Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookie Bread

I started taking my ballet teacher baked treats on the days I have ballet class and the tradition has really stuck. Now, it may seem really bizarre to take goodies to ballet, but we work hard and can afford to eat something decadent from time to time. We’re a bunch of adults who have regular lives who also love to dance. It’s a very positive atmosphere. One time when I was gone on vacation, one of the other dancers brought cookies for the instructor. We do really like her a lot.

Sometimes I have to think of something to bake so that I won’t show up empty handed! That affords me the opportunity to bake something that I will serve right away, so I can try some different things. I often want to bake scones to take to work, but those need to be baked and served the same day. I leave for work at 6:30 am so there’s no way I’m getting up even earlier to make something in the morning. This bread certainly could be made and served the next day, but I think it is better served soon after coming out of the oven.

This bread combines all the flavors of oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I didn’t think it tasted like cookies but all those flavors are there. I put coarse sugar on top of the loaf which made this look like a show-stopper when it came out of the oven. My house smelled amazing when this was baking! It’s a challenge to let it cool enough before you slice it, but do that or it will just be all crumbly. But crumbles taste good, too.

1 3/4 cup flour

1 cup oats

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup of butter, softened

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 cup buttermilk

3/4 cup chocolate chunks

coarse sugar for topping

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 9”x5”loaf pan with cooking spray.

 In a medium bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt. In a large mixer bowl, beat butter until creamy then add the brown sugar. Beat on high speed until fluffy. Add in egg and mix until fully combined, then add in vanilla and stir to combine.

With the mixer on low, add half of the dry ingredients. Once combined, add the buttermilk, then the rest of the dry ingredients. Mix on low speed until completely incorporated. Fold in chocolate chunks. 

Pour batter into the buttered pan and sprinkle with coarse sugar (if desired). Place the loaf pan on a baking sheet. Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

Allow to cool for 15 minutes in the pan before removing to a wire rack to cool.

Recipe from How Sweet It Is

Melting Moments

My husband was looking at some of his British cookbooks the other day and said, “I picked cookies for you to make this week.” In this particular cookbook, there are only two cookie recipes, so I was interested. I had actually looked at this particular recipe before so I decided to give it a try. I didn’t have the candied cherries that it asked for but I had maraschino cherries which would work just as well for a topping.

This cookie is very simple, with a lot of butter and shortening. It said you could also use lard but I have honestly never used lard. I’m sure it would taste different but shortening is a lot easier to use. It’s just a butter cookie that is rolled in oats. Baking the oats they get toasty and have a nice crunch, which adds texture to these light cookies. I did double this recipe as it was only supposed to make 16 cookies. The quantity here is for the double batch, which makes about 3 dozen cookies.

You’ll notice that this recipe, like many recipes in British and Australian cookbooks, call for self-rising flour. I always just make my own, since I always have flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt on hand. These cookies don’t quite look like the ones in the cookbook, but I think they turned out very well! They are light and really do melt in your mouth.

6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature

10 tablespoons shortening

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla

2-1/2 cups self-rising flour*

Oats

4 candied or maraschino cherries, cut in small pieces

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the butter, shortening, and sugar. Stir in the egg and the vanilla. Stir in the flour.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in the oats and place on the prepared baking sheets. Flatten each cookie slightly and then top with a piece of cherry.

Bake for about 16 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned. If you bake two sheets at the same time, rotate the trays in the oven half way through the baking time. Cool slightly on the baking sheets before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from The Great British Cookbook by Hilaire Walden

*I made my own self-rising flour: combine 3 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, ¾ teaspoon baking soda and ¾ teaspoon salt. You’ll have more flour than you need for this recipe.

Brown Butter Caramel Cake (fancily decorated)

I’ve talked about baking cakes for different birthdays and celebrations at work. One of my coworkers was having a baby boy and we decided to have a little celebration for her. This was her third baby boy and while it isn’t traditional to have a formal shower for the third baby, we figured that no one would mind having a little celebration!

We’d planned this as a surprise for her, her last day of work and about a week before she was going to have the baby. Well, she ended up having the baby early, so we weren’t able to celebrate with her before the baby came. That teaches us to plan a party on the last day! We’d just have to wait to celebrate.

