Peanut Butter Gingersnaps

I really expected that these would go over big at my house. We love our gingersnaps and we're pretty sweet on peanut butter anything. So I was surprised when they were met with...indifference. The boys liked these cookies, but they didn't necessarily love them. I think they are quite brilliant. Neither flavour dominates, and they are chewy but firm. I think they'll make a return appearance to the cookie jar.

Pumpkin Gingersnaps

Wow. These cookies are such a good idea. I love traditional gingersnaps. I have a go-to recipe for gingersnaps that has never failed me. But today I also had a couple of cups of pumpkin left over from making pumpkin muffins and I wasn't in the mood for pumpkin bread or pumpkin scones or pumpkin soup. These are not things I can sell around my house. But cookies....cookies always sell. So. Pumpkin Gingersnap cookies. So simple yet so effective!

Valentine's Day Cookies. And Chocolate Frosting.

When Patrick was born on February 15th it didn't really hit me how close his birthday was to Valentine's Day until he turned one. Valentine's Day has never really been on my radar. It comes around every year, of course, but David and I have never made a big deal about Valentine's Day. We still don't but that doesn't change the fact that every February 13th I remember I need to send some kind of card/treat to school for 50 kids. This year I was actually on top of things and assembled 50 iPhone valentines in the days leading up to February 14th, thanks to this (I used Kit Kat bars as 'iPhones' since I couldn't find boxes of candy hearts). I was also leading a team meeting at work on February 14th and got it into my head that I should make Valentine cookies as a treat for the group. This is classic 'me'. Feeling a bit of pressure? Trying to juggle both Valentine's Day and birthday treats? Why not seek out another activity to make things that much more interesting? So I found me a simple recipe for Valentine's Day Vanilla Cut-Out Cookies, searched out my heart-shaped cookie cutter and got to it.

What we ate for Christmas - cookies

The boys love decorating a gingerbread house at Christmas but I, for all of my culinary aspirations and experiments, do not. I find it a fussy, unpleasant task that fills me with rage. Last year when I found myself getting out the glue gun in an effort to make our darn gingerbread house stay together (after four kinds of icing failed) I vowed never again. I felt bad banning the gingerbread house from our Christmas repertoire but not for long since my proposal to make gingerbread cookies instead - shaped ones that we can decorate and actually eat - went over very well. We never ate our gingerbread house creations (particularly those that I stuck together with toxic glue, obviously) so I wanted a recipe that would make some good looking and good tasting cookies. I turned to my trusty Joy of Cooking for this particular task knowing that on page 828 is a simple recipe for Gingerbread People that delivers both great looking and great tasting treats.

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love a good chocolate chip cookie. As evidenced by my post Chocolate Chip Cookie Smackdown. In fact, everyone around here loves chocolate chip cookies. And since we consume so many of them I decided to try and make them a wee bit healthier. So one night while watching Modern Family, I did a bit of research to see what my options were in terms of making our favourite cookie healthy. (As an aside, can I just say that Modern Family is the best thing on TV right now? Aside from the BBC adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, but new episodes for that won't air until 2012.) Turns out lots of people who like chocolate chip cookies also like being healthy. Enter Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies. Whole wheat flour and ground flax seed make you feel a smidge better about eating a plateful of chocolate chip cookies after a long day. (Not that I've ever done that, of course.) These cookies are the real deal. There may be healthier recipes out there but for me, this recipe covers my must-haves for home made cookies, which is to say they contain butter and brown sugar. (You had me at butter.)

Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies - from The Yummy Life

2-1/2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
2 tablespoons ground flax seed
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup butter, softened

1-1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In medium bowl, whisk together flour, flax seed, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In large mixing bowl (use stand or hand mixer), cream butter; add sugars and mix until creamy. Mix in eggs and vanilla. With mixer running, gradually add flour mixture 1/2 cup at a time until completely mixed. Add chocolate chips and nuts (if using) and blend on low, just until mixed. (Note: The dough can be refrigerated at this point and baked later.) Use a scoop or spoon to form walnut size balls of cookie dough. Space 2" apart on a parchment lined baking sheet; flatten them slightly with your fingers. Bake 2 sheets at a time, rotating and switching pans half way through cooking time. Bake 12-14 minutes.

