If you love baking like I do, you seriously have to buy this book. Everything I have made from it turned out awesome, plus it’s really fun to look at (and I highly recommend the brownie recipe). I’ve been a little hesitant about oatmeal cookies because the last few times I’ve made them, they haven’t held together. This wasn’t the case with this recipe, they turned out pretty good! Note that the book says not to leave out the corn syrup. So, if you’re thinking it’s a little weird to put corn syrup in cookies, just go with it. This makes A LOT of cookies. I froze about 1/3 of the dough and then baked them off at a later time.
Monster Cookies from the Baked cookbook, makes A LOT
1/2 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
5 3/4 cups oats
3/4 cup butter, cold and cut into cubes
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
5 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups creamy peanut butter
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup M&Ms
Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Add the oats and stir until combined.
Cream the butter until smooth and pale in color, then add the sugars and mix until just incorporated. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time (scrape the bowl after each addition). Add the corn syrup and vanilla, beat just until incorporated.
Add the peanut butter and mix on low speed until just incorporated. Add the oats in three additions. Fold in the chips and M&Ms. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze for at least 5 hours.
Heat the oven to 375. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a Silpat. Use a large ice cream scoop or two tablespoons and drop onto cookie sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake for 12-15 minutes (rotate pans halfway through) until just beginning to brown. Let cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 8-10 minutes, then cool completely on wire rack. Enjoy with a big glass of milk, or if you’re out of cereal, eat them for breakfast like John did. (Hey, they have oats in them)
For cookie #5 of 2009, here’s a cute cookie that will look great on your cookie plate. Meringues: it took me a few times to get the spelling right on that word! You need just a few ingredients and a few free hours in your oven. This cookie is also a regular on the menu of the Annual Christmas Cookie Extravaganza with my friend Sara Beth (see previous post).
3 large egg whites
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure peppermint extract
Red gel-paste food coloring(Note: you can find this in the cake decorating section of your craft store, like Michael’s)
Heat oven to 175 degrees. Fit a piping bag with a large star tip. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or a Silpat. Set aside.
To make cookies, heat the eggs whites and sugar over a double boiler, stirring gently until sugar is dissolved, about 2-3 minutes. Transfer to bowl of electric stand mixer with whisk attachment. Mix on high speed until stiff peaks form (should look like this). Stir in peppermint extract.
Use a new, clean paintbrush to paint 2 or 3 stripes of food coloring on the inside of the piping bag. Fill the bag with meringue and pipe stars onto baking sheets.
Bake until crisp, but not brown – about 1 hour 40 minutes. Cool completely on cookie sheet. Enjoy – they melt in your mouth!
The Christmas Cookie series continues! The rest of the posts aren’t in order of favorites because it’s just too hard for me to decide. This post contains a favorite from the annual “Christmas Cookie Extravaganza” with my friend Sara Beth. We went a little overboard the first year (2007, I believe) and baked from 9am until the evening. We scaled it back a little the next two years. The Cream Wafers make it on the menu each year though! We use the recipe from Sara Beth’s vintage Betty Crocker Cooky Book.
We make them small, because they look cuter (and you can eat a few without feeling guilty!). Although I’m not always a huge fan of making cut-out cookie because they can be somewhat labor-intensive, this recipe is great because it calls for just a few ingredients and they taste so good!
For Cookies:
2 cups flour
1 cup butter
1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
Sugar
Mix flour, butter and the whipping cream together. Cover and refrigerate about 1 hour or until firm. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Roll dough 1/8 inch thick on lightly floured surface. Cut into desired shapes with small round cookie cutters. Put sugar in a shallow bowl. Turn each cutout in sugar to coat both sides. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Prick each cutout with fork about 4 times. Bake 7 to 9 minutes or just until set but not brown. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely, about 1 hour. Meanwhile, make the filling.
For Filling:
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon of flavor extract of your choice (we use vanilla or almond, but you could do lemon, peppermint, or whatever you want!)
Food coloring, if desired (we use green and red)
Mix all ingredients together. If the frosting is too thick, you can add a bit of milk or water. If it’s too thin, add more powdered sugar. Spread the frosting onto the backside of a cutout cookie, then sandwich together with another cutout cookie. Tip: we put the frosting into a piping bag to frost the cookies. It’s really easy and looks a lot neater.