She came to visit with the new baby and her two older sons and I made the cake for that day. I had bought M&Ms in two shades of blue (thank you party store for having these wonderful things) and found cute “It’s a Boy” ribbon. You could make any cake you’d like, even a cake mix, but I had made this excellent browned butter caramel cake. I frosted it with a simple chocolate frosting. This cake looks so impressive, but really isn’t too hard to put together. The ribbon helped keep everything together on the trip to work. Everyone enjoyed this cake and we had a great time meeting the new baby. Welcome to the world little one!

3/4 cup butter

1 cup brown sugar, packed

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 1/2 cups + 2 tablespoons cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk

6 tablespoons butter, room temperature

2-2/3 cups powdered sugar

½ cup cocoa powder

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

M&Ms

KitKat Bars

In a small saucepan, heat the butter over medium heat. Heat the butter until it is light golden brown, about 8-10 minutes. Watch it carefully so it doesn’t burn. Remove the pan from the heat and pour the browned butter into a small bowl. Allow to cool to room temperature.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two 8-inch round cake pans.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the cooled browned butter and brown sugar until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add in eggs, one at a time, beating for one minute after each addition. Stir in the vanilla.

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt. Add to the butter mixture in three additions, alternating with the buttermilk.

Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans and bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes and then remove from the pans and cool completely on a wire rack.

Make the frosting: in a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, powdered sugar, cocoa, milk and vanilla until smooth. If the frosting is too thick, add additional milk. If too thin, add additional powdered sugar.

Assemble the cake: place one cake layer on a cake plate. Frost the top of this cake. Add the second cake later and frost the second layer. Frost the sides of the cake. While the frosting is still soft, press KitKat bars around the sides of the cake. Top the cake with M&Ms.

Cake recipe from Guilty Kitchen  . Frosting recipe from Hersheys. Decorating idea from Pinterest

Almond Cookie Cups

I love cookies baked in little cups! I’ve made quite a few different ones. They look so fancy but they are pretty easy to put together. I also think that a little cookie dough goes a long way when making cookie cups. This recipe uses just a 1/3 cup of butter, 1 egg and 1 cup of flour for 36 cookies. That’s a pretty efficient use of ingredients!

I made these cookies as the “nut” variety of cookies for the National Library Week tea that we had at work. I love almonds and think that almond extract is just about the best smelling stuff on earth! I used sliced almonds in these, since you just crush them a little with your hand and you’ve got chopped almonds. I hate having to mess up a cutting board and a knife. I mixed these in the saucepan, but you could make them in your mixer if you’d prefer. I wouldn’t over work the dough too much, though.

These bake up to be the perfect little cups. I didn’t even bother icing them, since they looked great as is. But everything is better with frosting so I’m sure these would be even better with the icing. These are chewy on the inside and have a light crisp top, so you get both textures in one cookie. They were very popular at the tea and the cookies that were left stayed fresh for quite a few days. (This is not something that I have the opportunity to test very often!) 

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/3 cup butter

1 egg

½ teaspoon almond extract

½ teaspoon vanilla

1 cup flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

½ cup chopped almonds

¾ cup powdered sugar

¼ teaspoon almond extract

2-3 teaspoons milk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line 36 mini muffin cups with paper liners.

In a saucepan, stir brown sugar and butter over medium heat until mixture is melted and smooth. Remove from heat; cool slightly. Stir in egg, almond extract and vanilla.

In a small bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Add flour mixture to butter mixture and stir just until combined. Stir in 1/3 cup of the chopped almonds. Spoon batter into prepared mini muffin cups. Sprinkle tops with the remaining chopped almonds.

Bake for 13-15 minutes, until the tops of the cups are lightly browned. Cool in the muffin pan for 5 minutes and then remove the cups to a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the glaze: in a small bowl combine the powdered sugar, almond extract and enough milk to make a glaze of drizzling consistency. Drizzle over the cooled cookie cups.

Recipe from Better Homes and Gardens

Mamoul (Date Filled Cookies)

I sometimes ask my friends at work for ideas about what cookies to make. This week a made an inquiry about what type of cookies I should make; and specific flavors that anyone wanted. I only got one response and it was for making a cookie with rose water. Hmm, that was not at all what I expected! I had to think about that but I was sure I could find something interesting.

I found some recipes online, but I found this recipe for Mamoul in Nick Malgieri’s Cookies Unlimited. I have had this cookbook for years but I don’t know that I have made anything from it. I thought the combination of rose water and dates would be great. This recipe had you make your own date jam but I had bought some date jam when I was in California a couple of weeks ago. Perfect. This is a little butter cookie stuffed with jam. Yum!