FREEZING TIP: Mix dough, form into flattened balls and freeze in a single layer on a baking sheet. When completely frozen, transfer to ziploc bag and return to freezer. To bake, arrange frozen dough balls on baking sheet and bake as described above, adding 2-3 minutes to cooking time.

Happy (Chinese) New Year!

My kids both attended a wonderful pre-school program called the University Lab School. My husband and I both loved this school but more importantly, both of the boys loved it too. We all learned a lot of things at 'the Lab School' and made many great memories. One of my favourites was watching the kids celebrate Chinese New Year. They did it up right, every year, with a 'snack' feast of Chinese favourites and a parade of noisy revellers wreaking havoc through the halls, warding off evil and helping to usher in a prosperous New Year. I don't do a ton of theme menus for our Sunday dinners but this week, with Chinese New Year approaching, I couldn't resist.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Smackdown

We eat a lot of cookies around here. Never has that been more apparent than today. I made a ridiculous amount of chocolate chip cookies on Sunday. For some crazy reason that seemed rational at the time but in retrospect does not, I thought I would make two different chocolate chip cookie recipes while baking Sunday afternoon then compare the results. You know, just for kicks. And here it is, Monday night, and there aren't all that many cookies left. A successful experiment? I guess you could say that. Here's how it went down.

Christmas Cookie Fail

Really Martha? Really?

Shira's Cranberry Thumbprints sounded promising. I even got over the fact that my CT might not look the same as those pictured with the recipe before I started baking. Been there, done that. What I wasn't prepared for was an inedible cookie. Which is what I produced.

I'm willing to accept some responsibility for these cookies not turning out. I suspect I might have overmixed the dough since it resembled sand, which didn't work out so hot when I started trying to shape the cookies. Apart from that, I'm not sure what went wrong. Here is what I ended up with:


I did try one before ditching them. They're all squished together because I was about to sweep them off into the garbage then decided I should record my failures along with my successes. They tasted like sand. Or what I imagine sand might taste like, having never tasted sand before. Which shouldn't have surprised me given that's what they looked like earlier. Not destined to become a holiday classic at our house.

I had to recover quickly from this little setback, having made a promise of holiday goodies to deserving co-workers. So I went back in the archives for something festive yet simple. These should do the trick:


I first made these Triple Chocolate Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies in 2004. They are meant to be drizzled with white chocolate, which would make them extra festive, but I had to work with what was in my pantry so they will be served unadorned. They still taste good - three kinds of chocolate chips, chopped fresh (okay, frozen) cranberries, oatmeal...cinnamon. I have a whole whack of yummy homemade Christmas fruitcake to serve alongside.

Now I'm trying to figure out what to make D. for this birthday dinner. Decisions, decisions...

Christmas Cookies 1.2 - Sugar Cookies

I found the cutest snowman cookie jars a few weeks ago and decided they would make great teacher gifts for the holidays. I bought them and stashed them away with visions of a pleasant afternoon spent baking holiday cookies with the boys to fill up the round tummies of my jars. It was a pleasant afternoon of baking but my 'help' was rather hit and miss. P. likes cracking eggs and running the mixer, but once those tasks were done he was out. D. strolled through the kitchen once or twice, his nose glued to his DSi, and peeked at my progress but I suspect he was just trying to see if there were any cookies ready to consume.

I've made sugar cookies a few years now for the holidays. The most reliable recipe I've found comes from a Williams Sonoma cookbook called kids baking that I was gifted for Mother's Day in 2005. It's a nifty little book that has provided us with a few reliable treats. The sugar cookie recipe is definitely a keeper. The cookie dough is easy to work with, which I appreciate because I'm not a huge fan of rolling out cookie dough. To me, cookies are best when I can scoop, plop and bake. No fuss, no muss. I'll put up with a little fuss at Christmas, especially when the results are so tasty. Here's how to make some pretty excellent sugar cookies.

sugar cookies

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla

In a medium bowl, mix together dry ingredients. In large bowl of an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugar together until creamy (about 3 minutes). Add the egg and vanilla, beating until blended. Add the flour mixture (on low speed) just until blended. The dough will look lumpy. Dump the dough out and form into a solid mound. Divide in half, wrap in plastic wrap and flatten into a disk. Refrigerate until well chilled, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease baking sheets.

