ThanksNovember D27 (&Chocolate-Mint Cookies!)

I'm thankful for Christmas.

I really really am.

Even if I just want to run away from it this year.

I'm so thankful I get to give gifts from my heart and my hands.

I'm thankful for merry making and joy.

I'm thankful for holiday songs and sing-a-longs 

(in the privacy of my kitchen of course).

I'm thankful for decorations and crafts.

I'm thankful for shiny ornaments and paper snowflakes.

I'm thankful for Christmas mugs, my favourite.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I finally found an acceptable, make-again oatmeal raisin cookie.  Here in this house we are very picky about our cookies, we've got our stand-bys and IF I'm going to try a new recipe, it better be good.  This produces a wonderful chewy, yet crisp cookie.  I know they look flat in the pictures, but I found that if you leave them in the ball shape instead of flattening them before you pop them in the oven they stay much thicker.  Either way they are awesome, with a great spice level and a delicious texture.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies


This recipe is only slightly adapted from David Lebovitz.  I want to point out that the grams and cups measurements don't line up in the recipe, this is a problem on the DL site too.  I haven't figured out what to do about it, I think it has to do with European ingredients versus American ones.  I would highly suggest using a scale for accuracy here, or if that is not an option email me and I will try to figure it out for you.


I halved this recipe without any issues whatsoever.


Ingredients
225 g (1 c) unsalted butter, room temperature
150 g (2/3 c) white sugar
200 g (1 c) light brown sugar
2 eggs
245 g (1 3/4 c) ap flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg (or pre ground if necessary)
1 tsp ground cinnamon
175 g (1 3/4 c) old fashioned rolled oats
240 g (1 1/2 c) raisins


Directions
In a large electric mixing bowl combine the butter and two sugars.  Beat until very light and fluffy, about 5 minutes.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each.

In another large bowl sift together flour, baking soda, salt and spices.  Stir in the oats and raisins.  On low speed gradually incorporate the dry ingredients to the wet ones until very well distributed.

Here you can refrigerate the dough for several hours to develop flavour and also firm the dough.  I skipped this step because I was to darn lazy this time around.  Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment.

Drop the dough in 50 g or 1/4 c sized balls onto the baking sheet. (I could only fit 6 to a sheet.)  Flatten top slightly with your hand (if you refrigerated the dough.)  Bake the cookies for 15-20 minutes or until they take on some colour, but be careful not to overbake.

Salted White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

So I haven't told you about my second favourite cookie huh?  My tried and true, delicious and alway welcome?  Well darn, it just so happens I whipped up a batch a few nights ago, and hardly shared.  Truth be told it's because I finally realized the cost of a batch of cookies.  I've always told myself how inexpensive my baking is, I make something for the point of baking, not for eating, so I give it away and I do love to share it.  But I'm thinking I need to be more selective in just how giving I'll be.  This means I have to eat more to bake more, which could definitely be a problem.

Anyways, these are great cookies.  They are filled with oats (get the good kind, around here I'd recommend Anita's.  I love all Anita's products, most of their product is grown in BC, it's milled here in Chilliwack and best of all it's organic.  Try not to love them.  White chocolate is not something I usually like, but here it is delicious and the salt of course is a crucial part of the cookie.  If you can't get your hands on fleur de sel you need a coarse grain salt at least, not to coarse mind you, that wouldn't be good either.

Salted White Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies


This  was the original recipe I've made changes from it.


120 g (1 c) flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
200g (14 Tbsp) butter, softened
200 g (1 c) white sugar
44 g (3 Tbsp) brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
288 g good quality old fashioned rolled oats
6 oz white chocolate, chopped
1/2 tsp fleur de sel (or flaky sea salt)

Method:
Preheat oven to 350 F.  Whisk first four ingredients together in a bowl.

Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Scrape down the bowl and add the egg and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.  Add flour and mix until just incorporated and smooth.  Gradually add oats and white chocolate until evenly distributed.

Divide into 24 portions, 2 Tbsp each.  Roll into balls and place on silpat 2 inches apart.  Using fingertips gently press each ball into 2 cm thickness.  Sprinkle a little salt on each.

Bake until deep golden brown, about 13-16 minutes.

