Nutella Cookies

Nutella White Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 cup butter

1 cup white sugar

1.5 cups brown sugar

1 cup nutella

mix 2 minutes on high

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

mix in each egg one at a time. I like using local eggs- if possible locate a local farm or a neighbor with chickens. Your cookies will taste WAY better. and you can feel good about yourself.

3 1/4 cup white flour 

I used 1 cup of cake flour and used general all purpose flour for the rest. 

1 tsp Salt

1.5 tsp Baking Soda

1 bags of white chocolate chips. 

Bake at 350 for 13 minutes or until done.

My daughter hates chocolate chips.

I have no idea how this happened.

I think about it all the time.

But it means I frequently make cookies with no chocolate chips in them. She picks butterscotch or white chocolate chip cookies and I don't ever love them. So she voted these pretty good.

This week my kiddos wanted to give cookies to their new friends in the neighborhood. I've been trying to get them to think about helping people and who they can give cookies to every week.

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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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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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Cookie Sunday

Every Sunday Something Magical Happens in my House.

We make cookies.

A Short History of cookie Sunday.

To understand cookie Sunday I should probably explain a few things about myself.

1. I am a single mom

2. I am Mormon

3. I used to blog about Sunday Thoughts.

4. I like eating.

When I grew up I think my mom made bread on Sunday. She also helped us make our school lunches.

which normally contained ginormous cookies I could easily trade for a Nutty Bar at my leisure. 

Also we didn't really get to watch awesome shows on Sunday. And we didn't really go to friends houses. And we didn't play outside.

I always felt like Sunday was a huge "dont." Don't go crazy and Don't go shopping and Don't watch TV.

Then I had children. These children asked me what we should do on Sunday. This Sunday dilemma is one of the first realizations of how arbitrary parenting was. I don't actually care if you watch TV all day on Sunday. Sitting in church discussing what to do and not to do and when you would consider your Ox in the mire and hearing stories of cars miraculously producing gas to the family wouldn't have to spend money on Sunday got mixed in with really really wanting to order pizza on Sunday. Like more than I would normally even consider eating pizza.

Then I became a single mom and my world sort of fell apart. 

One of the things I realized was most helpful for me was to have a schedule. To know what I was doing so I didn't just sit on the couch and cry all day. I realized I wanted to be actively in control of my life. I didn't want to blame other people for the bad things that had happened to me or for my circumstances. I didn't want my life to be a great big list of "Don'ts." To me Sunday just seem like a bunch of questions I couldn't answer.

I thought I should take a different approach. I would try to build traditions of things that we "did" on Sunday. To distract my children from my existential breakdown about their television habits and keep me from throwing away all their electronic devices. If Sunday was to visit the sick and afflicted and help the needy and build family time I would do that.

So we make cookies. Every Sunday. for over a year now. We bring our cookies to our neighbors. Or a friend that needs cookies. Or people visit us and we eat cookies. Or we take them with us when we hike the Y. (that's another good Sunday activity- haul my children up the mountain.) I bring cookies to work on Monday.

To prepare for the kids helping I split the ingredients into bowls. One bowl for each egg and vanilla, one bowl for the sugar, three bowls for the dry ingredients (I split them into three separate additions because that's what my mom taught me) one bowl for the chocolate chips.

One child dumps in a bowl and the other one starts the mixer. Then they help eat the dough while we are baking the other cookies. Then they run a plate over to the neighbors. Then they eat cookies.

I'm trying to make a point of being more proactive about the type of person I want to be. If I want to be religious I need to have something to show for it. I happen to have lots of cookies to show for it. they are something I make on Sunday. Something I am DOING rather than just a list of rules.

Cookie Sunday is the most fantastic religious decision I've ever made.


Recipe for the pictures:
Preheat oven to 350
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 stick margarine (I used Imperial for this recipe)
1 stick salted butter
cream 2 minutes

2 extra large eggs
2 tsp vanilla
add eggs 1 at a time

3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder (I used Giradelli this time- brand has a HUGE impact on the taste)
stir together- add to other ingredients in at least three different parts.

1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips

I am always experimenting with how many chocolate chips to add.
Line cookie sheets with aluminum foil.
scoop out cookies with an ice cream scoop.
refrigerate at least 5 minutes before putting them in the oven.bake around 12 minutes. 
Check your cookies. then if you are me add 2 more minutes.

The total cook time depends on the size of your cookies.
every week I try to make the cookies just a tiny bit different so I will post what I think. This recipe is pretty classic and easy.
I hope you can make it for Cookie Sunday this week!
xoxo

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