Molasses Cookies (Soft)

     I wish I could take credit for this recipe, but I can't. These are actually called Sugared Molasses Crinkles and I found the recipe in Where Women Cook, Celebrate! The recipe was submitted by Ashley English, who is an author and a weekly blogger for Design*Sponge. I was looking for a non-chocolate, fall cookie for dinner guests and I loved the rich, brown color of these cookies.

Ingredients: (I doubled her recipe)

5 cups all-purpose flour
1 T. baking soda
2 tsp. salt (I used a little less)
1 T. cinnamon
1 T. ground ginger
2 tsp. ground nutmeg
1 tsp. ground cloves
1 tsp. ground black pepper
2 cups dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cup granulated sugar (divided)
2 sticks butter at room temperature
4 eggs
2/3 cups molasses

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

 

     I don't always sift my dry ingredients, but because of all the spices...I did so for this recipe. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and black pepper in a bowl and set aside.

 

With a mixer, beat the brown sugar and 1/2 cup

of the white sugar and the butter until combined.

 

Add the eggs one at a time, stopping to scrape

the bowl after each egg.

 

 

Add the molasses

and completely incorporate.

 

On low speed, gradually add the flour

mixture until completely blended.

 

Cover dough with plastic wrap and chill one hour.

 

     Roll cookies into balls and roll in remaining 1 cup of sugar to cover. Place on cookie sheets (you can use parchment paper if you want to) and bake until centers are firm, 12-15 minutes. Cool 5 minutes on cookie sheets and transfer to wire racks.

 

These made the house smell so

good and are a perfect fall or Christmas cookie.

 

     I have no idea what happened to this week. My birthday was Tuesday and between girlfriend visits and appointments, it has been days since I picked up more than my iPad to check my emails. I hope you all have a safe, dry Halloween. We have been raining all day, but it has finally stopped. I hope it holds off for the little ones.

Trick or Treat Cookies

 

     I mentioned in my last post that I try to put things I eat through the "worth it" test. Is it worth the fat, calories and extra exercise necessary if I indulge. Well, these cookies are absolutely WORTH IT! They are a little scary looking (after all-they are for Halloween) but they taste so good!

 

Ingredients:

 

3 sticks of unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed

1 cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla (I only use real vanilla)

scant tsp. of salt

1 tsp. baking soda

4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I use Hershey's)

4 cups of chopped Snickers , Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and M & M's (I used peanut)

1 cup broken pretzels

orange food coloring

 

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees

 

Cream together butter, brown sugar and white sugar.

Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until fluffy.

Mix salt and baking soda with flour and slowly

mix into butter mixture. Beat until dough forms.

 

Split the dough in half and place in separate bowls.

 

Stir cocoa powder into one half of the dough.

You can see a few "white spots" in mine, it

doesn't hurt anything.

 

Add orange food coloring to the other half of

the dough. This step is not necessary if you

want a black/white cookie. If that is the case, use

 the "white" dough as is without adding any food coloring.

 

Into each bowl of colored dough, fold

in 1 1/2 cups of the mixed candy (not the pretzels).

 

Roll the chocolate dough and the orange

dough into balls. Cut the balls in half and press

a half of each color together to

form a cookie. Place on cookie

sheet and slightly flatten.

 

     Press remaining 1 cup of mixed candy and the broken pretzels into the flattened cookie tops. Bake approx. 12 minutes, until slightly brown around the edges. Allow to cool on cookie sheet a few minutes and remove to wire racks to finish cooling. These cookies break easily when warm. Allow them to cool enough before removing. I left my pretzel pieces fairly large because I wanted "scary looking" cookies for Halloween. You could certainly have a prettier cookie if the pretzel pieces were smaller. The melted snicker bars (yum) may ooze out a bit while baking. With the edge of a knife or spatula, push the melted snicker back to the edge of the cookie while very warm. 

 

I am joining Michael @ Rattlebridge Farm for Foodie Friday.

Cookies!! GIVEAWAY with Cookbook! Yummy!

