Category Archives: Cookies and Brownies

Healthy(ish) Cookies!

January 27, 2015Cookies and Browniesoatmeal; chocolate chip; craisin; cranberryRuth Wendel

Hey friends! I hope you all are holding down the fort in this impending ice age! I can say without doubt that all the grocery stores in my area are completely ransacked of their milk and bread (and maybe some peanut butter, fluff, and Nutella, too). In light of this impending chilly craziness, I thought of something for you all to do inside- BAKE! Big surprise, right? And it just so happens that I have a great new recipe to share with you!

This recipe is for Oatmeal Cranberry Chocolate cookies. These are sooo yummy- the perfect combination of chewy oatmeal that provides soluble fiber to fill you up (and is heart healthy!), the sweet dried cranberries, and the dark chocolate (we’ll say this is included for the antioxidants). Here are the ingredients:

1 cup margarine, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 1/2 cup quick-cooking oats (either the 1-minute or 3-minute kind)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup dried cranberries
1 bag Nestle dark chocolate morsels

First, preheat the oven to 375ºF. Cream the margarine and sugars together until they’re fully combined. Then, stir in the eggs and vanilla and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix until the most delicious cookie dough ever is in front of you!

Drop heaping tablespoonfuls of the dough onto ungreased baking sheets, and bake the cookies for about 11 minutes. If you have two sheets baking at once, switch which oven rack they’re baking on halfway through the baking time.

As soon as they come out of the oven, take them off the sheets and transfer them to a wire cooling rack. Otherwise, they might continue baking from the heat of the baking sheets, and get pretty crispy.

Now, dig in! These cookies are spectacular when warm, because the chocolate is all melty and silky, and the cranberries are the perfect sweet and tangy bite. Add in the warm nutty oatmeal, and you have yourself a blissful moment. Happy baking- and stay warm!

Cookie Painting

November 6, 2014Cookies and Browniessugar cookie; icingRuth Wendel

Hello all! I’m so pumped to share my new idea with you: cookie painting! Yes, with actual paintbrushes. I’m sure all of you are familiar with frosted sugar cookies, and this is just a fun twist off of that. The best part? It’s simple, and it’s a great activity for kids! I’m really excited about this, so I’m going to jump right in!

The cookie recipe itself is the same as my “Pumpkin Pie Cookies” recipe (check my old posts for that recipe, too!). Here are the ingredients:

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter (room temp. or softened)
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs and vanilla, and mix well. Gradually add the dry ingredients, mixing until the dough is absolutely delicious and it’s tempting to just eat the dough (but really until everything is thoroughly incorporated). Then wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill it in the fridge or freezer until it’s nice and cold, which will make it easier to work with.

Roll it out on a floured pastry board or flat surface until it’s about 1/4 inch thick.

Cut out circles in the dough with a circle cookie cutter (or really any shape that you want to decorate- I just chose generic circles because I wanted the paintings to be showcased!).

Put the cookies on an ungreased baking sheet, and put in them in the oven at 350ºF for 8-10 minutes, switching racks after 5 minutes to ensure even baking. Some recipes call for a parchment-lined baking sheet, but if you take the cookies off the sheet right after they’ve come out of the oven you should be fine.

Let the cookies cool on a wire cooling rack. In the meantime, you can make up your “paint”, which is really a loose powdered sugar icing. There is no set recipe for this, so I’ll give you directions for how I make it.

Pour 1/2 lb. (half a box) of powdered sugar into a medium mixing bowl.
Sprinkle a pinch of cream of tartar (~1/8 tsp) in with the powdered sugar (this will help the glaze harden on your cookies).
A very little bit at a time, add milk to the sugar until you have a runny icing, about the consistency of regular paint.
Divide the icing into 5 separate small bowls.
Using food coloring, make each bowl of frosting a different color (I made four colors and left the fifth portion white). I made my colors pretty vibrant by adding 4 drops of the food coloring per bowl.

Now you’re ready to paint! This is the fun part, because you can be as creative or not as you please, and the cookies will taste great no matter what! An added perk is that if you mess up on your painting, you can just eat the mistake and start over with a new cookie! Just be sure to be gentle, because the cookies could break. I also suggest having one paintbrush per color, so that you don’t have to clean the brush between every color change.

Tip: The colors will be lighter when you first paint them on, and then will darken as the glaze hardens. The white glaze will really be an obvious white color, not the clear color that paints on.

Here are some of my designs:

This recipe is great for kid parties, or for decorating holiday cookies! You can easily switch it up by using a specific cookie cutter, like a Santa shape or a heart. This recipe is just fun and simple! Plus, the sugar cookies are delicious! Happy baking, and happy painting!

