Butterscotch Oatmeal Cookies

My daughter hates chocolate chips. Every week when I make cookies she sort of shrugs and says- you made the one's I don't like again.
Then she brings those crappy cookies to her friends. So every now and then I make ones she loves (or I just make multiple batches or split the dough and don't add chocolate chips to hers.)  Today Little Mr. was grouchy that there were no chocolate chip cookies. so he cried and crumpled on the floor in a heap of sadness and misery.
It's hard when your mom ruins her ONE JOB to provide you with chocolate chip cookies of various flavors every week.
These are pretty good cookies. I don't love butterscotch.

Recipe for Butterscotch Oatmeal Cookies

1 stick of margarine
1 stick of butter- unsalted I used Whole Foods butter. I like fancier butter normally but that's a different post.
1 1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
add chilled butter and margarine. Mix 30 seconds then scrape sides of the bowl. then cream for 2 minutes

3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
add eggs one at a time with vanilla

1 cup pancake mix
2 cups white flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
this mixture should be stirred gently with a whisk- for best results sift the flour before you measure it out then spoon the flour into your cup measure and level the top.

2/3 cup oatmeal
1.5 bags Butterscotch chips
1/2 bag white chocolate chips

mix together and scoop onto cookie sheets with cookie scoop. I used parchment paper to line my cookie sheets and baked for 11 minutes at 350 for a smaller sized scoop.

Candy Cane peppermint cookies.

Merry Christmas! A great day for cookies! 

So these are great Christmas cookies. My kids like them even d who hates chocolate chips.

This recipe is interesting because the first time I did it they were great and the second- not so much. 

So the trick here is to chill them. Don't skip this! Maybe even leave it overnight. 

1/2 lb butter. I used kerrygold butter. I like the taste of European style churned butter. However if you have a local farmer buy from them! You will think you changed the world with cookie making skills. 

1 cup brown sugar (light) 

1 1/3 cup white sugar. 

Cream 2 minutes on medium speed. 

3 large eggs 

2 tsp vanilla 

1tbsp heavy cream

Add in 3 parts 

Mix until just incorporated. 

1tsp baking soda

1tsp cornstarch 

1tsp salt

(These should all be heaping teaspoons) 

4 cups flour 

Stir dry ingredients together. Then add them to the rest in at least 4 parts. 

3 peppermint bark candy bars or the equivalent of 3 cups. 

1 bag chocolate chips. 

Cut in small pieces and stir in 1/4 inch pieces for the measurement lovers. I found awesome candy bars at wegmans the first time then when to whole foods and found adorable candy cane pieces. 

Chill 4-24 hours. 

Scoop out on sheets and let chill an additional hour. 

Bake at 375 for about 11 minutes or until done. 

#christmas, #candycane, #cookies,#recipe, #cookiesunday, #peppermint

#merrychristmas 

Christmas Butter Shortbread Cookies

Butter Shortbread Cookies

These cookies are perfect for Christmas. I have to admit that one of the things that makes cookie Sunday possible is that I don't eat very many cookies. So these ones can't be made very many times. 

1 pound butter- chilled

I cut mine into pieces to mix more easily. I used 1/2 tilamook butter and 1/2 plugra butter. I think imported or farm made butter is the best. Never use salted butter! It keeps longer so it is usually older on the shelf. 

1 1/4 cup white sugar. Extra fine is the best option. 

Mix at medium speed until just creamed. Don't let the butter get warm! 

2 tsp almond extract (optional) if you like almond spread almond paste over the completed cookies while they are chilling. I love marzipan so this is great! 

Add 4 1/4 cups flour in 1 cup parts. 

Add it gradually or you will end up over mixing and have a floury taste. 

Press into greased cookie sheet with ridges. I used the Williams Sonoma gold collection cookie sheets. I also used my rolling pin from them with silicone. I want a marble one but that's a separate topic. I love them. I greased it with a cheesecloth and crisco. I would always use a cheesecloth or paper towel to grease a pan/ and cheesecloth is best. 

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes until edges start to turn gold. 

Cover with sanding sugar or powdered sugar to taste- I used about 1 cup and out it on while the cookies were still warm so it melted a bit.