     Do you remember Tate's Bake Shop? Last year I had the pleasure of giving away some of their cookies and a cookbook to one of my lucky readers. Well, they have contacted me again and asked if I would like to share some Tate's Bake Shop "Love" with my readers

in honor of Valentine's Day.

  

     Kathleen King, owner of Tate's has a new cookbook, Baking for Friends. I love that title, don't you? She is sharing a recipe from the book for Linzer Heart cookies (see above). Aren't they the perfect Valentine treat? 

TATE'S BAKE SHOP LINZER HEART COOKIES

     An important tip: be sure to chop the nuts and chocolate very fine in a food processor (pulse to chop so the friction doesn’t warm them), or the dough will be too rough-textured to roll out smoothly. 

You need a graduated set of heart-shaped cookie cutters to make these. 

Yield: 20 sandwich cookies

Cookies

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup cornstarch

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ pound (3 sticks) salted butter, at room temperature

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 cups toasted, skinned and very finely chopped hazelnuts

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, very finely chopped

-plus-

½ cup seedless raspberry jam

½ cup confectioners’ sugar for sifting

1. Sift the flour, cornstarch, and salt into a medium bowl. In a large bowl, beat the butter and confectioners’ sugar with an electric mixer set on high speed until combined, about 1 minute. Beat in the egg and vanilla, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. With the mixer on low speed, mix in the flour mixture, just until combined. Mix in the hazelnuts and chocolate.

2. Gather up the dough and shape it into a flat disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled, at least 2 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 1 day. Let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes to soften slightly before rolling.)

3. Line 2 large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough to a round about ¼-inch thick. Use a 3 ½-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the cookies as close as possible to avoid excess scraps. Arrange the hearts about 1 inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. Gather up the dough scraps and gently knead together, and cut out more cookies. If the dough becomes too soft to roll out, refrigerate until chilled. You should have 40 cookies. Refrigerate for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

4. Position the oven racks in the top third and center of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F.

5. Use a 1-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the centers of 20 cookies. These will be the cookie tops. (You can bake the mini hearts to nibble on later! Don’t throw away or re-roll.) Bake, switching the position of the baking sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through baking, until the cookies begin to brown, 20 to 25 minutes. Sift some of the ½ cup of confectioners’ sugar over the hot cut-out cookies Let cool completely on the baking sheets.

6. Spread the jam on the cookie bottoms, leaving an 1/8-inch border around the edges. Add the tops, sugared sides up, and press together gently. Just before serving, sift the remaining confectioners’ sugar over the cookies.

Giveaway

Tate's Bake Shop has generously offered to send one of my readers 

the Valentine's Cookie Cube and Cookbook Combo. 

     I have tasted these cookies and they are delicious. They are thin, crisp and are made with excellent quality ingredients. You may notice from the picture that they are running a special on this package at 50% off, which means you can order this package for just $21.50. They are also allowing me to offer you 20% off any web store purchase with the code BLOG213 used at checkout. 

     In order to be registered for this Giveaway, simply leave a comment on this post telling me you are interested. I would love to have you as a follower if you aren't already...but, I won't force you into becoming one by offering free cookies! I will select a winner from all those entered on Sunday, February 3rd. Good Luck! Please check out Tate's Bake Shop website, click here!

I was not compensated for this post (not even a cookie!). 

Tate's will send the winner's gift directly to the winner.

Cookie Time!

 

     Back in the days of children at home, neighbors that exchanged gifts and a busy social calendar around the holidays, cookie baking was a big deal at my house. It was not unusual for me to make 10 or 12 different kinds of cookies and dozens of each kind. These days, the house is quiet around the holidays, neighbors don't "neighbor" the way they did in our old home town and the kids aren't here. My husband would rather eat Little Debbie Oatmeal things (fake-icky) than homemade and I would be in big trouble, eating my way through everything! I still make sugar cookies that my husband likes and a candy that is my daughter's favorite (recipe coming in a later post).

