Tag Archives: nuts

Kitchen Sink Cookies

3 Dec

Kitchen Sink Cookies

 

There aren’t a lot of things that I do extraordinarily well.

Driving a car with a manual transmission, cartwheels, wearing white without spilling something all over it, washboard abs…

Yeah, not so much.

I also never spell exercise, separate, or nauseous correctly either. The only reason those three words are spelled correctly now is because of spell check and its angry red lines.

What I can do well is bake. Which is cool because I reeeally like to eat.

This also would explain why I’ll never have those aforementioned abs. And that’s fine with me. Whoever said that “nothing tastes as good as being skinny feels” has obviously never had a patty melt with cheese fries and extra cheese sauce from Steak n’ Shake at 2 a.m. after a few cocktails… or microwaved a donut.

Getting back on track…

These cookies actually came to be because I couldn’t decide if I wanted to bake spice cookies, chocolate chip cookies, or oatmeal cookies.

All I knew is that I wanted a cookie.

Then I thought why should I have to choose?

I’m terribly indecisive anyway. Ask my husband – I’m the worst.

I basically never have an answer for ANYTHING.

So I just made a cookie that had everything I wanted in it.

I made… Frankencookie.

And it was Frankendelicious!

There were almost no cookies to photograph because I could not stop eating them.

They’re crispy on the edges but chewy on the inside (as they should be) and they’re just sweet enough with a hint of spice in the background.

They’re pretty much everything I want in a cookie.

And that’s saying a lot about a cookie that contains no dark chocolate or caramel.

Even the dough is delicious and I’m not a dough eater. I always taste a bit to make sure the flavor is right before I put it in the oven but I found myself going back for more over and over.

You certainly do not have to use all of the mix-ins that I used. I had a surplus of dried fruit, nuts, and seeds so I chopped them all up and tossed them in. Just use any combination of your favorite dried fruits, nuts, seeds, and chocolate chips.

 

Kitchen Sink Cookies

2 sticks of unsalted butter

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ginger

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

2 cups old-fashioned oats

Mix-ins: I just threw in a few good-sized handfuls. If I had to guess, I’d say it was probably a cup and a half to two cups worth of the goods.

My mix-ins:

  • Dried Apples
  • Dried Cranberries
  • Dried Blueberries
  • Dried Cherries
  • Dried Lingonberries
  • Raisins
  • Walnuts
  • Pecans
  • Sunflower Seeds
  • Pumpkin Seeds
  • Flax Seeds
  • White Chocolate Chips

Directions

Using a hand or stand mixer, cream the butter and both sugars until the mixture is light and fluffy. Should take 2-3 minutes.

Beat the eggs in one at a time followed by the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, add flour, baking soda, salt, spices, and oats and whisk together to combine.

Add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture and mix just until everything is incorporated.

Add your mix-ins and mix gently to combine or fold in with a spatula or wooden spoon.

Cover and chill the dough for an hour.

Line your cookie sheet with parchment or spray with non-stick spray.

Use a tablespoon measure to form dough balls and place them about 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.

Bake in a preheated 350 oven for 12-15 minutes.

The time they need to bake will depend on your oven. Cookies are done when they are golden brown around the edges and no longer look wet on top. You want to pull them out of the oven when they are just set so they stay chewy in the middle.

Allow the cookies to cool for a couple of minutes on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely but be sure to eat a few while they’re still warm.

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My First Time

15 Jul

I’m about to share with you the very first bentos I ever made for Camryn.

The lighting is bad and the pictures are blurry because I took them with my cell phone in my dimly lit kitchen before I ever thought about starting a blog.

I never had any intention of sharing these with strangers on the internet and I think that point is pretty clear based on the quality of those pictures (yikes!).

But I’m sharing them today because these are the two that started it all.

These two bentos were my very first and second attempt at bento style lunch making.

The first bento, which was made on March 5th of last year, contains tuna salad on spring greens topped with half of a hard-boiled egg that was decorated with eyes made from cucumber peel and a carrot beak, flower-shaped toast, yogurt covered raisins, peanuts, sunflower seeds, cheddar butterflies, carrot slices, and grapes.

There is also some dye-free yogurt in the heart-shaped silicone cup in the middle, topped with a flower that was cut from cantaloupe, honeydew, and cucumber.

Whew… That’s a lot of different foods!

I think Cam ate two bites of this lunch because she couldn’t stop looking at it. She told me that it was the best lunch ever.

2012-03-05

The second bento was made the very next day. It contained flower-shaped grilled cheese sandwiches, mixed nuts, grapes, carrot slices, spring greens, dye-free yogurt, cantaloupe and cucumber cut-outs, and a happy cherry on top. The facial features on the cherry were cut from a cucumber peel.

2012-03-06

I started making bento style lunches because the idea of mostly healthy, fun, and trash-free lunches really appealed to me. I also love being creative with food and making lunch this way allows me to do just that.

I had so much fun last year making Cam’s lunches and I think she enjoyed eating them just as much.

Here are a few of my favorites from this past school year:

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Daily Bento

7 Nov

Behold the bento that almost wasn’t. Pictured above, is actually the 2nd bento I made last night. As I was putting the first one in the fridge, it slipped out of my hand and all of my super nimble cat like reflexes weren’t enough to keep it from hitting the floor. Luckily, nothing actually spilled out of the bento box, it just got sloshed around and jumbled up inside the box.

So we press on because this is real life and sometimes we drop things and therefore sometimes we end up making lunch twice.

For today’s bento, I put some diced chicken breast leftover from dinner the previous night, in a silicone cup with some sliced carrots. Next to that are some french green beans (hericot vert) with some yellow grape tomatoes on top. In the other part of the bento, I put two banana muffins and a few chocolate covered almonds.

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