Cake Mix Cookies

Looking for something to satisfy my sweet tooth the other day, I turned to the internet and typed in chocolate chips -- the base ingredient I was hoping to use. Of course, thousands of responses came back, and with them, a recipe for Cake Mix cookies. 


I had never heard of these before, but the basis is that it uses a boxed cake mix as the main ingredient. I whipped these up in about five minutes and 20 minutes later, I was enjoying them while watching What Not to Wear. 


You'd be right in thinking that their consistency is not quite cookie like, and definitely not cake like. But they were easy and the possibilities of flavour combinations are endless -- white cake mix with chocolate chips, chocolate mix with white chocolate chips, chocolate mix with mint/butterscotch/peanut butter chocolate chips! Not bad for a five minute mix.


Ingredients

• 1 package of dry chocolate cake mix
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup chocolate chips

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 
• In a medium bowl, stir together the cake mix, butter, eggs, oil and vanilla and mix until smooth and well blended. Mix in the chocolate chips.
• Drop by spoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets. Be sure to put them far apart as they get really big.
• Bake for 10-12 minutes. 
• Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

When we go grocery shopping, T always waltzes through the cookie aisle looking for something for me to make. This week, he was inspired simply by oatmeal raisin cookies -- something I easily found a recipe for and whipped these up to enjoy while we were watching Mad Men on Sunday night. A perfect way to wrap up one of the last weekends of summer. 


Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 2 3/4 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup raisins

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees
• In a large bowl, cream together butter, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth 
• Beat in eggs and vanilla until fluffy
• In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt
• Gradually beat flour mixture into butter mixture
• Fold in oats and raisins
• Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets
• Bake 8-10 minutes, until golden brown
• Cool on a wire rack

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

I was looking for a good, classic chocolate chip cookie recently and I decided not to look any further the chocolate chip package. This was bound to be a good recipe because anyone who would put it on their package, had to be confident in them. These did not disappoint and fully lived up to their name of Chewy Milk Chocolate Chip cookies. I put these in just before So You Think You Can Dance came on, and was eating them by the first commercial. Yum!

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup butter, melted
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 tbsp hot water
• 2 2/3 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 package chocolate chips

Directions

• Combine melted butter, brown sugar, eggs and hot water. Mix well.
• In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to butter and sugar mix.
• Stir in chocolate chips.
• Drop from a small spoon onto a an ungreased cookie sheet.
• Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes.
• Makes about four dozen cookies.

Recipe from Hershey's Chipits package

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are simple, easy cookies that taste a little bit like Christmas with cinnamon and nutmeg. I whipped these up in no time on Friday night, a perfect, after dinner snack. Not only were they delcious right out of the oven, they actually tasted better the next day as all the flavours had really come together. Now all I need is a glass of egg nog!

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups chocolate chips (note that this is more than 1 bag)
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats

Directions

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In another bowl, beat butter until soft and creamy. Beat in brown sugar and white sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time and add vanilla.

Reduce speed and stir in flour mixture in three stages. Mix in chocolate chips and oatmeal.

Drop tablespoons of dough onto a greased baking sheet.

Bake in oven preheated to 350 degrees, for 10-12 minutes until golden and slightly firm to the touch.

Let cool to a wire rack.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

Download a printable recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe from The Mixer Bible

Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

This recipe looked right up my alley: you can't go wrong with peanut butter and oatmeal and I was right!

These cookies were pretty simple but look impressive so you could easily make them for a party. If you were doing that though, you'd probably want to make them smaller because it is a lot of cookie and cream -- but that's not always a bad thing.

Printer-friendly version of recipe

Ingredients:

For the cookies:

• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter (at room temperature)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 1 cup quick oatmeal
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt

For the filling:

• 1/2 cup peanut butter
• scant 1/4 cup butter (really, more like 1/8)
• 1 cup icing sugar
• 4-5 tbsp heavy cream

Directions:

In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and mix to combine.

In a mixing bowl, mix together the butter, peanut butter and both sugars until smooth.

Add the egg and vanilla.

Slowly add in the dry ingredients (not the oatmeal yet) and mix until combined.

Fold in the oatmeal.

Next, roll into small balls and place on parchment paper-lined baking sheets. Leave space between each ball so they can spread out. Mine were about the size of timbits, but I found them a bit large for the sandwich cookies.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes and let cool on wire rack.

While they're in the oven, you can make the filling. In a mixing bowl, blend the peanut butter, butter and icing sugar. Slowly add the heavy cream one tablespoon at a time. You want the consistency to be like icing, so not too thick and not too runny.

Spoon the icing into a piping bag or even a ziploc bag. (in the ziploc, cut off a small tip in the corner). On half of the cookies, pipe the icing on.

Place another cookie on top and press down so the icing oozes out to the sides. 

Grab a glass of milk and enjoy!

Recipe adapted from Annie's Eats

Big, Soft Ginger Cookies

My girlfriend Lindsey came over last night with a mission: she needed 24 cookies to take to a cookie exchange. We needed to find a good recipe to match our skills and palettes. We wanted something slightly festive, not too challenging and I wanted something with little decorating (as we have recently seen my success with that).

The recipe I found met all our criteria. With a title like Big, Soft Ginger Cookies, how could you go wrong? I found them on www.allrecipes.com, my favourite place for recipes because you can read feedback from real people and how they fared with the recipe and what changes they made. More than 2,000 people gave it five stars. They can add two more to the list!

We doubled the recipe and it made 52 cookies. Below is the regular recipe (which will yield about 26 delicious cookies)

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp orange juice (the recipe called for water but a reader said oj was the way)
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 tbsp white sugar

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Sift together flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and salt. Set aside
• In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Stir in OJ and molasses
• Gradually stir in dry ingredients into molasses mixture

• Leave mixture in fridge for about 30 minutes to cool
• Shape dough into Timbit sized balls and roll them in the remaining sugar (this will make them all sparkly and festive)

• Put cookies on sheet two inches apart and flatten slightly
• Bake for 8 - 10 minutes
• Eat!

(please note beloved mixer in the background)