Banana Oatmeal Cookies

These are a variation on Maida Heatter's"Banana Rocks." They are, needless to say, made with whole wheat flour and slightly less sugar than called for. Like all spicy things, they really came to life on the day after I made them. One thing I hate doing is getting most of the way through a recipe before realizing I am missing a crucial ingredient. I know how much I hate it because I do it ALL the time. Yesterday the missing piece was raisins, but the cookies are delicious all the same.

Spelt Chocolate-Chip Cookies

Just like grandma used to make! If your grandma was Gwyneth Paltrow, or ever made cookies, as none of mine did. Anyway, the cookies are delicious, but spread too much, which means I used too little flour.

Sugar Cookies!

My daughter and I made these while the bread cooled. One of her jobs was to scoop the cookie dough and plop it into my waiting fingers, to be rolled in pink sugar. She would ready the scoop, hold it out, and say "one scoop, ready to lay!"

Sort-of Snickeroodles

Friends, I have invented the perfect cookie for me. Let's observe:

I/2 C butter
1/2 C coconut oil
1 C sugar
1 t vanilla
1 t salt
1/t nutmeg
Zest of 2 lemons
2 eggs
2t baking powder
2C whole wheat flour
3/4 C kamut flour

You just put them together the way you would any other cookies, then bake for eight minutes at 400 degrees. Seriously, every pleasure-center in my brain registered a direct hit with these babies; I may never make another cookie again.

Catch up

Yikes! What a busy week. But last night: fried chicken, brown rice, roasted cauliflower, carrots, and broccoli. But much more importantly, I made cookies! I haven't done it in ages. Here is my number one recipe:

Oatmeal Cookies

Preheat the oven: 325 degrees

Cream:

1 C coconut oil
1 C brown sugar
1 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 t cinnamon
1 t nutmeg
1/2 t cloves
2 t vanilla

Beat in:

1 egg

Stir in:

1 C whole wheat flour
3 C oatmeal

Optional:

chopped nuts
raisins

Scoop the dough into nice big scoops (with a cookie scoop, if you have one) and flatten slightly on the pan. Bake for 20 minutes.

Banana Rocks

Does everyone experience stress about overripe bananas? I watch them decline, day by day, filled with the conviction that I ought to be using them, yet unable to think of a way to do it. I know--banana bread. But my mom raised me on the perfect banana bread, which I've never been able to duplicate, and in any case, the problem is deeper and weirder: I am always convinced, despite a lifetime of evidence to the contrary, that I'm not going to like banana-based baked goods. The fact that I love them, every time, does nothing to diminish this feeling. I was pushed over the edge today by the combination of six (!) ovveripe bananas in my kitchen, and the fact that the only "rock" cookie of Maida Haetter's that I hadn't yet tried was the Banana Rocks. Of course they're wonderful, and promise to be much more so in the days to come.

A side note: I have changed from someone who loathed raisins in cookies to someone who can't do without them; these are loaded. I used whole wheat flour and halved the sugar. Curious about what fat I used? Check any other cookie post.

Oatmeal Cookies

I make these so often that I now play even faster and looser than usual with the recipe (the Crunchy Oatmeal Cookie in King Arthur). Sometimes I get lucky, and this (improbably, as you'll see) was one such time. I cut the recommended 3/4 C white sugar and 3/4 C brown to a single cup of brown. I substituted whole wheat flour (locally raised and ground by a guy with whom my husband went to college) for regular, added raisins and walnuts, and made the cookies twice as big as I usually do (too lazy to scoop little ones). Let me tell you, the results, nasty and health-food-ish as they may sound, are sublime: a truly great, flavorful, chewy, rich oatmeal cookie.

Scandinavian Blondies

These may in fact be the perfect home-baked dessert: fast and simple to make, ridiculously good to eat. The recipe is from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, and I present it here:

2 eggs
1 cup sugar [I use three-quarters]
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon almond extract
4 oz. melted butter [I substitute—sing it with me if you know the words—coconut oil]
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sliced almonds.

Preheat the oven to 325 and lightly grease an 8x8 or 9 inch round pan. Beat the eggs, sugar, and salt until pale, thick, and shiny; beat in the butter and almond extract, then fold in the flour 1/2 cup at a time. Pour into the pan and sprinkle with the almonds. Bake for 35 minutes, and cool before cutting into squares.

