Pinterest Cookie Idea

Alright so I saw this nifty idea on Pinterest and decided that it was wonderful.  As many things I didn't read the directions and jumped in whole hog and it didn't go as I had planned.  

It is a very simple idea take delightful homemade cookie dough spoon into ice cube trays, freeze, then place into a freezer bag so that one always has cookie dough ready for when you need just a little something.  This sounded great one of my favorite things is to pull out the toaster oven and make just a few cookies for a treat once in a while instead of having a whole batch we don't need to eat.  

The problem was the cookies didn't slide out from their ice cube coffins with out much prompting from the butter knife.  By the time I was done coaxing the little bastards out the dough was so warm that I had to refreeze the chunks so that I could put them into a freezer bag.  It would have been so much easier to spoon out the dough straight onto the cookie sheet, frozen them and then put them into the bag.  No prying no fussing and two less things to wash.  Oh well lesson learned and I now have two ice cube trays instead of one, whoo hoo.  Oh yeah and I'm not sharing this cookie recipe with you because even that was a fiasco, how can you mess up chocolate chip cookies?!

Bright Fall Cookies

For the first time in almost four years we had to break in a new babysitter last night. Our dear sweet Alisha (co-writer of the blog) moved to be with the love of her life and that left us without a sitter. Luckily we have a niece that lives just a block or so away that was looking to take on a few more babysitting jobs. I figured that since it was her first night with the kids she might need a little bit of a bribe tool. So these cookies were born! I was inspired by Joy the Baker's Cranberry Orange Almond Oatmeal. The mix of cranberry and orange always seems to be such a bright flavor combo and then the oatmeal is just perfect for the gray nasty icky weather we had here yesterday. Hope you enjoy the recipe and it makes you smile
Cranberry Fall Cookies

3/4 C. butter softened
1 C. brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
zest of one small orange (about 1 Tbsp.)
1 and 1/2 C. all purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground clove
1/2 tsp. salt
2 C. rolled oats
1 C. dried cranberries
1/2 C. chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350

Cream together the butter, sugar, eggs, zest and vanilla until smooth. Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, clove and salt. Slowly combine the dry ingredients into the wet ones. Fold in your oats, cranberries and pecans. Using a small spoon to drop these on to an ungreased cookie sheet (I like to line mine with parchment paper).

Bake 10 to 12 minutes until lightly golden. Let them cool for a few minutes on the sheet then remove to a cooling rack. These are delicious soft cookies even the next day.

Sunny Cookies

A few weeks ago the kids and I made these simple cookies to celebrate the Solstice. It seems hard to believe that the longest day is already behind us and our days will be getting shorter. I hope you enjoy making these cookies and loving the long days while we have them.

Sunny Lemon Cookies

1/2 C. Butter (softened)
1/2 C. Sugar
1 egg
Cream the sugar and butter together. Add the egg in and blend well.

1 tsp. Lemon Zest
2 Tbsp. Lemon Juice
(this really makes them special instead of lemon extract)

1 1/2 C. Flour
1/2 tsp. Baking powder
1/8 tsp. Salt
Mix all ingredients together. This dough is very soft. Refrigerate for two hours or until firm.
When dough is firm preheat oven to 350 degrees.


Roll out the dough on a floured surface. I rolled mine out in three batches because this gets very warm quickly and once warm it is impossible to do anything with. Don't re-roll out your dough too much because it gets tough and it picks up too much flour and that throws off the taste of the cookies.
Place cut cookies on an ungreased cookie sheet. I did line mine with parchment paper but my cookie sheets are old and creepy looking so I always line them. You can sprinkle the tops of the cookies with granulated sugar before you bake them for decoration but they are yummy without the extra sugar.

Bake 8-10 minutes until edges start to brown. Let cool on tray for 1 minute then finish cooling on a wire rack.

This recipe is great because you only get 12 to 18 cookies from it just enough for everyone to enjoy with out having so many that you don't know what to do with them all. These cookies would be lovely with tea. My little monsters very much enjoyed them with milk :)