Admit it. You bake cookies to show someone you care about them. If you were making cookies for yourself, they wouldnt even make it to the oven, you’d just eat the cookie dough.

At least thats how I am. I could be wrong about all you guys.

My mom used to make cookies for my older sister and I when we were kids. Usually she’d make either chocolate chip or banana oatmeal cookies. She would make us cookies to take to school with us, She would make cookies for our friends birthdays, for our teachers birthdays.. She even made giant school bus shaped cookies for our bus driver’s on their birthdays.

Cookies were a way for my mom to show people that she cared about them. I guess I’ve started doing that myself. I make cookies for every occasion. I love making cookies for people that I care about.

So today I decided to bake my husband some cookies.

I wanted these cookies to be special. I wanted them to be full of the things that he loves, but different than most cookiesneverbashfulwithbutter.comhttp://www.neverbashfulwithbutter.com out there. I also wanted these cookies to be something that someone could make for anyone and have them be whatever flavour they chose.

It sounds much more complicated than it is.

Basically you make the dry ingredient base, add the “filling ingredients” and then mix it all together with the liquid ingredients.

I added rolled oats, shredded coconut, Milk chocolate chunks, white chocolate chunks, dried cranberries and crushed almonds.

So here they are-

I usually try to make smaller batches of the foods that I make. I usually end up with around 10 cookies or 12 mini muffins/ cupcakes or I’ll half the recipe and make smaller cakes or puddings or pies.

This recipe, since I made it as I went (though I did write it all down) ended up being HUGE! I used about 1/4 of the dough, and I made 12 cookies. AND THEY’RE HUGE!

So tonight after I finish baking all the cookies off and letting them cool, I’m going to save us a handful of them and bag up the rest and and attach little “happy valentines day” notes tied on with a pink ribbon and give them to my neighbours.

Something special for them, since if I leave them here, my husband and I are going to gorge ourselves on them, and thats never a good idea

The cool thing about this recipe is that you can add whatever dry ingredients to it that you want. Just use the base recipe, add the “filling” ingredients and then mix it all up with the liquid ingredients and voila! A great cookie.

I came up with this on my own. Its not a published recipe anywhere, and its not based off any other recipe either. So, here goes-

Ingredients-

*Liquids*

2 Tsp Orange extract
2 Tsp Vanilla extract
1/4 Cup Heavy cream
2 Egg whites

*Cookie Base*
1-1/2 Cup flour
1 Cup Powdered sugar
3/4 Cup Granulated sugar
1 Tsp Baking soda
1 Tsp Baking powder
3/4 Cup Cold butter

“filling” ingredients-

1 Cup Rolled Oats
1-1/4 Cup Chocolate (I used half white and half milk chocolate)
1 Cup Dried Fruit (I used Dried Cranberries)
1 Cup Coconut
1/2 Cup crushed roasted unsalted Almonds

Directions-

Measure all of the ingredients under “cookie base” (except the butter) into a large mixing bowl. Stir them to ensure even distribution of the ingredients.

Cut the butter into the dry ingredients, and using the same “crumbing” technique you would for making pie crust, Work the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles a bowl full of cornmeal or other coarse ground meal.

At this point, add your filling ingredients. You can be creative at this point. If you dont want coconut, add more nuts. If you dont want nuts, add more dried fruit. If you dont want chocolate.. well, I dont know what to do for you if you dont like chocolate, but I’m assuming you could add more coconut or dried fruit. Really, its a very versatile recipe. The oats add stability, so its kind of hard to sub them out for something, but you could play around with it and see for yourself.

Once all of the filling ingredients are in the bowl with the cookie base, stir the mixture and fold it around to distribute the filling amongst the cookie base. Once its fully integrated, set to the side.

Pour all of the liquid ingredients into a small bowl. Use a fork or a whisk to beat the mixture until its slightly foamy.

Pour the liquid ingredients over the rest of the ingredients in the bowl. Use a spoon or your hand to mix it all up.

When the dough is all mixed up and it appears as though all of the ingredients are fully integrated, place a small amount of flour onto a clean countertop and place the dough on the flour. Form the dough into a log, with a thin layer of flour all the way around the log. Wrap in cellophane and place in the refridgerator for about 30 minutes.

Remove the log from the fridge and remove the cellophane. Cut the log into small pieces and form into flat, round disks. Place about 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes, or until the edges brown and the tops are level with the edges.

Damn tasty I tell you. DAMN TASTY!

-A.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 2:46 am and is filed under February 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.