Tag: Cookies

Week 47: Persimmon Cookies

So this week’s recipe was something that fell onto my lap. The COO at my work had a large bag of persimmons, and he was giving them out to everyone. I took a few to begin with, but then realized I could make cookies with them, so I went and got some more.

Persimmons?

To make these cookies, you need to puree the persimmons. To do that, you need to cut them open (I cut them into fours), remove the center (like an apple), and scoop the inside of the good stuff. Then you have to run it into a blender for a while to get that sweet puree texture we desire for the cookie recipe.

Once it’s pureed, you need to mix 2 persimmons worth of puree with some baking soda in a small bowl. I personally used 3 persimmons worth because 2 didn’t seem like enough. Then you mix all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.

Dry and wet ingredients ready for action!

Once those sets of ingredients are ready, you need to mix one stick of butter (at room temperature) with a cup of white sugar.

I feel like the paddle attachment should go deeper into the bowl…

Then you get to add the egg and the puree mixed with the baking soda.

Fascinating…

Once those are mixed together, then you need to pour in the dry ingredients. What I do is use a sheet of parchment paper and slowly add it to the stand mixer.

It’s better to add the dry ingredients to the stand mixer a little bit at a time.

After the flour mix is added, I threw in some craisins and some chopped walnuts, and let the mixer do its thing.

Once everything is combined, you get a nice spiffy looking dough.

Aw yiss…cookie dough. You can see chunks of the persimmon puree…

Unfortunately, this recipe calls for “teaspooonfuls” of dough onto the greased cookie sheet. That meant I needed to use my least favorite kitchen utensil: the Oxo Cookie Scoop 1Tbsp version. That thing sucks, and I need to find a better version.

For greasing the cookie sheets, I just took some unsalted butter and wiped it on the cookie sheets. Then I added the dough little by little. The cookies were baked for 18 minutes on an aluminum cookie sheet.

Perfect!

Needless to say, this was a favorite among my coworkers, and it’s definitely a keeper.

Oh great, I just got more persimmons from work…

Ingredients:

  • 2 ripe persimmons, pureed
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 cups all-purpose flour 
  • ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg 
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • ½ cup butter
  • 1 cup raisins
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).
  2. Dissolve baking soda in persimmon pulp and set aside.
  3. Sift flour, spices and salt together, set aside.
  4. Cream together butter or margarine and sugar until fluffy, beat in egg and persimmon. Stir in dry ingredients. Stir in nuts and raisins.
  5. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.

Source

Week 46: Key Lime Pie Cookies

I decided this week to make cookies that weren’t fall-related, so I went with something that has nothing to do with anything frankly: Key Lime Pie Cookies!

I apologize for the lack of pictures. It was a busy weekend where it felt like I didn’t stop at all except to sleep.

The good news is that this is a recipe that can be made on impulse, assuming you have all the necessary ingredients. The only things you might need to get from the store are a couple of sticks of salted butter, a couple of limes (for zesting), and a container of lime juice.

The recipe comes together in the usual fashion: butter and sugar mixed together, egg and vanilla extract added, then the lime juice and lime zest, and then the flower mixed with the kosher salt and baking soda, with an added twist of graham cracker crumbs.

Unfortunately, this is one of those recipes that calls for the worst cookie scoop ever: the Oxo 1Tbsp scooper, and it once again didn’t do a good job of actually scooping cookie dough.

These were baked on aluminum cookie sheets covered with a sheet of parchment paper for 13 minutes.

Once the cookies have cooled down, you need to melt some white chocolate to drizzle. You need to microwave a bowl of white chocolate for 30 seconds at a time. I wouldn’t recommend more than three times because after the 4th time, it starts to clump up for some reason. Do not microwave the white chocolate for more than three times!

Once the white chocolate is melted, you need to somehow get it into a Ziploc bag, cut one of the corners, and squirt it onto the cookies.

