Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Today is National Peanut Butter Cookie Day.  I just so happened to have a peanut butter cookie recipe to share with you!  I don’t make cookies very often, because, quite frankly, I find them to be a pain in the butt to make.  I usually opt for cookie-like bars, which taste like cookies but are much easier to make.  Yes, I am lazy!  But when it was my turn to take snacks to Lena’s preschool last month, I decided to go with cookies.  I found a recipe for Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies on Allrecipes and tried it out.  I added one thing to it; here’s my version.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:
½ cup shortening
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1½ cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup quick-cooking oats
¾ cup white chocolate chips


Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.


In a large bowl, cream together shortening, butter, brown sugar, white sugar, and peanut butter until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time until well blended. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture. Mix in the oats and white chocolate chips until just combined. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.


Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until just light brown. Don’t over-bake. Cool and store in an airtight container.


Makes 4 dozen.

I love peanut butter cookies.  The white chocolate chips were my addition.  I made a yummy peanut butter blondie that has white chocolate chips, so I thought they’d be good in these cookies too.  

I usually like my cookies soft and chewy, but I still really liked these even though they are kind of flat.  The oatmeal gives them just a hint of chewiness, which was enough for me.  I might try adding a little bit more oats next time I make these and see what that does to them.  But they are pretty good as they are.

I hope you are able to celebrate the “holiday” by making some peanut butter cookies of your own!

Snowman Cookies

A picture of these cookies is one of the first things I “repinned” on Pinterest when I first joined back in August. I knew they would make the perfect preschool snack this winter.  The recipe originally came from the blog My Pretty Purse.

Snowman Cookies


Ingredients:
2 (4 oz.) bars Nestle Premier White chocolate
1 tbsp shortening
12 Nutter Butter cookies
12 orange Tic Tacs, ⅓ cut off
36 mini M&Ms
Black decorator gel icing


Directions:
Break the white chocolate into small pieces and place in a medium-sized microwave-safe bowl with the shortening.  Microwave on 70% power for 45 seconds.  Stir.  Microwave an additional 45 minutes if necessary.  Stir until smooth.


Dip cookies individually in melted chocolate using two forks to roll them around.  Use the forks to lift them out and place them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.


Once all the cookies have been dipped, place a cut-off Tic Tac on each one where the nose should be.  Then place 3 mini M&Ms on each one to make buttons.  Using a very light hand, draw eyes and a mouth on each cookie with the decorator icing.


Allow a couple of hours for them to set completely.  Even after setting, be careful with the eyes and mouth as the black icing may smudge.


Makes a dozen cookies.

Aren’t they just the cutest things ever?  And they are incredibly easy to make.  I didn’t have enough of the Nestle white chocolate to cover all the cookies I wanted to make, so I used some white melting candies for the remainder, but it didn’t work as well.  It didn’t coat it as smoothly, and I had trouble getting the black icing to stick to it.

I didn’t change very much about the original recipe, except to specify quantities.  I used three mini M&Ms instead of two regular ones.  My snowmen only had brown, yellow, and blue buttons because I used the red and green M&Ms to make my candy covered chocolate dipped pretzel rods at Christmastime.

Apparently, there was a discussion in my daughter’s class as they were eating these, whether they were cookies or candy.  Lena said, “I said they were cookies, but this other girl said they were candies.”  I told her that they were both right, because they were cookies with candies on them.  She thought this was a genius answer and told me that she would be sure to relay this information to the other girl the next time she saw her.  I’m going to treasure these times she thinks my answers to her questions are genius, because I know it won’t last forever!

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• Recipe Linky at Newlyweds
• Sweets for a Saturday at Sweet As Sugar Cookies

Groovy Gobblers

It’s National Candy Day! What better way to celebrate than to give you a recipe using chocolate chips, fudge-stripe cookies, and lots and lots of candy corn?  I saw these cute little guys in Taste of Home and had to make them for preschool treats.

Groovy Gobblers

Ingredients:

1 (12 oz.) pkg semisweet chocolate chips

1 (11 oz.) pkg candy corn

52 fudge-striped cookies

¼ cup butter, cubed

4 cups miniature marshmallows

6 cups Rice Krispies

Directions:

In a microwave, melt chocolate chips; stir until smooth. For tails, use a dab of chocolate to attach five candy corns to the chocolate side of half of the cookies in a fan shape; refrigerate until set.

In a large saucepan, melt butter. Add marshmallows; stir over low heat until melted. Stir in cereal. Cool for 10 minutes. With buttered hands, form cereal mixture into 1½” balls.

Remelt chocolate if necessary. Using chocolate, attach the cereal balls to the chocolate side of the remaining cookies. Position tails perpendicular to the base cookies; attach with chocolate. Refrigerate until set.

