New Motto for 2016?

'Tis the Season, to be Baking ... Fa La Laaaa

On the second night of baking, 

my oven hit 

375 degrees. 

Fa La La

La LA LAAAAAAA

There's a office holiday party on tomorrow, so I'm taking treats. Tonight was night 2 of the holiday baking.

Tuesday night, I made dough for these snickdoodles and a Nestle Tollhouse cookie base. I also made a batch of mint brownie bites (with this recipe, scooped into mini-muffin pans and stuffed with a half of an Ande's mint candy) and a new recipe, a pan of the McCormick Cinnamon Caramel Swirl Brownies. 

Tonight I made these snicker-doodles and the Tollhouse cookies, also scooped into the mini-muffin pans, half stuffed with a Hershey Kiss and half with a Reese's Peanut Butter cups.

This last batch of snicker-doodles got a little crisper than I like, because I got distracted watching Mary Berry and the last episode of the U.S. ABC version of the Great Holiday Baking Show. (The UK show is so much better, but I love Mary's style.)

I always go a little overboard, but there is enough for the hostess's kids, guests to take home left-overs, people who drive me to have left-overs, and for me to eat too many.

Total:

2 doz. PB bites;

2 doz. Kiss bites; 

4 doz. choc. mint browning bites; 

3 doz. snicker-doodles; 

and

1 tray caramel bars

Wait. How am I taking all this on the train?

Oh ...

Fudge. 

Still, this is NOwhere near my holiday baking output of days of yore.

~ photos by iPhone

43 Ideas for Birthday 43: Girl Scout Cookies - THIN MINTS ONLY!

Or if you are going to make me be calorie conscious, let me introduce this alternative:

The Yankee Candle Company has released a limited edition line of scented candles and air fresheners that smell like Girl Scout cookies. The company is offering four different scents inspired by the cookie varieties Coconut Caramel Stripes, Thin Mints, Trefoils, and Chocolate Peanut Butter.

Yes, Seriously.

But I will take cookies too. Apparently you can order them online now.

 

 via

43 Ideas for Birthday 43: Loving Levain

I have this ridiculous idea that I will try and lose weight this year, but these cookies? Forget any diet or exercise plans. These cookies are ... DELICIOUS. Now that I am nowhere near these cookies, I kindof crave them.


Yes, they are pricey. But they are almost a half pound EACH. It takes a while to savor these. Plus, you can freeze them, reheat them, and eat them later.

Levain Bakery Cookies

Assortment - Gift Box of 4 Cookies

Four, 6-ounce Levain Bakery cookies: 1 chocolate chip walnut, 1 dark chocolate chocolate chip, 1 oatmeal raisin and 1 dark chocolate peanut butter chip—all stacked in clear French cellophane bags. You simply can’t go wrong with this combination. Each cookie variety offers a uniquely different texture and flavor experience. Here are the most decadent cookies on Earth. baked and packed to your order.

Chocolate Chip Walnut

Our signature cookie is packed with semi-sweet chocolate chips and chunks of walnuts so every single bite is as good as the one before. Huge, thick, and gooey but crisp on the outside, the New York Times says these “may possibly be the largest, most divine chocolate chip cookies in Manhattan.”

Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip

The perfect combination of dark chocolate with peanut butter chips.

Two classic flavors got even better when combined in this tasty, over-the-top combination cookie. Dark chocolate cookie dough provides the sweet and peanut butter chips add the savory. A delicately balanced, delicious treat when you want the best of both worlds.

An ultra-rich twist on a classic flavor combination: moist semisweet chocolate cookie is packed with soft, smooth peanut butter chips. A dark and delicious cookie confection.

Happy Mother's Day!

Q: Why did the cookie cry? A: Because his mother was a wafer so long!

Found in Cape Cod Life, July 2012, Words of Remembrance by Brain Shortsleeve

Best Loved Poems of the American People
My Mother's Prayer

As I wandered round the homestead,

  Many a dear, familiar spot

Brought within my recollection

  Scenes I'd semingly forgot.

There the orchard meadow yonder,

  Here the deep, old-fashioned well,

With its old moss-covered bucket,

  Sent a thrill no tongue can tell.

Though the house was held by strangers,

  All remained the same within,

Just as when a child I rambled

  Up and down and out and in.

To the garret dark, ascending,

  Once a source of childish dread,

Peering through the misty cobwebs,

  Lo, I saw my trundle bed.

Quick, I drew it from the rubbish,

  Covered o'er with dust so long,

When, behold, I heard, in fancy,

  Strains of one familiar song,

Often sung by dear mother

  To me in that trundle bed;

"Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,

  Holy angels guard thy bed."

As I listened to the music,

  Stealing on in gentle strain,

I am carried back to childhood,

  I am now a child again.

