Carmel Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

The temperature has dropped slightly around here, and with every other food blog posting up yummy pumpkin recipes already, I figured it was my turn. Yesterday I tried two new pumpkin recipes. I had to try two because the first one only called for a half a cup of pumpkin, so I just had to use the other left over cup!

The only pumpkin cookies I've made before are your basic pumpkin chocolate chocolate chip cookies. These caught my eye because they were frosted. And unlike most frosting on pumpkin treats, this wasn't cream cheese based. The frosting is caramel flavored, and it is delicious. The frosting definitely makes the cookies. I wanted my frosting to be more than just a glaze, so I added more powdered sugar than the original recipe called for. You can thicken to your liking, just don't skip it! The cookies are a moist, cake like cookie, and the recipe only calls for your basic ingredients.

I ate three of these as soon as they were frosted. And few more that night. I did manage to give some away, and there are just a few left for Brian and I to munch on. I made the mistake of storing them in a ziplock bag and the bag stuck to the frosting and pulled some of it off. I was so sad, that's the best part! But of course, I ate them anyway. I will for sure be making these a part of my must make again pumpkin goodie collection. I'm wondering if next weekend is too soon to whip up another batch! I think not.


Carmel Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:
Cookies
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour

Frosting
3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
Pinch of salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Stir in pumpkin. In a medium bowl, sift together the baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger, salt and flour. Add to pumpkin mixture and mix well. Drop by heaping tablespoons onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.

To make frosting: In a medium saucepan, combine butter, cream, and brown sugar over medium heat. Cook, stirring occasionally, until mixture just begins to boil; remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Cool then stir in confectioner's sugar. Spread frosting over cooled cookies.

Source: Let's Dish

Cookie Tins

I have been passing out some Christmas goodies this past week and wanted to share a quick idea for using a tin. I bought some tins at the end of the season last year and was excited to fill them with a variety of cookies. I think I mentioned that I went to a cookie exchange last week and I came home with seven dozen different cookies. I started to pile them into the tin, but I didn't think they looked very pretty and I thought the cookies might all get broken. I so made a little divider out of card stock! I just cut a long strip and folded it in the shape of an x. I then had four neat little sections to divide my cookies into. I lined the tin with parchment paper first, placed in the divider and loaded it up with goodies. Just a thought! Happy goodie giving.

Christmas Party Favors

 

My super talented sister, Brittany, had a client who was throwing a Christmas party. She asked Brittany to do the flower arrangements. She (I don't even know her name) also asked Brittany if I would be interested in making some party favors with my "best cookie" for her guests. She must have found my blog through Brittany's and thought I'd do an ok job. I was so excited. Any time someone pays me to bake for them I just think how I wish this was my full time job. Although I'm happy to report that me and my 175 eighth graders are getting along pretty well these days. For the party favors I put four orange coconut cookies, dipped in chocolate in a clear bag and tied them up with a gold bow, to match the color scheme of the party. I finished them off with a simple happy holidays tag. I hope they were well received. I had such a fun time doing them. I just got an order for 10 more holiday goodie bags. I just love baking this time of year!

Snickedoodles

How is it already December 10th? My last post was about Thanksgiving! I always wonder how time flies but when I'm back at school the weeks take forever to end! So tonight I was taking pictures off my camera and realized how much baking I've done in the past two weeks. Apparently I was too busy baking to blog about it. But there is such fun holiday baking going on right now I want to share mine. I've had such a great time looking at the pictures everyone else has posted.

Last Saturday Brian left me for a whole six days to attend a MLB job fair in Orlando. Usually it's me leaving him home alone, so I always make him a treat before I go. But this time he was leaving me, but I wanted to make him a treat for his long plane ride. He had been talking about these snickerdoodles his mom use to make and she would roll them in candy canes for the holidays. So I emailed my mother in law, got her recipe and whipped up a batch for him to take on his trip.

Whole ball rolled in candy canes

Only the top with candy canes

This was the first time I'd made snickerdoodles, and do I dare admit that I'd never used cream of tartar for anything before? So that was new, but these turned out great. The only issue I had was actually rolling them in the crushed candy canes. The first batch I didn't spray the pan and I rolled the whole ball of dough in the crushed candy canes. That was bad news. Not only did the cookies stick, but the candy canes melted and then hardened on the pan. They tasted good, but they were definitely not pretty by the time I scraped them off the pan. I kept asking Brian if I was doing it right, but he said he hadn't had them since he was a kid, so I had to figure out a plan B. I decided to spray the pan with Pam, always a good move, I supposed I could have also used parchment paper, but I was out. And then my genius move was to only roll, or press the top of the cookie in the candy canes, therefore less melting and sticking on the bottom of the cookie. That worked like a champ. (For some reason I didn't take a picture of the finished product, sorry. I think the first ones were so ugly that I forgot!)

The next day I was attending a cookie exchange and decided to make regular snickerdoodles. Since this recipe was new to me I wanted to try out the original way. The recipe says to use one cup of shortening, but for my second batch I only had 1/2 a cup, so I did half shortening and half butter. I noticed that the dough was softer, but overall taste was the safe. So you can pick. Each batch made about three and a half dozen, which was great for me since I needed seven dozen for the exchange. These were great cookies, soft, and easy to make. As long as you know you need that cream of tartar stuff, you should have everything else on hand! Thank Kathleen for sharing another great recipe.

