Now that I have daylight!

I can finally take some pictures of some of the cookies from yesterday! I am struggling with day light savings time and the fact that yesterday at 5:15 it was DARK. ugh. I baked the last of the cookies for Wizard last night...I baked for almost 5 hours. But they are done. And in the freezer and waiting to be pulled out on Thursday to be put into cute little bags with cute little ribbons and cute little tags. :)

So...here are the last of them. THEN, onto baking for Saturday since I will then have room in the freezer to keep things! Whooo hoooo!!

We are going to start with Chocolate Chip cookies. I have been searching through chocolate chip cookie recipes...I LOVE the one that I have and have used for years, but I am attempting to branch out a little but. I liked the look of this one because it uses no white sugar!! These are not my new favorite chocolate chip cookies, they are good. And actually rather soft and chewy. I guess I miss the little bit of crunch.

Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies
mybakingadventures.com

Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies - adapted from a recipe by Nick Malgieri

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
½ tsp baking soda
10 tbs. unsalted butter, softened
¾ cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
12 oz. semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

Sift together the flour and baking soda. Beat together the butter and brown sugar just until smooth. Add the egg and vanilla, beating until blended. Add the dry ingredients and mix just until incorporated, then add the chocolate chips.

Drop by heaping tablespoons onto a parchment lined baking sheet, and chill for an hour (this will help them keep their shape – I always chill cookie dough before baking).

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake cookies until just set in the center, 12-15 minutes. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

Yield – 2 dozen.
While driving the 7 miles up the road to pick Miss B up from Munchkin rehearsal something dawned on me....Why not use M&Ms....I have had some issues with my M&M cookies. They all seem to come out FLAT. I mean, they tasted fine, but very crumbly! Makes for a not very good cookie to package. Soooo, I dug back into the pudding cookie recipe. This worked out very very well and tastes even better!

White Chocolate Pudding M&M cookies (this needs a shorter title!)
Ingredients

* 1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks softened)
* 3/4 cup brown sugar
* 1/4 white sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 2 1/4 cups flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda

* 1 (4 ounce) package jell-o instant pudding mix (I used White Chocolate)

* 1 (12 ounce) package semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used about 8 ounces of chocolate chips)
* 1/2 bag of M&Ms.

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350º F. with mixer beat wet ingredients until light and fluffy. In separate bowl stir together by hand flour, baking soda and Jell-O. Gradually add flour mix to wet ingredients mixing until smooth scraping bowl often. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

2. Drop dough with a tablespoon on baking sheets coated with non-stick spray or parchment paper.
3. Bake in pre-heated oven 10-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool 1 minute on baking sheets, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.


I really like the recipe for the pudding cookies because the possibilities are ENDLESS. After doing the M&M cookies and having them turn out, I decided to give Chocolate another try. I don't really like the chocolate pudding...don't know why, although I am not a huge chocolate fan to begin with! Maybe that is the issue. Anyway, this time around I cut up some Reeses peanut butter cups that are around my house. It seems that they were cheapest this year as my kids each got 10 - 15 in their halloween pumpkins, and I had also bough a bag...so into the cookies they went!!



Ingredients

* 1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks softened)
* 3/4 cup brown sugar
* 1/4 white sugar
* 2 eggs
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 2 1/4 cups flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda

* 1 (4 ounce) package jell-o instant pudding mix (I used Chocolate pudding)

* 1 (12 ounce) package semi-sweet chocolate chips (again about 6 - 8 ounces)
* chopped up peanut butter cups. I used the regular size PB cups and chopped up about 8 of them.

Directions

1. Pre-heat oven to 350º F. with mixer beat wet ingredients until light and fluffy. In separate bowl stir together by hand flour, baking soda and Jell-O. Gradually add flour mix to wet ingredients mixing until smooth scraping bowl often. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts.

2. Drop dough with a tablespoon on baking sheets coated with non-stick spray or parchment paper.
3. Bake in pre-heated oven 10-12 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Cool 1 minute on baking sheets, then remove to wire racks to cool completely.