Homemade Oreos

Homemade oreos are, as you can imagine, awesome.  They are crunchy, like a homemade cookie can be, and taste like oreos except, better!  And these ones are super sweet because I made the filing pink, for valentines.  I was inspired to make these because Shane loves them so much and I hate buying packages of cookies.  So I fully expect him to come home, consume the five I have laying out for him in brief succession before downing a glass of milk.  That's his speed at least, I hope I'm not mistaken, I do love when my baking vanishes before I even get another piece, especially when that baking is as worthy as this.

This is a very forgiving recipe, hard to mess up actually, so give it a whirl, you'll make someone's day.

Homemade Oreos


If pink is not your speed keep 'em white, or go blue or yellow for spring, heck even a little green would be awesome especially if there was a little mint extract involved.


Adapted from here.


Made 20 sandwiches for me


150 g (1 1/4 c) all purpose flour
40 g (1/2 c) your best dark cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt (only if you use unsalted butter)
250 g (1 1/4 c) sugar
155 g (1/2 c + 2 Tbsp) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 egg

125 g (1/2 c) unsalted butter, room temperature
400 g (2 c) icing sugar
2 tsp vanilla
optional - dye gel (I use Wilton brand)

Preheat oven to 375 F. Set racks in the middle.

In the bowl of a mixer blend flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt and sugar with a paddle attachment.  Add the butter on low speed and then the egg.  Continue to mix until the  dough comes together in a mix mass.

Roll the dough into teaspoon sized balls and place on a lined baking sheet at least two inches apart.  Flatten lightly with your fingers.  Bake for 9 minutes.  Let them cool a little before transferring to a cooling rack.

To make the cream, place butter in a large mixing bowl and beat it around a little with beaters to make is smooth and light.  Add the icing sugar and vanilla and keep on mixing until the filling is light and fluffy 2 or 3 minutes.  (With hand held beaters it can seem like it won't come together, keep going, it'll work out.)  This is where you can beat in some color, beware a little gel goes a long way.

Scrape the icing into a piping bag with a bigger tip and squirt blobs onto the center of half the cookies.  Or alternatively use a spoon to scrape the icing on the cookies.  Press the cookie's equal half lightly onto the cream.  Done.

Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies

I want to introduce you to these.  They sure don't look or sound like much, but are they ever good!?  Chocolate Gingerbread cookies.  Not really anything to the name, but they are my favourite thing I've made this season.  I made them on a whim, for a night of wine and cheese, ha! they've got nothing to do with wine or cheese, but we gobbled them none the less.

They are chewy, a huge plus in any cookie and very complex.  They are spicy with ginger and dark with a tiny bit of crunch all around the outside from the sugar.  They feel so decadent, but I can't. stop. eating.

Chocolate Gingerbread Cookies


I found these here.


1 heaping cup of semisweet chocolate chunks, chopped
180 g (1 1/2 c) ap flour
1 1/2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp allspice
1 tbsp cocoa powder
125 g (1/2 c) butter
100 g (1/2 c packed) brown sugar
1/2 c molasses
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp boiling water
granulated sugar, for rolling

Cover a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment.  In a medium bowl sift flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cocoa.  Set some water on the stove to boil.

In a mixing bowl cream butter on medium-high speed for three minutes until it is white and very creamy.  Add brown sugar mixing until combined.  Pour in molasses and combine.

In a small bowl mix together baking soda and boiling water.  First beat in half of the flour mix, then all of the baking soda/water mix and then the remainder of the flour mix.  Mix in chocolate chips (Batter will be very stiff) and dump out onto a piece of plastic wrap.  Pat into a one inch thick rectangle, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, at least two hours.

Heat oven to 325 degrees.  Cut dough into 24 equal pieces.  Roll each piece into a ball and coat in sugar.  I would place no more than 8 per cookie sheet, they spread a lot.  Place extra cookies in the fridge to chill while waiting for their turn to bake.  Bake for 14-16 minutes until the tops crack slightly.  Cool on the sheet for five minutes and then move to a cooling rack.

Christmas Box Finale

                    

The christmas boxes finally went out.  I'm not as happy with these ones as the ones from last year, but these were a heck of a lot easier.  There was only one item in the boxes I baked the day before, everything else was done in advance and just needed to be portioned.  

