Category: Cookies and Bars

Koulourakia

My cooking club theme this month was “My Big Fat Greek Dinner”.  We had a great buffet of Greek specialties including spanakopita, Greek chicken, Greek pasta salad, and baklava.  There was plenty of feta and phyllo dough to go around.

I made these Lenten Koulourakia.  Many traditional recipes featured sesame seeds, but this recipe used almonds which I like better. Plus, this recipe also included wine, always a crowd favorite.

The dough uses oil, not butter, so the texture is dense and the cookies are nice and crunchy.  They are not overly sweet, but still taste like dessert.  They actually remind me a bit of Italian biscotti; they’re the kind of cookie you want to dip in something.  Coffee, tea, wine…your choice!

 

Gooey Chocolate Chip Sandwich Bars

For me, the Superbowl is all about the food.  And this year was no exception.  I brought two dishes to a party, but let’s start with dessert first.   I made these Gooey Chocolate Chip Sandwich Bars, and they exceeded all expectations!  I received a lot of compliments for making them, but the credit really goes to Recipegirl.

The top and bottom layers of the bars are like chocolate chip cookies, with a rich chocolate layer in the middle.  The recipe is pretty straightforward, but I do have just a few notes.  The cookie dough batter is fairly stiff; I wasn’t able to spread it easily, but it was fine in the end.  The chocolate layer is also fairly stiff once the mixture cools a bit, but that’s OK too.  As long as you get everything into the pan, it will come out fine.

Whether you eat these to celebrate your team’s win, drown your sorrows in your team’s loss, or just because you love chocolate, they’re guaranteed to be a hit.

 

 

Gingerbread Men

I totally didn’t mean to leave for the holiday without even saying “Merry Christmas”!  It’s been an odd year, and I even skipped the Christmas cookie swap.  Then my family realized that this meant there were no cookies to serve for our family gatherings.  My sister thought it would be fun to make some gingerbread men with my nephews, and a new holiday tradition was born.

 

 

She made the dough using this recipe and brought over some cookie cutters.  We had to let the dough warm up for quite a bit before we could roll it out, but after that, it was all hands on deck.  We rolled, we cut, and we scooped the cookies onto the baking sheets.  Then we pulled up the scraps and rolled some more.  We decorated the cookies with raisins and chocolate chips before baking, and this may have been my older nephew’s favorite part!

 

 

After the cookies were out of the oven, we let them cool, and then decorated them with icing.  The recipe above includes icing directions, but we used store-bought icing tubes which were a good time saver.  Santa still had a lot of things to do!  Even my younger nephew got to play with some cookies and icing.

 

 

This was a fun project, and the cookies tasted really good!  The thin cookies got nice and crispy, and the thicker cookies were a bit softer.  Unless you roll the dough more consistently than we did, you’ll have a variety.  It may be too late for you to make gingerbread men this holiday season, but we’ll come back to this project again next year.

Creamy Pumpkin Pie Bars

Thanksgiving doesn’t stop on Thursday.  We have an annual extended family gathering on the Friday night after Thanksgiving that’s just as much fun as the big day itself.  Usually we bring a dessert (probably because we’re almost always late!)  This year, I wanted to make Joy the Baker’s Pumpkin Pie Bars.

The bars have a bottom crust made with butter, flour, oats, and pecans, and this mixture is also used for a crumble topping.  The filling is a rich mixture of cream cheese, pumpkin, sugar, and spices.  The recipe has all the right ingredients so we had high expectations.  Sadly, we were disappointed.  But don’t they look pretty?

 

 

The first problem was that the bars took significantly longer than expected to bake in the oven, and it was really difficult to tell when they were done.  The recipe indicates they should be cooked until “the center no longer jiggles.”  It’s pretty hard to see the filling underneath the crumble topping, so we ended up using a toothpick to help.

The recipe also indicates that the bars should be chilled prior to cutting, but even after some time in the freezer, the center was still very soft.  It was difficult to cut them into nice bars.  After more time in the host’s refrigerator, the bars were still messy to eat.  I think this recipe would work much better as a regular cheesecake that you enjoy with a fork.

