Snickerdoodle Bars

Posted on March 12, 2014 
Filed Under Cookies and bars

In the world of baking, here is what I bake the most. Snickerdoodle Bars.

Out of the 5 people in this house, 4 of us are crazy about them. I won’t let out any secrets how long (or should I say how short) a pan of these lasts around here. I’ll give you a hint though… you might not want to blink or you could miss them. Ok, not quite.

In case you’re wondering who’s the one not crazy about them, it’s me. I really like them, but they don’t have chocolate in them. Give me monster cookies instead. That’s my all-time favorite ever.  Monster cookies is the second most common thing that gets baked in my kitchen. Why is it that I often think of my sister-in-law Liz when I write baking posts? Our friendship does go deeper than food, honestly! But I thought of her again when I wrote about monster cookies… she loves them, too. And one time, when they were here and we were going shopping, she asked me if I’d please make some monster cookies if she buys the ingredients. That was such a huge compliment and I’ll never forget it. But anyway, this post isn’t about monster cookies, it’s supposed to be about snickerdoodle bars! For a monster cookies post, go here.

One nice thing about these snickerdoodle bars is that they take only staple ingredients. So 95% of the time, they can be made at a moment’s notice. They take a whole Tablespoon of cinnamon, so another nice thing about them is that they have a bold cinnamon flavor.

Snickerdoodle Bars …recipe from my friend Shannon, and then she also put it in the Simple & Satisfying cookbook

3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/3 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

1 Tbsp. cinnamon
1 Tbsp. sugar

Glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
1-2 Tbsp. milk (1 1/2 Tbsp is perfect)
1/4 tsp. vanilla

Cream together butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well.

Add dry ingredients. Pour 3/4 of the batter into a greased 9×13 pan. (It doesn’t actually pour, more like scoop it into the pan and then spread it out.)

Mix Tbsp of cinnamon and sugar together and sprinkle over layer. Put remaining batter on top.

Bake at 350 for 25 min. (The recipe actually says 30 min, but we think they’re softer and better at 25 min.)

Cool slightly. Drizzle with glaze.

Now. A variation.

Lexi (11) makes these bars, but she kind of has a hard time with spreading the remaining dough on the cinnamon layer. And it is hard… the dough is sticky and firm and the cinnamon layer offers no traction. It even takes me 4-5 minutes just to spread that layer on. So, we tried something and it worked! We mixed the Tbsp of cinnamon right into the dough. The 2 bars taste the same and it’s so much easier to spread all the dough in the pan and pop it into the oven instead of the 3 layers.

The bars look different, though.

I like the looks of the 3-layered ones better, so I might do those for social occasions, but here at home, the all-in-one bars win most of the time. Especially if Lexi is baking.

And since we’re talking variations, if you prefer cookie form, here is our favorite recipe for Snickerdoodles.

So, there you have it. The most popular baked goods at our house. What do you bake the most?

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Nothing says summer like watermelon cookies. Just kidding. I was only trying to sound cliche. There are probably 50 things that could go in this blank: Nothing says summer like ________ . Flip flops, burgers on the grill, buzz haircuts, sticky roasted marshmallows, sun-kissed cheeks, fresh strawberry pie, laying in the hammock, picnics, etc. etc. Oh! and watermelon. Watermelon anything.

Before we get to the cookies, I want to throw this in here. Watermelon cake. I made it a couple years ago, but you can make it this year!

And now, onto the cookies…

What these cookies lacked in taste, they made up for in cuteness and fun. But, when it comes to eating sugar cookies, you can’t go by me because I’m not a sugar cookie fan. I like them ok if they’re loaded with frosting, and these cookies weren’t loaded with frosting. The girls liked them though, and that’s what counts, I guess. These particular cookies did have chocolate chips in them too, which is good, what with sugar cookies needing all the help they can get.

I didn’t know how I was going to get the cookie dough red, other than just using food coloring. So, I came up with a brilliant plan (sorta kidding about the brilliant part). I mixed up sugar cookie dough (this recipe) and cake mix cookie dough (this recipe, but I used a red velvet cake mix, and I skipped the silly Tbsp of flour). Then, I took about 1/3 of the sugar cookie dough and mixed it with a dollop of the red velvet dough. (Thought of it later that I could’ve tried simply dumping a pkg of red jello in the dough and see how that works, instead of messing with red velvet). Then I mixed in some chocolate chips. I rolled it out and cut circles, baked them, put a rind on, and cut them in half.

Btw, to do the green, I just piped a fat line around the edge, then spread it out.

And ta-da! Watermelon-lookin’ slices!