The final list was: 

Chocolate Espresso Cookies

Speculaas Spice Cookies

Cranberry Bliss Bars

Bacon or Hazelnut Toffee

Hot Chocolate on a Stick

Spiced Nuts

Orange Pistachio Biscotti

I did 17 this year.  I love doing them, I am looking forward to next years already.

Cranberry White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

My birthday now has come and past.  That elusive day in the year, one you wait for 364 days and then it's gone, 364 more.  Your birthday is one day all about you.  It always makes me so uncomfortable, people singing me songs and everyone watching me open gifts, the excitement you have to show, an uncharacteristic response, even if you are excited.  Center stage is not a natural position for me to be in.  Maybe everyone feels this way, it may just come with the territory, a celebration of another year we've all been together.  

Two decades, I suppose is a little something to celebrate.  In another decade I'll be dreading the day, or at least this is what I've seen.  I can't even imagine myself in two years, never mind ten.  How crazy will it be to look back as I turn thirty and remember my life before...whatever happens between now and then.

I did make a birthday cake, a chocolate one.  I didn't like it and it definitely didn't photograph well.  So I made these cookies for you instead.  For Shane if I'm being honest.  He's been asking for cookies for several days and I've been holding out, so here they are.

Cranberry white chocolate chunk cookies 

Makes 18

125 g (1/2 c) unsalted butter, room temperature
100 g (1/2 c) white sugar
100 g (1/2 c) light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
150 g (1 1/4 c) ap flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 c old fashioned oats
3/4 c white chocolate chunks
1 c cranberries, dried

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper.

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars together until smooth.  Add in egg and vanilla and mix until well combined.

In a separate bowl stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt (if you used unsalted butter).  Slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet, mixing until incorporated.

Fold in the oats, chopped chocolate and cranberries.  Shape the dough into 2-3 Tbsp balls and place on baking sheet, only 6 or 8 on a sheet.  (They spread quite a bit).  Bake cookies for 14-16 minutes or until they are golden brown.  Remove from oven and let cool on the baking sheet for two minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

Hazelnut Cookies

It started with a bag of the most wonderful hazelnuts I’ve ever had.  Purely delicious.  While at the store the other morning I was deciding what nuts to buy for my granola when Shane suggested we try a trip to the hazelnut farm.  A farm he passes five times a week, twice a day and yet somehow, a farm we’ve never been to.  We dropped in after visiting our favourite honey farm, immediately we were given samples of more than a dozen different treats the farm makes on site.  That was the beginning of the end.  They roped us in and before we knew it, we came home with a bag of dry roasted hazelnuts, a coffee coated batch and a jar or hazelnut chocolate spread (also known as the jar that killed my thighs).

I put some hazelnuts in my granola and the rest in the freezer. This morning while searching for an easy fall treat, I noticed that I had hazelnut cookies written down on my 'To Bake' list.  I remember reading this recipe in my first issue of Martha Stewart.  They sounded so good, so simple and fresh that I didn’t want to use just any stale nuts from the store, so I added them to the list, thought about them a few times and waited.  This morning they were perfect.  Moist, crisp, buttery and nutty.  All you taste is hazelnuts and its all you want.  I added some chocolate on the top to make them a little more special (or maybe I really like Nutella!)

Now I'm sorry to say these aren't my weekly post of Christmas cookies, I'm just getting ready for another four night shifts, so bear with me, I hope to get them up this week yet.

Hazelnut Cookies 

(adapted from Martha Stewart)

Hazelnut meal, for those who haven’t heard, is just toasted hazelnuts (skins taken off) put in the food processor and blitzed to oblivion.  It’s a noisy ordeal I’ll warn you, but easy enough to do.  In the end the hazelnuts should be very fine.

125g (1/2 c) butter, room temperature

100g (1/2 c) sugar

150g (1 1/4 c) flour

1/2 c toasted hazelnut meal

1/2 t coarse salt

1 oz unsweetened chocolate

2 1/2 oz semisweet chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  Beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed until pale and creamy.  Add flour, hazelnut meal and salt, beat until dough forms.  

Roll out the dough in your hands to one inch balls.  Place on a cookie sheet and flatten slightly with a fork.  Bake until the edges of the cookie are golden brown, 12-13 minutes.  

In a medium bowl chop chocolate in place over a pan of simmering water.  Once chocolate is melted dip the tops of the cookies and place on a rack to harden.