Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

If you're anything like me then you have about a year supply of quick cooking oats in your pantry that needs to be used and rotated.

So a perfect way to do that it to make cookies. Chris loves oatmeal cookies, but they have to be a very specific kind and I needed to make an equivalent to or better oatmeal cookie.

I think I nailed it with this recipe. It was another Pinterest win.


Recipe adapted from: The Comfort of Cooking
INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg 
• 1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

I left out the nutmeg, on the fact that I didn't have any nutmeg. If you don't like nutmeg don't worry the cookies taste fantastic without it. 


DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars until fluffy. Mix in egg and vanilla until well blended. Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder and nutmeg (omitted) in a bowl. Stir into butter mixture. Gently stir in oats until well blended.

Shape dough into rounded golfball-sized balls (about 2 Tbsp. each). (I used my trusty cookie scoop)  Place on prepared baking sheet (I fit 9 per sheet). Flatten with the bottom of a measuring cup dipped in sugar. (Totally missed reading this part. I did NOT flatten my cookies before baking.)


Bake for 8-10 minutes.(since I missed flattening the cookie before baking, I had to bake mine longer between 10-14 minutes) Let cool on baking sheet 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

I think  I got at least 24 cookies.  I didn't count cause we started eating them immediately out of the oven. oops. :)

Cookies times to see how they turned out. 

Seriously so so good! We ate way too many! They were just as good the next day too. Just put them in a zip lock and you should probably hide them cause they will be hard to resist.

This would be a perfect base if you want to add chocolate chips, or raisins (yuck), or reeses pieces candies (yum).

Let me know how they turn out for you and how many you ate too. :)

Easy Homemade Brownie Recipe

I'm continuing my quest in making the recipes I've pinned on my Pinterest.

Up next brownies!

I was wanting something chocolate and we only have cocoa powder in the house and I'm not about to start spooning it into my mouth.  That probably would not go over very well.

So I turned to the glorious Pinterest and found recipe that was simple and I had everything already in my house.

The recipe is found on I Am Baker site.  She had a brilliant idea of making the dry mix as a gift and including the recipe of the rest of the ingredients and such for the person to finish making it.  I may have to do that.  Its just like using a box mix but I think more personable because you spent the extra time on it. 

  

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp baking powder

Wet Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup melted butter, then cooled
• 2 eggs 
• 1 tsp vanilla

*I doubled the recipe and it was still perfect* 

Directions:

1. Sift together all dry ingredients in a medium mixing bowl. 
2. Melt butter and set aside to cool slightly. Beat two eggs with the vanilla.  Add to dry ingredients and stir.  Pour in cooled melted butter and incorporate.  Spread batter in a prepared 8-inch square pan and bake for 20-22 minutes at 350 degrees. *since I doubled the recipe I used a 9x13-inch pan and baked it for about 30 minutes, but started checking at 22 minutes.*

It is seriously such an easy recipe.  I am a huge fan of fudge style brownies and this is perfect.  Add a little vanilla ice cream and some chocolate syrup and its a perfect desert for any day or even a special occasion. 

Enjoy and happy baking! 

Simple Soft Pretzel Recipe

Right now I'm going through my Pinterest food board and I'm actually attempting the recipes I've pinned over the years. 

Who even does that right?

Well, I decided I wanted to be that person. 

My younger brother lives in Idaho, going to school there and he had a little pretzel business with a couple other people and when I found that out I was supremely jealous, cause SOFT PRETZELS! 

I have a serious love for them, its unhealthy really.  The obsession become even greater in this last pregnancy. I got the pretzel love bad!

So the other day I decided instead of going to QT kitchen to pick up a pretzel (btw they have good soft pretzels there) for the umpteenth time, I'd attempt making them myself.

I did not expect them to turn out, the recipe I found said I should use a stand mixer but I don't do things that way.  I mix everything by hand so I was leery of the outcome.

If you're like me then I want to let you know that yes, they will turn out and you will be happy you didn't skip out because you don't have a stand mixer.

I got quick Instagram story of my first batch right out of the oven, i wanted to post it but the video is being finicky so here is a crappy screen shot of the video. :) I made a second batch the next day and instead of the usual pretzel shape I made them into pretzel bites.  I've been poppin way too many in my mouth.

Homemade Soft Pretzels

Yields: 8 small pretzels

recipe adapted from Sprinkles Some Sugar

Ingredients:

2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast (1 standard packet)

1 cup warm water

1 tbs unsalted butter, melted

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

3 cups all-purpose flour + up to 3/4 cup more if needed

2 cups water

4 tbs baking soda

1 tbs coarse salt, for sprinkling on top

6 tbs salted butter, melted

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 475 degrees and line a large baking sheet or two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Combine yeast with warm water and sugar in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with hook attachment. Once mixture becomes "frothy" your yeast is ready. 

Stir in salt and melted butter. Add flour 1 cup at a time until a dough forms and is no longer sticky. You may need more or less depending on temperature differences. If you press your finger into the dough and it bounces back, it's ready to knead. Knead dough for 5 more minutes until smooth and pliable. Form dough into a ball and place it back into the bowl to rest for 15 minutes. During this time, prepare baking soda bath.

In a medium sized pot, boil 2 cups of water with 4 tbs of baking soda. Once the baking soda is mostly dissolved, take mixture off heat and allow it to come down to a lukewarm temperature. Pour into a 9x9 baking dish once cooled down.

At this time, 15 minutes of dough resting time should be up. Take dough out of the bowl and flatten slightly with the palm of your hand. Cut dough into 8 sections (like a pizza). Roll each triangle into a long rope, about 19-20 inches long. Shape dough into pretzel shape and place in baking soda bath for 2 minutes. If the whole pretzel isn't covered by the water, spoon it on top of the areas is doesn't reach. Once the 2 minutes is up, carefully pick pretzel up either by your hand or with the help of a fork and place on prepared baking sheet. You may have to re-shape slightly. Sprinkle the pretzel with coarse salt while still wet (optional). Repeat these steps until all 8 pretzels are prepared and on the baking sheet(s).

Bake pretzels for 8-9 minutes or until golden brown. Immediately from the oven, brush with melted butter.

I tried to outsmart a pinterest recipe

Chris came home from work Monday night all excited saying that he was going to be making a dessert that he found online.  I told him i would let him make it himself.  About 5 minutes in i basically took over.  I can't help it, but that's pretty much how everything went horribly wrong.

You've seen pinterest fails before, I'm sure of it. Well i thought i would be smarter than the pinterest recipe and change things up a bit and not follow the recipe exactly and well it didn't go so well.


Here is the original recipe: Homemade Little Debbie star crunch-no bake

It seems like a super simple recipe with super simple instructions. I'll go with what we did wrong.

• We only have salted butter.  Eh, I'm sure that will be fine, through it in!  
• I know what i'm doing honey, this doesn't need to be microwaved this long. 
• It would go faster if we didn't make them into disks and we just flattened them into bars
• We'll just put them in the fridge for a few minutes and let them cool and then put the chocolate on

It was basically an avalanche of i know better then this recipe.  

They ended up being bricks!  Giant, tooth chipping, yet extremely tasty, bricks! 

I mean once we sawed out a piece, then successfully taken a bite, then were able to chew on the piece for a bit, it got chewy and it actually tasted really good! 

It was an unfortunate series of mishaps that lead to our brick homemade star crunch krispies.  

I vow now to try again and follow the recipe EXACTLY.  Its gonna bother me until i figure out if this yummy recipe can actually be replicated successfully. 

Wish us luck!