You know what I just thought of now? WHY did I not think to make some wedges and make some look half-eaten, like just the rind with a bit of red left on it or use a small flower cookie cutter and cut a ‘bite’ or two out of some of the slices?! So, there’s an idea for you if you make watermelon cookies… I can’t do it anymore with these because I made them last week and they are LONG gone. Oh, and another way to make watermelon cookies would be to make regular sugar cookies (not colored dough) and then frost them red, white, and green and press mini chocolate chips into the red frosting.

So, that’s the end of the watermelon cookies. But if you were paying attention up there, you know that I have most of two batches of cookie dough left. What should we do with all of it?

Mix them together and you’ll have a bunch of red cookie dough. Then, make star sandwich cookies for the 4th of July, which is just around the corner!

Speaking of the 4th of July, I’m going to ‘play’ a little this afternoon and make some fireworks out of white chocolate with the help of blue and red food coloring. Then, tomorrow sometime, I’ll do a 4th of July post with those (whether they end up actually looking like fireworks or not ), USA/flag/stars rice crispies, and maybe another red, white, and blue thing or two.

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Posted on July 31, 2009
Filed Under Cookies and bars

V-A-R-I-E-T-Y!!!! That’s what’s so fun about these cookies! You know in the grocery store, in the baking aisle, how there are several shelves full of cake mixes? Red ones, yellow ones, white ones, brown ones, confetti ones, pink ones, orange ones, blue ones… are there blue ones? Not sure about that now that I think of it.

And you can make even more variety! You can mix the colors too… make brown and pink (chocolate and strawberry) for your daughter’s slumber party… when you’re rolling the dough into balls, make them half the size they should be, then smash a brown and pink one together and put it on the cookie sheet.

I should’ve made a bunch of different kinds and then featured them all. But, I guess I’ll just feature them using one kind. The best flavor ever in the world of food.

Chocolate.

This recipe is adapted from the Tasteful Delights cookbook.

Cake Mix Cookies

1 cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 cup oil
1 Tbsp. flour

Don’t you just wonder what magic that little tablespoon of flour does? Seems like it wouldn’t make enough difference for the bother. Next time, I should be really daring and omit it, and see what happens.

Beat all the ingredients together. Roll into balls and put on cookie sheets.

Bake at 350 for 11 minutes.
 Yum. They have cracks in them. I like when cookies have cracks like that. Makes them look soft and chewy.

Sprinkle with sugar. I used powdered sugar. I just sprinkled some of them because I think I like the looks of them better without.

Actually, I think I like them best some with and some without. You know, variety.

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Posted on June 5, 2009
Filed Under Cookies and bars

You get these cookies. Not bad, huh?

Ok, time to dust off this site again. For those of you who have come back over the last 2 weeks to check if there’s anything new, do you sorta feel like you’re getting to know Trevor? And don’t you want one of his cookies?

We got a serious cookie craving awhile ago… Lexi said, “Mom, can we make cookies?” and I said “Sure!” and without another word, we both stopped what we were doing, headed for the kitchen and I went for the cookbooks and she pulled the flour out of the cupboard. That’s when you know it’s a serious cookie craving. If it wouldn’t have been, we would’ve just acted like that would be a good idea and say how we’d “sure like some cookies” and “maybe this evening we could make some” and then just went on with what we were doing.

The first problem was that we had no chocolate chips. The second problem was more serious… no eggs. There are LOTS of cookie recipes with no choc chips, but very few with no eggs. I thought of making Mary’s Cream Cheese Cookies. (The reason I thought of making those is because this exact thing had happened and after searching cookbook after cookbook, I had fiiiiiiiiiiiiinally found one without eggs.) I’ll bet you anything when Shannon reads this, he’ll wonder why I didn’t Google ‘cookie recipe no eggs’ or something like that. His brother Wendell will probably wonder that too. Now that I think of it, I kinda wonder too.  

Anyway.

What ended up happening is that we have a brand new made-up recipe. Not usually what I have in mind when I say I’m gonna try a new recipe. I looked at the cream cheese cookie recipe this time and noticed there were no secret ingredients taking place of the eggs and I had sour cream in the fridge, so I combined and deleted some ingredients and changed a few amounts on a snickerdoodle and sour cream cookie recipe and here it is:

2 cups brown sugar
1 cup shortening
1 1/4 cups sour cream
4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla

Cream sugar and shortening. Add dry ingredients alternately with sour cream. Add vanilla. Roll into balls. Flatten a bit. Sprinkle generously with cinnamon sugar. Lexi was in charge of putting on the cinnamon sugar and when she started loading it on, I almost said “Not so much!”, but just in time, I thought, ‘You know, that looks kinda good!’ And it was!

