Monday Munchies - Snowballs

Christmas baking has officially started!  These little cookies are known by a bunch of names and Russian Teacakes are the official (cookbook assigned) title, but I think snowballs are the most fitting for this time of year.  My mom and I made a batch of these last night, and although I always forget about them, they're one of my favorite Christmas treats.  They melt in your mouth, and I love the nutty flavor (without a chunky texture) and that the actual cookie isn't too sweet (until they're rolled in powdered sugar)! So, if you need something else to add to your holiday baking list, give these a try!

I love cooking from actual old cookbooks where you can see how they've been worn and splattered on throughout the years, so I just took a picture of the recipe today.

Recipe Source: Vintage Betty Crocker Cookbook

Monday Munchies - Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

Can you believe it's October already?  And the first happened to fall on a Monday, perfect for kicking off a month of fall recipes!  The weather in Jackson has been absolutely beautiful, highs around 70 and cool nights...perfect shorts/sweatshirt weather which has been my favorite clothing combination since I was a little kid haha!  Although I can't wait for the snow to come, I have definitely been enjoying fall in Jackson and it has me in the mood to make all sorts of pumpkin, apple, and soup recipes!  A couple of weeks ago we had a ladies' night where we all brought food and played games.  I knew right away I wanted to bring these pumpkin snickerdoodles.  The pumpkin in the batter makes them turn out so moist and fluffy, the girls all loved them!

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles

Yields 3-4 dozen

Cookies:
3¾ cups all-purpose flour
1½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
½ tsp. ground cinnamon
¼ tsp. ground nutmeg
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
¾ cup pumpkin puree
1 large egg
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Coating:
½ cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
½ tsp. ground ginger
dash of allspice

Directions:
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Whisk to blend and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugars on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Blend in the pumpkin puree. Beat in the egg and vanilla until incorporated. With the mixer on low speed add in the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated. Cover and chill the dough for at least 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper. Combine the sugar and spices for the coating in a bowl and mix to blend. Scoop the dough (about 2½ tablespoons) and roll into a ball. Coat the dough ball in the sugar-spice mixture and place on the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough to fill the sheets, spacing the dough balls 2-3 inches apart. Dip the bottom of a flat, heavy-bottomed drinking glass in water, then in the sugar-spice mixture, and use the bottom to flatten the dough balls slightly. Re-coat the bottom of the glass in the sugar-spice mixture as needed.

Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes, or until just set and baked through. Let cool on the baking sheets about 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining dough. Store in an airtight container.

Recipe Source: Annie's Eats

Monday Munchies - Monster Cookies

A few weeks back I had a big bag of M&M's leftover from a cooking project and needed a recipe to use them up, Monster Cookies seemed like the perfect recipe!  Our community group is getting rather large and it's hard to come up with desserts that will feed 20 people, but this recipe makes enough to feed a small army!  I'm sure if you didn't want as many, you could halve or quarter the recipe but my favorite thing to do with leftover dough is to freeze it.  Now, a lot of people just freeze a wad of dough, but scooping them into dough balls first saves a bunch of time when you're ready to thaw and bake them.  After you've scooped the remaining dough into balls put them close together on a baking sheet and pop them into the freezer for a few hours, or until they are hard.  Then, put them in a freezer bag or some other container and you have cookies ready to go at a moment's notice.  You don't even have to thaw them before baking, just adjust the baking time accordingly!  This is an awesome way to have fresh baked cookies ready for friends or neighbors who drop by unexpectedly!

Dough balls for freezing

Monster Cookies

6 eggs

2 c. white sugar

2 c. brown sugar

1 stick of butter

3 c. peanut butter

1 c. Crisco (or you can use more butter)

4 t. baking soda

1 T. vanilla

1 c. flour (or you can add another cup of oats instead)

8 c. oats

1 bag of M&Ms

1 bag of chocolate chips

Combine peanut butter, butter, Crisco, sugars, vanilla and eggs, beat until smooth. Add baking soda and mix thoroughly.  Stir in oatmeal and flour, then add chocolate chips and M&M's.  Scoop onto cookie sheets.  Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.  Yield: 6 dozen(ish) normal size cookies (depending on how much dough you eat!)  Also, these are tasty made into giant cookies, just remember to adjust the baking time accordingly!

Source: A combination of my friend Bry's recipe and a similar one from our church's cookbook From Our Table to Yours

Monday Munchies - Easter Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

I have a love-hate relationship with sugar cookies.  I love how cute they turn out, and I love the taste, but they require so much work/time to roll out, cut out, and then it takes another few hours to ice them depending on how intricate you're getting.  Honestly, I don't even like icing on my sugar cookies, I'd rather have them plain...and burned, but that's beside the point.  Royal icing doesn't have the greatest taste, but it looks awesome when you're finished!

Last week an older lady from our community group came over to learn how to decorate with royal icing.  The fact that she came to learn from us was a little scary, because I still feel like I need someone teaching me!  But the cookies turned out adorable, so although we don't have it perfected yet (i.e. air bubbles after the cookies are flooded...how do you get rid of them?), here are our recipes!

Outlined and ready to be flooded

White Sugar Cookies
1 c. butter
1 c. Crisco
1 c. powdered sugar
1 c. granulated sugar
2 eggs
4 c. flour
1 t. cream of tartar
1 t. baking soda
1 and 1/2 t. vanilla

Directions
Cream together butter, shortening and sugars.  Add eggs, beat well.  Add dry ingredients, beat.  Add vanilla.  Roll into balls and flatten with a glass dipped in sugar, or roll dough out and cut with cookie cutters.  Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 min. on greased cookie sheet.

