Monday, October 13, 2014

CHALLENGE: Cook It Up!



Trish is hosting a Cook It Up! challenge. Try a new recipe, get out those cookbooks (or appliances) and try something new. I did a Mexican meal in the summer and for the fall, got cookie baking.

I was shopping in the summer with my mother, and she saw a cookie jar that she was going to buy, as it would look perfect in her kitchen. I stopped her and said to let me get it for her birthday, which was only a month away. It took me longer than it should have to realize I should make cookies and fill her jar before I gave it to her. Brilliant! (eventually)


I got out my Pillsbury Best Cookies cookbook and browsed for a while. I limited myself to cookies that were not heavily chocolate based, which although goes against most of what I believe in, fit more in line with the type of cookies my mother prefers. It was her birthday after all.

I made Coconut Macaroons, Brown Sugar Shortbread Puffs, Shortbread Triangles, Zucchini Cookies from the book, and Cake Batter Cookies from a Pinterest recipe.

Coconut Macaroons
These were fabulous! I may have had to make a second batch so there would be some left to give. They also made me look for recipes with only egg yolks, but now I have a list that I inserted in the Macaroon recipe page with recipes to try with yolks only, so I'll know what to do with those 2 egg yolks left-over after I make macaroons. More brilliant me!
And I will be making them again. Yum!
Shortbread Triangles and Zucchini Cookies
Everyone needs a zucchini recipe in the fall, right? I have an excellent chocolate zucchini bundt cake, and I always love a bundt cake. But you get a lot of zucchini, so a cookie recipe was called for. There was oatmeal, and spices as well as mini-chocolate chips.
The shortbread triangles were a slice and bake and used an egg yolk!  Pretty easy and quite yummy; a good shortbread recipe.

But not as good as the Brown Sugar Shortbread Puffs. They were a drop recipe and required no chilling, but one egg yolk! They didn't drop very pretty, and seemed a little dry as I baked them. Because they were a little rough around the edges, I went fancy and made a glaze with icing sugar and milk to put on top which added just the pizzazz these tasty cookies needed. A little chewy with that butterscotch edge - definitely going on the make again list. These did not get photographed for some reason. Neither did the completed cookie jar. But it was a great present and my parents both loved it.





5 comments:

  1. Glad you got so inspired, as I was the recipient of the cookie jar! Thank you so much, and keep on baking and reading

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  2. Those coconut macaroons look fabulous!! I've never attempted them but I love coconut. Funny--a few years ago I went through a big ice cream making phase so always had egg whites left over (I froze them for when I could use them).

    Thanks for participating! I hope you don't mind, but I actually linked you up to the linky today. :)

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  3. Yummy! I was always a big cookie baker until a couple of years ago when a.) hubby went on a seriously low-carb diet and b.) my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease and our kitchen was suddenly completely unsafe for her to eat out of when visiting!

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  4. Yum!! I love cookies and those coconut macaroons look fantastic! I love a good shortbread as well. So simple yet so perfect. I'm a chocolate fan too so I always have a hard time cooking non-chocolate-y cookies. Hope your mother loved them!

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  5. trish - thanks for linking me; I meant to do that! The macaroons are so good I think I'm going to make them my 'treat to bring' that I get known for. You know, the ones where everyone says they hope Elizabeth is going to bring macaroons.

    laurie - the macaroons could be easily adapted for gluten free I think. They had 1 T of flour, but you could probably use coconut flour instead.

    katherine - I always used to be a chocolate freak, but I am really beginning to appreciate a nice shortbread. The brown sugar ones were so different being a little chewy instead of melty. My mom (and dad) loved the present.

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