Bake for 12 minutes at 375.

Well, they look pretty normal, don’t they?
And they tasted great! Seriously! Sometime, I want to try them with chocolate chips and omit the cinnamon sugar. Or would cinnamon be good with chocolate chips?

Look how soft they are. They’re nice and chewy, not crunchy.

Now I hope that I’m not out of eggs AND sour cream AND cream cheese when the next cookie craving hits. If so, we’ll have to settle for No Bake Cookies, which isn’t a bad choice. At all.

Ok, I’m off to Google ‘Why do cookie recipes have eggs in them?’ Or maybe I’ll Bing it. Just this week, I learned there’s such a thing as Bing.

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Posted on May 13, 2009
Filed Under Cookies and bars

Usually when I’m flipping thro’ a cookbook and a recipe JUMPS out and grabs me, it’s a recipe with chocolate chunks or melted milk chocolate in it. This time, it wasn’t though. I think what grabbed me about these bars was the cream cheese. And the fact that when there’s a brown sugar/oatmeal/butter mixture, it’s always good… like these Peanut Butter Dream Bars, for example.

This recipe comes from the Tasteful Delights cookbook. The committee behind this cookbook includes a couple of my friends, Michelle and Monica. Good recipes in there! Sometime, I want to try the stuffed mushrooms, bacon cheese chicken, frozen mocha dessert, and a bunch of others. But for now, we’ve got some scrumptious jam bars…

Jam Bars

Printable recipe

2 cups rolled oats (I used quick oats)
1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup butter
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
Desired amount of cream cheese filling
Any flavor jam

Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

Reserve 2 cups crumbs and press the rest in a 9×13 pan and bake for 10 minutes.

Spread cream cheese evenly over crust, then jam over cream cheese.
 I used about 1 cup of cream cheese filling.

 I used about 1/2 cup of jam. Next time, I’d use more like 1/4 cup of jam. It was a little too sweet and the strawberry flavor over-powered the cream cheese flavor, I thought. And that’s not good when fruit over-powers cream cheese! ????

Sprinkle crumbs over jam.

Bake until crumbs are golden. After 17 minutes, it looked like this, so I got it out of the oven… looks great to me!

These didn’t last long around here! They’re pretty easy too. They oughta cool before cutting and eating though. They didn’t hold their shape very well while still warm. They are THE best out of the fridge. I don’t think they’d need to be stored in the fridge, but they were extra good when they were chilled. By the way, I made only a half batch (and used an 8×8 pan) because I didn’t have enough of one of the ingredients and I wanted to make them NOW.

About the cream cheese filling, I buy it in tubes at a local bulk foods store, but if you don’t have access to it or would rather make your own, here’s a wonderful cream cheese filling recipe:
8 oz softened cream cheese, 1 egg, 1/4 cup sugar, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Beat till smooth.

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Posted on July 15, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

I can’t tell you how good these are! It’s good I don’t have a pan of these sitting around, what with trying to be on a diet and all. I’d be helpless.

This recipe came from the Tasty Favorites cookbook and the 2-page spread that they’re on is a dynamite 2 pages. Seriously, I was trying to choose between all 4 recipes. First, I weeded out the Chewy Peanut Butter Bars, I think because I wasn’t too sure about the coconut… they, by the way, are not similar to the Peanut Butter Dream Bars featured awhile ago. Next, I weeded out the Chocolate Crunch Bars, mostly because I had made something similar to those before, except the brownie part was a brownie mix in my other recipe instead of made from scratch like this one. I just could not choose between the Caramel Toffee Bars and the Butter Pecan Turtle Bars (which are actually called Butter Pecan Turtle Cookies in this cookbook, but I’d say they’re bars because they’re made in a pan then cut apart, not made individually like cookies). And finally the Turtle ones won. BUT, you will probably be seeing those other recipes sometime in the future.

Back to that Tasty Favorites cookbook, I love it! It’s got 227 pages of good solid down home cookin’ recipes in it. It’s compiled by the Pleasant Grove Mennonite Church in IN. If any of you readers are from there, you did a GREAT job compiling that cookbook! I know my cousin Nic goes to that church, but I don’t think I know anyone else there.

Anyway, back to the Turtle bars…

Butter Pecan Turtle Bars

Printable recipe 

2 cups flour
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup pecan pieces

Mix flour, sugar, and butter, and pat into a 9×13 pan.

I wasn’t too sure about this crust when I was making it. It seemed too thick for as fine and crumbly as it was. But after it baked, it was perfectly firm and not crumbly at all.