I’m a master of my craft, lol.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup (2 sticks) salted butter, at room temperature 
  • 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3 tablespoons key lime juice
  • 2 teaspoons grated lime zest
  • 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 cup finely crushed graham cracker crumbs
  • 1/2 cup white chocolate

Instructions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix the butter and sugar on medium speed for 2 minutes until light and fluffy.
  3. Add the egg, vanilla, key lime juice and lime zest and continue mixing for 1 more minute, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary. Mix in the salt and baking soda until incorporated.
  4. Turn the speed to low and add the flour and graham cracker crumbs until the dough comes together.
  5. Roll the dough into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart on the baking sheet. Bake for 9 to 10 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden.
  6. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool.
  7. Place the white chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Heat on full power for 25 seconds. Remove the bowl from the microwave and stir the chocolate. Repeat this process until the white chocolate is melted and smooth. Transfer the melted chocolate to a small ziptop bag. Snip one corner of the bag off with scissors and drizzle the white chocolate on top of the cookies. Allow the white chocolate to set completely.
  8. Store the cookies airtight at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Source

Week 45: Pumpkin Spice Cookies!

As promised, I decided to make another pumpkin-themed cookie this week, and this time it was the Pumpkin Spice Cookie.

This is actually one of the easiest recipes to make, but it does require some planning ahead, as you need an egg at room temperature. No butter or sugar is needed, since the yellow cake mix makes up for it.

For this recipe, you’ll need three bowls: a small, medium, and large bowl. The large bowl will consist of your dry ingredients: yellow cake mix, quick cooking oats, and pumpkin pie spice. The medium bowl will have the wet ingredients: pumpkin, the egg, and canola oil. The small bowl will have your powdered sugar, orange juice, and orange zest.

No stand mixer required for this recipe!

There’s not really that much to the recipe. The most time consuming part of making this recipe is probably making the frosting for the cookies, since I had to freshly squeeze orange juice and then zested them for the frosting.

As long as you have the ingredients ahead of time, this is a very simple recipe to make. Plus, the yellow cake mix is pretty cheap at most grocery stores, so it’s not like it’s a stupidly expensive specialty ingredient.

This recipe calls for the use of our trusty 1.5Tbsp Oxo cookie scoop, that never lets us down, to scoop the balls of dough.

The only issue I had with this recipe was that you need to make sure you scoop the dough, place it on a cookie sheet coated in cooking spray, and flatten the cookies. Because the cookies were pretty sticky, it’s hard to get a large cookie for this.

They don’t get much bigger after baking, trust me.

I actually made this recipe twice because I originally made this recipe with the cookie dough balls on a cookie sheet covered with a sheet of parchment paper, but they felt way too soft for me. I remade them the next day and put them on the cookie sheets coated with cooking spray, and it made a marginal difference. It made the cookies a little more firm since you’re cooking the cookies directly on the aluminum cookie sheets.

The cookies were baked in the oven on aluminum cookie sheets for 23 minutes. Then they were cooled on racks, and then frosted.

The frosting was pretty easy to make, as you just combine all the ingredients. I’d recommend putting in 4 tablespoons of frosting since with 3, it’s pretty thick and hard to spread.

Final result!

Overall, I’d say this is a recipe I recommend for the fall season, and they’re going to be a delight for anyone you make them for.

Ingredients:

  • 1 package yellow cake mix (regular size)
  • 1/2 cup quick-cooking oats
  • 2 to 2-1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
  • 1 can (15 ounces) solid-pack pumpkin
  • 1 large egg, room temperature
  • 2 tablespoons canola oil

Frosting:

  • 3 cups confectioners’ sugar
  • 1 teaspoon grated orange zest
  • 3 to 4 tablespoons orange juice

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°.
  2. Combine cake mix, oats and pie spice.
  3. In another bowl, beat pumpkin, egg and oil. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened.
  4. Drop by 2 tablespoonfuls onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray; flatten with the back of a spoon. Bake until edges are golden brown, 18-20 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.
  5. For frosting, combine confectioners’ sugar, orange zest and enough orange juice to achieve desired consistency.
  6. Spread over cooled cookies.

Source

Week 44: Buttermilk Cookies

So I decided to do something that didn’t have pumpkin in it, but don’t you worry: next weekend, we’re back to pumpkin cookie recipes!

This weekend, I wanted to do something different, and I went with a buttermilk cookie recipe. It’s pretty simple and does require some prep. You do need to have one egg at room temperature, so there’s that. The only weird ingredients you need for this are buttermilk for the cookie dough and whole milk for the frosting.

