Butterscotch Chip Cookies

We're almost done with this loooooong week! And tonight I was getting ready for an awesome camping weekend out in western Mass by....making some cookies of course! I decided to whip up some butterscotch chip cookies, and MAN did I eat a lot of cookies dough. I'm gonna have to run that off tomorrow Morning!!!!

Ingredients:

3/4 cups sugar
3/4 cups brown sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/4 cups flour
1 bag butterscotch chips

First off, blend together your butter and the two sugars.

Next add in your egg and vanilla.




Followed by....your flour, salt and baking soda. Generally I mix in the baking soda and salt first, then slowly add the flour, just to make sure those first two dry ingredients get mixed evenly into the batter. Now its time for your butterscotch pieces. Make sure to save a few of these babies for yourself!

Mix until JUST blended. your dough should stick to your mixing paddle, like so:

Using a large spoon to keep your measurements equal, roll the cookies into 1 to 2 inch balls (I usually err on the side of BIG).

Bake at 375 for 8 minutes. You'll get a soft, sweet, rich chewy result.

I also whipped up some rice krispie treats for the kiddos who are coming along for the weekend/ (Who am I kidding, they're really for me).

Have a great Holiday weekend folks!

Thank You Cookies

Update!

Tonight I finished my Thank you cookie-bags for my confirmation class teachers. I decided to add to the biscotti with some coconut macaroons dipped in white chocolate.....


These were pretty delish, gooey and messy....but delish.

Aaaaaand one of my all-time classics, snickerdoodles.

Then I wrapped them all up with some love and fancy ribbon :) Ta-da!

I hope everyone's week is off to a good start!

Banana Biscotti

As the weekend winds down and another busy week begins, I started in on my latest baking project: Thank You cookie bags for the presenters at my confirmation class. I was confirmed last weekend as a full-blown Catholic in preparation for my Wedding, and this week I'm having dinner with my class and the presenters who volunteered their time for the last 9 months. Cookie gifts were obviously in order.

I wanted to have some variety in my gift bags so tonight I thought I'd make a biscotti. Conveniently I had some very ripe bananas, so I googled some recipes. I started out following a random recipe from a blog, but ended up pretty much winging it due to several factors (my lack of brown sugar, love of butter etc...) Here's what I came up with.

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 mashed bananas
½ cup butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
2.5 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons cinnamon, whoops
1 cup choc chips

First I mixed together my sugar and butter, eggs, vanilla and bananas. I couldn't resist putting in a second banana, when my recipe only called for one, so at that point I just went totally rogue and started making things up.

Then I added in my flour, baking soda and cinnamon. I thought I had a slotted cap on my jar of cinnamon, however this was not the case. As a result, I dumped a TON of cinnamon directly into my batter. I tried to skim some out, but I decided it was best to just roll with it. Apparently there's fiber in cinnamon, call it a health food.

After it was all mixed together it was time to form the dough into logs. This was more challenging than usual as the dough was SUPER sticky. SO sticky in fact that I thought my experiment might be going awry. NO way to tell for sure though until you bake the damn thing. so....Into the oven!

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. In my oven, more like 27 minutes. I think my oven is gradually getting hotter, I need to start systematically knocking minutes off my bake time.

Diagonally slice your log into your happy little biscotti pieces.

Then it's time to bake again! Turn down the heat to 300, bake for 12 minutes, flip, then bake one more time for 10 minutes.

Yum.

Stay tuned this week for the rest of my cookie gift bags, and some memorial day yummies to come!