Sprinkle pecan pieces over crust.

Caramel Layer:
2/3 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 cup milk chocolate chips
In a 1-qt pan, combine butter and sugar, cook. When entire surface boils; boil 1/2 to 1 minute, stirring constantly. Pour over pecan crust.

Anybody getting a caramel craving? I’m feeling a strong urge to make these bars again.

Bake at 350 on center rack for 18-22 minutes or until caramel is bubbly all over and crust is lightly browned.

Sprinkle chocolate chips on and allow to melt slightly, swirl as they melt.

I will not go out to my kitchen and make these right now. I will not go out to my kitchen and make these right now. I will not… somebody, please help me… I could use a bit of willpower here.

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Posted on June 28, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

I love looking thro’ recipes, cookbooks, etc. It can keep my attention as good as any interesting book. And one nice thing about it is that it is calorie-free… the looking and reading, that is! Where I get into trouble is when something reaches out and grabs me and I can’t help but go out to the kitchen and make it. That’s why I purposely don’t keep chocolate chips on hand. Chocolate is my weakness. And I do believe that I’ve become immune to getting sick from it.

Anyway, it was raining yesterday evening and the church ballgame got cancelled, and I was in the mood to bake something. So, I started going thro’ recipes. I had no chocolate in the house, so any recipe with that was out. I also had no brown sugar, so that threw out alot of cookie recipes. Then this lemon bar recipe caught my eye, and I had everything on hand, including fresh lemons. I didn’t know if any of us even liked lemon bars, but they sure looked tempting on the picture, so lemon bars it was.

Sweet Lemon Bars …recipe taken from an Easy to Bake Easy to Make recipe card

Printable recipe 

1 cup flour
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. grated lemon rind
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 3 oz pkg cream cheese, softened

Preheat oven to 350. Line bottom of  8″ square baking dish with parchment paper. I didn’t do that, I just greased the pan well. Mix flour, butter, and powdered sugar together using hand mixer until fine crumbs form. Using drinking glass, press crumbs evenly into bottom of lined baking dish.

This was sort of a joke. I started like that, but then ended up using my hand. Worked great!

Bake until crust is lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, beat eggs, sugar, and salt until light and fluffy. Add lemon rind and lemon juice. Blend in cream cheese. Pour over baked crust.

Return to oven and bake until firm in the center when touched, about 25 minutes longer.

Cool to room temperature; sift powdered sugar over top.

Cut into 9 squares and cut each of the squares in half diagonally to make triangles. Serve or store in refrigerator. Makes 18 triangles.

For the grated lemon rind and the lemon curl garnishes, I used the tool pictured below. Not sure what it’s called, maybe a lemon zester/scorer. It’s a Pampered Chef item and it works like a charm! I cut off a string of peeling with the part in the middle of the tool, then curled the peel around a pen so it would be more apt to curl on the plate later. I tried to find a utensil with a round handle and had none, so I used a pen. Yeah, even my wooden spoon handles aren’t round! The grating was actually lemon zest, done with the top part. I do it in as tiny pieces as possible so it dissolves or whatever it does that you don’t see it or feel the texture of it in the finished product.

I liked these bars the best chilled. When I told Shannon that, he said he’s tried them at every temperature from slightly warm to chilled and they passed with flying colors at all stages. They were just tops and I do know now that baked stuff doesn’t have to be chocolate to taste great and leave you coming back for more. So, we were pretty hard on them and I don’t think I’ll tell you how much of the pan is left! And we’re not sharing, so you’ll just have to make them yourself.

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Posted on June 15, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

My Father’s Day post I had planned didn’t really happen then, but Happy Belated Father’s Day anyway. Especially to the father of my daughters. And also to my own father.

I’ve got good memories growing up. Dad spent alot of time with us, from laying on the floor playing games with us to taking the family out on the boat multiple times a week in the evening in the summer.         Dad taught us children how to play chess when we were pretty young. He’d take off his queen AND give us hints. As we got older, the hints stopped and eventually the queen came back on, and we could even beat him sometimes.       We went boating and picnicking on islands and fishing alot too. I grew up here among the many lakes in the northwoods and a boat was almost as important to own as a car, in our opinions. At a certain age, Dad stopped taking the fish off of our hooks and said we were old enough to do it ourselves. I don’t remember exactly what age that was (maybe 9 or 10 yrs old), but whenever it was is when I started mostly just going along fishing for the ride and not getting my pole out. I missed seeing my bobber jerk underwater and feel the tug on the line, but it was worth giving up not to have to take a fish off the hook!         His storytelling ability is amazing and kept us very entertained and wide-eyed growing up… especially the stories involving his horse Dusty and the stories about their one-of-a-kind neighbor.    Oh, and one other thing, not alot of people grew up with yearly Donald Duck renditions by their dad of the “Happy Birthday to you” song.

