Cookie Time

I have a couple of cookie recipes that I have tried over the last few months and thought I might as well just group them together into one big cookie post.

Peanut Butter Cookies

I've made these peanut butter cookies a couple of times and they are delicious...especially the dough, oh my god. I always use spelt flour and substitute the olive oil for softened coconut oil. You can just barely taste the coconut and I really love it. I have tried making this recipe with both smooth and chunky peanut butter, and find I prefer smooth. I like soft, chewy peanut butter cookies. I have also tried to substitute the maple syrup for honey, but found they didn't turn out as sweet and delicious, so I will stick to maple syrup, or a combination of the two. Finally, I always refrigerate them for a couple of hours before baking them. I find it makes them more manageable to roll and squish them, and they spread less.

Unfortunately, I never thought to take many pictures of the first couple of times I made them. For some reason, I did take pictures of my lastest batches, where I've been making them in a rush and they haven't turned out as nicely. As you can see, I crammed a few too many on a cookie sheet this time, trying to save time. I also halved the recipe (it makes a lot of cookies) but spaced out part way through and added the normal amount of salt and baking soda. I also kind of forgot about them and left the dough in my fridge for three or four days...whoopsydaisy! Anyways, when I finally got around the baking them, they spread a lot more than usual and were very chewy--I just so happen to love chewy peanut butter cookies and probably ate like 6 of them in one go. Unfortunately, I am not sure which of my many mistakes made that happen...

When I made them for my Christmas party, I was feeling rather rushed and the dough ended up much runnier than normal, so they spread quite a bit. The only thing I knowingly did differently was use honey instead of maple syrup and I didn't refrigerate them for any significant length of time.

Fortunately, after messing up a batch, I decided to take a picture of leftovers from a previous, more successful, batch. These are a couple days old, and I find the cookies get quite a bit softer as they have time to sit. I sprinkled sea salt and crushed peanuts on these ones. I wouldn't recommend the sea salt, actually, I had complaints that it made them too salty. I just thought it looked nice!

Pepparkaka/Gingerbread Cookies

I love these cookies! I made them weeks ago to help get myself in the Christmas mood and it worked marvelously. This is also where I learned the plastic wrap cookie rolling trick that saved my Linzer cookies! I mixed the dough the night before, refrigerated them and spent the next morning cookie cutting and listening to Christmas music on the radio.

I used coconut oil, honey and only needed one cup of spelt flour to acquire a workable consistency. When I went to fetch the dough in the morning, I found it was frozen! This might have been our fridge's fault, or because of the coconut oil, but oh well. I just warmed it up enough in my hands so that I could roll it out. It was a fun process, though I had to move quickly because the dough, of course, became less manageable as it warmed.

They only needed 7 minutes in the oven--in fact, they probably could have used less. But, as the recipe says, this all depends on what size you make yours. Though they are crisp at first, I have let mine sit in a container for over a week now, and they've become quite soft, which I think I prefer.

"Sugar" Cookies

I made these cookies a long time ago, along with some peanut butter ones, but never thought to take a picture. Luckily, my aunt did. Not much to report on these...I used vanilla extract instead of almond, spelt flour as the flour and ended up not being able to use my cookie cutter because the dough was too sticky...I was also a very inexperienced cookie cutter (pre-plastic wrap trick days). They did not taste like sugar cookies--more like shortbread cookies. They were kind of cheesy tasting and certainly not very sweet. I still liked them, and my aunt, who does not have much of a sweet tooth, preferred them to the peanut butter cookies. I am still interested in this recipe and would like to re-try it sometime.

Oat'Nana Pucks

I have made these cookies quite a few times. They are delicious for what they are and I find them very addictive. I made some tonight, hoping my dad might like them...he just said they'd taste better with a half cup of sugar and then called "sugar....sugar!" as I walked away. OH WELL.

The dough for these cookies is very crumbly, be warned. I find wetting my hands before handling and rolling them really helps.

I always squish them because I find they don't bake very thoroughly if I leave them in balls.

I usually use unsweetened carob chips, which taste great in these, but I didn't have any tonight, so, since my dad loves them, I just used raisins.

Worked fine...but I kind of missed the carob taste.

So, for the last batch, I added 2 tablespoons of carob powder. I didn't want to ruin them with too much and throw off the balance of stickiness. However, with the carob powder, they actually ended up being easier to form into balls.

To be honest, once they baked, I could barely even taste the carob...oh well, maybe next time I'll be a bit more daring...or more prepared.