Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies

This recipe popped up in one of my Martha Stewart emails recently and I was intrigued. I wanted to bring a little something to an event I was attending and, knowing someone I was planning to share the treats with has an issue with gluten, this recipe seemed like a good option. It also just happened to be National Peanut Butter Day. Who knew?

Chocolate Pretzel Cookies

I ventured out to the 'burbs last weekend and found myself at Sobey's in search of a deal. While I was there I picked up their in store magazine, Inspired, and found this recipe. I'm always looking for cookie recipes with a twist and these seemed to fit the bill - chocolate pretzel cookies. A pretty classic cookie dough full of coconut, oats, chocolate chips and pretzel pieces.

Chocolate Pretzel Cookies
Sobey's Inspired Magazine, Fall 2011
Makes 30 (using a tablespoon sized scoop, I got over 50)

1 cup butter
3/4 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup sugar

1egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour

1 cup shredded coconut
1/2 cup large flake oats (not instant or quick oats)

1 tsp baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 cup pretzels, broken into pieces
1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup puffed rice cereal

• Preheat oven to 375°F. Using a hand mixer or stand mixer with the paddle attachment on medium speed, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy, then add the egg and vanilla.
• In a large bowl, combine flour, coconut, oats, baking soda and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture, and mix until combined. Blend in pretzels, chocolate and cereal until just combined.
• Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake in centre of oven, 8 min. for chewy cookies, 10 min. for crisp ones. Cool on wire racks.

  
These were really easy to pull together. Really no more difficult than a regular chocolate chip cookie, but a little more interesting. I did alter the recipe slightly. I didn't have any puffed rice cereal so I added an extra half cup of oats. I also added an extra 1/4 cup or so of chocolate chips. Once I put in the half cup it didn't seem like nearly enough for the amount of dough in the bowl so I threw in another handful. Sometimes baking isn't all about following the directions.

I would certainly make these again. The one issue I had was that they were really inconsistent. Some spread out flat and some didn't seem to spread out too much at all. My best guess is that, because of all the stuff in the dough, some didn't have enough dough to keep them together so they spread. Not really sure. They all tasted the same but some just looked ugly. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. 

Do you have any tricks to make a basic cookie stand out?

Share Your Sweets: Breakfast Breads

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve participated in the Share Your Sweets slideshow on Serious Eats. Seeing that the theme for this week was ‘breakfast breads’ I figured I had to participate. As evidenced by the Great Bake Sale of 2011, I love loaves and quick breads. We’re entering into my favourite season, and there’s nothing that says Fall more than pumpkin, so I figured I might as well make a pumpkin loaf to submit for the slideshow.  

Despite how much I love pumpkin, I don’t really have too many pumpkin recipes in my repertoire. I’ve made pumpkin cinnamon rolls and pumpkin crumble bars (both soon to be posted here), and of course I’ve made pumpkin pie (probably my favourite food ever in life), but I didn’t have a recipe for a pumpkin loaf.

I started searching around on the internets and finally came across one from a familiar source. The recipe comes from Lynne Frappier’s blog, The Twisted Chef. Lynne was one of the judges at the infamous Ottawa CupcakeCamp that inspired the whole desire to document my baking adventures. Over the last year, she and I have become Twitter buddies (in my mind anyway) and often discuss baking, cupcakes, and the like. Here’s the thing I love about Twitter – we’ve never actually met in person. Despite having a mutual friend in real life (Hi Amanda!) and spotting her at Montreal CupcakeCamp, we’ve never actually managed to have a face to face conversation even though I feel like we have. The wonders of the internet.

Apologies for the tangent. Lynne’s pumpkin loaf recipe was just what I was looking for. A straightforward recipe (that she’d made many times with great success) that also provided some variations. I decided to go with the chocolate chip. 

This is what happens when I make a recipe I found online and forgot to print. It gets written out in shorthand on the back of a random envelope. This is scaled to half of Lynne's original recipe.

The recipe came together really easily and I loved that I didn’t have to pull out the KitchenAid. Two bowls, a whisk, and a spatula were all I needed. I cut the recipe in half because I only have one 9” loaf pan and I’d already brought a bunch of baking into the office the day before and figured my poor co-workers didn’t need to worry about devouring two huge pumpkin loaves on top of everything else.