Another thing about Dad is that he loves whoopie pies. Every year for his birthday, Mom would make him whoopie pies and at least one year, she made a whoopie pie cake. It was huge (maybe about 12″ across) and looked exactly like a whoopie pie. I haven’t made whoopie pies for years, but I did just lately. I was so disappointed that they didn’t turn out like Sheila’s OR Julia’s… the 2 people that I consider to be whoopie pie queens. But oh well, they were good anyway.

Not sure why this picture has a lavendar hue! ????

Ever wonder why whoopie pies are called whoopie pies? I didn’t really wonder it until Lexi wondered it and started questioning me like I’d just automatically know. It’s like 3 desserts all in one… they taste like chocolate cake with frosting, but you bake them like cookies, and they’re called pies! Maybe it’s one of those things that will forever be a mystery… try explaining that to a 5-yr-old! Her world is full of questions and she’s not satisfied with no answer.

Whoopie pies …recipe taken from the Tasty Favorites cookbook (Pleasant Grove Mennonite Church)

Printable recipe

2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs
3/4 cup cocoa
2 tsp. soda
2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup hot water
1 cup sour milk or buttermilk
4 cups sifted flour (sift?! Does anyone out there sift?)

Mix and drop by teaspoonfuls (I did more like 2 Tablespoonfuls) on cookie sheet. I spread them out a little so they wouldn’t be so thick. I don’t like thick whoopie pies… too much cake.

Bake at 400 for 8 minutes. I baked it for 7 minutes.

Filling:
2 egg whites
2 Tbsp. vanilla
4 tsp. flour
4 tsp. milk
2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup Crisco

Beat egg whites until stiff. Add vanilla, flour milk, and powdered sugar. Beat and cream, then add Crisco. Spread filling on bottom side of one cookie.

Top with another cookie. Yield: 66 cookies (33 sandwiches) Here you go, Dad… I wish you could just pick one off the screen!

This recipe tasted great, but I had a couple problems with it. The filling didn’t get white. It was a light tan. Do you think the vanilla is a misprint? Should it be teaspoons? Everything else in the filling is white except the Crisco I used is yellow, so I think it was mainly the vanilla’s fault that it got tan. The other problem I had was that the cookie part made 5 1/2 dozen cookies, which made 33 sandwiches, but the filling was gone after 24 sandwiches. And it was none too thick, either. So, next time, I’d either make 1.5 times the amount of filling or do what I did this time… filled the leftover cookies with ice cream.

That was good! They tasted like ice cream sandwiches!

On a different note: I won’t be posting on here much at all this week… we have Summer Bible School at church Monday – Friday and I’m teaching the nursery class (4-yr-olds), so that’s where I’ll be during the day. Then, the rest of the time I’ll be trying to keep up with the laundry, cleaning, etc. around here. Some wonderful ladies from church who aren’t teaching offered to make suppers, so I’ll probably be doing little cooking this week. I will be making rice crispy treats for snack time at Bible School though.

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Posted on May 28, 2008 
Filed Under Cookies and bars

There are just some recipes you fall in love with when you read over them and you know you’ve just gotta try it. The recipe today was one of them. Most of the recipes like that for me are cookies, bars, or a dessert of some sort.

Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t just do a dessert site instead of a general cooking site. But, on second thought, that might not be a good idea because think of all the desserts and cookies and stuff I’d have to make to keep it updated! That wouldn’t be good for the wasteline.

In case you wonder, you pretty much get stuff hot off the press here. So, you know what we’ve been eating within the last day or two. I’m not a plan ahead person in any other area of my life (it’s something I’m trying to work on though!), so I’m not with this site, either. I have no posts made ahead. For example, I’m planning to make my ‘Out of my Comfort Zone’ lettuce salad with fruit in it today and post it tomorrow. And no-posts-made-ahead is why my site died the week I went with Shannon on a business run to PA and also over Memorial Day weekend.    

Anyway, I don’t know why I said all that just before saying this: these bars are an exception, I actually made them last week! I think it was maybe Thursday. So they are long gone by now. I only made half a batch because I didn’t want a huge pan of them around here. Way too tempting! I got the recipe from Michelle. She said, “I think the title doesn’t do them justice. I think a better name would be Peanut Butter Dream Bars. See what you think.” And I agree! Oatmeal Bars sound like a healthy something with raisins in. These would NOT fit that mental picture!!! See what you think. 