Raspberry Thumbprints

September 25, 2014Cookies and Browniesraspberry; cookie; shortbreadRuth Wendel

Hello all! I know, I know, it’s been a while again since I’ve posted. College gets crazy! But once again, I’ve had my blog in mind all the while, and I have baked a delicious recipe that you will love! But first, a little background…

Every year, our garden provides us with more fruit than we could possibly eat. This includes Concord grapes, raspberries, strawberries, apples, and blueberries! Since we hate to waste any of our delicious fruit, we make jams and jellies out of it. It’s always an adventure making jelly, and it takes quite a while, but it’s so worth it. Let me tell you, store bought jelly can’t hold a candle to my Mom’s homemade jelly. I’ll walk you through the bare bones of her Concord grape jelly recipe:

Start with about 8-10 cups of grapes (from our backyard grape vine, of course!). De-stem them and mash them in a large pot, and cook them down just a little bit with some water to soften them.

Then, pass the grapes through a fine mesh strainer over a large bowl to get rid of the skins and the thick pulp. Pour this juice through three layers of damp cheesecloth over a bowl to really refine the juice. Pour this juice back into a large pot with some pectin, bring it to a boil, and let it boil for 10 minutes. Then add your sugar and stir it constantly until the juice has thickened. Put a small bit of the jelly on a chilled plate, and if the juice gels on the plate, you’re ready to can it and eat it!

That was just a quick description of the recipe, because that’s not the star of the show. What matters most is what happens to these fruit jellies! For this next recipe, I used my Mom’s homemade raspberry jam to make a family recipe, called Raspberry Thumbprint cookies. Here are the ingredients:

2 sticks softened butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 pinch salt (about 1/8 tsp)
2 cups all-purpose flour

Cream the butter and sugar together, and then add the egg yolks and vanilla. Mix these ingredients until they’re fully combined. Then, add the flour and salt and stir until the mixture is completely mixed. The dough is really that simple!

Roll the dough into small balls between your palms and lay them on a baking sheet.

Press the center of each ball down with your thumb (hence the name Thumbprint cookies!).

Now add your favorite flavor of jelly or jam to the center of each dough ball. My great-aunt Sadie, who gave this recipe to me, warned me: “Go easy on the jelly when you’re filling these, because when it bakes it can overflow!”

Bake the cookies in a 350ºF oven for 15-20 minutes, or until the cookies are lightly browned.

And that’s all there is to it! This recipe is so simple, but let me tell you, it’s scrumptious. And of course, the homemade raspberry jam took the flavor of these cookies to a whole new level. I really hope you get a chance to try these cookies- they take only about 30 minutes from start to finish, and you won’t regret making them! Happy baking!

Oreo Balls… in Cookies!

June 2, 2014Cookies and Browniesoreo; cookies; chocolate; oreo ballRuth Wendel

Hi friends! I’m back at the baking, and decided to create a new cookie! For those of you who have eaten Oreo balls before, it’s a spin off of that. For those who haven’t experienced the Oreo ball delights, imagine this: soft Oreo filling, stuffed in a chocolate cookie with white chocolate chips in just the right places!

Is your mouth watering yet? Here’s the recipe!

Ingredients:

Oreo Filling

1 package Reduced Fat Oreo’s
8 oz. reduced fat cream cheese, softened to room temperature

You can use regular Oreo’s or cream cheese, but I was trying to keep the calorie and fat count down. Plus, the less fat there is in the filling, the less likely it is to melt in the oven!

Chocolate Cookie

2 cups flour
2/3 cup cocoa powder (unsweetened)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup margarine
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 package white chocolate chips (optional, but definitely recommended)

First, make the Oreo filling. It’s super easy! Just crush up the whole package of Oreo’s in a plastic bag, and pour them into a mixing bowl. Then, put the cream cheese in the bowl with the crushed Oreo’s. Using a hand mixer, combine the cream cheese and Oreo’s until it’s dark brown and thoroughly mixed. Set it aside. Here’s what it should look like:

Now it’s time for the cookie dough! Start by softening the margarine. When it’s softened, add the brown sugar and the granulated sugar, and mix until the butter is creamed and fully combined with the sugar. Add the eggs and mix. Add the vanilla extract and stir to combine. Then add the flour, baking soda, cocoa, and salt and mix well until everything is completely mixed. Before adding the white chocolate, this is what it should look like.

Fold in the white chocolate chips. If you feel like doing a quality check, feel free to take a spoonful of the dough and taste it! I definitely did!

Now comes the exciting part: assembling the stuffed cookies! There were three different methods I tested, and all had completely different results. I’ll list them here according to the result, and you can decide which one you’d rather use.