24 Karat Cookies

These are pretty good: filled with grated carrots, walnuts, and raisins, sweetened with honey. It's not often that I say this, but they may not be quite sweet enough. If I make them again I'll up the raisin content, as well as the flour, and make them bigger. In any case, thank heavens my cookie mojo didn't fail me twice. The recipe is from Maida Heatter.

Nut-Tree Walnut Jumbles

Disaster, unmitigated. These look horrible, have a horrible texture, and taste, if not horrible, not great either. Frankly, I don't often have cooking disasters, and I can't remember ever having one centered on cookies, but this, friends, is a wash. I'm throwing them out and starting over. I won't even tell you where I got the recipe.

Peanut Butter Cookies

Oh how I love them. I use the first recipe in the "peanut butter cookie" section of the King Arthur Flour Cookie Book, substituting (can you guess?) coconut oil for shortening and butter. I also omit the brown sugar the recipe calls for, since I like them lighter and less sweet. These are great cookies.

Mrs. LBJ's Rocks: Part II

A day on these have mellowed and enriched; the spices are still potent, but blended, and there is a strong, buttery vanilla bass note that makes the whole thing saturate the palate about twenty seconds after the first bite. A few minutes after finishing the third one I experienced a reasonably strong fermented-sugar aftertaste, so maybe a little less sugar next time. Incidentally: am I the only one who had that sugar aftertaste phenomenon go berserk during pregnancy? I couldn't stand to eat anything sweet because the after-fermentation kicked in immediately and at nuclear strength.

Mrs. LBJ's Rocks

This recipe is from Maida Heatter's Cookies, a great cookbook. The name "rocks" refers to appearance, not texture, by the way (and Heatter's Pumpkin Rocks can't be beat). These are wonderful; spicy and flavorful, with lots of nuts and raisins. The recipe calls for butter and dark corn syrup, for which I substituted coconut oil and Steen's cane syrup; it also calls for shredded coconut and dates, neither of which I keep on hand. Truly the spice in these cookies is prodigious; full teaspoons of cloves, allspice, cinnamon, and nutmeg. I had vague ideas that that much clove in one recipe would kill you—but it turns out to be delightful.

Oatmeal Cookies

Same old recipe, but this time I used one cup of light brown sugar instead of the cup of dark brown and half-cup of white the recipe calls for. They are delicious, and quite different from the others in flavor and texture. They are less sweet, of course, and also more salty. The spice flavors are less pronounced too, though I don't know if that's the sugar or simply that I ate them on the same day as making them--the spice may develop over time. The texture is much lighter and crisper; no candy-like chew to the crunch. As always, I substituted coconut oil for the butter. Successful cookies.

Problem Solved

I mentioned making oatmeal cookies in an earlier post. These are my favorites to eat, but hitherto I have hesitated to make them because the recipe called for smooshing them down before baking, one by one, with a glass. I hate that step. So then, a few days ago, looking at two big trays of unbaked cookies, it came to me: I could smoosh them with my fingers! No sticky glass-bottom, no icky sugar- or flour-crust left on top as I tried to prevent the glass from sticking! Problem solved.

Brown Sugar Cookies

I made these from a recipe in my beloved Cook's Illustrated magazine. They involve browned butter, an ingredient that has been on my mind ever since reading an essay (in last year's Gourmet Christmas cookie issue) about cookies made with it. I made Gourmet's cookies, but found them too rich, and way too much trouble (since they involve hand-shaping each cookie. I make drop cookies or I don't make any at all.) The ones I made yesterday called, in fact, for rolling each cookie-dough ball in sugar, but I didn't. I did do everything else the recipe said, and ended up not with the nicely risen, crackle-top little beauties the magazine pictures, but rather with pancake-flat, thin, crunchy disks. Never mind—they are *delicious.*

Oatmeal Cookies

For a recent family gathering I made several dozen oatmeal cookies, from a favorite cookie cookbook. I used their "crunchy" recipe, with walnuts but not raisins. The only other variation (common to most of my cookies) was substituting coconut oil for butter. They were fantastic, and disappeared quickly.