I made a couple of small modifications. I used half allspice and half cloves. Instead of a full 1/3 cup of water I used about half water and half maple syrup just because I had it around. I don’t think it made any noticeable difference to the taste so definitely feel free to go along with the original recipe.

Trust me - it tastes better than this picture makes it look

I loved this. It tastes like Fall. It’s super moist. It’s delicious. A few co-workers were unsure about the pumpkin/chocolate combo but they liked it a lot after tasting it. It holds up well too. Today is day three and it’s still delicious. I would most certainly recommend you try this one out.

What is your favourite recipe for Fall?

Chocolate Fudge Cake

While I was home in PEI this past week, I was given the task of making dessert for a big family dinner. I wanted to get all creative and show the family what I'm capable of in the kitchen but my dreams were dashed. My mother informed me that this was what I was making...

I usually don't use cake mixes. Not that I have anything against them - they're reliable for a reason. They've been tried and tested to turn out well every time, but it sometimes feels like cheating. Know what I mean? Anyway, this is what my mom wanted me to make so I obliged. 

This particular combination is apparently pretty popular. I'd never made it before but it's a favorite of my aunt and her family. Based on the ingredients, a couple of her friends have dubbed it the "chemical cake". Seems appropriate. The ingredients were pretty straight forward as you can see in the recipe...cake mix, pudding, sour cream, and chocolate chips.

I was a bit skeptical of the batter at first. It was so thick that I didn't think that the proportions could possibly have been right.

I mixed in the bag of chocolate chips, threw it in the pan, and hoped for the best. 
 

Turns out I was wrong. The cake turned out really well. As per usual, I was a little too eager to get the cake out of the pan and left a chunk behind in the pan. Luckily that piece was mostly chocolate chips so I just stuck it back on the cake and it seemed to hold. I knew the cake was just going to be cut up and dished out so I wasn't overly worried about presentation. 

The overall result was really quite good! Mom served it up with peanut butter fudge crunch ice cream instead of frosting. A pretty delicious combo. I wasn't sure I was going to be too fond of this concoction but I really liked it. It was all of the things you expect from a cake mix. It was moist without being soggy, had a really good texture, and had a good chocolate flavor. It's not something I'm going to make everyday but I think it's a really good alternative for people who aren't too comfortable with baking from scratch and want to make something more interesting than a plain cake mix. 

What's your favorite cake mix modification?

Ice Cream Sandwiches

My Friday night was spent hanging out with some great friends enjoying time with their new baby, testing out new deck furniture, and barbecuing our first hot dogs of the season. I was tasked with bringing the hot dogs and buns, a salty snack, and limes and mint (from my own balcony garden!) for some delicious mojitos. Peggy (hi Pegs!) was in charge of salads and something sweet to finish off our first summer meal. And what she came up with was genius...homemade (or home assembled) ice cream sandwiches. 

I thought a hot and sunny day like today was the perfect time to share this treat with all of you. The decision to document our dessert was an impromptu one, so please excuse the pictures. Trying to sort out the settings on an unfamiliar camera resulted in less than stellar photography. 

You might as well start with the good stuff

Chocolate chip pecan cookies from Metro

That is a perfect looking scoop

Mmm...

Put on the top and squish

Peggy thought it looked like a tongue : )

Cookie dough ice cream + chewy chocolate chip pecan cookies = an easy and delicious treat. I would not hesitate to eat these, or some variation thereof, again. Thanks again Peggy. You choice was an excellent one. Maybe for the next BBQ we'll have to try a different combo.

Do you have a go-to assemble at home dessert you like to serve when you're short on time or it's too hot to make something from scratch? 

The Bake Sale: Cookies

I made two kinds of delicious cookies for my bake sale last week. I started off planning to make just a classic chocolate chip cookie. Then, after thinking about it more, I added an oatmeal cranberry. Kind of along the same lines as adding the loaves. I figured an oatmeal cookie might be more appealing at 7am than a cupcake (no matter how delicious they look). 

My favorite chocolate chip cookie comes from the Joy of Baking site. I'm not sure what it is about this one that makes it different compared to other classics like the famous Tollhouse recipe but I like this one best. It's got good flavor and the cookies stay chewy which is very important to me.

