A Day Late...

Well, I am a day late and a dollar short, but these chicks are too fun to leave until next Easter.  So simple too, a Nutter Butter dipped in yellow Candy Melts with mini chocolate chip eyes and orange piping gel beaks...perfect.  When dipped in white chocolate with chocolate chip eyes, these make fantastic ghosts at Halloween.

Nutter Butter Chicks

• 1 package Nutter Butter sandwich cookies (make sure you find the ones shaped like peanuts, I hear rumor there are round ones that are not as cool
• 64 mini chocolate chips
• 2 packages yellow Candy Melts
• small tube of orange piping gel

Melt Candy Melts according to the directions.  Dip Nutter Butter's into the Candy Melts.  Place on wax paper to dry.  While cookies are still wet, place two chocolate chips for eyes.  Allow to dry for a few hours.  Once dry, using the orange piping gel, pipe a triangle "beak" below the eyes.  Enjoy!

Mint Kiss Brownie Bites

I had never seen these babies before I received them as a birthday gift.  They are Creme de Menthe Hershey's Kisses.  They are delicious, but isn't chocolate mint always delicious?  I wasn't sure what I was going to do with them until my mom flipped the bag over and saw the recipe for brownie bites with mint kisses on top.  Perfect! 

I used my favorite from scratch brownie recipe and poured the batter into my mini muffin pan.  I used paper liners to ease removal from the pan, but they are not necessary if you grease your pan well.  Bake the brownie bites for about 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.  Once the brownies are out of the oven and removed from the pan, stick an unwrapped Creme de Menthe kiss on the top.  If you wait a few minutes for the brownie to cool a bit, the kiss will keep its shape.  If you put the kiss on right away, it will melt on the top of the brownie.  It just depends what look you are going for, both taste amazing.

Valentine Brownie Treat

I was looking for a fun and easy Valentine's sweet to take to project night last Wednesday and I stumbled upon I Am Baker's alternate ego I Am Mommy.  Her post had a cute idea for Valentine's Day treats to make with your kids.  The brownie hearts with strawberries were just the thing I was looking for. 

I made it even easier, by baking my brownies in a heart shaped cake pan, rather than cutting out individual hearts.  Spread on a package of cream cheese lightly sweetened with about a 1/2 cup powdered sugar and add strawberries.  Awesome dessert.  So easy.

Brownies

For a long time, I have been looking for the perfect brownie recipe.  My mom always made great brownies, but try as I might, I could never replicate them.  As basic a bar cookie as  you can find, for whatever reason  I could not make a tasty brownie.  I had finally given up and decided to make my brownies from a box.  Then, oddly enough, my grandma gave me an old issue of Cooking Illustrated.  Lo and behold, these was a whole discussion on brownies.  I had never read Cooking Illustrated before and I was so pleased with the discussion regarding the pitfalls of making brownies.  I decided to try their recipe with fantastic results and just a tiny bit of modification.  This brownie is the perfect union of fudgy and cakey.  The cake flour makes the brownie not too dense, yet the melted chocolate gives it a ton of flavor.  The best part?  The fact that this recipe makes a 9x13 pan of these beauties, lots of deliciousness to go around.
 
Brownies* adapted from Cooking Illustrated
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted (I used 70% cacao Trader Joe's Pound Plus Bar)
1 1/2 sticks (12 ounces) butter, melted
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups cake flour

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a heatproof bowl in the microwave.  Add the sugar and mix well.  Add eggs one at a time fully mixed in.  Add vanilla.  Mix in baking powder and cake flour.  Pour into a well greased 9x13 pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Allow to cool.

*The original recipe calls for a little more sugar and salt.  I reduced the sugar and don't add the salt.  I find that the brownies are delicious anyway.  I also typically omit the nuts that are called for in the original because I share my goodies with lots of picky eaters :)

White Chocolate Pomegranate Cookies

Things I love:

-my husband

-my family

-my critters

-riding horses

-quiet mornings

-going out for breakfast

-these cookies

Make them.  Eat them.  You will not be regretful.

 

White Chocolate Pomegranate Cookies

adapted from Two Peas and Their Pod

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  2/3 cup quick oats
1 cup white chocolate, chopped or white chocolate chips
Arils from 1 pomegranate

Cream together the butter and the sugars.  Add the egg and beat until blended.  

Add vanilla, baking powder, and soda.

Add flour mix until combined

Hand stir in oats, chocolate, and pomegranate arils

Scoop into 1 tablespoon balls onto greased cookie sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

Allow to cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet, these are very soft cookies and they will fall apart when warm.

