The Best Snickerdoodles

I found a snickerdoodle recipe I love and need to remember. Snickerdoodles are such a great cookie this time of year. I think its something about the cinnamon that just screams the coziness of the season. I love the tanginess the cream of tartar gives these cookies as well. They are chewy, soft, and a little bit spicy. So good. 

Ingredients: 

1 cup butter, room temp

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

For rolling: 

1 tbs cinnamon

1/4 cup sugar 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mix all ingredients in mixer. Roll into 1 1/2 inch balls, then mix together your cinnamon and sugar, and roll the balls in that until their entire outside is coated. Then bake for 8 minutes. 

Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies

I know when I have a cookie craving, it can often come late and night. (Ok, maybe while I'm watching some housewives...) I don't really feel like turning on the oven and waiting around while I get my butter to room temperature, chill my dough, and bake several batches of cookies. No Bake Cookies are the perfect solution for that. These are a great "one pot" treat and are ready in minutes. This particular recipe has a great depth of flavor from the dark chocolate pieces, and a nice salty bite from the peanut butter. It's also got a great chewy texture from the oats. You will love it. 

Make sure you set out a large sheet of wax paper because you will want that ready once your ingredients are combined. 

1 stick of butter
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons dutch processed cocoa powder
1 cup white sugar
3 pieces dark chocolate melting wafers (or you can use any dark chocolate you have on hand)
1 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla 
1/4 tsp salt
4-5 cups of oats depending on your chocolate to oat preference 

Melt your stick of butter. I LOVE the taste of brown butter in this recipe, so if you feel ambitious, you can let your butter heat up until brown pieces begin to form and it turns a deep golden color. If you are in a hurry, you can just melt it quickly. Then add your milk slowly so you don't scald it. Mix in your cocoa powder and sugar. Bring all of this goodness to a boil for about 1 minute, make sure you stir it the entire time so nothing burns. Reduce the heat to low. Then add in your dark chocolate pieces, peanut butter, vanilla, and salt. Stir until everything is combined. Remove from the heat and add your oats. I would start with 4 cups and keep adding until it looks like everything is coated well and there is no extra chocolate on the bottom of the pan. Then drizzle your wax paper with clumps of the oat mixture. Wait until they cool and you (and the cookies) are all set!

Pistachio Wedding Cookies

Italian wedding cookies, Russian tea cakes, Mexican wedding buttons, whatever you want to call them, wedding cookies are my favorite.  They are salty, butter, and sweet all at the same time. With such a huge flavor profile to live up to, they are not a low fat or healthy cookie by any means. But that's ok, sometimes we deserve to indulge. And if I'm going to indulge, these cookies are my favorite. These are so easy too! 

1 1/2 sticks of room temperature butter

1/4 cup white sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 box pistachio instant pudding mix (3.4 ounces)

1 3/4 cup white flour

1/2 tsp salt 

1/4 cup powdered sugar

Mix your butter and white sugar in a mixer until fluffy. Add vanilla, pudding mix, flour, and salt. My son loved this cookie mix because its eggless, so I actually let him lick the beater! Roll your dough into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour or longer. 

Preheat oven to 350. Roll your dough into small 1 inch balls. Bake for 8 minutes. Wait for cookies to be warm, but not completely cool, and sprinkle with powdered sugar. If they are too hot when you sprinkle them with sugar the sugar will melt. 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I recently made these chocolate chip pumpkin cookies from Sally's Baking Addiction. http://sallysbakingaddiction.com/2013/09/04/pumpkin-chocolate-chip-cookies/  I fed them to my friends and they ranted and raved. My husband said they were the best pumpkin cookies he's ever eaten. High praise. I wasn't madly in love, but I did eat the entire batch in one day. So I guess I am being forced to save my version of this recipe for use next fall. (As you can see my cookies look nothing like Sally's. I didn't flatten mine as she suggested.)  

Mix together:

-1/2 cup MELTED butter (melted es muy importante) 

-1/4 cup packed brown sugar

-1/2 cup white sugar

-1 generous tsp vanilla

-7 tablespoons pumpkin purée 

Mix until smooth.