Oatmeal Bars

2 cups melted butter (starting out with melted butter… you KNOW they’re gonna be good!)
2 cups brown sugar
2 tsp. soda
4 cups quick oats
3 cups flour
1 tsp. salt
2/3 cup peanut butter
2 14-oz cans sweetened condensed milk
2 cups mini choc. chips or mini m&m’s

Mix together melted butter, sugar, soda, quick oats, flour & salt until it’s crumbly.

Set aside 3 cups. Press the rest into a greased 15×10 pan. Remember I made a half batch. I couldn’t decide what size pan would be half of a 10×15. That’s 150 square inches, so half would be something that’s 75 square inches. An 8×8 is 64, a 9×13 is 117. So I picked the 8×8. Maybe I need more baking pans. Or maybe they don’t even make 8×9 pans (72 sq in) or better yet, 7 x 10.5, that would be perfect. Um, let’s see, I forget, were we baking or having Math class?

Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.
Mix peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk. Spread over the baked crust. Pour/drizzle worked great. Yum, doesn’t that mixture look good?! It is. I licked the spatula afterwards.

Mix mini choc chips or m&m’s with the reserved crumbs. Sprinkle the reserved crumbs on top of the peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk mixture. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Enlarged to show texture. And that creamy caramelly peanut buttery layer. These definitely do not fit the ‘Oatmeal Bar’ name. In a recipe that has peanut butter and M&Ms and oatmeal, WHO would pick out the oatmeal and name them THAT?! So, Peanut Butter Dream Bars they will be. They are, of course, irrestistably good. They’re a bit crumbly, for example, you wouldn’t want the kids to walk around in the house eating them. But then, who’d ever let their kids do that anyway. Thanks for the recipe, Michelle! It’s a keeper.

Edit: I made them again and put a half recipe in a 9×13 and that was perfect, they were not as crumbly as they were with the 8×8 pan.

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Posted on May 14, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

These cookies don’t have chocolate or nuts in them, so I’m not cracked over them, but I live with people who are. That’s fine with me though because it gives me a chance to bake something that doesn’t tempt me. I could inhale half a batch of monster cookies or s’mores sandwich cookies in, well, I guess I don’t really want to say how fast I could do that. Anyway, I was just looking thro’ my Cookies and Bars category and I was surprised how varied the selection is! It’s not ALL just the kinds of cookies and bars I love. There are some others in there like gingerbread men and Mary’s cream cheese cookies. And now these:

Classic Snickerdoodles

A bit of trivia first… did you know that Snickerdoodles originated in New England and the origin of the name is still a mystery. It may come from the German word Schneckennudeln, which were cinnamon-dusted sweet rolls. Anyway, I’ve often wondered where the name came from and always thought it was kinda fun to say, it just rolls off your tongue… Snickerdoodle, snickerdoodle, snickerdoodle.

2 3/4 cups flour
2 tsp. cream of tartar
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 3/4 cups sugar, divided
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
4 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375. Coat baking sheets with cooking spray. Combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Combine butter, shortening, and 1 1/2 cups sugar in a large bowl. Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Stir in eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Stir in flour mixture. Beat with mixer on low speed until combined, about 1 minute. Mix remaining sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Shape dough into 1″ balls; roll balls in sugar mixture. Place balls on prepared baking sheets.

Bake until  lightly browned, 10-12 minutes. Remove from oven; let stand 1 minute.

Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool completely. Makes 4 dozen cookies. I must’ve made mine too big because it made just under 3 dozen.

They were good. I asked Shannon how he’d rate them and he said, “They’re ‘make again frequently’ quality”. And judging by the way the girls ate them/asked for more, I think they’d agree!

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Posted on April 28, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

Ok, here we go again. The break is over. I had enough Tasty-Kakes and Starbucks to last me for awhile now.

I wish Tasty-Kakes would come to WI. Well, they do come to WI… but only when we bring them here from PA or FL. A couple years ago, I ordered a bunch and they were shipped UPS. For awhile, every time after that, when we’d see a UPS truck, Lexi (who was 3 at the time) would say, “Mom, let’s ask him for some Tasty-Kakes!” I guess she thought those trucks had a never-ending supply of Tasty-Kakes in them. Kind of like ice cream and a Schwans truck. Would be nice to be able to just flag one down a UPS truck whenever the Tasty-Kake urge strikes.

