Baking: Cherry-Cranberry Crumb Bars

Spring cooking date with my friend! Remember my road trip buddy that I hang out with for movies and baking dates? Well, we only had one baking date before Christmas last year where we made this and this. We’re back this time for the long Victoria’s Day weekend and with cherries and eggs, I went over to her place and we did some research and ended up making some Cherry-Cranberry Crumb Bars.

Cherry-Cranberry Crumb Bars
Adapted from: Blueberry Crumb Bars from Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

1 cup white sugar
1 tsp baking powder
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup cold unsalted flour
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
*zest and juice of one lime
4 cups *fresh cherries & cranberries
1/2 cup white sugar
4 tsp cornstarch

1. Preheat over to 375F. Grease a 9×13 inch pan.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together 1 cup white sugar, 3 cups flour and baking powder. Mix in salt and lime zest. Use a fork to blend in the butter and egg. Dough will be crumbly. Pat half the dough into the prepared pan.
3. In another bowl, stir together the 1/2 cup sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice. Gently mix in the cherries and cranberries. Sprinkle the fruit mixture evenly over the crust. Crumble the remaining dough over the fruit layer.
4. Bake in preheated over for 45 minutes, or until top is slightly brown. Cool completely before cutting into squares.

There were no substitutions for anything here. Although this one is already modified to how we made it.  There was only two ingredients from the original recipe that we’ve changed.  The first is that we made cherry and cranberry instead of blueberry and the other is that we used lime zest and juice instead of lemon.

The last time I made crumb bars was in 2012! Almost four years ago! That’s crazy! Last time was good but the pan was too small so the levels didn’t work out well in that sense.  However, these crumb bars were rather tart, probably because of the cranberries.  I personally love it like this more.  The pan we used was perfect and had a great texture in layers.  The fruity bits balanced well with the crumb on the top and when it cooled, it became firm enough to actually feel like a bar and didn’t fall apart.

This recipe is rather easy to do.  Of course, it would be less time consuming if you used blueberries.  We had a bit more prep time just because we had to pit the cherries.  Now, I am thinking of redoing the Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumb Bars I did four years ago but using the right sized pan and making it the perfect fit for this time of year, especially when my rhubarb plant is fabulously ready for harvesting! 🙂

What flavor do you like crumb bars or just granola bars or whatnot? 

Baking: Homemade Granola Bars

We’re back on the next baking adventure.  I’ve never made any granola bars but my husband and I both love to bring granola or protein bars as snacks to work.  I had bought some granola at the store a little while back and I’ve been hoping to give it a go soon.  Finally, I felt like it was time to do it so here we are!

Granola Bars

I confess that they look a little like Granola Squares.  But that’s okay.  The husband says they taste good.  If you want to give this a try, you can use the recipe in this simple infographic below.  Also, click on the image to go to the original post and get more insight on this.

 I didn’t make my own granola and had bought it like I mentioned and actually used one with boosted protein in it for the husband.  This was for him and that is why I went with using daily milk instead of the almond milk that I have. So for the dry ingredients, mine was simple.  The granola mix, which I only have 4 cups of and the baking soda.  In the wet ingredients, I used mashed bananas, peanut butter and like half-half of honey and maple syrup (because I ran out of honey).  I probably should have decreased the portions a little because I was short 1 cup of granola but I didn’t and that’s probably why its not the texture that I think it should be.

Regardless of those little changes, the husband did think it tasted good.  I personally like the recipe because its natural from honey and maple syrup as more natural sweeteners to the moistness coming from fruity bases like puree or mashed fruits. Its really easy to put together. And you all know how much I like quick and efficient recipes.

This one is definitely a winner but I believe that mixing honey and maple syrup might not be a good idea and that I would do a dairy-free version next.  I’d give this recipe a second go with a different flavor.  Let me think about what to use and we’ll be doing a round 2 of homemade granola bars

What do you like in your granola bars? 