'Tis the hour of my retiring,

  At the dusky eventide,

Near my trundle bed I'm kneeling,

  As of yore, by Mother's side.

Hands are on my head so loving,

  As they were in childhood's days;

I with weary tones am trying

  To repeat the words she says.

'Tis a prayer in language simple

  As a mother's lips can frame,

"Father, Thou who are in Heaven,

  Hallowed ever be Thy name."

Prayer is over, to my pillow,

  With a good-night kiss, I creep,

Scarcely waking while I whisper,

  "Now I lay me down to sleep."

Then my mother over me bending,

  Prays in earnest words but mild,

"Hear my prayer, O Heavenly Father,

  Bless, O bless, my precious child."

Yet I am but only dreaming,

  Ne'er I'll be a child again,

Many years has that dear mother

  In that quiet churchyard lain.

But the memory of her counsels

  O'er my path a light has spread,

Daily calling me to heaven,

  Even from my trundle bed.

~ T.C. O'Kane

Mothers' prayers never cease, despite age, distance, separation of realms of existence. Isn't that a reassuring thing to know on this Mother's Day.

Love you Mom. No cookie bouquet today - but will call you soon.

xo Auntie Nettie

Summer 2012: Island Hopping, Part 3

I know this was supposed to be the summer of Island Hopping, but due to one thing or another (mostly the heat index), I've been spending it inside in the air conditioning sorting through things. My islands thus far visited include: the parchment-covered Isle of Memories, to the Peninsula of the CPU where I commute to the Twin Island of Techies in the Keys, to the oft-visited Kitchen Island.

Ah, the tiny Kitchen Island. It's a miracle that so much is produced on such a tiny speck of land, with nary a granite piece, tiled backsplash, stainless metal quarry, or electrical or utility connection in sight. Not to mention water/wine cooler/dishwasher/cabana boy/personal chef/personal shopper/or interior decorator.

It's the only place I have to create culinary masterpieces, and it's the only real estate around with room to store sundries, cooking implements, spices, and to experiment and feed visitors and IT boys alike.

It is from this Kitchen Island that I was thinking of attempting to make a themed treat for the summer: The Floating Island - a classic French dessert with meringue and custard, but mon dieu, that looks super hard - so thanks to Wikipedia for supplying this image instead.Rather than get all "het" up about making it, I turned my energies instead to trying out a recipe that I knew I had ingredients for: Cake Mix Peanut Butter Cookies, a recipe that had come to my attention via the Interwebs.

1 box white or yellow cake mix
1 cup peanut butter
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
chocolate chips optional

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix all the ingredients together, adding the chips at the end.
(Dough will be super sticky, and stiff. You can add a little milk to thin out the batter.)
Drop by the spoonful (or cookie scoop) onto your cookie sheet.
Sprinkle with sugar (fine/granulated/demerara) and press the tines of a fork into the tops to create that peanut butter cookie look.
Bake 10-15 minutes (depending on your oven.)

The author of the recipe added suggestions, including adding more peanut butter, different chips, but my brain went elsewhere.

Batch one was baked as above, and was yummy and was eaten by my usual guinea pigs and me, of course.

HOWEVER, I immediately started to plot something else.

In my pantry was a container of the Peanut Butter & Co.'s Mighty Maple blend pb, and in my freezer was a package of Trader Joe's Fully Cooked Bacon, as well as enough stuff to remake the cookies for an upcoming staff party and so ... Viola.

Breakfast cookies - maple, peanut butter, bacon, chocolate chip pancake cookies!

Package of pre-cooked bacon
1 box white or yellow cake mix
1.5 cups Mighty Maple PB
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
chocolate chips

Pre-heat bacon. Cook until crispy. Drain well.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix up cake mix, peanut butter, eggs, and milk.
(Dough will be sticky. Can be thinned out with a touch of milk.)
Chop up or tear bacon into little pieces.
Scoop dough onto cookie sheet with scoop.
Add about 6 chocolate chips and a few bacon pieces to center of dough ball, wrapping treats into the center, covering like a dumping.
Stud a few chocolate chips/bacon pieces to top of cookie.
Sprinkle with demerara sugar.
Bake 10-15 minutes depending on your oven.
Let cool slightly on sheet before transferring to rack to cool.

Really yummy warm, with milk.

Not recommended that you eat more than 2 or 3 at a time. These are once in a while cookies. Not all the time cookies.

Trust me, I know. I ate way too many, and even the party people couldn't eat more than 1 or 2 at a time. Though, now that I think about it, they may have been full of beer and other party foods.

Recipes from Aunt Flora -- Peggy's Buffalo Chips

Blogger seems to have given me a reprieve on the whole photo/blog post issue. This entry was created in the old interface (thank you very much), which is SO MUCH better for me.