Mounded, Thick Cookies with Chunks of Oreo

To get these types of cookies, take a spoonful of dough and lay it on a baking sheet. Then, using the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in granulated sugar, press the cookie flat. Put a 1/4 tsp of Oreo filling in the middle of the dough patty, and then pile more dough on top of the Oreo filling. Gently fold the edges of the bottom patty up so that the Oreo filling is enclosed. The process is depicted below:

Very Flat, Soft Cookies with Oreo Throughout

This process is almost like making stuffed sugar cookies, and it’s really simple! It’s easier than the first method, in my opinion, but you can choose what you wish! First, take a spoonful of cookie dough and roll it in a bowl of granulated sugar. Then, press it flat in your palms. Take a 1/4 tsp of Oreo filling and put it in the middle of the patty. Then, fold the dough around the Oreo filling and roll it into a ball again. Place it on the baking sheet, and with a sugared drinking glass, press it flat.

Thick, Soft Cookies with Oreo Throughout

These were my personal favorites, and also won the prize among my test subjects! This is the easiest method, and in my opinion yields the best cookie. Do the same method as listed above, but don’t press it flat with a glass; just leave it in a ball on the baking sheet. This is how they looked:

After you’ve chosen your favorite method, put the cookies in a 325ºF oven for 12 minutes (after 6 minutes, switch the baking sheets to the other rack in the oven). Make sure to enjoy some right after they come out of the oven- they’re soooo yummy warm!

Since I couldn’t eat all of these myself, I made up little plates of them and gave them away. I had extra Oreo filling left over, so I made regular Oreo balls! That’s another super easy recipe: just take a scoop of Oreo ball filling, and roll it in melted white chocolate and drizzle milk chocolate on top.

These cookies were so yummy, my friends couldn’t stop eating them! They also made a great little gift in the small plates. If you’re in the mood for chocolate, go ahead and try this recipe! You won’t be disappointed!

Pumpkin Pie on a Cookie

February 2, 2014Cookies and Browniescookie; sugar cookie; pumpkinRuth Wendel

Every other week, my parents have a Bible study with some couples from our church. More often than not, I make their desserts, and the following dessert was a result of that!

This is a pretty simple recipe, with a fairly specific decoration process. It’s a “Pumpkin Pie Cookie”, which is really just a sugar cookie that has been slightly flavored to taste like the pie, and frosted to look like it. I made my cookies taste like pumpkin pie, but you can flavor it anyway you want. For example, if you want lemon meringue pie cookies, flavor it with 1/4 tsp lemon zest instead of the pumpkin pie spice.

Here’s the pumpkin cookie recipe:

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter (room temp. or softened)
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or 1/8 tsp nutmeg and 1/8 tsp cinnamon)

Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs and vanilla, and mix well. Gradually add the dry ingredients, mixing until dough is absolutely delicious and it’s tempting to just eat the dough (but really until everything is thoroughly incorporated). Then wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill it in the fridge or freezer until it’s nice and cold, which will make it easier to work with.

Roll it out on a floured pastry board or flat surface until it’s about 1/4 inch thick.

Then, if you’re lucky enough to have a triangular pie-piece-shaped cookie cutter, cut out a bunch of little triangles and lay them on a cookie sheet. For the rest of us who lack a cookie cutter like that, just free-hand the triangles. They’ll be slightly different sizes, but I figure they all taste great and look cute!

When the cookies come out of the oven, let them cool and work on the frosting. Here’s the frosting recipe:

1 ¼ cup powdered sugar
3 tbsp milk
½ tsp vanilla extract

Put the ingredients into a mixing bowl, and being mixing it on LOW speed or else you’ll get powdered sugar everywhere. Once the sugar is incorporated, turn up the speed and whip it for several minutes until it begins to stiffen. Adjust the sugar and milk amount based on how it comes out; it differs depending on weather, humidity, etc.

Divide the frosting into three bowls, one with about half of the frosting and the other two with the remaining quarters of the frosting. Now it’s time for food coloring!

The bowl with half of the frosting should be colored like the “pie” that you’re going for. For example, for pumpkin pie cookies you would make orangey-tan colored frosting. For lemon meringue pie cookies, make it vibrant yellow. The coloring of this will take a little time and patience, because there’s no set guideline for how many drops of which color you need. Just keep mixing until you like the color!

One bowl with a quarter of the frosting will stay white for the “whipped cream” on the pie. The other bowl will be colored to look like pie “crust”. This is a pretty simple color to make. The goal is to make it yellow-tan, so add a little bit of yellow, a little red, and a little blue (but of course you can decide what shade looks the best).