For feet, cut off white tips from 52 candy corns; discard tips. Attach feet to base cookies with chocolate. Attach one candy corn to each cereal ball for heads. With a toothpick dipped in chocolate, 

dot each sprinkle to make pupils. Let stand until set. 

Store in an airtight container. 

Makes 26 turkeys.

Aren’t they adorable?  And pretty tasty too!  I made most of them with regular candy corn, but wanted to see what they looked like with the chocolate kind.  I think I kind of like the chocolate kind better.  

The original recipe called for round white confetti sprinkles for the white part of the eyes, but I couldn’t find those.  I melted some white chocolate and freehanded that part. I think in the future I would not even worry about the white part.  Since the candy corn is light colored, I think it would be fine to just put a dot of dark brown for the eyes.

 

It’s kind of funny to see a whole army of little turkeys sitting on your table!

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Crazy Cooking Challenge: Hazelnut Mocha Nutella Cookies

Yes, I have joined yet another blogging challenge.  When I was in school, I hated homework, but homework for a food blog is really fun!  This one is the Crazy Cooking Challenge.  In this challenge, all the participants make and blog about the same dish each month.  Each blogger is to scour other blogs for the “ultimate” version of whatever that month’s dish is.  The goal is to highlight and promote personal food blogs.

This month’s assigned dish was chocolate chip cookies.  So we were to find the “ultimate chocolate chip cookie” recipe, make it, and blog about it.  I immediately went to my Google reader and did a search for chocolate chip cookies.  I came across several that looked promising, but then when I saw this one, I knew immediately that this was it.  I chose a recipe from the blog Yammie’s Noshery.  Yammie is a fairly new blogger, but her blog is fantastic and her pictures are gorgeous.  She has some really tasty recipes posted, so go check her out!  I made her Hazelnut Mocha Crunch Cookies for this challenge, and let me tell you, they did not disappoint!  They are double chocolate chip cookies (meaning chocolate cookies with chocolate chips) packed with Nutella, instant coffee, honey, and hazelnuts.  Yum!  I didn’t change anything about Yammie’s recipe, except that I altered the name just slightly (since everyone is crazy for Nutella these days, I thought that should be in the title).

Hazelnut Mocha Nutella Cookies


Ingredients:
1 (13 oz.) jar Nutella
½ cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
¼ cup honey 
1 tbsp vanilla
5 packets Via instant coffee
1 egg
1⅔ cup flour
¾ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon 
1 cup hazelnuts, coarsely chopped
1 cup milk chocolate chunks 


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375º. 


Cream ¾ cup Nutella, butter, and brown sugar for about five minutes. Combine the honey and vanilla in a small bowl and microwave for about 30 seconds.  Add the instant coffee and stir until coffee dissolves.  Add coffee mixture and the egg to the Nutella mixture and beat until well combined.


In another bowl, mix together the flour, soda, salt, and cinnamon. Add to the wet ingredients and beat until combined.  Stir in the hazelnuts and chocolate chunks.


Scoop by about 2 tbsp scoops on a cookie sheet.  Leave plenty of room in between as they will flatten as they bake. Bake for about 12-15 minutes or until desired doneness is reached.


Warm the rest of the Nutella that’s left in the jar (if you haven’t eaten it all by now) and drizzle it over the cookies. 


Makes about 2 dozen.

Wow, are these cookies good!  Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that the first batch of these cookies I made was a flop.  But it was 100% cook’s error: I kinda sorta forgot to put sugar in them!  Yeah, oops!  Now, they weren’t a total loss; they were still edible because the Nutella and honey did add some sweetness.  The only problem was that without the sugar they were too salty and the coffee was too strong.  So I made them again (luckily Nutella was on sale that week so I had bought 2 jars) and this time I remembered to add the sugar (it helped that my husband yelled out “Don’t forget the sugar!” about every 5 minutes from the living room while I was in the kitchen!).  It’s amazing what a cup of sugar will do for cookies!  They turned out perfectly that time.

Keep in mind that these cookies will spread a lot during baking.  The first time I tried fitting 9 on my baking sheet and they all merged together into one large cookie!  The next time I did 6 and that worked out well.

I definitely think that these are the “ultimate” chocolate chip cookies.  If you think so too, vote for them in the blog hop below!

Come back on the 7th next month to see my version of the “ultimate” mashed potatoes!

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Flower Cookies on a Stick

This is the dessert I made for my Easter dinner this year. I saw them on the blog The Family Kitchen, and had to make them. They are so springy looking!

Flower Cookies on a Stick

Ingredients:

½ cup butter, at room temperature

½ cup canola oil

½ cup sugar

½ cup powdered sugar

1 large egg

2¼ cups flour

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp vanilla

food coloring

wood or paper lollipop sticks or long wooden coffee stirrers

Directions:

In a large bowl, beat the butter and oil with both sugars until light. Add the egg and beat for another minute. Add the flour, baking soda and vanilla and beat on low speed or stir by hand just until you have a smooth dough. Remove about a third of it and set aside; add several drops of food coloring to the remaining dough and knead it in until incorporated. Wrap or cover and refrigerate for 2 hours. (This will cause the dough to spread less.)