Cut into squares with sharp knife while still cooling. 

Let cool 

My children got a plate and used them as Legos with a sort of rapt intensity. It was about an hour of using their cookies as a fun game and carefully taking bites out of each piece. 

These taste better after they are a few days old. 

Merry Christmas! Don't eat too much. 

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/m/products/usa-pan-goldtouch-nonstick-quarter-sheet-pan/?pkey=e%7Ccookie%2Bsheet%7C150%7Cbest%7C0%7C1%7C15%7C%7C6&cm_src=PRODUCTSEARCH

Adding a link with my phone blogger is difficult so I'm including links here with this tacky method. 

http://www.plugra.com/ butter of champions. 

http://www.tillamook.com/products/butter.html

Everyone loves tilamook. 

http://www.deandeluca.com/pantry/baking-ingredients/dean-and-deluca-rainbow-sanding-sugar.aspx

Guys. Brand matters. Especially when it comes to butter. 

Kit kat cookies

Kit kat cookies for cookie Sunday 

The day after Halloween we have already confiscated all the Halloween candy. For kids staying up all night. After a nasty little letter from Danielle and an unapologetic parenting moment I have my kids the chance to earn back some candy by cleaning the entire house. Since they are quite young they weren't super effective, but they did a stand up job opening kit kits from Halloween and breaking them in small pieces. ( after they had baths-they seemed like a hand wash wasn't enough.) 

So we made these super fun cookies. Now if only I have enough candy left to get the bathrooms cleaned. 

1 cup white sugar

1.5 cups light brown sugar 

1/2 cup margarine 

3/4 cup butter 

Cream

3 medium eggs 

1.5 tsp vanilla 

Mix in one egg at a time 

I small package instant vanilla pudding

1.5 cups pancake mix

1.5 cups cake flour 

1 tsp salt 

1.5 tsp baking soda 

Add in three parts 

3 cups kit kat pieces 

1 bag semi sweet chocolate chips 

Stir in. 

Hooray for the tiny bowls we use to make this kid friendly. 

Happy Father's Day cookie Sunday! Oreo m&ms cookies

These cookies were great for Father's Day! 

1.25 cups powdered sugar

1.5 cups white sugar 

1 cup butter

Mix 2 minutes on medium speed. 

3 eggs 

1 tbsp vanilla 

3 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix in parts- 1 egg at a time. Don't overmix. 

3.75 cups flour 

1 tsp salt 

1.5 tsp baking soda 

Mix in at least 3 parts 

2 bags mini m&ms 

Double stuff Oreos. 

Surround Oreos with dough 

Cook 14 min at 350. 

Give to someone who could use a cookie. This is an important part of cookie Sunday. Positive actions and gifts teach my kids being a good person is about action, not restriction. 

Butterscotch cookies

I may have already mentioned this but my daughter hates chocolate chips.
Not just a little bit. If I can convince her to try a cookie with Chocolate chips in it she slowly picks them out and throws them away when I'm not looking.

It only confuses me.
so she likes to tell me exactly what kind of cookies I should make. When I make the wrong kind she understandably reminds me AGAIN that chocolate chips are not her favorite. So half of my cookies can't have any chocolate chips in them.

The things we do for our kiddos. One of the things I did for my kids a while back was to hide all their Halloween candy on top of the fridge so I could secretly throw it away make sure they didn't eat too much.
Since that didn't work perfectly I decided to employ their help is distributing candy into cookie "recipes." It took all of one type of candy to make these nice cookies.

Butterscotch Reeces Cookies

1 cup margarine

1 cup sugar

1.5 cups light brown sugar

whip together

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

mix

2 3/4 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

add in 3 parts

A whole bunch of reeces pieces candy  bags. 

Or you can go buy a bag at the store and save some time with the tiny wrappers

1 package butterscotch chips

mix

bake 350 for 12 minutes or until done.

Finally a cookie my daughter can get behind.

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Lime Coconut Cookies

Lime Coconut Cookies

I really liked the lemon cookies so I decided I had to make Lime ones to match. 

