cookie soldiers

Seeing all these little peanut butter blossoms all lined up makes me smile. I feel much this way when I see the pens in the stationery store... rows and rows of pens, neatly lined up by color, like disciplined soldiers ready to march.

I made these cookies for my fabulous friend Heather. I must admit that I have never made this type of cookie before last night. I never much cared for these when I had them as prepared for the church cookie walk. This is really strange since i love peanut butter and chocolate. I found them to be hard and a real challenge to eat. When I was plopping the kisses into the cookies last night, I recalled reading over on Sarah's blog that peanut blossoms are really phenomenal right out of the oven so I gave that a try. Whoa doggies, that was really amazing. I mean, really amazing!

This recipe is from the Hershey's website and can be found here. I did not make any substitutions or changes to the recipe. Even cooled, these were not hard but rather stayed nice and chewy including the kiss in the center. Oh, so tasty.

I promise

When my husband sees that I made chocolate chip cookies for him while he was away (again!), I am going to be the most popular girl in school! I just know it.

Chocolate chunk, orange, and pecan cookies, makes 18 3 inch cookies

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
4 teaspoons grated orange peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
3 3-ounce bars bittersweet chocolate, cut into 1/3-inch chunks
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350°F Combine flour, baking soda and 1/8 teaspoon salt in medium bowl; whisk to blend. Using electric mixer, beat brown sugar, unsalted butter, grated orange peel and vanilla extract in large bowl until light and fluffy. Beat in egg. Add flour mixture and mix just until combined. Mix in chocolate chunks and pecans.

Drop batter by heaping tablespoonfuls onto 2 baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake cookies until just firm to touch and beginning to brown, about 12 minutes. Transfer to racks; cool.

cookies and tassies

I really need to go and purchase a chest freezer so I can start making Christmas goodies earlier in the season and freeze them. Instead, I find myself going home from work every night and baking until I am exhausted. I still have some cookies to finish and one little handmade item for my friend to make tonight.

Shall we take a look at the items I have baked already?


These are chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies. So, one way to describe these cookies is really delicious. Another would be pain-in-the-neck! I don't know if it was the fact that my oven decided to despise me and run very hot burning 2 dozen of these cookies in 4 minutes or if it was making the dough but they were just troublesome. Troublesome but very tasty. Worth it all. The recipe is from Martha Stewart and can be found here.

Ok, so much simpler to make and also very tasty are these lovely to look at jam thumprint cookies. Just a basic shortbread with raspberry preserves. Only, I did not have seedless raspberry preserves so I have to strain all the seeds out. Once again, these cookies are worth the trouble. Totally.

My mom introduced me to these pecan toffee tassies last year at Thanksgiving and I was instantly hooked. The recipe is from Paul Dean, who is always a wizard when it comes to baking. They are like mini pecan pies. The recipe calls for a 10 ounce bag of almond brickle chips. I live in the middle of nowhere and sometimes have trouble finding these. Right now at the grocery store in the baking ailse there are toffee pieces that are Heath bar so they are basically brickle with chocolate. I used these this year and they are still amazing. Just amazing.

Even without a big freezer I have amassed a stockpile of cookies and tassies this week. I also made rocky road fudge which is one of the very best inventions ever. I suppose it is for the best that I don't have a freezer, since this way the cookies are all fresh and tasty.

more pumpkin

I really did not think my husband would like these cookies but I was so wrong. He really enjoyed them. I had planned that in the event that he did not like them, I thought I would bring them in for my coworkers but Lenny liked them so much he said, "these are my cookies!" Funny man who never learned to share.



Anyway, these are spice and pumpkin cookies with cream cheese icing and they are wicked good if I do say so myself. They are kind of like eating little cakes. Yes, your own little cake. I made about 3 dozen of them. I do not expect them to last the week in my house as the husband and I each have a terrible sweet tooth!

I hope everyone had a safe and fun Halloween. Lenny and I watched old monster movies until we were bleary eyed. That is our Halloween tradition. I cannot watch modern horror movies but give me a monster movie with Boris Karloff or Vincent Price and I am so happy. The Universal pictures are certainly my favorites! There is a certain drama that those movies portray that has been entirely lost in this day of gore and torture.

whose big fat chocolate chip cookies?

These are MY big fat chocolate chip cookies made from Tyler Florence's recipe called "my big fat chocolate chip cookies" which by the way is the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I have ever tried. It makes big... well, big fat cookies but the cookies are cakey and chewy and delicious. I guess "my big, fat, chewy, cakey, delicious, chocolate chip cookies" was too long of a name. As a child I did not really know that a home cook could make round cookies since my mom always made square chocolate chip cookies. She made more of a chocolate chip blondie than a cookie, now that I think of it. Anyway, I thought that round cookies were from the store and square cookies were from home! I recall a few years ago a friend of mine told me that his son had not yet figured out that he could have a Christmas tree in his house. He really thought department stores and other people's houses had Christmas trees! How funny and how sad, huh? I cannot imagine being a kid and not having a Christmas tree in my house. My mom hand painted all of the ornaments on our tree and I remember knowing that made them special, even as a child. I cannot remember when I was more careful or delicate with something than when I was helping to decorate the tree and then put the ornaments away.

I have been thinking about Christmas a lot lately. Wondering about decorations and what my hubby and I will have for dinner. The Anglophile that I am, I would love to make a traditional English Christmas dinner. I thought about doing that last year but when I got to the store and the rib roast was $9 a pound and the turkey was $.30 a pound, I decided to make turkey! The turkey was pretty good.

Cookies!

I found out a few days before Easter that I was responsible for the sunrise service snacks. I had plenty to say grace over already but if I am going to do a thing, I want to do it well. I made country ham biscuits, fruit salad with mint and honey and some Easter egg cookies. I had purchased some lovely daffodils on good Friday, so I was really loving the idea of yellow eggs, cookies, and decorations. Although I have no fewer that 6 cookbooks dedicated to just cookies, I used the sugar cookie and royal icing recipe here.