And since we live up in the boondocks here, our closest Starbucks is 1 1/2 hours away, so we don’t get there often. But along the turnpike, going across IN, OH, and PA, there was often a Starbucks at the travel plazas. Very nice! I tried a couple different things, plus my favorite: a caramel frappucino.

Now, back to the kitchen, new recipes, and all…

This one isn’t really a new recipe. To me anyway. You’d know that if you’d see my recipe card… it’s bent a little, it has a bit of sugar stuck to it, and it has a blue star (written by me) up by the recipe name. What first caught my eye when I was flipping thro’ the cards was the word “Irresistible”. Yeah, that wasn’t me putting that word in the title, that’s the name of the recipe: Irresistible Peanut Butter Cookies. So, I decided to try them. They were wonderful, and I’ve been making them for the last couple years. The recipe is from an Easy-to-Bake-Easy-to-Make recipe card.

One thing that was interesting is that it calls for Crisco (w the logo) shortening and for awhile, that exact recipe was on the Crisco cans. I don’t know why I had never noticed the word “Irresistible” on my Crisco can before. Now, the recipe on there is “Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies”. I wonder how often they change the recipes on their labels.

One other thing, I always wonder how peanut butter cookies got that trademark crisscross pattern in them. I don’t think any other kind of cookie has that and you can always tell a peanut butter cookie by it. I Googled it and there were answers like “To tell them apart from other cookies”, “They don’t taste as good without that”, “They don’t flatten by themselves in the oven”, “They did it in the 1930s and it stuck”.

Irresistible Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/4 cups firmly packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup Crisco shortening
3 Tbsp. milk
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. salt

Heat oven to 375. Place sheets of foil on countertop for cooling cookies. Combine brown sugar, peanut butter, shortening, milk, and vanilla in large bowl. Beat at medium speed w electric mixer until well blended. Add egg. Beat just until blended. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to creamed mixture at low speed. Mix just until blended. Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough 2″ apart on ungreased baking sheet. Flatten slightly in crisscross pattern with tines of fork.

Bake one baking sheet at a time at 375 for 7-8 minutes, or until set and just beginning to brown. Do not overbake. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet.

Remove cookies to foil to cool completely.
Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Soft and chewy… just like a cookie oughta be! Wish I could give you one. Oh yeah, that’s right… there are none left to give.

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Rich and chocolatey, 7-layer bars

Posted on April 19, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

These are the only kind of bars that last more than a couple days around here. It’s not because they’re not tempting, it’s because they’re so RICH and you can’t eat more than a couple at a time. One glance at the list of ingredients and I think you’d agree. They are oh-so-good though!

I’m sure this recipe is in quite a few cookbooks, but the one I used is from the Derstine cookbook.

Seven-layer bars

1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 cup coconut
1 cup chocolate chips
1 pkg. butterscotch chips
1 can Eagle Brand condensed milk
1 cup chopped nuts

Melt butter or margarine in 9×13 pan. Sprinkle over top graham cracker crumbs, coconut, chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips. Drizzle milk over top. Add 1 cup nuts. Bake at 350 for 25 to 30 min. Cool and cut.

   Layer #1: butter.

The dark that you see under the pan is just a hot pad… the pan was hot from melting the butter in the oven.

   Layer #2: graham cracker crumbs

   Layer #3: coconut

My Grandma made Lexi’s apron for her (the one that makes the brown sugar pie). Grandma wears that kind of apron all the time and she sewed a few miniature ones for the great-grand-daughters. They were really cute even though they look a bit old-fashioned.

   Layer #4: chocolate chips

I like chocolate chips way better than butterscotch chips, so I always trade quantities and put in the whole pkg of the chocolate and only 1 cup of the butterscotch.

   Layer #5: butterscotch chips

   Layer #6: sweetened condensed milk

  Layer #7: chopped nuts (I used pecans.)

   Just came out of the oven. Slightly browned around the edges.

                                                                                                                                                                                            Mmmmmm! Just delicious!

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Posted on March 29, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

Are you wondering if I’m serious? You’ll find out at the end.

I was paging through a cookbook one day last week while I was laid up with my sprained ankle. It was the same day and the same cookbook that I saw the Fudge Sundae pie in a few posts ago. Anyway, I saw a recipe titled ‘Oreo Cookies’. I read the directions and they do get flattened and I wondered if someone had actually figured out how to make them with that taste that only Oreos have and with the crunch, too. I had to try them. So, from the Cooking with the Horse and Buggy People cookbook…

Oreo Cookies

1 cake mix, white or chocolate (I used chocolate)
2 eggs
2 Tbsp. water
2 Tbsp. cooking oil
1/2 cup cocoa

Let stand 20 minutes. That’s the first directions given, but I took it to mean after everything was mixed together! Do not refrigerate.