1 cup butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup white sugar

whip together

3 eggs

2 whole limes, juiced

zest of two limes

1 tsp vanilla

add to butter mixture in parts

2.5 cups flour

.5 cups cornstarch

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

Add in three parts

1 cup coconut

blend in.

scoop out dough into powdered sugar

bake at 350 for 10 minutes or until done.

Which recipe is your favorite? Lime or Lemon? maybe we should make orange cookies sometime soon.

Vegan Oatmeal Cookies

Classic Vegan Oatmeal Cookies.
1.5  cups brown sugar
1 cup demerarra sugar
1 cup vegan vegetable shortening
mix

egg substitute equivalent to 3 eggs
vegan vanilla
mix in one egg at a time

3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
mix in (split into several parts to add in gradually)

1 cup oatmeal
mix

extra demerarra sugar in bowl
scoop out cookies into sugar 
bake at 325 for 12 minutes or until done.

One of the best things about vegan cookie dough? safe to eat all of it without danger of food poisoning. Also I can feed the kids all the cookie dough which they love.
If these cookies end up a little burnt substitute white sugar for demerarra sugar.
These cookies won't flatten as much as a traditional cookie so shape them how you want to cookie to be and if you cook until they look just like your traditional cookies they will be burned. I usually take them out after 11-12 minutes even if I normally would leave them in and they turn out perfect.
The first time I made these I don't know if the planets just aligned correctly but they were some of the best cookies I've had. If they have trouble sticking together add more shortening.

It breaks my heart to see things suffer. I used to try to volunteer with dog rescues to help them have a better life and better conditions and I still hold a special place in my heart for people who are working to help abused animals.  At the same time I do not love the squirrels that used to dig up the bulbs I planted in my back yard.  I don't think I could hunt an animal and kill it. Sometimes that makes me think I shouldn't eat them at all. In an ideal world I think I would be vegan. One of my closest friends is Vegan and sometimes I make her cookies. She is always very nice about it even if I don't think the cookies are as good as they should be.
I HATE most of the chocolate chip products that are out there for vegan consumers. They just don't taste good. One of the biggest problems if you want to make vegan products is trying to make them taste the same as non-vegan ones. There are a lot of delicious foods that are animal products free but don't expect something that isn't milk to taste like milk My favorite vegetable shortening is Vegan and it doesn't taste like butter but it makes the most delicious sugar cookies and whips up really nicely when you cream it with sugar. The best whip in a shortening I've ever seen.
I practice different tastes with vegan and allergy sensitive cooking not only because I feel like I should be able to reduce my negative impact on animals. It's also because I want to be good at making cookies everyone would enjoy and that means knowing how to make several different kinds of cookies.  I think it is good to try to figure out ways to cook so that people with dietary issues and concerns can still participate. I have a child with a dairy allergy so every week I make one kind of cookies with no dairy. That's fairly easy since vegetable shortening is great to bake with. I also have friends with gluten intolerance. Much trickier. Especially since almond flour seems very expensive. I've decided that a lot of experimentation is the way to improve the cookies so here is one of my favorite vegan cookie recipes.

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Merry Christmas Peppermint Crinkle Cookies

Peppermint Red Crinkle Cookies

I love most uses of powdered Sugar. Because it is Sugar.So in my quest to find more ways to fill the world with powdered sugar I like to roll cookies in it. These cookies are an adaptation of a traditional crinkle cookie. It started when I was at our grocery store and saw a product that I needed to buy for cookies:Andes Mints Peppermint baking chips. Now that I've tried them I want to go buy Williams-Sonoma Peppermint Bark and go cookie crazy. When I say cookie crazy I might mean eating half of it myself.

 

1 cup vegetable shortening at room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup sugar

Mix together three minutes medium speed.

3 medium eggs

1 tsp vanilla

15 drops red food coloring (optional)

Add wet ingredients together than mix in one egg at a time. More food coloring can be added until you get the desired color.

 3 cups of flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

have dry ingredients together and mix together with a wire whisk. Split the mixture into three smaller bowls. Children need to add each part of the cookie recipe in parts and it's easier with a separate bowl.

1 bag Andes Mints Peppermint Candies

Mix on low speed.

1 cup powdered sugar 

Drop cookie dough in powdered sugar and roll around until coated.

Refrigerate one hour and bake at 350 degrees for 11 minutes.