Then add on top of the pumpkin mixture without stiring yet:

-1.5 cups of flour 

-1/4 tsp baking soda

-1/4 tsp baking powder 

-1/2 tsp salt 

-1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg 

-1/4 tsp cloves 

-1 tsp cinnamon 

-1 cup chocolate chips 

Once everything is sitting in a big pile on your pumpkin mixture, fluff all the dry ingredients to disperse them. Then mix them into the pumpkin mixture. Do not over mix. 

Because of the melted butter you MUST chill the dough for 30 minutes before baking. 

Bake at 350 for 8-9 minutes. Makes about 2 dozen cookies. 

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

These are a classic all American chewy oatmeal cookie.  Sorry again that my blog photography is not very beautiful. When I'm done cooking I'm more interested in eating vs photo-ing. 

2 sticks butter

1/4 cup white sugar

1 1/2 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs 

3 tsp vanilla 

1 tsp salt 

1 3/4 cups flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

3 1/2 cup oats 

1 cup chocolate chips

1 cup chopped walnuts 

  

Bake at 350 for 12 minutes

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last night I helped host a baby shower that looked like it literally came to life from Pinterest. My friend is a professional party planner and the "woodsy" theme was complete with a trail mix station and a s'mores bar with live flame. It was legit. 

I contributed a bunch of stuff for the s'mores bar, including homemade marshmellows. But by far the hit of the night were my chocolate chip cookies. I tried a new recipe because all my current cookie recipes were just good. But these were great. My husband said it was the best cookie he's ever eaten and if I didn't bring back the leftovers, to not bother to come home. 

Turn oven to 375. 

Ingredients

3/4

cup white sugar

3/4

cup packed brown sugar

1

cup butter softened

1

teaspoon vanilla

1

egg

2 1/4

cups all-purpose flour

1

teaspoon baking soda

1/2

teaspoon salt

1

Large handful semisweet chocolate chips 

Bake for 10 minutes and if you feel adventurous add them to a s'mores bar!

Pistachio French Macaroons

So a lot of my new friends here are wonderful and amazing women. Many of them are also what I like to call "fancy pants". Their houses are perfect and look like a designer pinterest board. They always dress beautifully and are sweet and generous and I hope I can learn how to get my crap together like them some day. Anyway, I wanted to make some "thank you" treats for my "fancy pants" friends. I got inspired while at the River Market. Bloom Bakery makes these to die for french macarons. But they are also $2 a pop, and my wallet wants to die whenever I step foot into that place. I figured, how hard can it be to make my own macarons? Well truthfully? It's dang hard. But now that I've got one batch under my belt, I think it can only get easier. Right? Well here's hoping.

I love giving baked goods away in these martha stewart treat boxes. It makes even ordinary cookies fun!

 French Macaron Recipe Ingredients
4 large egg whites 1/3 cup white sugar plus 1 tsp
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar plus 4 tsp
1 cup plus 3 tsp almond flour (also known as almong meal)
Tiny pinch of iodized salt
Food coloring of your choice (I used green to match my pistachio theme)
Crushed pistachios for the top of the cookies (optional) 

Preheat the oven to 300 degree

Mix egg whites and white sugar in your kitchen aid until the peaks are stiff and nothing falls out when you turn the bowl upside down. (Mix it 1-2 minutes after nothing will fall out of the bowl.) Add your food coloring and mix for only about 20 more seconds. Put a little extra color than you think you need because the color usually will fade during baking.

Sift the almond meal and icing sugar and salt twice, discarding all the lumps that are too big to pass through your sifter. (This is boring, fair warning.) Fold into the egg white mixture. It should take roughly 30-50 folds using a rubber spatula.  The mixture should be smooth and not runny. Over-mix and your macarons will be flat, under mix and they will not be smooth on top - so be careful! Then you put your cookie mix into a piping bag and pipe little drops about 1-2 inches big on your silpat or parchment paper. I used a silpat. You will want to tap your cookie sheet on your counter about 5 or 6 times pretty harshly to get out all the air bubbles. I wasn't super rough with mine and mine cracked a bit because of that. So be careful. 

Many recipes I found varied in the amount of cooking time. Some were 12 minutes, others were 20 minutes. I actually ended up cooking mine 30 minutes which probably was a little too long. But the main thing you want is to make sure the cookies come off clean when you take them out of the oven, because if they don't you will have a crusty outside and goopy inside. Anyway, this was a tough one, delish, but tough. Enjoy!