Baking: Marbled Cherry Pie Cake

This recipe is literally hot off the press (or out of the oven?). Okay, okay. I’ll stop with the bad puns. I’ve been postponing baking a lot.  It’ll probably help me get out of my case of the winter blues but I just haven’t been all that excited about doing anything.  Still, I have been wanting to use up that can of cherry pie filling so I looked up something easy.  It turned out that since I don’t use boxes of cake mix, I had to end up finding a white cake recipe.  Its actually not too hard to do that so here we go! 🙂

Marbled Cherry Pie Cake

Inspired by this recipe via Pinterest: http://www.tammileetips.com/2015/04/marbled-cherry-pie-cake-recipe/

I really loved this idea but I had to pretty much find my own white cake recipe and mix in the cherry pie filling.

The White Cake recipe is from Butter’s Baked Goods by Rosie Daykins.  I’m going to give the white cake recipe as is first.  Go to the bottom to get the cherry pie cake way, although I was lazy and didn’t do it that way.

Butter’s Classic White Cake

Makes 1 cake, about 8 to 12 slices (2 7-inch circular cake pans)

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups pastry flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
4 egg whites
1/2 tbsp pure vanilla
1 1/4 cups buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Onto a large piece of parchment paper, sift together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
3. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until light and fluffy.  Add the sugar, egg whites and vanilla and continue to beat until well combined.
4. Turn the mixer to low and add the dry ingredients and buttermilk alternately (begin and end with the dry).  Scrape down the sides of the bowl at least twice during the mixing.
5. Spoon the batter evenly into the prepared pans.  Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes or until wooden skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
6. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for about 10 minutes, then invert onto wire racks to cool completely.

Marbled Cherry Pie Cake variation

• Instead of using the circular pans, use a 9 by 13 inch pan.  I didn’t and it took much longer to do and could be messy.
• To make this, open the a can of cherry pie filling and swirl in on top of the cake batter creating the marbled pattern. (I’m not too good at that)
• Bake for 30-35 minutes.

Changes and Substitutions

• I used all-purpose flour instead of pastry flour.  I’m changing to gluten-free flours and trying to get a variation to make my own blend so this is the last batch of all-purpose flour I will have.
• Buttermilk was replaced with unsweetened vanilla flavor almond milk.
• I never sift anything onto parchment paper but directly into a bowl.  Its less messy that way.

How did it turn out…

I cut corners because I was lacking time and all those funky excuses so I ended up putting it all into one tiny square baking pan.  The issue with that is that it ended up taking forever to bake and then I realized that it just needed time to set.  While it doesn’t look too great, I did cut off a bit of the burnt edges after it set.  The cake itself tastes really great.  Its still pretty moist and if there was any dryness, the cherry pie filling creates the needed balance and adds a little extra texture to it.

The only thing I’d change is to bake this in a longer pan, like I suggested up there with the 9 by 13 inch pan or somehow create the two tier cake as a cake box amount would normally do.

I’d definitely give this a second go with the improvements and maybe put an update here when it happens 🙂

Do you like cherry desserts? How do you use canned cherry pie filling?

Baking: Sugar Cookies (with 4 different toppings)!

The holidays are fantastic.  We take turns spending time with our friends and this year, we had a few friends drop by for a little potluck and game night to ring in the New Year’s.  Some of you know that I’m in absolutely love with baking.  With My Weekly Adventures post, before rambling about recaps and updates, I gave a quick look of some Boxing Day finds and the one I’m most proud of is finally getting the standing mixer.  For New Year’s Eve, I put it to the test and after much debate between various recipes, I decided to go with Sugar Cookies.  It does sound kind of familiar since I did do Chocolate Sugar Cookies on the baking date with my friend right before Christmas. Except, I’ve been eyeing this recipe in Butter Baked Goods, one of the cookbooks I own.

Here it is!