Tell your daughter you can't make green cookies until next week.

So close to Christmas Decoration time...

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Sugar Cookie Sunday

Sugar Cookie Sunday

  Based on the cookie recipes I've seen online I should name this recipe the best sugar cookies ever that your mom made super soft.  But the other day I made some sugar cookies. When I say the other day I could mean a few months ago or yesterday. In this case both are true. I made sugar cookies yesterday for Cookie Sunday but I didn't have time to finish the recipe posting.

One of the best things about yesterday was that I met up with some of the lovely ladies from Feminist Mormon Housewives. They came to be my visiting teachers. And I wanted them to stay all night and tell me everything about their lives and I wanted to have better food to invite them over for dinner and I wanted to go hiking with them. So overall it was really positive except I SLIGHTLY BURNED THE COOKIES. I have been making cookies for over a year every Sunday and THIS is the first burned cookie Sunday? That did NOT make me smile.

I burned the second batch that was chocolate cookies with kit kats and white chocolate chips. 

First I made sugar cookies because they are always popular. I had some circle sprinkles so I thought I should make cookies with them. That is really the BEST use of sprinkles ever. Sprinkles and sugar cookies are also fantastic because it is much less work than making cute shapes and rolling them out and frosting them with more beautiful shapes. That is also wonderful but sometimes I just want sugar and sprinkles.

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Sugar Cookies

Notes on ingredients:

To make these cookies vegan:

1 cup crisco or vegan Vegetable shortening. Crisco has some fantastic baking sticks that have one cup and I recommend them. I don't like washing crisco out of my cup measure. For this Recipe I don't like to use the butter flavored Crisco. My favorite brand is spectrum organics which is also vegan. These cookies are very easily vegan.

Use organically sourced non GMO sugar 

Use your favorite egg substitute. I use Ener-G egg replacer. I've had a lot of success if I mix it up in a mixer before I start making the cookies and let it sit, then mix it again.

Sprinkle Sugar Cookies

1 cup powdered sugar
1 cup white sugar
1 cup vegetable shortening

mix for thirty seconds, then whip for at least two minutes.

2 jumbo eggs
1 tsp vanilla

mix in one egg at a time

1 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3.5 cups white flour or cake flour

mix in three parts

1-2 packages sprinkles of your choice

spoon dough into a bowl of sprinkles and completely coat with sprinkles. refrigerate for at least an hour.
Bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees

eat a lot. like a billion million.

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Peanut Butter M&M Cookies

Happy Cookie Sunday!

Today I just made one of my favorite type of cookies. The first thing I realized was that I was pretty much out of brown sugar. Which is a life threatening disaster when you are trying to make cookies every week. Last week I ran out of butter though and luckily a friend brought me some. I have tons of butter this week.

SO... I improvised a little. Also almost out of peanut butter. and milk. and all types of food because I haven't gone grocery shopping this week yet.  Please tell me I'm not the only one who keeps putting it off.

I LOVE peanut butter M&M cookies. I like making them little and eating a ton of them. I ate three of them today. I use a little ice cream scoop to measure out my cookies. I can fit 15 cookies onto one cookie sheet. Also I should mention that I have favorite cookie sheet brands and I feel pretty strongly about it. The Williams Sonoma Goldtouch nonstick pan is one of my favorites. I also like the Calphalon kitchen essentials series but I think I got it at bed bath and beyond and I have no idea what specific cookie sheet it is. If you just get really cheap crappy cookie sheets then your cookies might not cook as well. I use aluminum foil to line my cookie sheets. So I don't have to wash them. I've tried parchment paper and one of the silpat liners but I haven't tested those as much.

Peanut Butter M&M cookies

1 stick of margarine

1 stick of unsalted Tilamook butter

1 cup of white sugar

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

cream sugar and butter for at least 2 minutes

1 cup peanut butter

1 tbsp vegetable oil

mix

2 eggs

2 tsp vanilla 

mix

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

blend dry ingredients. I used a whisk

mix with other ingredients in at least 3 parts

1 bag mini M&Ms 

1 bag milk chocolate chips.

mix

chill at least one hour

scoop onto pre lined cookie sheets

bake for 10 minutes at 350degrees

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