My third favorite new cookie this year is not actually a cookie, but a candy bar. This recipe comes courtesy of my friend Christina’s grandmother. Christina and I made these together (along with the caramels) when she was inspired after seeing these bars at Yum! Kitchen and Bakery in St. Louis Park (I highly recommend the place). I enjoyed one of these bars pretty much every day after work while making dinner or waiting for John to get home from work. Needless to say, I’m spending lots of time on the treadmill these days.
Nut Goodie Bars Cut them small – they are very sweet!
Butter a half-sheet sized jellyroll pan. Melt chocolate and butterscotch chips in a large bowl in the microwave, stirring after 30-second intervals until melted. Stir in peanut butter. Mix well. Spread 1/2 of the mix onto pan. Place in refrigerator to set. Stir peanuts into remaining mix and set aside. In a large saucepan over low heat, melt butter then slowly add evaporated milk. Stir in pudding mix. Stir constantly until thickened slightly – do not boil. Remove from heat and slowly stir in powered sugar. Add vanilla. Carefully spread over chilled chocolate layer. Chill 30 minutes. Drop reserved chocolate and peanut mix over chilled pudding layer. Spread to cover. Cover and chill until firm. Cut into 1-inch squares and enjoy.
My second favorite cookie of the season was these gingerbread cookies, from Martha Stewart (of course). I slightly under-baked them (about a minute) so they’d be a little softer, and they were very good – a little spicy and not too sweet. And they kept for a few weeks in a tightly sealed bag. This batch made so many that I ended up wrapping them up in cute little plastic bags for my coworkers.
Since I tend to go a little overboard with the Christmas baking, I decided to make a few batches of dough the weekend after Thanksgiving and freeze them, knowing that I’d probably be burned out on baking by December 15 or so. Then all I had to do a few weeks later was let the dough thaw and then roll it out, cut out the cookies, and bake them off. I’d highly recommend this strategy if you, like me, tend to “bite off more than you can chew” when it comes to holiday baking! (I also made the dough for Chocolate Butter Cookies and Rugelach ahead of time and froze them – more on those later!)
Basic Gingerbread Cookies from Martha Stewart, makes a lot
6 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup dark-brown sugar, packed
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground clove
1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 large eggs
1 cup unsulfured molasses
Mix together flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy in a mixer. Mix in spices and salt, then eggs and molasses. Add flour mixture; combine on low speed. Divide dough in thirds; wrap in plastic. Chill for at least 1 hour (or freeze for a few weeks like I did).
Heat oven to 350 degrees. On a floured work surface, roll dough 1/8 inch thick. Cut into desired shapes. Transfer to ungreased baking sheets; refrigerate until firm, 15 minutes. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on wire racks, then decorate as desired. I used these cookie cutters from Williams Sonoma and made royal icing and put it in a piping bag to decorate.
Snickerdoodles are my dad’s favorite cookie. Have you ever wondered where the name “snickerdoodles” came from? Well, I looked it up in order to enlighten you, but it turns out there are a bunch of theories of where the name comes from so unfortunately I won’t be able to pass any useless knowledge on to you today.
These cookies are fairly simple to make and I’m sharing my mom’s recipe with you today. One of the great things about these cookies is that you probably have all these ingredients in your pantry (although I did not have shortening because I don’t use that much for baking).
Snickerdoodles Makes about 2 dozen
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
For topping:
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
Directions:
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix butter, shortening, sugar, and eggs. In a separate bowl, mix flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and then mix until combined. Shape into balls using a tablespoon or small ice cream scoop. Roll in the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Place on cookie sheets and bake 10-12 minutes.
Have I mentioned you NEED one of these? This small ice cream scooper is probably one of my favorite gifts ever! It helps ensure your cookies are evenly sized which makes them look nice and pretty.
Here’s what they look like before they are baked… Ok, you also NEED a Silpat. It’s a silcone-coated baking sheet which helps things not stick to your pans. Another one of my favorite things!
The other day, I was attempting to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies from my Martha Stewart’s New Classics cookbook when the chocolate chip cookie EPIC FAIL happened. It was a hot day and this recipe calls for melting the butter, then adding the sugar. I think the temperature of the butter was just too high (even though I refrigerated the dough before baking the cookies off) and they spread out way too much. They tasted fine, but definitely resemble cow pies. How, you ask, do I know what cow pie looks like? Well, I grew up next to a farm! Now how’s that for appetizing?