Sprinkle work surface with some flour. Place unwrapped chilled dough on flour surface, sprinkle with a bit more flour. Roll out dough with rolling pin until it is about 1/4 inch thick. Then use cookie cutters to cut out desired shapes. Like so:


Bake each full sheet of cookies for 8-10 minutes or until the edges begin to become golden brown. (I found 8 minutes sufficient, particularly for the smaller cookies.)

The fun part is icing and decorating your cookies. To be honest I tend to be minimalist with sugar cookies. Most of the time I just leave them plain. I hear no complaints and have none left after a couple of days, so icing and sprinkles are apparently optional, right? Since these cookies are gifts I decided to tart them up a bit, like so:



I used an icing recipe from the same cookbook that is super simple (see below). After applying the icing I then coated each cookie in coloured sugar sprinkles. Buttery, sugary goodness all set for gifting!

super simple sugar cookie icing

2 cups icing sugar
2 tbsp + 2 tsp warm water
1 tbsp light corn syrup

Combine the above in a bowl and mix with an electric hand mixer.

Martha, Martha, Martha...

Yes, I do remember the Brady Bunch. But I'm not upset with Marsha, rather it's a certain Martha who has me a bit wound up. See, I decided to get radical and try new Christmas cookie recipes this year. I attempted my first newbie this weekend: Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps. Now, I have no quibble with how these turned out taste wise. The espresso powder definitely adds a little something to the overall taste of the cookie, which is chewy, chocolatey deliciousness. No, my quibble is with the presentation. My cookies looked nothing like Martha's beauts. Go ahead. Click on the recipe link above and see how pretty her cookies look. Now look at mine:

Even my cuter than cute polar bear doesn't look so impressed. I mean, he's trying to be supportive and all but he can tell something is a bit off. My cookies don't look nearly as snowy. And I followed the instructions; I rolled my cookie balls in sugar twice, I even tried a batch where I made my balls a tiny bit smaller. But to no avail. My cookies are at best Chocolate-Espresso Snow(dusted)caps. So I'm a bit irked, although really how they look is really a moot point since they are all gone, less than 24 hours after they were baked. So that's gotta count for something, right? I do think these are a keeper. They are quite divine.

Chocolate-Espresso Snowcaps

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

4 teaspoons instant espresso

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

2/3 cup packed light-brown sugar

1 large egg

4 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, melted and cooled

1 tablespoon milk

1/2 cup confectioners sugar, for coating

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, espresso, baking powder, and salt. With an electric mixer, beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg until well combined; mix in cooled chocolate. With mixer on low speed, gradually add dry ingredients; beat in milk just until combined. Flatten dough into a disk; wrap in plastic. Freeze until firm, about 45 minutes.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place confectioners' sugar into a medium bowl; working in batches, roll balls in sugar twice.
3. Place balls on prepared baking sheets, 2 inches apart. Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until cookies have spread and coating is cracked, 12 to 14 minutes; cookies will still be soft to the touch. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

From The Martha Stewart Show, December 2006

Christmas Cookies 1.0 - Ginger Cookies

Friday night I decided to launch the Christmas baking season with a classic - ginger cookies! Yeah. No big surprise. I have made this particular ginger cookie for a couple of years now. It's based on a recipe from The New Canadian Basics cookbook and it's fabulous. If you need a fool-proof cookie that tastes like Christmas, look no further...

Ginger Cookies

3/4 cup shortening, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup molasses
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
sugar for coating

In large bowl cream together shortening and sugar. Beat in egg and molasses. In separate bowl mix together flour, baking soda, salt and spices; blend in to creamed mixture. Shape into balls 1 inch in diameter. Roll in sugar. Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets.

Bake in 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Cookies will be slightly soft when removed from oven. Let cool on baking sheets for a few minutes then remove to racks to cool completely.

This batch of cookies will likely find their way into school lunches this week. We also enjoyed a few (okay, maybe more than a few) while we decorated our Christmas tree. We finally received a dusting of snow that made our outside Christmas greenery look particulalrly festive so we couldn't resist brightening up the inside as well.