 

     I made these cookies last year and simply linked the recipe. This year, I thought I would actually show you the process. I have made several sugar cookie recipes over the years and we have decided these are our favorite. The recipe makes a huge batch and while this year I actually rolled them out and used cookie cutters, last year I rolled them into balls and slightly flattened them before baking. It is much faster that way. If you have ever had Cheryl's Cookies (mail-order), these taste very similar. They are soft, not overly sweet and have an excellent flavor.

 

NOTE-One batch of frosting doesn't quite make enough for all the cookies. We don't mind having a few without frosting, so I just make one batch. If you want to frost all the cookies...double the frosting recipe.

 

Ingredients:

6 egg yolks

4 whole eggs

2 cups real butter (soften to room temperature)

2 1/2 cups sugar

7 c. flour

1 T. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

 

Frosting:

1 pound powdered sugar

1/2 c. butter (soften to room temperature)

1-2 T. milk

1 tsp. vanilla

 

 

 

 

In large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until smooth.

 

 

     I like to put my eggs (the 6 yolks and the 4 whole eggs) into a glass or measuring cup before I start the mixing process. It makes it easy to add them to the butter/sugar mixture. After the butter and sugar are smooth, add in the eggs, one at a time and blend until smooth.

 

     In a separate bowl, place the flour, salt and baking powder. Slowly stir (first by hand and then with mixer) the dry ingredients into the sugar/butter/egg mixture. You can see above how yellow the wet ingredients are from all those egg yolks.

     You will end up with a large bowl of slightly stiff batter which you should chill for one hour before forming into cookies.

 

Preheat oven to 375 degrees

 

     After an hour, take part of the batter and form into a ball. On a floured surface with a floured rolling pin, roll the dough out to 1/2 inch thick and cut your shapes with cookie cutters. You can also just take the chilled dough and roll it into tablespoon sized balls at this stage and flatten them before baking. Bake on greased cookie sheets (I lightly ran the butter wrappers over my cookie sheets) for 8-10 minutes. You do not want them to brown around the edges. Allow to cool on cookie sheets for 5 minutes before moving to racks to cool completely.

 

     For the frosting; blend softened butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and milk with a mixer until smooth. You want the frosting to be smooth and spreadable, but still somewhat thick. Add milk very slowly until you get the texture you want. At this point, you can separate the frosting into small bowls if you want to color it a variety of colors. I wanted most of the cookies to be simple since I have to transport them to Florida. I cut most of mine with a biscuit cutter and frosted them with white frosting and added sugar/sprinkles.

 

 

     I tinted a little bit of the icing blue and cut out a few large snowflake cookies, topped with snowflake sprinkles. They really looked like snowflakes before I frosted them...now, they look a little bit like crabs!

 

 

Nothing says Christmas like the smell of cookies baking. 

 

 

 

Mr. Food Helps With My Super Bowl Snacks!

     I'm sure many of you did exactly what I did yesterday...I ate too much! We went to a lovely Super Bowl party, where everyone brought something yummy to eat! Every day on our local noon news, Mr. Food has a recipe at the end of the show. Sometimes they look good, sometimes not so much. I never try the recipes. I decided for the party to finally give two of them a try. The first was a bar cookie-Lime Margarita Bars (click here for recipe).

     They were very easy to make and I really liked the combination of the salty pretzel crust and the almost cheesecake type filling. Mr. Food showed them with a little whipped cream on top, but I didn't think that would hold up during the party. I dusted them with powdered sugar and sprinkled a few of the remaining crumbs from the pan on top of the bars.

     The second recipe I tried was an appetizer-Border Biscuit Bake (click here for the recipe). This was also very simple to make. Refrigerator biscuits are cut into pieces, tossed with a jar of salsa and covered with cheese, peppers and olives. After baking you end up with a pull apart "bread" with a Mexican flavor. I used 4 cups of cheese rather than the 3 cups in the recipe. I found this to be very good, but just a little dry for my taste. I baked mine 40 minutes and I would reduce that by a few minutes when I do it again. I also would probably serve sour cream and/or guacamole on the side to garnish it with. The flavor was very good and hot from the oven it was gooey and delicious, it needed a bit of sauce or something after it cooled. I did read in the Mr. Food comments that some people added cooked meat before baking which would certainly be delicious. So-did you eat too much? I'm back to eating a bit healthier today!