The recipe starts off the usual way: mix the softened butter with the sugar. Then you throw in an egg with some vanilla. While it’s mixing you put in the dry ingredients mixed together, and then top it off with some buttermilk. It’s pretty standard procedure at this point.

You need to scoop up 1Tbsp balls of dough to put on your cookie sheet. Unfortunately, the Oxo one I have does a terrible job, and it can’t seem to give me a good consistent scoop every time. If anyone knows of any good 1Tbsp cookie scoops, I’m open to trying them out.

I baked the cookies for 14 minutes on aluminum cookie sheets with a sheet of parchment paper for easy cleanup. They came out perfectly browned on the edges.

After that, I made the frosting, which involves combining all the ingredients, although I just added the milk little by little instead of just measuring. The frosting came out perfect.

Do I recommend this recipe? Yes, if you can get a small amount of buttermilk and whole milk.

As I mentioned, this does require planning ahead.

I wish the cookies looked more consistent…

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 large egg, room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup buttermilk
  • frosting:
  • 3 tablespoons butter, softened
  • 3-1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
  • 1/4 cup whole milk
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped walnuts, optional

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 375°. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
  2. Beat in egg and vanilla.
  3. In a separate bowl, whisk flour, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with buttermilk, beating well after each addition.
  4. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets.
  5. Bake until edges are lightly browned, 10-12 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.
  6. For frosting, combine butter, confectioners’ sugar, milk and vanilla; beat until smooth. Spread over cookies; if desired, sprinkle with chopped walnuts.

Source

Week 43: White Chocolate Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

We’re back on the theme of fall-related cookies, with a recipe once again containing pumpkin.

This is another one of those recipes that you need to plan out ahead of time, and not because you need to make sure that your butter is at room temperature. If anything, this can be made on impulse, assuming you prepare ahead of time to have the dough sit for half an hour in the refrigerator.

The only random ingredients you need for this recipe are pumpkin puree and pumpkin pie spice.

The recipe starts off pretty easily. You melt the butter and combine it with the brown and white sugar. Then you throw in the pumpkin and vanilla. Once that is prepped, then the dry ingredients go together, and then you combine both bowls.

By their powers combined…

After the ingredients are combined, you need to refrigerate the dough for a minimum of 30 minutes.

After the dough is refrigerated, then you can scoop it, roll it in a bowl of combined sugar and cinnamon, and place it on the cookie sheet. You’ll need to flatten the cookies a little bit. This recipe calls for the use of our trusty 1.5Tbsp Oxo Cookie Scoop to make the nice even 1.5Tbsp rolls.

Scooping time!

For this recipe, the cookies were baked on aluminum cookie sheets with a sheet of parchment paper for 14 minutes, and they came out perfect.

Smells like fall…

This is a good recipe to make on impulse, although don’t expect a large yield. The recipe will only make about 18 cookies, so this is something you make for yourself or someone close to you. This isn’t one of those “I need to make a bunch of cookies for a cookie exchange” recipes.

Ingredients:

  • 1/2 cup (115g) unsalted butter
  • 1/4 cup (50g) packed light or dark brown sugar
  • 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar, divided
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 6 Tablespoons (86g) pumpkin puree*
  • 1 and 1/2 cups (188g) all-purpose flour (spoon & leveled)
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon, divided
  • 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice*
  • 1/2 cup (90g) white chocolate chips or chunks

Instructions:

  1. Melt the butter in the microwave. In a medium bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and 1/2 cup granulated sugar together until no brown sugar lumps remain. Whisk in the vanilla and pumpkin until smooth. Set aside.
  2. In a large bowl, toss together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, 1 and 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix together with a large spoon or rubber spatula. The dough will be very soft. Fold in white chocolate chips. They may not stick to the dough because of the melted butter, but do your best to have them evenly dispersed in the dough. Cover the dough and chill for 30 minutes or up to 3 days. Chilling the dough is imperative for this recipe.
  3. Take the dough out of the refrigerator. Preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
  4. Roll the dough into balls, about 1.5 Tablespoons of dough each. Mix together the remaining 1/2 cup of granulated sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. Roll each of the dough balls generously in the cinnamon-sugar mixture and arrange on 2 baking sheets. Slightly flatten the dough balls because the cookies will only slightly spread in the oven. The photo above shows what the cookie dough balls should look like before baking.
  5. Bake for 11-12 minutes or until the edges appear set. The cookies will look very soft in the center. Remove from the oven. If you find that your cookies didn’t spread much at all, flatten them out with the back of a spoon when you take them out of the oven. If desired, press a few white chocolate chips into the tops of the warm cookies. This is only for looks!
  6. Cool cookies on the baking sheets for at least 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.  The longer the cookies cool, the even better they taste! The flavor gets stronger and the texture becomes chewier. I usually let them sit, uncovered, for several hours before serving. Chewiness and pumpkin flavor are even stronger on day 2.
  7. Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week.