“Big” Sugar Cookies
(from Butter Baked Goods by Rosie Daykins)

Sprinkled with icing sugar

Makes 24 cookies

Ingredients

4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla
coarse sanding sugar, for sprinkling

2nd batch: With Sliced Almonds

 1. Preheat the oven to 350F.

2. Onto a large piece of parchment paper, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt.  Set aside.

3. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and oil on medium to high heat until fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

4. Add the sugar and mix until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Add the eggs one at a time and beat briefly after each addition.  Add the vanilla and beat again to combine.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

5. Turn the mixer to low and add the dry ingredients and mix until fully combined.

6. Use the ice cream scoop to drop 24 equally sized portions of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets, about 1 1/2 inches apart.  Use the palm of your hand to press down lightly on the top of each dough portion to flatten slightly, then sprinkle with a little sanding sugar.

7. Baking in the preheated oven for 15 to 17 minutes or until the cookies are lightly golden around the edges and cracked in the center.

8. Remove from the oven and transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool.

3rd batch: with Dark Chocolate (Lindt 70% Cocao)

Notes:

• I ended up with double the batch (48 cookies) with probably smaller size cookies.
• Replaced vegetable oil with olive oil
• Sprinkled with icing sugar for first batch but then used, sliced almonds, dark chocolate and snowflakes sugar decorations

4th batch: with sugared snowflakes

These sugar cookies were pretty good. There was a good crunchy consistency.  I put the batches for 15 minutes in the oven. Suffice to say that the snowflakes was a true experiment and they ended up melting so that isn’t a great idea. The dark chocolate toppings were the big hit and ended the night with most of them eaten. Sugar cookies are a very easy solution.  I did these without a sifter and a proper ice cream scoop or parchment paper.  My new home needs some improvement in the supplies portion but that is on our shopping list. To be honest, cookies are my go-to whenever I need a quick fix for baking.  Preparation is usually quite minimal (unless you need to use cookies cutters which adds a step and maybe some kneading the dough depending on what you make) and the bake time is usually under 20 minutes (unless its biscotti which needs to baking sessions). I love quick solutions.  Sometimes life is about enjoying the simple things and sugar cookies definitely fits that category.

On a side note, the promise I made (to my husband and myself) with the new mixer purchase was that it would be the motivation to step back into my favorite activity ever: Baking and work towards improving this year.  Consider these sugar cookies to be the first step back in the kitchen.  For the record, there should be another recipe up soon for the Baking Through Disney.

How do you like to top your Sugar Cookies? Are you fan of cookies? What type do you like?

Baking: Pumpkin Cookies

Yesterday I talked about having a fun baking date with one of my girl friends and the first thing we made was some chocolate sugar cookies. After some discussions, we decided to make Pumpkin Cookies. This recipe is also from Martha Stewart’s Cookies.

Pumpkin Cookies

Makes 6 dozens

Ingredients

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 tsp coarse salt
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/4 tsp ground ginger
3/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
2 1/4 cups packed light brown sugar
2 large egg
1 1/2 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

 1. Preheat the oven to 375F.  Whisk together, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg in a bowl.

2. Put butter and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Beat on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes.   Mix in eggs.  Reduce speed to low.  Add pumpkin, evaporated milk, and vanilla; mix until well blended, about 2 minutes.  Add flour mixture; mix until combined.

3. Transfer 1 1/2 cups batter to a pastry bag fitted with a 1/2 inch plain tip.  Pipe 1 1/2 inch rounds onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart.  Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until tops spring back, about 12 minutes.  Cool on sheets on wire racks 5 minutes.  Transfer cookies to wire racks; let cool completely.

Notes:

• Ground nutmeg instead of freshly grated
• Almond milk instead of evaporated milk
• All of step 3 was replaced with scooping up with the ice cream scoop and making small cookies.
• We put it in the oven for 12 minutes and ended up putting them in for another 5 minutes or so. It seemed to be better cooked that way.

These pumpkin cookies are pretty delicious.  This is only half the recipe because it should go with a brown-butter icing but we didn’t make that. If you do want that recipe, just email or comment below and I’ll send it to you. The consistency of these tasted a little like pumpkin bread/scone hybrid.  The texture was fluffy and soft.  It wasn’t too sugary and yet filled with the seasonal spices.  Its pretty good.