Rolled Butter Cookies

 

For some reason this year, I have had a hard time getting into the Christmas season.  It's only three weeks away, and I have made no preparations.  Usually most of my Christmas gifts are purchased and I have decorated my house, but not yet this year.  Then yesterday, it snowed.  A beautiful wet stick to the ground snow.  Now it feels like winter, now if feels like Christmastime.  It's time to start baking!

These cookies are the version of sugar cookies my husband's grandmother always used to make.  They are delicious and buttery.  They are good plain, but we prefer them with the powdered sugar glaze.

Rolled Butter Cookies
3 cups flour-sifted
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup butter at room temperature
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Put flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.  Cut in softened butter with a pastry blender until the particles are fine.  (I actually usually do this in my food processor, but a pastry blender by hand will do just fine.)  After the butter is mixed in, add the egg, milk, and vanilla.  Mix thoroughly.  Refrigerate for at least one hour or up to three days.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface until it's 1/8 inch thick.  Cut into shapes as desired.

Bake at 400 degrees for 5-8 minutes.

Cool completely.

Frost with a mixture of 2 cups powdered sugar, 1 tablespoon vanilla and 5-6 tablespoons milk.

Add sprinkles!

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.  Simple.  Delicious.  The perfect thing to take to a party or barbecue or just to eat yourself.  The sweetened shredded coconut is an amazing surprise that adds just a hint of flavor but a ton of soft chewiness.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies adapted from Martha Stewart Baking
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup pure maple syrup
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3 cups instant oatmeal
1 bag 60 percent cacao Ghiradelli chocolate chips

Cream together the brown sugar and butter.  Add in the maple syrup, egg, and vanilla.  Then mix in the cinnamon, soda, and coconut.  Add the all-purpose flour.

By hand, mix in the oatmeal.  You may need to use less oatmeal, depending on the dryness of the batter.  Finally, mix in the chocolate chips.  I added the whole bag because I love a high ratio of chocolate to cookie.  Feel free to reduce the amount of chocolate as desired.

Scoop into even tablespoonfuls onto a cookie sheet.  Bake at 350 degrees for 9-11 minutes.

*It helps if you don't get so caught up taking photos that you remember to set the timer and check on the cookies.

Happy Birthday Grandma

Today is my grandmother's 75th birthday.  Tonight her family is going to get together to eat lasagna and celebrate her life.  She is the mother to six children and the grandmother to five.  Recently she has even acquired a couple of great-grandchildren.  I have been an incredibly lucky girl, because I grew up only twenty minutes away from my grandmas.

This was the grandma who used to bake with us.  For Easter, we attempt to make elaborate Easter basket cakes and at Christmas, lots of sugar cookies.  She would find things in magazines that she thought we would like to create and save them until we came for a visit.

She was the grandma who used to let us do really messy crafts in her house.  The ones with glitter and glue and Popsicle sticks.  Anything we could come up with was fair game.  There was always a craft to be done.

This was the grandma who lived on a farm, with a creek, whose grandchildren had to play in the creek and catch toads and fish.  She even let us come in her house after that.

So these cookies are for her.  Literally.  Because as I stated above, I am a lucky girl and she lives close. 

Christmas Cookies

Every year since I have been a little girl, my mother, sister, and I have baked Christmas cookies together.  Some years my aunt and grandmother would come, sometimes not.  For many years when I was young, my sister and I hosted cookie baking parties with our friends at Christmas time. ( That ended the year we got into a flour fight and caught the cookies on fire).  To me, it isn't Christmas time until we have baked the Christmas cookies.

Now that we are all grown ups, we do a crazy version of a cookie swap.  Instead of each of us making cookies and swaping with each other, we all get together and make all the cookies that each of us will need for the Christmas season.  That means a whole lot of cookies.  The whole kitchen is covered in flour.  My floor is sticky for weeks.  Half way through I had to con my husband into a trip to the store because we were running out of chocolate.  Complete insanity but so satisfying.

This year we made:
Sugar Cookies
Butter Cookies
Mint Chocolate Cookies
Peanut Butter Blossoms
Coconut Bon Bons
Peanut Butter Balls
Almond Bark Pretzels
Peppermint Bark
Peanut Butter Fudge
Chocolate Fudge

So many cookies...so tasty.

Peanut Butter Cookie Time

These peanut butter cookies were made for my friend Mandy. My friend Mandy is absolutely amazing. She is so sweet and caring. She always remembers the details and is there whenever I need her. So I made these peanut butter cookies for her because she is awesome and also because she started a new job. Sometimes starting a new job is stressful and the best solution for that stress is to eat some peanut butter cookies.