Royal Icing

These squirt bottles work GREAT for icing

3/4 c. warm water
5 T. meringue powder (Wilton brand is rumored to not taste as good, but that's what most of the stores in the area sell.  It works fine or there are several brands available to order online, Ateco is a brand that is highly recommended.)
1 t. cream of tartar
2.25 lbs powdered sugar (You will have to use a kitchen scale to measure out the extra 1/4 pound since powdered sugar comes in 2 lb. bags or 1 lb. = 3 and 3/4 cups.)
Optional:
1 and 1/2 t. clear flavoring (I always use vanilla, but butter and almond are common as well.  Just make sure they are clear!)
1-2 t. corn syrup - makes the icing have more of a sheen


Directions
Put water, meringue powder and cream of tartar into a glass or metal mixing bowl (plastic absorbs oils from what you mix in it and it can mess up the recipe).  Whisk until foamy.  Gradually add powdered sugar and mix until stiff peaks form, about 2-3 min.  Be careful not to over-mix.  Stir in any flavorings you desire and/or corn syrup.

Now, for the actual icing instructions, I'm going to direct you over to Bake @ 350 blog, because she's the real pro!  Her Royal Icing 101 tutorial provides the basic steps (outline with thick icing, flood with icing thinned with water) and Royal Icing 102 tutorial provides some extra tips.  I'd encourage you to read both tutorials before you embark on your cookie decorating adventures!

Recipe Sources: 
Cookies - Family recipe
Royal Icing - Adapted from Karen's Cookie Blog

Monday Munchies - Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

Today's bite sized cookie recipe is one that I think would be a great addition to your dessert selection for a Super Bowl party on Sunday, or really whatever other excuse you can come up with to make them!  Whoever  came up with this recipe is brilliant - peanut butter cups on peanut butter cookies, what's not to love?!?  Since we didn't have mini muffin tins we made giant cookies in regular muffin tins and put full sized peanut butter cups on the top, but we both agreed that it was a lot of cookie, and the mini's would have been a better ratio of cookie to peanut butter cup.  Also, I think the yield is off, this recipe seemed to make a LOT of dough.  We made 24 large cookies and still froze some of the dough, but in the future I might cut the recipe in half. 

Peanut Butter Cup Cookies
1 cup butter softened
1 cup peanut butter (We used crunchy peanut butter and I loved the texture it gave the cookies!)
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 16 oz package miniature peanut butter cups

Blend butter, peanut butter and sugars until creamy.  Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.  Combine flour, baking soda, and salt and add to creamed mixture.  Shape dough into balls that fit nicely into ungreased miniature muffin tins.  Bake at 350 degrees for 5-7 minutes.  Don't overbake.  After removing from oven, immediately press one miniature peanut butter cup into the center of each cookie.  Let cool in the muffin tin.
Yield: 3 dozen

Monday Munchies - Wheat-Free Oatmeal Cookies with Chocolate Chips and Peanut Butter

It is 5:30 Monday morning and I'm super excited, which means...I'm leaving for Jackson, Wyoming in 30 minutes!  Don't worry, I'll keep you all posted on my adventures along the way, but now back to business.

This week's recipe is a tasty new cookie recipe I tried last week.  Although it is gluten free, it doesn't have any special flours or other weird ingredients so it tastes just like a normal delicious cookie, and the raw cookie dough is awesome too (don't worry mom, I survived the raw egg)!  The only downfall of these is that after a day or so they get a little dry (nothing a little nuking in the microwave can't help though).  The next time I bake these I will probably only bake a dozen or so, then scoop out dough balls onto a cookie sheet, put the cookie sheet in the freezer for several hours, then put the frozen dough balls into a freezer safe container to store them until I want fresh baked cookies again!  I also think these would be good with almond butter in case anyone has peanut allergies.  I apologize for the bad pic!  This was a last minute Monday Munchies recipe decision so this is a poorly lit smartphone pic of the picture in the cookbook (there was only one burned cookie left in my house and that picture turned out even worse).

Wheat-Free Oatmeal Cookies 

with Chocolate Chips and Peanut Butter

3 cups rolled oats (not instant)

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/3 cups creamy peanut butter 

6 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temp

2/3 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup packed brown sugar 

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350.  Line a baking sheet with a silpat or parchment paper. 

Combine the oats, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. 

Place the peanut butter, butter and sugars in a large mixing bowl and beat together with an electric mixer on medium-high until smooth (2-3 min).  Add the eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth.  Beat in the oat mixture on low until just incorporated.  Mix in the chocolate chips. 

Drop the dough by heaping tablespoonfuls onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie.  (I found that the cookies stayed in whatever shape the dough balls are, so I needed to press the dough down to flatten the balls so they actually looked like cookies - the learning process was not pretty, but it sure tasted good!)

Bake the cookies until they are golden around the edges but still soft on top, 10-12 minutes.  Let the cookies stand on the baking sheets for 5 minutes, then carefully slide the parchment sheet with the cookies to a wire rack and let them cool completely.  (I kind of skipped that last step.  I waited until they were cool enough to transfer without falling apart and they turned out fine.)

Makes: 48 cookies

Recipe Source:  Cookie Swap Cookbook