After you’ve colored the frosting to your liking, put the crust color and whipped cream color into separate pastry bags. If you don’t have a pastry bag, just cut off the corner of a Ziploc bag and put the frosting in that.

Now for decorating! Using a knife or a frosting spreader, take the “pie filling” colored frosting and spread it over the top of the cookies. Then, using your “crust” colored frosting, make a thick line across the short end of the triangle to look like the crust. If you want to get really fancy, you can make the crust frosting wavy so that it looks like a scalloped edge. Finally, finish it with a dollop of “whipped cream” frosting. When you’re finished decorating them, let them dry on a wire rack to let the frosting harden.

Then, put them on a plate and eat them all!

Having the Bible study group over is always fun because they’re great people and fun to have around, and they’re great guinea pigs for my desserts! It’s so fun sharing my ideas with them and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Give these cookies a try, because I got good reviews on them from the group!

The Cookies That Were Worth It

January 14, 2014Cookies and Browniessugar cookie; decorating; frostingRuth Wendel

So I know it’s a bit late to be posting about New Year’s Eve parties, being January 14th and all. But I figure, better late than never, plus these cookies were too yummy not to share!

Now before I start this, I’ll preface by saying I hate making roll-out cookies. That shouldn’t be a problem, because I could just avoid making them. Sadly, I apparently suffer memory loss when it comes to making roll-out cookies, because I always forget how much I hate making them until I’m past the point of no return. However, since I made the cookies, I figured I might as well make them look great as well as taste great.

For the New Year’s Eve party, I made sugar cookies and decorated them to look like different New Year’s themes. I’m proud to say they came out looking great, even though the process was a little messy!

For the cookie recipe itself, you can use any sugar cookie recipe you have. I personally used a vanilla cookie recipe because I don’t like citrus-y sugar cookies.

Here’s my sugar cookie recipe:

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks unsalted butter (room temp. or softened)
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside in a separate bowl. Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixing bowl (or by hand), and then add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly. Add the vanilla extract and mix. Then gradually add the flour mixture until the dough is well mixed. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for a couple hours to chill, or the freezer for a little while. Either way, make sure the dough is nice and cold, so that it’s easier to roll out.

When the dough is chilled, lightly flour a pastry board- or some large flat surface- and roll the dough out on it until the dough is about 1/4 inch thick.

Then, pick your favorite cookie cutters and cut out shapes, putting them on a baking sheet. Some recipes call for the sheet to be lined with parchment paper, but if you take the cookies off when they’re right out of the oven, it should be fine to leave it ungreased/unlined.

When all your shapes are cut out, make the dough scraps into a ball, and roll it out again. Andddd repeat. Over and over again. Until all the dough is used. This is the part I hate, because I’m not exactly the most patient person!

When all the cookies are rolled and put on the baking sheet, put them in the oven at 350ºF for 8-10 minutes. If you’re not using a convection oven, switch the cookie sheets to a different oven rack after 5 minutes so that they bake evenly.

Now comes the fun part- decorating!

I used royal icing to decorate my cookies, because it hardens nicely so you can stack the cookies without getting frosting everywhere, and they’re easy to hold. Here’s the recipe:

1 box confectioner’s sugar
2 large egg whites (if you’re making this recipe for anyone who can’t handle raw egg whites, use 5 tbsp meringue powder instead)
1/4 tsp cream of tartar (this is a back-up if your frosting isn’t getting stiff enough, it’s not entirely necessary otherwise)

Combine all the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Start mixing on LOW speed, or else you’ll get powdered sugar all over you. After the sugar and eggs are combined, turn the mixer up to higher speeds and whip the heck out of it until it’s shiny and beginning to stiffen (not quite forming stiff peaks, but almost there). Then it’s ready to be put into pastry bags! If you don’t have one, you can just cut the corner off a Ziploc bag and use that as a decorating bag! And if you don’t have decorating tips, just make the hole in the bag teeny so that the frosting is controlled. I made blue, yellow, and white frosting, so I divided the batch of frosting into three bowls and colored them accordingly.

You can obviously decorate the cookies however you want, but I made some New Year’s balls, stars, and fireworks. I think they came out pretty well! Ps, the shimmer on the white balls is from “pearl dust”. I bought it at our local craft store, and it gives a nice sparkle to the frosting. Then I used blue sprinkles on the blue frosting to enhance the color.

The party was a huge success, and I’m proud to say the cookies were all gone by the end of the night! Roll-out cookies are tedious, but so yummy and worth it if you’re planning to share!

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Category Archives: Cookies and Brownies

Healthy(ish) Cookies!

Oreo Balls… in Cookies!