This is my go-to peanut butter cookie recipe. I have been using it for years and it rarely fails me. It's really great when you have some peanut butter chips to throw in, but still good just plain. An adaption my family likes is to take the dough and put it in a pizza pan. Bake for 15 minutes and then pull it out of the oven and immediately pour a bag of chocolate chips on top. We call it peanut butter pizza. Some people even like to throw some mini marshmallows on top and throw the pizza back in the oven for a few minutes to brown the marshmallows.

Peanut Butter Cookies:
adapted from the Betty Crocker Cookbook
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 cup margarine
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour

1. Melt together the shortening, margarine, and peanut butter.
2. Mix in sugars, egg, baking soda and vanilla.
3. Add the flour, but pay attention, the dough will tell you how much flour you need. Often the full three cups are unnecessary and if used, will result in a dry cookie
4. Scoop in even spoonfuls onto cookie sheet and smash in a criss cross pattern with a fork.
5. Bake 8-11 minutes at 350 degrees.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Of all of the comfort foods in this world, my absolute favorite is a chocolate chip cookie. It is the first recipe I learned to make. It is my go-to recipe when I need to bring a dessert to a friend's house. When I am craving something sweet, a scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough cures it every time. These cookies taste fantastic warm and gooey straight out of the oven and are still good three days later when you dunk them in milk so soften them up.

The recipe I use is from my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook. It is the version she got when she was my age. Her cookbook is old and the pages are dog eared and falling out from years of use. You can't even read the oatmeal cookie recipe because there is a hole worn in the page from being wiped clean of batter so many times. It is just a guess how much brown sugar is needed. But my sister and I tried to get her a newer version of the Betty Crocker Cookbook and the chocolate chip cookie recipe is just not the same, so the book sits unused in her cupboard. The recipe is good, don't get me wrong, but those same feelings of nostalgia do not come bubbling to the surface with each bite.

When my sister and I used to bake these chocolate chip cookies, we used to fight over who got to pour the vanilla in and who got to stir in the chocolate chips. We have made this recipe so many different ways depending on what we had in the cupboard. If we were just going to eat the dough, we left out the eggs. We have made it with no vanilla, no baking soda, butter instead of margarine. We've put butterscotch chips, vanilla chips, cinnamon chips, M&Ms, and mint chips in them, but honestly, never have we put in the optional nuts. Each time the cookies turn out a bit different but still good. We have probably made these cookies for almost every person we know.



I made this batch of cookies for my husband's interns. It is their last week of work because summer is coming to a close. However, he forgot he had meetings in the city early this week and would not be seeing his interns, so no cookies for them. But chocolate chip cookies never go to waste...

Chocolate Chip Cookies adapted from Betty Crocker
2/3 c. shortening
2/3 c. margarine
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
3 c. flour
1 12oz package chocolate chips
1 c. nuts (optional)

Mix ingredients together. When I was little, I melted the shortening and margarine in the microwave and stirred in the ingredients by hand. Now I am big and I have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer and so I just throw everything in there with the paddle attachment and whip the batter right up. Its really personal preference. The mixer gives you a more whipped dough than stirring by hand, but the cookies come out pretty much the same. So I guess it depends on whether you like to eat whipped dough or not ( because really, who can make chocolate chip cookies and not snitch some of the batter?)

Scoop tablespoons onto a cookie sheet. If you used butter instead of margarine, leave a lot of room between cookies. They will spread like crazy.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-12 minutes or until the bottoms are just starting to turn brown. My family prefers cookies on the gooier side, so I tend to try and err on the side of caution by pulling them out a bit early. However, if you like crunchy cookies, leave them in.

Enjoy!

Lemon Sugar Snaps

These are Lemon Sugar Snaps from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. These cookies are straight up amazing. My husband's extended family lives in Kentucky, and each time we trek down there I make these cookies because they travel so well and yet taste awesome. They take a little bit of work, they need to be refrigerated, which takes time. They also need to be rolled into balls by hand and additionally rolled in sugar. You know Martha recipes, nothing is ever just easy but the results are well worth it. These cookies taste like buttery sugar cookies with a definite lemon flavor. The citrus reduces the overwhelming sweetness of the sugar cookie, making it so that you can eat about twenty of them in one sitting. It's crazy. Here you can find almost the exact same recipe, it makes a few more cookies and you use some shortening instead of all butter, but I suspect you will get a similar result.