The cookie scoop was a good investment

I had a harder time finding the recipe for the oatmeal cranberry cookies. I knew I wanted to use the classic Quaker recipe but I couldn't find the one I thought I was looking for. The one on the Quaker site just didn't seem quite right. This is actually one of the first cookies I ever remember making. The recipe used to be on the back of the cardboard oatmeal container that we always had in the house. I checked around on a few blogs and I finally found a link back to the Quaker site to the Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe. Since I don't really love raisins, I opted for the more universally appealing dried cranberries instead. 

I'm happy to report that both of these cookies freeze really, really well. I made both batches almost a week before the sale and kept them "fresh" in the freezer until the weekend. Since I had quite a few left I threw them back in the freezer and hoped for the best. They were delicious that day and still delicious today, even after they were refrozen. I might have to take some of them in to the office soon. Now that I've remembered they're there, I might have a hard time keeping my hand out of the freezer. 

Do you have a favorite recipe that freezes (and maybe refreezes) well?

Lots of Loaves

I've been a bad blogger. I posted last week about the big bake sale I prepped for and pulled off and promised to post more about what I made, and I haven't yet. But here I am! Last week was absolutely insane and I just wasn't able to get it done. Hopefully I didn't keep you waiting too long. 

Let's start off with the loaves. When I decided on this whole bake sale endeavor I was only planning on making cupcakes. Then I remembered this thing was going to start off early in the morning and maybe it would be a good idea to add some sort of baked good that was a little more breakfasty. Hence, the addition of the loaves.

The first recipe that came to mind was another one that I used to make for my roommates in Australia, Burt Wolf's banana bread. My decision was made for me when my coworker, Karen, offered me some bananas from the stash in her freezer. I thought about branching out and trying a new recipe instead of my tried and true. It just felt a little boring. I checked out a bunch of blogs and all of my cookbooks but, after a very thorough search I decided to go with what I knew instead. I probably hadn't made the recipe in at least seven or eight years but a recipe stays the same, right? I doubled the recipe to suit the number of bananas I had and added chocolate chips to half. I'm wild and crazy, I know. Breakfast doesn't have to be totally healthy, right?

Before

After

They look like they turned out pretty well. I have to be honest though, I never actually tried them, so I have absolutely no idea what they tasted like! No complaints from the customers though so I'm hoping for the best.

A couple of days after the banana donation, Karen brought me a big bunch of rhubarb from her garden. We'd been talking about my love of it for weeks and I was pretty excited when it was finally ready to eat. Since I had more ingredients, I decided to make another loaf. Why not? I decided to try out a Canadian Living recipe for rhubarb loaf. Three factors played into that decision - 1. it used buttermilk and I had lots to use up, 2. it didn't call for butter and I was afraid I wasn't going to have enough, and 3. it made two loaves which meant I could take one in to work and share it. 

Before - I forgot to take a picture of the after

These I did taste and they were delicious. Moist and tasty. I will most definitely be using this recipe again. Minimal ingredients for maximum results. The only change I made was to the topping. I threw in some oats and 1/4 cup of flour to make it a little more crunchy and to make it go a little further. 

I think the loaves were a good decision. They were pretty popular and the first things to go. If I ever do this again, I'll be sure to make more!

C is for Cookie

By the end of the work day today I had a hankering for cookies. Peanut butter cookies to be exact. For some reason, I've been thinking about these cookies for a few weeks. I last made them a couple of years ago for a birthday celebration at the office. It must have been in one of my daily Martha Stewart emails where I first saw this recipe for Peanut Butter Toffee cookies. How could they be bad? It's a really easy recipe to pull together. I made these tonight in under an hour even accounting for all the pauses for picture taking. A simple peanut butter base with added toffee bits and chocolate chips for good measure. The recipe calls for Skor bars (Heath for any Americans out there) but the chips were a more less expensive option.

First things first...peanut butter

Cookie dough sans goodies

Mmmm...

The finished product

Looks good enough to eat!

I think they turned out quite well. Hopefully my co-workers are ready for some sugar tomorrow.

Do you have any favorite, easy cookie recipes you're willing to pull together on a weeknight?