Source

Bonus: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Note: Miss Jones Baking Company sent me this cookie mix for free for me to try out.

The Miss Jones Baking Company reached out to me to try out one of their cookie mixes. They sent me the chocolate chip cookie mix for free, and these opinions are my own. They’re not paying me to say certain things about this product.

Let’s give it a try!

What is this product? It’s powdered cookie dough mix, where the only things you need to add are an egg and 2 tablespoons of butter (which is 1/4 of a stick of butter).

Front and back of the packaging.

Luckily the butter is pretty easy to measure.

That top portion is all you need for this recipe.

This recipe is pretty simple to make. All you need to do is mix the softened butter and egg in a bowl, and throw in the dry mix.

The most unsettling omelet.
Throwing in the dry ingredients!
Cookie dough!

Once the dough was made, it was recommended to make these into a rounded tablespoon. Needless to say, I tried to use my definitely-not-trusty 1tbsp Oxo scooper, and it didn’t work very well, so I scooped all the cookies with it.

I baked them for 10 minutes on aluminum sheets with a layer of parchment paper, and they came out pretty good.

If you’re wondering, yes that one cookie in the lower right of the picture doesn’t have any chocolate chips in it.

These cookies came out pretty good, and I was surprised by how they tasted. This recipe used wheat flour and has a different mix of sugar that makes it healthier than most cookies. This honestly doesn’t feel like a sacrifice when it comes to wanting to make cookies but still want to be somewhat healthy.

Also, this works if you’re ordering stuff off Amazon and want some healthy chocolate chip cookies to make. They taste a little different, but if you’re trying to be better about your eating, they won’t make you feel like they’re trying to be something else.

Source

Week 42: Tender Italian Sugar Cookies

Alright, so we’ve been doing quite a few cookies with pumpkin in them, so let’s change things up a bit and do something completely not related to fall: a sugar cookie!

So I was trying to find something different and unusual, and this seemed pretty simple that you can easily do it on the fly. There’s no butter required, so you can actually make this recipe on a whim. Even if you have butter still in the refrigerator, you can just cut what you need and melt it in the microwave. The only bizarre ingredient is probably the shortening that most people might not keep on hand.

The recipe starts off fairly simple by combining white sugar and shortening.

Shortening almost looks like vanilla ice cream, and I don’t recommend eating it with a spoon.

Once you combine the shortening and sugar, you throw in the eggs and vanilla. Then you throw in the dry ingredients, and you get your spiffy looking dough.

Yep, it’s cookie dough.

This recipe calls for the use of our trusty Oxo 1.5Tbsp scoop to make some perfectly rounded balls for baking. These were baked in the oven for 12 minutes, and they kinda looked like biscuits.

Cookies or biscuits?

Then you make some frosting and top the cookies by dipping the cookies into the bowl of frosting. The results look pretty good actually:

Red food dye plus blue food dye somehow turns into periwinkle…

Once they dry, they look amazing.

The utter magnificence!

This is a great recipe to make on impulse, and doesn’t really require planning ahead (like bringing anything to room temperature).

Ingredients:

  • 3/4 cup shortening
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 3 large eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt

Icing:

  • 1/4 cup milk
  • 2 tablespoons butter, melted
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2-1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar
  • Food coloring and coarse sugar, optional

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 400°.
  2. In a large bowl, cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy.
  3. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
  4. Combine flour, baking powder and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.
  5. Shape dough into 1-1/2-in. balls. Place 1 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool.
  6. For icing, in a small bowl, combine milk, butter, vanilla and confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Tint with food coloring if desired. Dip tops of cookies in icing; allow excess to drip off. Sprinkle with coarse sugar if desired. Place on waxed paper; let stand until set.