The only thing to note for this one is that we didn’t realize that it made 6 dozens so it took us by surprise a little.  Its a reminder that we should always read much more carefully how much a batter serves and not just what ingredients on hand.  Both are equally important.  Still, it was a ton of fun 🙂

Are you a fan of pumpkin-flavored desserts? What do you like to make with pumpkin puree?

Baking: “Giant” Chocolate Sugar Cookies

This year for the holidays, I did something a little different.  For the first time, one of my really great friends and I got together for a baking date.  Both of our recipes are from one of the cookbooks she has which is Martha Stewart’s Cookies.  Today we will start with the first one we chose: Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies. Except ours are many times smaller because this recipe should make 8 but we ended up with 28 (approximately).

Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Makes 8

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable shortening (or 1/2 cup unsalted butter), melted and cooled
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 375F.  Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt in a bowl.
2. Put butter and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.  Mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy.  Mix in melted shortening (or butter).  Add egg and vanilla extract; mix until creamy.  Reduce speed to low.  Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until just combined.
3. Using a 2 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing about 4 inches apart.  Bake until edges are firm, 18 to 20 minutes.  Let cool on sheets on wire racks.  Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 2 days.

I had been thinking about chocolate sugar cookies since forever.  The best part is that because its made with cocoa powder, it has no milk meaning that I can eat it.  If you aren’t aware, I used to not be able to even digest cocoa but somehow in the past few months, I gave it shot and its all good now.  I don’t abuse the privilege my stomach has given me but these cookies are delicious! For sugar cookies, the balance of the chocolate taste and the sugar level is pretty awesome.  They were a little chewy with a little crunch on the edges.  It reminds me of why I love making cookies so much.

Plus, my friend has this fantastic standing mixer from Kitchenaid that has totally convinced me of why I should dish out the money to invest into one 🙂 And, the fact that I need those lovely ice cream scoops so that I make these perfectly sized cookies.

Baking is fun but baking with friends is even better! 🙂

Do you like sugar cookies? What types of cookies are your favorite?

Baking Through Disney: Snow White and Apple Charlotte!

It took me a thousand years to get this done but I vowed to at least get this first one done by the end of the year, so here we are!  Sure, its not the cupcakes and fanciness but I finally got my baking stuff in order in a new kitchen set-up so it was a little bit of a mess. However, Snow White is all about poison apples so first choice would have been candied apples but it seemed kind of complicated with the syrup and whatnot so I opted for an easier but still unique idea for any apple dessert.  It pretty much came down to Tarte Tatin and Apple Charlotte both from my “Made in Quebec” Cookbook that I bought back in February this year.

If you’d like to read the review on Snow White or any of the adaptations, you can find it HERE.

APPLE CHARLOTTE
(from Made in Quebec by Julian Armstrong)

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 4 medium apples, peeled and cored
• 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
• 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 1 tsp butter
• pinch ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup firmly packed ground brown sugar
• 4 or more slices white bread, crusts removed
• 2 tbsps butter, at room temperature

1. Slice apples thinly and place in a medium saucepan. Measure lemon juice into measuring cup and fill with water to make 1/4 cup liquid.  Stir into apples along with granulated sugar, butter, and cinnamon.  Place over medium-low heat and cook, stirring often, just until apples are tender, are 15 minutes.  Let cool.

2. Butter a 6 cup baking dish.  A baking dish with sides at least 3 inches high is recommended.  Sprinkle the bottom of the dish with a little brown sugar.  Butter the bread on both sides.  Then, dividing brown sugar evenly, pat onto each side of buttered bread slices.  Cute 2 of the slices in half.  Press a full slice onto the bottom of the baking dish; if necessary, add more bread slices to cover bottom of dish. Line the sides with the 4 half slices, pressing them firmly into place.

3. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375F.

4. Pour apple mixture into bread-lined baking dish.  Cover apples with remaining slice of buttered, sugared bread and gently press down.