Shape into balls. Flatten with bottom of glass greased once and dipped into Nestles Quik (I think it’s actually called ‘Nesquik’) for each cookie. Bake at 300 for 8 minutes.
 

Here are the cookies right out of the oven. Yeah, they pretty much look the same as when they went in. Maybe slightly fatter.

I think I went a bit overboard on the Nesquik with a few of them. Oh well. That might not be a bad thing.

Filling:
1 envelope Knox geletin
1/4 cup cold water
1 Tbsp. plus 1 cup powdered sugar (not sure why the 1 Tbsp!)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup Crisco

And that’s where the recipe ends, folks. No directions. This cookbook is kinda interesting that way. Sometime, I’m gonna scan in a recipe from it and see if you can help me figure it out. Usually, I can kinda go from past experience and know what to do, but there’s one recipe that sounds very yummy that has me clueless. Anyway, I mixed the filling up and spread it between 2 cookies.

I actually ended up making the filling twice. All I have is butter-flavored Crisco, which is yellow. It makes the filling a light yellow, which I didn’t think looked too good, so I made it again and used butter instead. It turned out fine. This recipe made 25 1/2 complete sandwich cookies (51 halves).

Now, our take on them: When my taste-testers (aka: my husband and girls) tested them, here were their responses: Husband, “They look like mini whoopie pies” then after tasting one, “They’re better than Oreos.” Lexi (5), “Oh, they’re so cute!” then a little later, “Mom, can I have another one?” and Tiffany (2), she didn’t say anything, she just pulled it apart, licked the frosting off, refused to eat the cookie part, and begged for another one.

They ARE cute. They were the size of Oreos, except fatter. And  they sorta had the same taste. But they didn’t have the crunch, they were soft like regular cookies, which if you ask me, when it comes to cookies, ‘soft’ is better than ‘crunch’. Some things aren’t like that though. Like chips. These cookies were a bit time-consuming to make though, for no more than food than it ended up being. Maybe if I’d make them bigger it would help.

I doubt I’ll get the urge to make them again. Like I said, “Why make ’em when you can buy ’em?”

Or isn’t that what I said?

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Coming up next… the making of Tiffany’s birthday cake. So check back on Monday! It’ll be along the same lines as the other birthday cakes in the ‘Birthday Cake” category in the ‘categories’ section, so you can go look at those awhile if you want to.

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Posted on February 28, 2008
Filed Under Cookies and bars

I guess I never paid enough attention, but do you know how many cookie recipes take eggs?! I’d say roughly 99% percent of them! Lexi wanted to make cookies and we had no eggs, so I started going through cookbooks. There were nobake cookies in the Derstine Cookbook, but we wanted ‘bake’ cookies. Finally, we found “Mary’s Cream Cheese Cookies” in the Treasured Recipes for our Mothers cookbook by the Lebanon Valley Christian School in PA.

“Who’s Mary?” Lexi asked.
“We don’t know her. She just gave the recipe to put in the cookbook”, I said.
“Well, we should cross out her name and just call them Cream Cheese Cookies cuz we don’t know her.” was Lexi’s reasoning.
We didn’t cross anything out… Mary is still getting credit for the cream cheese cookies in our cookbook.

Mary’s Cream Cheese Cookies

1 c. butter
6 oz. cream cheese (we just threw in the whole 8 oz)
1 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. flour
4 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla

 Cream butter, cream cheese, and sugar. Add rest of ingredients. Refrigerate for 1/2 hour. (Ha, the dough didn’t last in the fridge for 30 min! With 2 eager helpers asking every 10 seconds if it’s ready yet, I got it out after about 5 min. Worked just fine.) Form balls and roll in crushed Wheaties.
 (This is still at the beginning of rolling. Tiffany hasn’t started playing in the Cornflakes yet. What a mess it turned out to be!)
 Bake 350. That’s all it said. Not how long to bake them or anything. I baked them for 10 min, then thought they didn’t seem quite done, so I let them in for 2 more min. and that seemed perfect. So, 12 minutes it is. The batch made exactly 3 dozen cookies. Also, we didn’t have Wheaties, so we used crushed Cornflakes.
 On whether we liked them or not, let’s just say that those 3 dozen cookies look like they might not last a full 24 hours around here! They are nice and soft and moist, not dry like regular sugar cookies. Must be because of the cream cheese. I think I might try these sometime for frosted sugar cookies (without the Wheaties/Cornflakes), like at Christmastime. I’m sure they’d need to be refrigerated the full length of time to be rolled out though.

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