Especially I am writing this up again in the middle of a 8+ hour cooking spree. This time I did have the sense to start in the middle of the afternoon, but it's about 5 hours later and 6 dozen cookies in, and they are still coming out of the oven. (AND STILL COMING ......)

And that's no bull.

And there is the segue to the Recipe of the Week: Peggy's Buffalo Chips (Cookies)

Peggy was one of Aunt Flora's daughter-in-laws and must have had a herd of kids to feed, because it makes a LOT of cookies. Like 9.5 dozen give or take a few.

2 cups melted margarine (I used butter)
2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar

4 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups oatmeal AND
2 cups cornflakes OR 4 cups oatmeal

4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder

1 cup coconut, shredded
1 1/2 cup raisins
1 cup chopped nuts OR
1 package butterscotch chips

Blend margarine and sugars.
Stir in eggs and vanilla.
Mix in oats and corn flakes.
Add in flour, soda and baking powder and mix thoroughly.
Stir in optional items.
Drop by tablespoon onto ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. (or 15-20 minutes depending on your oven.)

Makes about 9.5 dozen
Making sure you have all the ingredients before you start ensures you don't have to make your second run to 7Eleven of the day. Also make sure you have all the lumps out of your brown sugar before you add your melted butter, and then don't lose your stirring implement into the sugar/butter slurry. Make sure you have a GINORMOUS mixing bowl (thanks Mom!), so everything fits this time and you don't have to transfer halfway through the mixing like last week. Don't over mix the cornflakes and oatmeal with your fork, you don't want to break down the cornflakes. Get a mixing spoon at the end for leverage because that's about 8 cups of flour/flakes/oats and your arms will fall off!

Don't eat the cookies ... or you will have sugar shock and your intended recipients will be sad.

(MMmmm MMMMM *crumbs flying* ME LOVE COOKIE!)

2 points if you know who I was quoting.

Recipes from Aunt Flora -- JTR's Peanut Butter Cookies

I'd first like to go on record that I HATE it when tech platforms change and don't give you enough instructions into what those updates/improvements will mean in practical terms.

I thought I was doing pretty well learning how to play in .html codes in the old version of Blogger so that I could get rid of extraneous spacing, coding, and lay photos in as a nice block.

Unfortunately, while the new version of Blogger will let me import more photos at a time, and determine more sizes, it is severely limiting on where you can place photos. You can only center/left/right justify one photo at a time. Even playing in the .html codes didn't resolve my issues.

Thus, the only way I could get all these photos in one post is to strip them down the side .. for now.

Plus, look at the time stamp [1:08 a.m.]. That's the real time. Instead of posting for upload at 9:00 a.m., I am still awake, baking, and blogging in the wee small hours of the morning.

I started this process HOURS ago--like on a whole different day--both the recipe making, the cooking, and then trying to upload and process this.

I am annoyed.

I am tired.

I should have just not gotten this done on time.

I have sent off a snippy feedback entry.

And now ....

The real portion of this post!

I needed a recipe to satisfy both my guilt for not feeding the IT boys last week and my guilt for subjecting my MailRoom Guy to the unfortunate social issues of my Wonder Intern. MailRoom Guy requested peanut butter cookies, and I owe him a lot. The IT boys like crunchy. The family recipe book had an untested recipe for peanut butter cookies - unlike any other that I had tried previously. Thank goodness for Aunt Flora's family cookbook. Two departments. One recipe.

I made a bunch of missteps with this though. I didn't start making the dough until 7:00 p.m. Then I doubled the batch. As you'll see the photos that just happened to lay in next to this text, I misjudged the volume of dough and the size of the container. (Physics wasn't my strongest subject in high school.) I had to swap out bowls once I figured out I had 5 cups of flour going on. Then I realized how long I would be baking ... 6 cookies per sheet. 12-15 minutes each .... So late. So many cookies. So tired ...

All of this struggle is still not enough to say thank you to the MailRoom Guy. The Wonder Intern was/is ... um ...

Well.

He is a wonder, alright.

As my other granny would say.

JTR aka Janean's Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup margarine (I used butter, 2 sticks)

1 cup sugar, white

1 cup sugar, brown

1 egg

2 tablespoons hot water

1 cup peanut butter

1 tablespoon baking soda

2 1/2 cup flour

Blend margarine and sugars.

Beat in egg, water, and peanut butter.

Combine dry ingredients and stir them into margarine mixture.

Roll in balls and roll in sugar.*

Press with fork on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

* Usually peanut butter cookie recipes call for chilling prior to the rolling-phase. This one doesn't.