5. Bake, uncovered, for 30 to 35 minutes or until bread is browned and crisp.  Serve hot or at room temperature, with whipped cream or ice cream.

Notes from what I did:

• They recommend to use Cortland apples. However, I only had Empire apples on hand so they work also.  Any sort of apples work.
• Room temperature butter is very important.  We don’t have any of that so it was really  hard to get the bread buttered without having to struggle and breaking up the bread.
• I took about 5.5 slices of bread and for the edges, I cut the piece of bread into 4 pieces in thin lengths to line the side.
• I did not measure how much brown sugar I used but I might have used less(?)
• The top should be covered in bread but buttering and sugaring bread in the middle of the night made me lose a bit of patience so I just stopped.

Apple Charlotte has an interesting texture.  I’ve never had it before but the point is that its a dessert wrapped up in toasted, crunchy and sugared bread.  The seasoning of the cooked apples covers up any of the sugared bread. Its not a bad texture and I can actually see it working exceptionally well with ice cream or even maple syrup for a Canadian twist. I’m probably going to try that later. The apples do have a really nice taste and mixed with the sugared and crunchy taste was quite good.  I might prefer apple crisp or apple crumble pie or even straight up apple pie but its because of the fluffy pastry pie shells that I enjoy eating.

Have you had Apple Charlotte before?  

P.S. I’ll be giving an update on how I plan to approach this with much more dedication in 2016 for the next Weekly Adventures on January 1st! 🙂

Baking: Nutella Cookies

I’m finally back in the kitchen and baking. Nothing brings me back quite like baking some goods for events.  This time around its for Father’s Day and for my boyfriend’s dad. I may not know a lot of stuff but I do know that he loves chocolate.  After looking through my Pinterest boards for a long time and thinking thinking and thinking some more, I finally decided on this Nutella Cookies.

I love simple, quick and efficient recipes, especially when my indecisiveness causes me to have a lack of time and I need to do this quickly.  These “One Bowl Nutella Cookies” are from Chew Out Loud.  You can find the recipe HERE!

Whats better than a recipe with 6 ingredients, right? You probably have most of the items at home.  Plus, 8 minutes in the oven ONLY!! Nothing like a simple recipe to boost my motivation and confidence in the kitchen!

However, I did make slight changes:

• Replace all-purpose flour with (Cloud 9) Gluten-Free Flour
• Chocolate chips are semi-sweet

Another success for this one is that I managed to control dividing the dough to be a smaller portion so that it would not expand and merge into one big cookie while it baked.  I’m usually really bad with that but I’m quite proud of being able to take the extra time to get that right.

I can’t eat Nutella due to dietary restrictions but the feedback from my boyfriend and his parents were great.  They really liked it and I could actually see them enjoy it.  That’s what its all about 🙂 Plus, they didn’t taste the gluten-free flour which is great.  I’m still the happiest with my baking experience with Cloud 9.

Easy, efficient, Nutella, chocolate, quick and delicious! This one is a definite winner 🙂

Do you like Nutella? Chocolate? All of the above?

Rhubarb season is officially upon us so expect some recipes coming up.  I’ll be baking up a storm this week (hopefully)!

Happy Monday!! 🙂

Gluten-Free (Coconut Flour) Banana-Walnut Bread!

Last month I was contacted and asked to create a recipe using coconut flour. Seeing as how I’ve been meaning to give coconut flour a shot, for my gluten-free flour choice, I decided to give it a try! You can find more info on coconut flour on their site here.

For this recipe, after some thought I decided to use a banana bread as the foundation.  I’ve heard that coconut flour is a little more dry than normal flour but still very good.  But then, most gluten-free flour seems to have that problem too.  I wonder if it’ll turn out the same way.

Banana-Walnut Bread

As I’ve been saying in previous baking posts, moving has been really hard.  I can’t seem to find everything I need between leaving some pans for my mom, coincidentally the loaf pan so I was stuck with this square one.  Still, bread is bread and with a little lower baking time, it worked out pretty well. Before I say anything else, here’s the recipe I used, adapted from the Pumpkin Bread recipe in the Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook. It’s not Christmas but its my go-to bread recipe.