I don’t think that the rose water is very strong in these; maybe my rose water wasn’t fresh? I’ll not kid you: wrapping dough around a jam filling is tricky. My first few cookies were pretty ugly, but I eventually figured out a method that worked. Pricking the top of the cookies is to replicate how they look when you buy them in the Middle East. This was an interesting challenge for me, and they turned out to be great!

1-3/4 cups flour
12 tablespoons butter, cut in small pieces
2 teaspoons rose water
2 tablespoons milk
Date Jam*
Powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a food processor, pulse the flour and the butter until the mixture looks like crumbs. Sprinkle with the rose water and the milk and pulse again until the mixture forms a ball.

Divide the dough into 30 equal pieces. (I divided the dough in half and then divided from there.) Shape each piece of dough into a ball. Press your finger into the ball to make a hole and then flatten the dough out to make a little cup. Fill with about ¼ teaspoon date jam and then seal the dough around the filling. Place seam side down on the prepared baking sheet. Prick the top of the cookies with a fork.

Bake for about 20 minutes. The cookies should not brown. Once cool, dust heavily with powdered sugar.

*I had date jam at home. You can make your own by simmering ½ pound finely chopped dates and 3 tablespoons water in a medium saucepan over low heat. Simmer, stirring occasionally until thick and jam-like. Allow to cool.

Recipe from Cookies Unlimited by Nick Malgieri

Chipotle Chicken Chili with Flaming Tequila-Pepper Salsa and Avocado Ranch Dressing

For this round of the recipe swap, we had to submit celebrity recipes. This was an interesting theme, because I know some people are probably more famous in some circles than others. I submitted a recipe from Jaime Oliver, who I think is a very famous British chef. I went to his restaurant in England and I think that’s just about the only celebrity chef restaurant I have been to. I got this recipe from Rachel Ray, submitted by Kate at Kate’s Recipe Box.

I generally like Rachel Ray but one thing I noticed about her recipes is that they use a ton of ingredients. This recipe is no exception! It makes sense that she uses so many ingredients as she used to work in a grocery store, creating recipes that used ingredients sold by the store. This recipe wasn’t too hard, if fact it was the perfect dish for my husband and I to make together. I made the salsa and the dressing and he focused on the chili. I halved this recipe and toned down the spicy ingredients. Lately any food with any spice to me tastes really spicy. It’s quite frustrating because I used to like some spice to my food.

I’ve always wanted to use chipotle in adobo, and I have finally gotten the chance. I like it! We used some chicken sausage that we already had and I left the jalapeno out of the salsa. Otherwise not too different. I’m not a big fan of avocado (I know, I’m so strange!) but I loved the avocado dressing. We kept the leftovers and served it with some burritos we made for dinner. Good stuff! We really enjoyed this dish and had a great time making it. We’ll certainly make it again!

4 tablespoons olive oil
6 slices bacon, chopped
2 pounds ground chicken breast
2-3 tablespoons pureed chipotle in adobo (adjust to your heat preference)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon smoked sweet paprika
1 large onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
3 tablespoons tomato paste
4 cups chicken stock
Salt and pepper
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 orange bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 jalapeño peppers, seeded and finely chopped (I left this out)
4 shots of tequila
Juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup cilantro leaves, chopped
1 avocado, pitted
Juice of 1 lemon
1 cup buttermilk or soured milk
Tortilla Chips

Place a large pot over medium-high heat with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Add the bacon to the pan and brown, about 3-4 minutes. Add the chicken to the pot and brown, 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally to break up the lumps. Add the chipotle, cumin, coriander and smoked paprika, then stir for 1 minute. Add the onion and garlic to the pot and cook until tender, 5 minutes more. Add the tomato paste and chicken stock and some salt and pepper to the pot and bring the liquids up to a bubble. Reduce the heat to a simmer.

While the chili is simmering, place a skillet over medium-high heat with the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the bell peppers, red onion and jalapeños to the skillet and cook until tender, 4-5 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat and add the tequila. Return the skillet to the heat and flame the tequila to burn off most of the alcohol. (Be careful!) Add the lime juice, cilantro and some salt to the salsa.

To a food processor bowl combine the avocado, chives, lemon juice and buttermilk. Process until smooth and then season with salt and pepper.

Serve the chili with some of the tequila-pepper salsa and avocado ranch dressing. Garnish with tortilla chips.