Since I used SO MUCH BUTTER the dough was warm and I just didn't see the point of getting greasy. I knew I wasn't going to be rolling it in refined sugar either. Instead I used my handy cookie scooper. I plopped the dough down on the parchment paper, pressed them down with the fork tines, and then sprinkled with a combination of demerara sugar and crystallized sugar to up the crunch factor.

I have lost count of how many cookies I've eaten (not really, only 3).

It's over 9 dozen cookies and counting.

I'm sure my neighbors will be happy when the kitchen timer stops going off, I stop tromping across my floor to my bureau/cooling racks, and I finally go to bed.

Me. too.

Wait. There's the ding for the last batch. Glory Hallelujah. Now I have to figure out how to get 9 dozen cookies in containers and to work. .... Later, MUCH LATER, today.

Response to comments: It's not the size of the pan holding me back from making more than 6 cookies at a time. It's the depth and quality of the oven. It's not calibrated right, but after almost 6 years, we've come to a sensory understanding of each other. I can tell by smell and then by a quick look. Also, it's not as deep or wide as a regular house oven. I have exactly one cookie sheet that will fit in there. My other ones won't fit in one way, and the the "normal" way, kicks the door open and then things NEVER finish.

Honestly.

One day we'll do a tour of the kitchenette. It's not even a "kitchen" per se according to you or me, or the housing authority. It's the type of kitchen that makes me mock all the people on House Hunters (the US version). Excuse me: Granite countertops, 2 fridges, a US style fridge, an ice machine, garbage disposal, dish washer, grilling devices, 6 burners? WTH. GET OVER YOURSELVES! Do you have a counter top? Do you have a full fridge? Can you shut your oven door with a normal cookie sheet in it? That, a knife, a pot, a pan, and a cutting board, and a burner ... that's all you really need.

Those European houses where there is a coil, a fridge under the counter, and a hole in the ground? They would LOVE my kitchenette!

Recipes from Aunt Flora -- Becky's Nestle's Oatmeal Scotchies

I've been a bit busy lately and haven't really had time to stock up the larder. Supplies are running low, and demand from the IT guinea pigs is running high. They keep requesting "crispy" stuff. You would think they would be happy to get ANYTHING, but ...

So, knowing what I had in stock, I flipped through the family cookbook and found this recipe. As long as I could swap out butter for margarine, I figured ... why not?

Nestle’s Oatmeal Scotchies

1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
? teaspoon salt (I used a half a teaspoon)
½ teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup margarine, softened (I used butter)
¾ cup white sugar
¾ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups uncooked oats
12 oz. packaged butterscotch morsels (mine was 11 oz., sneaky!)
(handfuls of chopped pecans)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
In a large bowl, combine margarine, sugar, brown sugar, 2 eggs and vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. Gradually add flour mixture. Stir in oats and butterscotch morsels (and nuts.)
Drop by tablespoon onto ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 375 for 7-8 minutes.
Makes 4 dozen.

Few comments, the recipe called for salt, but none was in the list of the ingredients. I opted for 1/2 a teaspoon to be on the safe side. I also chucked more nuts in there to up the crunch factor. My oven must run REALLY slow, or the parchment paper makes a difference, because these took closer to 15 minutes to really brown up. There were probably more than 4 dozen cookies, but I had to quality control taste test them. If I didn't, they would have been chewy and not crispy. They did "firm" up the more they cooled, but I seriously baked those suckers.

I hope the boys chip a tooth!

Crispy ... Auntie Nettie .... We like crispy cookies. (**grumble grumble*** ... MUHAHAHAHAHA, I'll show them!)

Holiday Traditions: Cookie Exchanges/Decorating

Many thanks to Jess for inviting me over the river and across the train tracks to her holiday cookie exchange. It was so wonderful to go and socialize in a nice mellow environment with great food. Bonus? The IT Boys are getting a variety pack of cookies today (or what's left. I had to eat some of the tiny cupcakes and the Oreo Truffles! Editing note: Snafu in the delivery to the IT Boys. Somehow they ended up with peanut butter crisps and the MailRoom got the assorted cookie exchange pack. Don't deliver when distracted.)

In addition to food, drink, and conversation, there were sugar cookies to decorate. One tip though, when attending a party with professional prop masters, set decorators, and theatrical types from drama programs, Broadway, Off-Broadway, and off-off Broadway productions, don't expect to even come close to looking like you are knowing what you are doing when it comes to decorating.

That top row .. can you see? Some of those look like vintage ornaments.
Lots of little kids running about also helps set the mood, though they want to eat the cookies not decorate.

Cookies by Ms. Lili with help from Mom.

Finally, one reminder for the holiday season ....

Don't eat the yellow snow...man!

Oh yeah. I went there. I had to do it.