can’t even see where I stole a taste. Perks of combining the dough by hand. You’re the only one who knows how much you started with
It’s best to refrigerate the dough before you go any further. Just wrap it in plastic wrap and hide it in the fridge (dough never lasted long in our house). This would be a fine time to preheat the oven to 400F.
I separated the dough into two batches so that I could do different flavor combinations (you’ll see), and it also helps to work with small amounts of dough and keep the rest refrigerated.
When you’re ready, lightly flour (or powdered sugar) a work surface.
I find that it helps to also put a little flour on the rolling pin. Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into whatever shape you’d like, then top with sprinkles or bake plane for about 10-15 minutes. You’ll know when they’re done because they’ll smell like Christmas and be just a tiny bit darker where the cookie meets the pan.
And there’s your canvas! I’ll share a few of my ideas and let you know how they worked out (spoiler: deliciously!! some even involved Nutella) I’ll see you again before New Year’s, but happy baking until then.