Recipe from Kate’s Recipe Box via Rachel Ray

Lemon Loaf Cake

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Lemon Loaf Cake. Our hosts this week are Truc of Treats and Michelle of The Beauty of Life, and you can get the complete recipe for the loaf cake on their blogs. It seems like I have made many cakes that are similar to this one. We did make a similar cake, but with yogurt, when TWD was baking through Baking From My Home to Yours. But I guess I just like lemon pound cakes and therefore this one seemed familiar.

This is an easy cake to put together; you just have to make sure that you have lemons and some heavy cream. I imagine you could substitute something for the heavy cream, milk or sour cream or yogurt, but I did happen to have heavy cream on hand. I made mine in the mixer, but I probably could have mixed it by hand. I did make sure not to mix it too much, as the way the recipe was written I got the feeling that an over mixed cake would be very bad.

The cake baked fine but it looked a little plain, so I tried to think of a way to jazz it up. We’ve finally had some nice weather in the Seattle area and so I was thinking spring, so strawberry shortcake was the first thing that came to mind. Our weather has been so bad that strawberries are not yet in abundance, but I found some decent ones at the store. This lemon cake is lovely, with a perfect sweet/tart/lemon flavor and it was excellent as the base for strawberry shortcake.

Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, pages 252-253

Mini Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last week, we hosted a tea at my library as part of the celebration of National Library Week. I was so excited that I got to make the cookies. I could bake a lot plus I really enjoy planning a larger baking event like this. I want to make sure that I have lots of different flavors for all of the people at the tea. For me, most cookies fall into just a couple of categories and then I plan from there. This time I wanted to make something with chocolate, something with fruit or citrus, and something with nuts. These are the chocolate cookies I made.

I also wanted to make something like chocolate chip cookies because once I baked for an event at work and someone said, “What, no chocolate chip cookies?” Well, these are chocolate chip cookies but they are mini, and they are coconut so they were different. And they were a big hit at the tea.

These use coconut oil instead of butter, which is so interesting. It also got all over my hands when I was measuring it and my hands were so soft! I was chatting to another faculty member at the tea and she said coconut oil was often used in India as a hair conditioner (you rinse it out afterward). The coconut oil mixed with the coconut extract and the shredded coconut gives these cookies great flavor, but I think people really liked that they were teeny, tiny little cookies that were super cute. You could make these regular sized too, but they wouldn’t be quite as cute. I’m not sure if cuteness makes things taste better, but it certainly doesn’t hurt!

3/4 cup coconut oil (solid), melted and slightly cooled
1 cup loosely packed brown sugar
1/3 cup sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/4 teaspoon coconut extract
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cups shredded coconut
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large bowl, whisk together melted coconut oil and sugars. Allow to sit for 15 minutes. Whisk in egg, egg yolk and extracts, mixing until completely smooth. Add in 1/2 cup flour, baking soda and salt, stirring to combine. Add remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time, stirring to bring it together. Finally, fold in coconut and chocolate chips.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls and place on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until just set. Allow to cool on the baking sheets for several minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from How Sweet It Is

Golden Almond Amaretti

I have used amaretti before, as part of a torte. At that time, I bought the amaretti. They are expensive and can be hard to find. I’m not exactly sure why I didn’t consider baking my own amaretti, but I didn’t. I was looking through my cookbooks, planning a big baking vent. I came across a picture of these cooking in Carole Walter’s Great Cookies and they looked so good. Hmm, amaretti. That sounds good and I figured I would make them.

I had bought the big bag of sliced almonds at Costco and I really wanted to use them before they got stale. This recipe calls for 3 cups of sliced almonds, so that was fortuitous. These cookies contain no flour, just ground up almonds. I had all of the ingredients on hand, but I’m currently out of Amaretto so I used Frangelico (hazelnut) liqueur. Ok, it might seem wrong to use hazelnut liqueur in amaretti, but I figured it was close enough. It’s just part of the glaze and in the end you couldn’t tell the difference.

Looking at the recipe in the cookbook, I thought it might be complex, but this book just has long descriptions. You grind up the almonds in the food processor, beat the eggs and bland everything together. Dipping the dough in egg and then the almond mixture is super messy and my kitchen looked like a disaster area. But the cookies are beautiful and so tasty. They have a wonderful almond flavor and would be great with a cup of coffee or tea.