Chocolate-Peanut Butter No-Bakes

     Do you ever have one of those days where you just need to "self-nurture"? You know, when for whatever reason you just wish you could call your mom and feel better? Well, for many of us, that isn't possible anymore...so, for me sometimes the combination of my love for cooking, an old favorite recipe of my grandmother's and of course a bit of chocolate tends to help for a moment. 

     If you are as old as I am, you will know this simple recipe. My dad's mother made these all the time. I'm sure it was created because it is made with ingredients that most people had in their kitchens all the time. I haven't made them in decades, but I saw them pinned on Pinterest a few days ago and I knew that I would be making them soon. Cookies today have more ingredients and tend to take longer to make. These go back to the days of simple, easy, inexpensive and made with staples.

     I don't even know the name of this recipe. My grandmother just called them "No-Bakes". They are sort of a cross between a cookie and a candy. They are not good for you...some days I just don't care about that!

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

2 cups white sugar

1/2 cup milk

4 heaping T. unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 cup peanut butter (I used crunchy)

3 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

2 tsp. vanilla

Add the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a rolling boil, and boil for 1 minute. Stir in the next 3 ingredients and drop onto wax/parchment paper. Let cool until set.  

     You can use a scoop and make them prettier than mine. I used a spoon, my goal was to get them done and eat them! Yes, I had 2 while they were still a bit warm...and one later in the afternoon. Then, I put some on a plate and gave them away because I knew I was in trouble. Sometimes we just take a hug from our grandmothers any way we can get it...yesterday, mine was with a bit of chocolate and a lot of memories.

Almost Famous Sugar Cookies-Very, very good.

     I have known about Cheryl's Cookies for a long time. I have never tried them. A few days before I left for Florida, a good friend was lucky enough to get to taste them and she  couldn't say enough good things about the flavor and texture of these cookies. The fact that they come individually wrapped is a bonus. I wanted to order them to take to Florida with me for the holiday, but I didn't have enough time...so I started searching for a recipe that might be similiar. I found a recipe titled "Cheryl and Co. Cookies" on Tastebook. Click here for the recipe. They also list a frosting recipe, but I wasn't crazy about the idea of vegetable oil in my frosting, so I used the following recipe for the frosting. The cookie recipe makes so many cookies that I ran out of frosting and still had about a dozen cookies leftover.

Buttercream Frosting

1 - (1 lb.) pkg. powdered sugar (approx. 3 3/4 cups)
1/2 cup - butter, softened
3 to 4 tablespoons - milk
1 teaspoon - vanilla

Combine in large bowl, with mixer at low speed, powdered sugar, butter, milk and vanilla. Beat at medium speed 1-2 minutes until creamy. If desired, add more milk until frosting is spreading consistency. Divide into bowls and add food coloring as desired.

Makes enough to fill and frost 2-layer cake, 13x9x2-inch sheet cake, or 24 cupcakes.

     I was a little shocked at the amount of butter, eggs and sugar for the recipe...but, it made lots of cookies and they were very good. The recipe says to roll out the dough and cut out the cookies. They would certainly look more like Cheryl's Cookies if you did that. I was lazy and simply rolled them into balls and pressed them down with a glass dipped in flour.

     My family said these were the best sugar cookies I've ever made. They are thick, soft and not overly sweet. I tend to go for the chocolate cookies on the plate, but even I was grabbing these. I still look forward to trying some of the authentic Cheryl's Cookies, but these were certainly a hit at my house and would be wonderful for Valentine's Day.

I am joining Michael @ Designs by Gollum for Foodie Friday

Please stop in and say hello to our hostess!