Of course, no one at the party cared that our bars weren’t up to par.  There were plenty of great desserts, including another dish of pumpkin bars which were excellent.  So I asked which recipe they used.  “Shhhh….they’re from a box mix.”

Pumpkin Oatmeal Cranberry Chocolate Chip Cookies

After making two pumpkin recipes last week, I had just 1 cup of pumpkin leftover.  I was saving it for these Pumpkin Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies from the ‘a hint of honey’ blog.  I know, I just made Pumpkin Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies a few weeks ago, but these have even more pumpkin, and chocolate.

It seems like it’s been a long time since I’ve creamed butter and sugar, and making these cookies was really fun.  I chopped a bar of good dark chocolate which was the perfect complement to the dried cranberries.  And the end result is rich, chewy, and delicious.  I better make these last, because I am all out of pumpkin at the moment!

 

 

Pumpkin Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

It seems like everyone is talking about the impending bacon shortage.  I can easily do without bacon, but the shortage of canned pumpkin these last few years has been distressing.  Based on a quick scan of my grocery stores shelves, it looks like there is plenty (for now.)  It just isn’t fall without some pumpkin!

I’ve had this recipe for Pumpkin Spiced Oatmeal Pecan Cookies from Skinnytaste bookmarked for almost a year.  I was inspired last week to do a little baking, and this seemed like the perfect choice.  I think pecans would be delicious in this recipe, but I substituted dried cranberries instead.  They added a little bit of color and a touch of sweetness to these chewy cookies.

 

 

This recipe is really easy and uses mostly pantry staples.  The cookies do not spread very much at all, so you can go ahead and place them close together on the cookie sheet.  Although these are lighter than the average cookie, I still made mine fairly small.  They are the perfect addition to your lunchbox or afternoon coffee break.  And I still had over half a can of pumpkin leftover…

Whole Wheat Zucchini Blondies

Ready for another shredded zucchini recipe?  One that also features chocolate chips?  This recipe can be made as cookies or bars, but we all know bars are a lot quicker.  I used a cup of regular sugar in place of the sucanat in the original recipe and mixed all of the ingredients in one bowl.  The batter was spread in a 13″x9″ dish, and then popped in the oven.

Even using all whole wheat flour, the batter rose fairly high.  These cute squares were perfect with a cup of hot (or iced!) coffee.  They’re sweet enough to be dessert, but not overly sweet.  And now, I am off to a farmer’s market to get myself more zucchini!

 

 

Almond Brownies

When people stop by your house to meet your newborn, or perhaps play with your active toddler, it’s always nice to be able to offer them a chocolatey treat.  Or at least that’s what my Mom and I told ourselves when we decided that we should bake some brownies for my sister.  See, we had stocked the freezer but not the cookie jar.

Our mission was to bake something sweet that did not require a trip to the grocery store.  These cocoa brownies from Smitten Kitchen fit the bill.  Requiring just butter, sugar, cocoa, vanilla, eggs, and flour, you just might have all the ingredients in your kitchen right now.  And I would urge you to go ahead and make a batch, because these brownies were smooth, rich, and fudge-like, similar to flourless chocolate cake.

We added 2/3 cup of chopped almonds which provided a bit of crunch, but that almost detracted from the silky texture.  Next time I would skip the nuts and keep all the attention on the chocolate.  It’s amazing what cocoa powder and butter can do. 

 

Whole Wheat Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Boston University has a fantastic food and education program called Sargent Choice.  One of the signature items offered are these Whole Grain Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies.  I haven’t been to campus much this summer, so I decided to try the recipe myself.

The cookies are easy to make, and call for mini chocolate chips to ensure there’s plenty of chocolate in each cookie.  And they don’t taste like “healthy cookies”, they taste exactly as cookies should.  My version was a little dry, but that’s probably because I used natural peanut butter.  (Yes, I made the same exact mistake before with these peanut butter oatmeal cookies.)  I’ll use regular peanut butter next time, which will probably be soon since this batch seemed to fly off the plate!