Cookies are the instant gratification fix of the food world. You mix things together, you scoop, you bake and you iiiiiiinhale them. Or at least that's what I do. This recipe was developed at the request of my dear-ole-dad who asked me to find a road-tested peanut butter and molasses cookie recipe for him. I couldn't. So I did what any self-respected recipe developer would do. I made one up. Then I tested it like I was doing a recipe for a company, because people, this is my DAD we're talking about. I don't give him lousy recipes. Something about owing my life -in part- to him, blah blah blah. I put everything my dad loves in a cookie View Post
Sweet and Salty No-Bake Popcorn Cookies | The Croods
I love movies of all kinds: comedy, drama, action, adventure, COLIN FIRTH (because he gets his own category), HUGH JACKMAN (because he does, too), classics, musicals, suspense, animation (both silly and serious)... I love all of them. I can converse entirely in movie quotes and adaptations thereof when in the company of another movie lover. I don't do this often because it's just not as much fun when someone looks at you blankly when you say something like, "Wonder Twin powers activate! Form of a play date!" and try to fist bump. Sigh. I am especially fond of animated films. I've loved them my entire life and being firmly entrenched in View Post
Grandma’s Snickerdoodles
My family lives, talks, dreams, plans, prepares, preaches, and eats food. We don't breathe it, however, as aspirating food is generally acknowledged to be a bad idea. In short, we are all food maniacs. There have been a handful of time that I've been brought up short when chatting with people and they inform me that their family tradition is to keep their recipes secret. At those moments, my jaw has dropped open like a cod and I've been at a loss from words. This is probably because in my family, if you even imply you like something we've cooked for you, we hurriedly jot down the recipe and cram it into your hands. The recipe I'm View Post
Holiday Cookies and Goodies Round-Up
Were you to be looking for me this past Tuesday or Wednesday, you would've found me in the basement of the student center at Houghton College in Houghton, New York, selling tasty goodies at a table set up at the 26th Annual Houghton Arts & Crafts Fair. This was the first year the college did two floors of vendors and I was there on a mission: to sell as many baked goods as I could possibly turn out of my kitchen to benefit the Cookies for Kids Cancer organization. First I want to say a word about this fabulous group. Cookies for Kids' Cancer was the brainchild of a mother who was inspired by her two and a half year old son's own battle View Post
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies
There is nothing like a warm cookie on a cold day. While my husband and I play our annual game of “just how long can we wait to fire up the wood stove”, the days are getting cooler and the nights are colder yet. We try to eek as many days wood stove-free as we possibly can out of each year and steadfastly refuse to start a fire at least –AT LEAST- until fall has officially started. It’s ridiculous. It’s petty. It’s stupid… we march around in so many layers that we look like the baby brother in ‘A Christmas Story’. We wear gloves in the house. I bake like it’s my job. In a way, I suppose it actually is, considering how many mouths we View Post
Almond Joy or Mounds Cookies
By a show of hands, who out there is going to be angry with me if I post two dessert recipes in one week? Anyone? No? We're good? Good. Because this one? Phew. This cookie recipe is the ne plus ultra of cookies. This is like a combination of a Twix bar with an Almond Joy or Mounds bar. The anatomy of the cookie is thus: Crispy chocolate butter cookie base. It is what it sounds to be. It's a little shortbready and carries a little snap to it. It's the perfect place to put your... Honey caramel coconut chew. Yes. Just yes. Have you had honey coconut caramels? Maybe not. It's an old one (and I blush to see the photo of it, but ever View Post
Shortbread Cookie Spoons (Spookies)
You know how sometimes everything just comes together at the right time? Those moments where inspiration strikes at the same time that you have all the supplies to make it happen? This is one of those moments. I had just made some velvety, luscious chocolate custard and one of my friends started talking about the world's best shortbread cookies that she just made. I wished aloud that I had a couple of her cookies to dunk in my custard and asked for the recipe. Lightbulb. I was going to make cookies that were spoons and eat my custard with them. Were they cookies? Were they spoons? Yes, they were both; they were Spookies*. *Like a View Post
Deep Dish Snickerdoodle Skillet Cookie
Raise your hand if you, like me, love snickerdoodles beyond any other cookie on the face of the earth. Raise your other hand if you, also like me, really don't think snickerdoodles need to be messed with to make them wonderful. Raise your foot (since we're running out of hands) if you think tinkering with snickerdoodles is close-on to blasphemy. Well, now that we're most of us standing on one foot with both hands in the air, let me make a confession (because at this point, if you raise that other foot to kick me you're down on your keister. This is what I call self-protection.) I messed with snickerdoodles today. And I didn't just mess View Post
Chocolate Covered Graham Crackers and S’Mores Bars
Oftentimes, the ordinary things are the ones that bring the most pleasure; a cool breeze on a hot day, sitting quietly next to your kids on the couch, studying puffy white clouds in a cerulean sky, eating the first sun-warmed berry of the season or curling up to sleep at night between cool, clean sheets. And there are the blissful moments when simply ordinary is elevated just a bit; not so far that it's ostentatious- only enough to gently nudge it into the realm of extraordinary. Chocolate Covered Graham Crackers are one of those. Most of us were raised with graham crackers as a staple of the snack table. Brown, sweet and homey, graham View Post
Amish Cookies
This is the face of a monster. Merciless. This is a face that destroys on a whim. Unyielding. This is a face that -without pause- devastates the entire population... Of cookie jars. This is my cookie monster baby. Allow me to illustrate. The Evil Genius and I went to Houston before Christmas and the boys' soon-to-be-nominated-for-sainthood Nana (a.k.a. My Mom) babysat the entire mini-horde. My Mom is fun. All kinds of fun. Proof? This is her just last month. That's right. That's MY mom, on the climbing wall of a playground, wearing a skirt and cotton shoes. I told you she was all kinds of fun. But I was View Post