Snickerdoodles
1 cup shortening
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups flour

Cream shortening and sugar: add eggs and vanilla..  Add sifted dry ingredients gradually.  Roll into balls the size of a small walnut.  Roll in mixture of 2 Tablespoons sugar and 2 tsp. cinnamon.  Bake 8 to 10 minutes at 400 degrees until brown but soft.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

With all the baked goodies I've posted here, I have yet to put up a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Chocolate chip cookies are by far my favorite cookie, grew up on these things. Instead of sharing the mom's old classic chocolate chip recipe, I'm posting the new and improved recipe that she found, tweaked and is getting rave reviews on from everyone. (I'll share the classic later.) I made these the other week for Brian's friends birthday. I was racking my brain trying to think of something new and creative to make for him. But apparently he doesn't like new and exciting, just plain and simple. So I called up mom, got the new, must have recipe, and gave it a go. And guess what? I got rave reviews too. I loved that these cookies had a little crunch around the outside, and they have lots of brown sugar which gives them a slightly different, but delicious taste that the classic cookies don't have. Mom and I thought these cookies looked a little more professional than your average chocolate chip cookie, hers more so than mine pictured here. And I made them much bigger than usual, about 4 inches in diameter. The recipe calls for four kinds of chocolate, which Mom says is delicious, but I made mine with plain old semi sweet chips, still delicious. So if you'd like to try a new chocolate chip cookie recipe, I'd start with this one. I thought they looked cute boxed up too!




Debby's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cream:
½ c, butter flavored shortening
½ c. butter softened
1 c. packed brown sugar
¾ c. sugar

Add:
2 eggs, one at a time, beating well after each is added

Add:
2 tsp. vanilla and beat

Combine in a separate bowl:
2 ½ c. flour
1 t. soda
1/8 t.salt

Add:
Flour mixture gradually to the creamed mixture.

Stir in:
1 c. miniature semisweet choc. chips
1 c. milk choc. chips
1 c. vanilla or white chips
¾ c. English toffee bits or almond brickle chips
½ c. chopped peacans (opt.)

Drop by tablespoons 3 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake 350 for 10-12 min. or until lightly browned

Salted Double Chocolate Cookies

While I wasn't baking during the week this past month, I was still oohing and ahhing over delicious looking blog posts and making mental notes of what I wanted to make when I did find the time. While I was reading a favorite blog on mine, Annie's Eats, I came across these chocolate cookies that looked delicious. I love chocolate cookies and I'm always looking for new recipes. While I was reading her blog, I also found out that she just finished medical school and manages to blog everyday. So I should be able to manage by little school teaching job and blog at the same time!

Anyway, these cookies are very chocolaty. But the added salt makes them a good combination of sweet and salty. I love those treats! I did run into a bit of trouble with the recipe though. I made it as is, and the batter was very runny. I read a few comments and people said they let it sit for a while and the dough thickened. That didn't seem to happen to mine, so I added about 1/3 of a cup more flour, to equal one cup total.


Before the extra flour, the dough looked more like cake batter, even after I let it sit. See how it's very runny?


When I used my cookie scoop and put the dough on the cookie sheet, it spread out. These cookies would have been really flat with chocolate chips sticking up.

After the flour the dough thickened up quite a bit and started to resemble actual cookie dough. They cooked up great, and longer they sat, the better they became. Great second day cookies. So if you love chocolaty chocolate cookies give these a try. Here is the link to the Annie's Eats recipe and also the Martha Stewart recipe it was adapted from.

Salted Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Martha's Original Recipe

Etsy Store

I decided to follow in my younger sisters footsteps and start an Etsy store. People really are selling all kinds of things on there. Brittany sold Christmas stockings, wreaths, and garland. People are also selling all kinds of home baked goodies. I figure if they can do it I can definitely do it, and this week I made my second sale! I know it doesn't seem like much, but it's a start. The first item I put up for sale were my cinnamon rolls, which I have totally perfected. I mentioned in the post about them that I had all those extra boxes, so I individually wrapped them up and sold them in groups of four. I needed to sell them by the half dozen, but I've yet to find anything to package them in, so those are soon to come. I sold the first order (of two) to a lady in Florida who wrote very nice things about me in my ratings section. The second gal was a local here in Newport Beach, so I hand delivered to her and she says she'll most likely be a repeat customer. (I'm looking forward to that!)

I've added to the rolls with a Valentine's Day collection of two types of cookies packaged and wrapped up all cute! A lot of people are checking them out, but no sales on the cookies just yet. Perhaps it's still early. I'd like to get a wide variety of items on there because, like I said, people are selling everything, and making a lot of sales too. Etsy is fun, a little side hobby. It was such a blast making the rolls and packaging them up for shipping. I'd love to do that full time. Visit my shop, if only to check it out, and you can heart me if you'd like!

Packaging Goodies

You would think with two weeks off for Christmas vacation I would have a lot of time to write some good blogs. But that hasn't exactly been the case. Busy, busy holiday season. But I have been baking while being home with my mom, and all the recipes and pictures will be posted shortly. But I do have a few pictures of the home made goodies I gave away to the teachers I work with. Super easy, found the boxes, used red tissue paper to separate the cookies, and finished it off with cute labels. I put the chocolate dipped coconut and orange cookies in the boxes and mini loaves of bread (harvest loaf and banana bread) in red cellophane with green ribbon and star gift tags. Simple, easy and looks oh so cute!

Trader Joe's: Joe- Joe's

Based on the content of my blog, I’m sure you’ve all figured out that I love home baked goodies. I’m not much of a candy person, store bought cookie or salty chip kind of girl. But boy oh boy am I sucker for all homemade treats. There is one exception. I am on box number two of Trader Joe’s peppermint Joe Joes. Have you had those? Oh my goodness! They are similar in concept to a mint Oreo, but those don’t even compare. These have the best frosting inside with bits of candy cane. I’ve eaten almost two boxes all by myself. My husband keeps making fun of me. But they’re only sold this time of year, so I have to get them in while I can. Do yourself a favor and go out a buy a box!