Source

Week 41: Pumpkin Chip Cookies

So since we’re still in fall, and we’re going along with the fall-themed cookies, I decided on a variation of the pumpkin cookie, and this time it’s a pumpkin chip cookie!

So this is one of those recipes where I actually read the recipe ahead of time, but I didn’t bother to read how many cookies this recipe actually makes. Yeah, this recipe makes 10 dozen cookies. Read that again: 10 dozen cookies. I should have noticed considering how much of each ingredient was needed for the recipe.

This recipe called for 1.5 cups of butter, which is 3 sticks of butter.

Or 3/4 of a brick of butter from Costco.

This also required a total of 3 cups of sugar (2 cups of packed brown sugar and 1 cup of white sugar).

That’s a lot of sugar! Also, why does it almost match my counter?

Luckily I had a large enough bowl for all the flour, and I made sure to use the correct measuring cup, unlike the first time last week.

Mixed dry ingredients!

Once the butter is mixed with the sugars, then you do the normal thing where you add an egg (at room temperature in this case) and vanilla, but before adding the dry ingredients, you need to empty a can of pumpkin into the mix. After the dry ingredients, you need to add 2 cups of quick oats and 2 cups of semi-sweet morsels.

As I was adding all the ingredients, I didn’t realize how many cookies I was going to make until I stopped it.

The bowl was pretty much full.

Whoever came up with this recipe was definitely pushing the limits of stand mixers.

So for this recipe, to cut down on the number of cookies made, I used my trusty 1.5Tbsp scoop and played around with the bake times. The good news is that they don’t expand that much, despite the amount of butter in them, so you can bake a dozen at a time with the larger scoop.

If you’re going to use the 1.5Tbsp scoop with parchment paper on an aluminum cookie sheet, you’ll need to bake the batch for 18-20 minutes to get it to brown a bit on the edges. That would be my recommendation if you decide to pursue this recipe and spend an entire afternoon making them.

The good news is that instead of 10 dozen cookies, I ended up with…6 dozen cookies. This is good to know in case there’s some sort of fall bake sale, or a cookie exchange at your work where you need to bring something tasty and fall-themed.

I need a bigger kitchen…

They came out excellent, and now I have too many cookies that I’m not sure what to do with. On the other hand, I might have some happy coworkers.

I wonder how they would taste if they were reheated a bit…

Some of the cookies made.

Ingredients:

  • 1-1/2 cups butter, softened
  • 2 cups packed brown sugar
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 large egg, room temperature
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin
  • 4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups quick-cooking oats
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 350°.
  2. Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
  3. Beat in egg and vanilla.
  4. Beat in pumpkin.
  5. In another bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; gradually beat into creamed mixture.
  6. Stir in oats and chocolate chips.
  7. Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake until lightly browned, 10-12 minutes (this will vary depending on baking sheet material, use of parchment paper, etc.). Remove from pans to wire racks to cool.

Source

Week 40: Frosted Apple Cider Cookies

We’re officially in the autumnal season, and this week is something else related to fall: apples! This week’s recipe is a cookie that also feels like a fall day.

I spent a good amount of time yesterday finding fall-themed cookie recipes, so I’ll have some more tasty treats in the weeks to come. I tried to keep the recipes related to the season, and this one came up first. It’s funny how fall and the holidays have their own themed cookies, but summer doesn’t seem to have much in the realm. They’re just…cookies.

The good news is that this is a recipe that can be made on impulse (as long as you have butter at room temperature at all times). You’ll need to get some extra ingredients for these cookies though. The unusual ingredients you might not keep on hand include:

  • Cloves
  • Applesauce
  • Vegetable shortening

Well, I usually have vegetable shortening on hand at all times, but most people might not since it isn’t used in a lot of baking.