Preheat the oven to 350°. Roll the chilled dough into marble-sized balls. On a parchment-lined cookie sheet, arrange one plain dough ball, place a stick with its tip underneath it, then place 5 colored balls around it. (They will spread, so they can be close together without having to touch.) Bake for 15-20 minutes, until set.

Makes about 1½ dozen cookies.

I actually didn’t change anything about this recipe. The only thing I did differently was to make more than one color. My mom helped me make these, and we did blue, pink, and yellow. I thought it would be fun to have a few different colors.

I couldn’t find sticks at the store that were the right length, so I used wire cutters to cut some bamboo skewers that I keep on hand. I think between 6 and 7 inches is good; mine happened to be 6¾” long.

We made the first batch on a dark metal baking sheet and they burned. 😦 So after that we used an air-bake type baking sheet. I think they would bake nicely on stoneware too.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Regular chocolate chip cookies are good too, but I love the chewiness the oatmeal provides. I’m definitely of the “chewy cookie” camp instead of the “flat and crispy cookie” camp.

This is my variation of the infamous Neiman Marcus cookies. If you are not familiar with Neiman Marcus cookies, you can read about them here. We received this recipe in our email back in the mid to late 90s and my mom made these cookies every once in a while. They are really good. I made them myself for the first time the other night. I ended up changing the recipe a little bit. Here’s my version.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

2½ cups old fashioned oats, divided

2 cups flour

½ tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

12 oz. chocolate chips

Directions;

Preheat oven to 375°.

Pulse half of the oats in a food processor until powdery. Combine it with the remaining oats, flour, salt, baking powder, and soda. Set aside. In another bowl, cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, mixing thoroughly. Add chocolate chips.

Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes.

Makes about 3½ dozen cookies.

I changed a few things about the original recipe. All of the oats were supposed to be processed, but I like having whole oats in my cookies, so I left half intact. It was also supposed to have a 4 oz. Hershey’s bar grated in it. I always liked that about these cookies, but when I went to make them myself, I couldn’t figure out how to grate the candy bar. I tried using my box grater, and that seemed to work ok, until I realized that the chocolate was melting all over my fingers while I did it. I was already kind of frustrated with the whole cookie-making process at this point, so I said “forget it!”, ate the rest of the Hershey’s bar, and continued on with the recipe. It was also supposed to have 1½ cups of chopped nuts, but I don’t really like a lot of nuts in my cookies so I left that out too.

I decided to rename these cookies from Neiman Marcus Cookies to Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies 1. because I changed the original Neiman Marcus recipe 2. because probably not everyone knows what a Neiman Marcus cookie is and 3. because I can’t ever remember how to spell Neiman Marcus and have copied and pasted it every time I mentioned it in this post!

I really don’t enjoy making cookies. I don’t have a stand mixer, so I have to mix everything by hand, which is a big pain (literally!). I could have used my hand mixer, but this dough is so thick and clumpy that I don’t think it would have worked very well. Then when the dough is finally ready, it takes forever to roll it all into little balls and bake them all in batches. The other reason I don’t like making cookies is because the intention is to only have dessert once a week (on Thursday nights), but since a cookie recipe makes so many cookies, we end up eating cookies all weekend. I know that we should have packaged some up and given them away, but that didn’t happen!

Katrina at Baking and Boys chose to make this recipe (along with Key Lime Cheesecake Bars) when she was assigned my blog for the Secret Recipe Club in December 2011.  Click on the button below to check out her post!

Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is a variation of a Betty Crocker recipe that I saw in a magazine. They were creme de menthe flavored with green food coloring, but I thought it would be fun to do peppermint flavor with red food coloring for our holiday open house this year.

Peppermint and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

1 pouch sugar cookie mix

6 tbsp butter

½ tsp peppermint extract

1 egg

1 cup chocolate chips

6 to 8 drops red food coloring

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°.

Mix cookie mix, butter, extract, egg, and chocolate chips in a bowl until soft dough forms. Drizzle the food coloring over the dough and lightly stir to swirl it in; don’t mix it in completely.

Using a small cookie scoop or teaspoon, drop dough 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Cool 3 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Makes 3 dozen cookies.

I am going to use less butter next time. It called for ½ cup and that’s what I used this time, but reviewers on the Betty Crocker website suggested using less will reduce the amount that they spread out. They did spread out a lot. And I have a tendency to make them too big, so the less they spread, the better! So I will try using less butter next time.

But other than that, they turned out great. Be careful not to mix the food coloring in too much. Light stirring will give you a red swirl while too much mixing will give you a general pink. The swirl is what I was going for.