2 cups sliced unblanched almonds
¾ cup sugar, divided
1-1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
4 egg yolks
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon almond extract

2 eggs
3 tablespoons Amaretto liqueur
1 cup sliced unblanched almonds, crushed into small pieces
½ cup sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Place the 2 cups sliced almonds, ¼ cup sugar and the cinnamon in the food processor. Process until the mixture begins to clump together, about 60 seconds.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the yolks on medium and then increase the speed and beat until thickened and lightened in color, 2 or more minutes. Add the remaining ½ cup sugar and mix for a minute. Stir in the vanilla and almond extract. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the almond mixture in two additions.

Prepare the glaze: in a pie pan whisk together the eggs and the Amaretto. In another pie plate, combine the crushed sliced almonds and ½ cup sugar.

Shape the dough into 32 1-inch balls. Roll the balls in the egg mixture and then the almond mixture. Place the balls on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 10-11 minutes, just until the bottoms are lightly browned. Do not over bake. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Great Cookies by Carole Walter

Cheddar Beer Bread

This is probably the easiest loaf of bread that you will ever make! We’re just home from vacation and I’m not really in the cooking mood yet, so dinner at our home has been pretty simple lately. We have some pantry staples that we are working our way through, and I’ll admit it, sometimes that gets a little dull. One night I knew I would be making some soup, and I wanted to make something to go with it. This bread made the perfect accompaniment.

What first interested me about this recipe was all of the variations. You can use any type of beer, and type of herbs, and even change up what type of cheese you use. I used aged white cheddar since I had some of that left from another recipe. We had Guinness in the fridge so I used that. I have to say that Guinness wouldn’t normally be my first choice, as it’s such a strong flavor. I’d rather used a lager or something, but, again, it’s what I had. I used Italian herbs for my seasoning, as that’s pretty much what I use in everything I cook!

This was so quick to make and it smelled so great when it came out of the oven. You could brush the top of the loaf with egg wash, but that would give it a shinier top. My load looks rustic and that seemed right. I could really taste the Guinness in the bread, but I couldn’t taste the cheese at all. So trying this with another type of beer would yield very different results. It was great paired with the soup and made a kind of plain dinner a little more interesting.

3 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh herbs (or 2 teaspoons dried)
1 cup finely grated sharp cheddar cheese
12 ounces beer

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease an 8-inch loaf pan.

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, herbs, and cheddar in a large mixing bowl. Slowly stir in the beer and mix just until combined. The batter will be thick.

Spread in the prepared loaf pan. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick stuck in the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes.

Cool in the pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Remove from the pan and cool 10 more minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Recipe from Farmgirl Fare

Date Sour Cream Coffee Cake

As I mentioned last week, for Spring Break I went to Palm Springs, California and stayed in a condo with my husband, parents, and my brother and his family. We had visited Palm Springs three years ago and one of the places we visited was Shields Date Garden. Of course we had to go back again! This time we tasted the dates and liked the honey dates so we bought some of those and brought them home. I also bought some date preserves that I need to figure out how to use.

I decided to make this date coffee cake, which comes from a cookbook that I had bought way back in 1999 on a family vacation. I love to pick up cookbooks when I travel because every time I use the cookbook I think about that trip and all the good times that I had. This is a cookbook of recipes from local folks, which are usually really great. I don’t think that dates are as popular as they once were which is too bad because dates are so sweet and good.

I used the whole dates that I bought at Shields, so I had to pit and chop the dates, which is tricky because they sticky little things. Measuring them isn’t super precise, but I suppose that’s ok. I like the combination of the sweet dates with the tartness of the sour cream. The first time I used dates it was in a sour cream date bar (I wonder where that recipe is…). This cake smelled divine while baking and was just a superb coffee cake. This cake would work with any sort of dried fruit, but if you’ve not tried dates, I really suggest you give them a try. They are wonderful!

2 cups flour
½ cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup sour cream
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, beaten
1-1/2 cups chopped dates

2 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9” spring form pan with cooking spray.

In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg. In a separate small bowl combine the sour cream, oil, and eggs. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir just until combined; don’t worry if the batter is lumpy. Stir in the dates.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Combine the 2 tablespoons sugar and the ¼ teaspoon cinnamon; sprinkle on top of the batter.

Bake for 40-45 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool until warm and remove from the pan.

Recipe from Coffee Cakes: 105 Wonderful Recipes

Butterscotch M&M Bars

Wow, I didn’t mean to post two M&M cookies in one week, but I guess that’s just how it was this week. I know we are just two days away from Easter and I still and trying to figure out what I want to bake for the holiday. This was an easier choice. I say this recipe come up on Pinterest and thought it looked good. My husband also pointed it out so I figured that would be good to make.

