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.

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. 

Pinterest and Candy Corn

I used to have adorable apothecary jars.  Some I acquired at my seasonal job at williAms Sonoma. Others at pottery barn where you can usually find a great selection and nice seasonal decorations. The last were from target and I never cared as much about those ones but they weren't as expensive.
These were some of the things I lost in the divorce. I filled three of the apothecary jars with candy corn. I don't know if you know this but candy corn is a delightful looking holiday decoration. Now I would change all the picture frames in the house to our Halloween silhouettes I made in my spare 30 hours one year and loved. Then came the jars. I really wanted orange and white and yellow gumballs but apparently if you go and buy roughly ten tons of candy corn and say no one can eat it your husband doesn't want you to traipse out to the party store and spend 300 dollars on matching gum-balls and sixlets. Weird.
So I settled for candy corn And promised that we could recycle it not just eat it.
To be fair I have to disclose that I'm not and was never one of those people who felt like I couldn't do something because my husband didn't "let me." I hate it when people say that shit. He won't let you buy a sandwich? Maybe divorce his controlling ass. Oh wait I am divorced and I digress...

So candy corn and apothecary jars. There is something delightful about matching candy. I really liked it but I also felt strongly that we should give out pretzels or goldfish to kids. Candy is for decoration! Ok always goldfish no one likes pretzels they are shit.  I loved my apothecary jars they went great with my pottery barn candles and festive little black gems my kids love to play with. I can't decide if I like them or sparkly skull votive holders more. I kept the candles but didn't think the jars could make the move.

Here I am as the Halloween decorating season is in full swing trying to think of how to budget for new apothecary jars and matching candy.
I could get some high res images of candy corn and get the unhung frames out of the garage with lovely pictures. Maybe I could re-make the silhouettes of cats and a haunted city while I was on the phone at work. Maybe I could just take pictures of candy corn cookies since cookies are important in my life now.
First I have to make good cookies.  I looked at some online and I have to tell you- candy corn melts like crazy. Like want to tear your hair out when you are trying to make them. No joke if you add them to the top 5 minutes before your cookies are done like with mini marshmallows that's not going to work. Don't even suggest adding them to the dough or I will punch you. So there are all these Pinterest cookie recipes and I'm like- I wonder if those are fake or an approximation like when people asked me how much sugar I added to cookies and I want to say as much as looked right but instead I say 2 cups and omit the give or take a cup.
Seriously when people ask how much vanilla and flour I added the answer is " enough." But most people don't understand that. So I make something up. Just like this year I'm trying to get successful candy corn cookies. This is my fourth week. I'm using a Pinterest recipe. I didn't even photograph most of my attempts and there is a very good reason for that. They looked terrible. (Tasted OK)

So next time you look on Pinterest for a recipe just know that I'm there too, thinking most of the recipes are crap and trying to learn more about bread flour in cookies. Cool right? I'm not sure I think I will have to test extensively. Luckily I have a lifetime full of cookie Sundays where I can learn more and hopefully teach my children his important it is to actively spread joy.

I got a recipe from Pinterest from Averie cooks and used it for these cookies.
I split the dough to make sure each cookie would have a base without candy corn.
I made a double batch. I also looked at her website for over an hour and thought about how her cookies would taste. It's normal to study recipes online.
You can check the recipe out on her site or I will type out what I did. Her site is pretty good. I am going to try her recipes and I will link to them when I do.

Candy Corn Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
cream together

2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
4 tablespoons heavy cream
mix together until just incorporated (I actually used whipping cream which turned out OK

Kid Bowls!

3.5 cups flour (heaping)
4 tsp cornstarch
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
mix together with a wire whisk and split evenly into 3 bowls.

Add each bowl one at a time.
for the last bowl switch from the whip attachment to the dough/cookie attachment of your mixer.

Split dough into 3 parts and put one in an airtight container. Refrigerate.

1 bag candy corn (larger bag)
1 bag chocolate chips
mix into dough- do not overmix and be careful that candy corn doesn't break.

Chill overnight or freeze 1 hour.

When you are preparing your dough take the portion without candy corn in it and make a 2 inch by 1/4 inch circle. Then scoop the candy corn dough on top- it's important to have this layer to make sure the candy corn isn't touching the cookie sheet. This can lead to a candy corn explosion and the end of the world.

Baking directions- bake at 350 for 9 minutes. They won't look done. take them out and leave them on the sheet. It's a soft batch cookie so they look different.

NOTE: you can use 1/2 self rising bread flour and they will rise more.
NOTE: I don't usually use cornstarch because I feel like you can taste it. I did in this case. The candy corn sort of overpowers the taste. I'm not convinced that most people can taste it.
NOTE: I used Giradelli white chocolate chips. I will blog about different chocolate chips soon because they all have very different tastes. I have strong feelings about them which I think you get after a few years of making cookies.

The Three stray neighborhood kids that were living at my house this Sunday liked the cookies. They brought some home. I think because I make cookies I get a lot of stray neighborhood kids. It's fun.


When Candy Corn cooks it gets darker. That way you can tell your friends you put siracha hot sauce in your cookies.

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.

Also right now if you

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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.

 If you really want to share my boards or follow me on pinterest I would love that. I love Pinterest. 

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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Butterscotch Caramel Cookies

Butterscotch Caramel Cookies

While I was at Target the other day I walked by something that seemed like it might be wonderful in cookies.
Kraft Caramel Bits.
Have you ever seen them? I hadn't. They are tiny little balls of caramel. just about the size of a chocolate chip. I guess they are for melting but you know what? I thought they would be good in cookies. So I bought them. Then I decided to make butterscotch cookies because my daughter loves Butterscotch cookies. (she hates chocolate chip cookies which I find totally incorrect.)

So I made them.

1 stick Margarine
1 stick unsalted Butter
1 cup white sugar
1 1/4 cup brown sugar (I used dark brown which I rarely do)
cream together 2 minutes

add 3 medium eggs
2 tsp vanilla
mix in eggs one at a time.

3 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt ( I didn't level it on account of the unsalted butter)
mix in at least three parts.

1 bag Kraft caramel bits
1 bag butterscotch cookies.

Bake at 350.

My thoughts-
The caramel bits sort of exploded out of the sides of some of the cookies which I didn't love.  But my daughter told me I was the best mom ever and that she loves me forever so go figure.
My mother updated me that unsalted butter was the way to go because it doesn't store as long as salted butter so normally when you look at the butter on the shelves the unsalted butter will be relatively new whereas the salted version can sit quite a while without going bad.
So of course I bought unsalted butter because my mom put the fear of salted butter in me.

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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