Unfortunately, I made a rookie mistake when I was measuring my flour and sugar. I accidentally used the 1.5 cup measuring cup instead of the 1 cup measuring cup. I wasn’t paying attention to the measuring cup I was using, probably because I was distracted while doing so. I was wondering why the bowl with flour was looking pretty full, and it turns out I had put in 6 cups of flour instead of the recipe calling for 4 of them. Could I have saved the recipe by adding 50% more of everything? Probably, but then I would have had around 60 cookies instead of the 40 that I got, and I would have been baking for even longer.

Also, don’t ask why I have a 1.5 cup measuring cup. I think it came with a set of measuring cups from Costco.

I baked these on my aluminum cookie sheets at 18 minutes per batch for good measure on a sheet of parchment paper. Make sure you keep the cookies well separated because they might ending up mingling a bit together.

The cookies came out super chewy, which I’m guessing is because of the applesauce thrown into the mix.

The frosting is pretty easy to make, although you don’t need to make it right away after the cookies are baked. The recipe tells you to have it come to a boil, but I think just a little bit of bubbling is fine. This one, I had to dust off my hand mixer and use it for the frosting.

  • They taste better than they look, and they already look pretty good.

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon cloves
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter – softened
  • 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 cups applesauce
  • 1 cup chopped pecans – optional

Apple Cider Frosting:

  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 1 1/2 packets spiced apple cider instant drink mix
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 2 1/4 cups confectioners’ sugar

Instructions:

  1. Begin by preheating your oven to 375 degrees F.
  2. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and cloves. Set aside.
  3. In a large bowl, using a mixer, cream together the butter, shortening, and sugar for about 5 minutes or until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs and applesauce, mixing to combine.
  4. Add in the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.
  5. With a medium scoop, drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a greased cookie sheet. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until the edges of the cookie just start to brown. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
  6. While the cookies cool, prepare the frosting. In a pot over medium heat, combine the brown sugar and milk. While constantly stirring bring the mixture to a boil; then remove from the heat. Stir in the butter, spiced apple cider drink mix, and salt.
  7. Add the confectioners’ sugar and beat with an electric mixer until smooth. The frosting will firm as it cools, so work quickly to frost your cookies. If the frosting seems too thin, add a bit more confectioners’ sugar.
  8. Use about 1 tablespoon of frosting for each cookie. Top with chopped pecans (if desired) before the frosting sets. Pack and store in an airtight container.

Source

Week 39: Old-Fashioned Soft Pumpkin Cookies

So the first day of fall was this week, and what’s more fall than pumpkin-flavored desserts?

This is a pretty simple recipe, and the ingredients aren’t anything too crazy. You can find everything pretty easily. The only oddball ingredient is probably nutmeg, as it might not be something people have on hand. Also, pumpkin is something people might not always have their pantry. Luckily, you can easily find pumpkin in a can in your baking aisle.

These cookies can also be made on impulse, as long as you always have softened butter ready to go at a moment’s notice (like I do).

The recipe follows the usual steps: mix the dry ingredients and put them aside, mix butter and sugar, then eggs with vanilla and pumpkin, and then throw in the combined dry ingredients.

I feel like I made a mistake using the small 1Tbsp scooper as the cookies were pretty small. Plus, I think the dough was mixed too much as it was very airy and was difficult to make into nice scoops.

I baked these on my aluminum cookie sheets for 20 minutes each. They’re better when they’re soft like a pumpkin pie.

I recommend this cookie for the fall season, since it feels like you ought to be in a warm blanket watching the leaves fall. Well, depends on where you are. In a normal place that doesn’t burn to the ground every year, you get leaves falling. Here in California, not so much…

The frosting is pretty tasty, despite how messy it is.

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup butter (1 stick), softened
  • 1 cup LIBBY’S® 100% Pure Pumpkin
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, divided
  • 2 cups powdered sugar, sifted
  • 3 tablespoons milk
  • 1 tablespoon butter, softened

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven to 350° F. Grease baking sheets.
  2. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt in medium bowl. Beat sugar and 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter in large mixer bowl until well blended. Beat in pumpkin, egg and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract until smooth. Gradually beat in flour mixture. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto prepared baking sheets.
  3. Bake for 15 to 18 minutes or until edges are firm. Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.
  4. Combine sifted powdered sugar, milk, 1 tablespoon butter and remaining 1 teaspoon vanilla extract in small bowl until smooth. Drizzle over cookies.

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