These bars use white chocolate M&Ms, which are one of the special holiday flavors for Easter. I had seen those at the store and thought they sounded interesting. I’ve had white chocolate that I’ve liked that have just the perfect balance of sweetness. I’ve had overly sweet white chocolate and I’ve had basically tasteless white chocolate. The expensive stuff was the tasteless stuff, go figure. I picked up two bags at the store and went to work on the cookies. For the record, the M&Ms are good on their own, sweet with the crunchy candy shell, so pretty good!

I made two batches of these cookies and they turned out quite differently. This first batch was nice golden brown and the M&Ms were distributed evenly. The second batch was darker and all the M&Ms sank to the bottom. I can’t quite figure out the difference, although maybe I had too much butterscotch in the second batch. I really like the butterscotch flavor in these bars, which paired nicely with the white chocolate chips. You could use other types of M&Ms in these and still have an excellent bar cookie.

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2/3 cup butterscotch chips, melted
1 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup White Chocolate M&M’s

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 8” × 8” pan with foil and spray the foil with cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, blend the melted butter and brown sugar together until smooth. Stir in the egg and vanilla. Mix in the melted butterscotch chips. Add flour and salt, mix until combined. Stir in the M&M’s by hand. Pour into prepared pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack before cutting into bars.

Recipe from Dinners, Dishes and Desserts

Cake Mix Cookies

I don’t often bake things that start with a cake mix, but this was a special occasion. I recently spent a week in California with my husband, my parents, my brother and his wife and two kids. We were staying in a condo so I didn’t have my normal supply of baking ingredients. I knew that I wanted to bake with my niece and nephew, but I had to figure out how that wouldn’t be too much trouble. I went looking for a cake mix cookie. I found this one and figured it would be great.

My niece is 7 and my nephew is 3 and I wanted them to be involved as much as possible. The beauty of this recipe is that you can use any cake mix that you’d like, and mix in any extras that you’d like. My niece went to the store with me and I had her pick the cake mix. She chose a chocolate cake mix which surprised me because she doesn’t really strike me as a chocolate kid. I asked her what to mix in to the dough and she thought really hard about that. She thought of things that wouldn’t be good to mix in (like licorice) and finally settled on M&Ms.

My niece and nephew took turns stirring the dough and did a really good job. Both attempted to add eggs, but both kids had accidents with that so they let Auntie Nicole add the eggs. They were very good taking turns and just couldn’t wait for the cookies to bake. They intently watched them bake! For such a simple recipe, they turned out really well, and they were enjoyed by all.

1 box cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 cup of mix-ins (chips, M&M's, nuts, toffee bits, etc.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray two cookie sheets with non-stick cooking spray or line with silicone baking mats.

In a large bowl mix together the cake mix, eggs and oil. Stir in the mix-ins. The dough may seem oily, but don’t worry.

Scoop one tablespoon of dough onto the prepared baking sheets with a cookie scoop or two teaspoons. Bake for 10-12 minutes the cookies are set. Allow to cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Hoosier Homemade

Pizza Rustica

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Pizza Rustica. The hosts for this week’s recipe are Emily of Capital Region Dining and Raelynn of The Place They Call Home. You can get the complete recipe for the Pizza Rustica on their blogs. Don’t forget to check out the Tuesdays with Dorie site to see the links from all of the Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers participating this week.

This recipe is not at all what I thought it would be. I thought it would be pizza, and it really isn’t. When it came out of the oven my husband said “This is different than I thought it would be.” I think this is more quiche than pizza: a ricotta quiche with a sweet crust and a lattice top. I have to say that I wasn’t all that excited to make this. Maybe it was because I was just home from vacation and not in the cooking mood yet. I’m not sure. I got all the ingredients and still I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. But I did make it and it turned out just fine.

I didn’t make any changes to the recipe, other than using regular parmesan cheese rather than Romano cheese. The crust was really sweet and I think that was strange. I would have preferred something with less sweetness. The filling was pretty good; I really liked the prosciutto. I hadn’t made a lattice topped pie in a long time and it was happy that it turned out, although I did find this pastry to be fairly sticky, even though I refrigerated the dough for quite a while. I wasn’t super excited about this recipe, but in the end it turned out very well!

Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, pages 430-431