The cafeteria at my office has these wonderful cookies called English Toffee Cookies. They only make them once a week, and I can never remember which day of the week that is, so a few months ago I decided I should try to recreate them at home. I searched the internet and found a few recipes that seemed similar. Luckily, the first one I tried out was right on! These cookies are so easy to make and I really enjoy the fact that you only have to get two measuring utensils dirty – just the one-cup measure and the teaspoon measure. That helps my tidy kitchen stay tidy!
The recipe makes a ton of cookies – perfect for sharing. I’d normally just cut the recipe in half, but it calls for 3 eggs, and last time I tried to split an egg in half, it didn’t go so well. So, I brought half the batch over to my family the first time I made them. This time I think I will share with coworkers! You could also just freeze half of the dough and take it out of the freezer next time you feel like having freshly-baked cookies.
I love cookie dough, how about you?
Here they are in the oven. If you are baking two sheets at a time, make sure to rotate them halfway through.
See, it makes a ton of cookies. There are two racks here
Coconut Toffee Cookies
Makes 5 dozen
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup butter, softened
3 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 3/4 cup coconut
1 package (10 oz.) English toffee bits
Preheat oven to 350º F. Beat sugar, brown sugar and butter in large bowl at medium speed until creamy, about 1 – 2 minutes. Add eggs, almond extract and vanilla. Continue beating until well mixed. Add flour and baking soda. Reduce speed to low, beat until well mixed. Stir in the coconut and toffee bits. Drop by rounded tablespoon on cookie sheet (I used my Silpat liners, but you could cover the baking sheets with parchment paper too). Bake 8 – 11 minutes, or until edges are golden brown. Let cool slightly on cookie sheet (about 1 minute), then move to wire rack to cool completely.
Last weekend, John and I made the trip out to South Carolina for his brother Jim’s wedding. We were only there for the weekend, so we didn’t really get to explore SC much, but the wedding was beautiful.
Does this ever happen to you: you’re traveling, staying in a hotel, and you get cravings for random foods? It happens to me all the time on trips. I tend to crave fruit and veggies because when you travel, you tend to eat all meals out, and most restaurants don’t make a point of serving good fruits and vegetables with meals (well, at least they don’t serve ones that are worth eating). Last summer when we visited Seattle, we were lucky that our hotel sat atop a Whole Foods Market. For breakfast each day, we just went down and were able to purchase fresh fruit and pastries for breakfast.
Anyway, on this trip, we made a stop at Atlanta Bread Company (which was really similar to Panera Bread we have here in MN). They had one shortbread cookie left on display. I really wanted it, but the service was so slow that I didn’t want to go back to the register to get the cookie and chance missing our plane. So, we stopped at Starbucks on the way to the airport, and I was lucky that they had shortbread cookies! However, this cookie did not satisfy my craving. It was pre-packaged, dry and crumbly. Not the kind of cookies I normally enjoy.
So, after arriving home, I just had to make shortbread cookies! These were especially good, moist and flaky (maybe due to the 3/4 pound of butter), and they were dipped in chocolate! Chocolate makes everything better. You might be like me, and hate making cookies that require rolling out, but these are worth it! These cookies sure satisfied my craving!! Make sure you eat them all within a few days, or they will get kind of dry. And if you are concerned about the amount of butter in these cookies, you can just eat one and give away the rest.
3/4 lb butter (room temperature)
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 1/2 c flour
1/4 tsp salt
8 oz semi-sweet chocolate (chips, or chocolate bar, finely chopped) I use Ghirardelli Semi-Sweet chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add vanilla. Sift together the flour and salt, then add gradually to the butter mixture, mixing until the dough comes together. Shape into a disk shape, then wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes. This makes the dough easier to roll out.
Roll the dough out into 1/2 inch thickness, then cut out with cookie cutter. I used a 2 1/2 inch fluted round cookie cutter. Place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper (I always use my Silpat) and bake for about 12 minutes until edges are just barely starting to turn golden brown. If you like soft, not crispy, cookies (like me), take them out before they start to turn golden. Cool on cookie rack completely.
Place chocolate in microwave safe bowl and microwave at 30 second intervals, stirring between each, until chocolate is just melted. Dip half the cookie in the chocolate, then let harden on the cookie rack or on parchment paper.