Banana- Walnut Bread

Makes 24 slices (in a loaf pan)

3 mashed bananas
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
3 cups coconut flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup coarsely chopped nuts

1. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven.  Heat oven to 350F.  Grease bottoms only of pan with shortening or cooking spray.

2. In large bowl, stir banana, sugar, oil, vanilla and eggs until well mixed.  Stir in remaining ingredients except nuts.  Stir in nuts.

3. Bake 8 inch loaves 50 to 60 minutes, 9 inch loaf 1 hour 10 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.  Cool 10 minutes in pans on wire rack.

4.  Loosen sides of loaves from pans; remove from pan to wire rack.  Cool completely about 2 hours, before slicing.

For once, the recipe up there, ingredients is exactly the portion I used.  I had to guesstimate a bit of the portions as I couldn’t find my measuring cups but it worked out okay.  It definitely was a little dry and crumbly but the taste was very good.  I’d have to agree that with a little practice in finding the right level of moistness to the recipes and some research, coconut flour could be a really good alternative for a gluten-free diet/baked good.

This banana bread was pretty good.  I think it was a good idea to decrease the sugar since bananas already have quite a bit of it.  The walnut pieces gives it some chewy texture and it smelled delectable.  Think banana and coconut filling the house.  I’m serious, its a pretty good choice.  I’ve been searching a long time for a good gluten-free flour.  Cloud Nine with a rice and buckwheat base was a good mix but unfortunately thats not available at Costco anymore (or anywhere I frequent).  The Robin Hood GF flour has a beet base and it tastes really bad.  Blame that one for why I haven’t been baking a lot.  Now, coconut flour smells really good without being in the recipe and if it holds all those nutritious values like on the site, I’m down for giving it a shot.

Do you eat gluten-free foods? Have you tried out coconut flour as a substitute for all-purpose/wheat flour? 

Thick & Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Its been tough getting in time to bake but the past Tuesday was my boyfriend’s birthday, so the least I could do was bake him some goodies. His favorite is Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies.  All my cookbooks are at my new place so I dug around in my Pinterest and remembered that I had pinned this recipe from a blog that I’ve followed for quite some time called Chew Out Loud.  I still have a ton of recipes to try from this blog but these looked like quite the winner.  As usual, I made a few changes to it but this one is not gluten-free as my boyfriend isn’t so I don’t make him eat GF flour unless necessary 😉

Thick & Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

The recipe I used was this one: http://www.chewoutloud.com/2014/12/21/thick-n-chewy-oatmeal-dark-chocolate-cookies/

Makes 24 cookies

Suffice to say these aren’t quite Thick & Chewy and I only managed to get half the batter used.  My mom ended up transforming the second half the next day into muffins after adding in some cashew milk or something.  The cookies were quite good. My boyfriend seemed to enjoy it. Still, my issue was also that I forgot to flatten it and just kept it in a rolled up batter. Rushing to baking when I don’t do it frequent enough is hurting my little skills that I have.

Lets start with the changes:

• Omit cinnamon: ran out
• Unsalted butter instead of salted and less than required: I used the only bit left, maybe 14 tbsp, I just estimated.
• Semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of chopped semi-sweet chocolate

The cookies was pretty easy to make.  Cookies usually are and that’s why I love making them.  Plus, the oven time is usually around 15 minutes so its quick as well.  Efficiency is definitely a plus for this recipe. I felt like there was a lot of sugar for this one but my boyfriend felt it was good. I can’t eat chocolate so I didn’t get a taste.  The looks are really good as well.  I could’ve waited for it to cool a little more because it would have settled a little more (as the recipe suggests).

This is definitely an easy and efficient recipe to try.  My boyfriend liked it quite a bit.  I absolutely love the smell of chocolate swirl around the air as it bakes.

Do you like chocolate chip and/or oatmeal cookies?