Mexican Wedding Cookies

Mexican Wedding Cookies

I've been making these cookies every year at Christmas since I was little. I got the recipe from my mom-no idea where she got it or where the recipe is originally from.

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups flour
1 cup finely chopped pecans

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

2. Cream butter, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt until fluffy. Stir in flour and nuts until well blended. (I use pecans-my husband is allergic to walnuts. I grew up using walnuts in this recipe. Either one works-just make sure they are finely chopped).

3. Chill for at least 30 minutes, or until firm enough to handle. Shape into one inch balls and place one inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet (I use my pizza stone). Bake until golden brown, 12-15 minutes.

4. Roll immediately in powdered sugar. Place on cooling rack.
 

Pecan Pie

Pecan Pie

I made the BEST EVER pecan pie for Thanksgiving!
I've tried three or four recipes in the past-the first one was pretty good, but I never found it again (hence the reason for this blog...so I can find things again!!). The others were never as good as the first one. But this pie was better than any of them! And so pretty too :-)
 This is definitely the prettiest pecan pie I've ever made!

 I used The Pioneer Woman Cooks recipe from Recipe Girl  for most of the pie, but I took a hint from Gimme Some Oven for the topping-looked and tasted PERFECT!

Ingredients:
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup granulated white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
3 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup (2/3 stick) butter, melted and slightly cooled
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups finely chopped pecans
1/2 cup pecan halves-enough to be placed over filling and cover top
1 unbaked pie crust, fitted into a pie pan (edges crimped)

 Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In medium bowl, combine corn syrup, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, butter, salt, and vanilla. Whisk until smooth.
3. Place chopped pecans in bottom of crust. Pour contents of bowl over pecans.
4. Line the top of the filling with pecan halves.

5. Cover with foil and bake for 35 minutes. (I put foil on the bottom rack of the oven so it can catch anything that boils over-makes clean-up a LOT easier!) Remove foil and bake for 25-30 minutes longer-if crust or pecans are close to burning, re-cover with foil. Pie is done when the filling is set-should be a little bit jiggly but not sloshy. If pie is still sloshy, continue baking, checking every five minutes.
6. Cool on rack (3-4 hours) before slicing.

Seriously-this is the BEST pecan pie I've ever tasted!!

Mama's Famous Cookies

These are soooo good. All chocolatey, peanut buttery, walnuty. Mmmmm!!
I adapted this from a recipe on the back of a Ghirardelli chocolate chip bag ages ago.

 Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup butter (2 1/2 sticks) at room temperature

3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons flax seed meal
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teasppon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups oats (I prefer old fashioned, but quick oats work okay too)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. I always bake cookies on a pizza stone. I place it in the oven when I turn it on to preheat. That gets the stone the same temperature as the oven. It makes the cookies bake more evenly-when I used to make cookies on a baking sheet, they would always burn a little on the bottom. I never burn them when baking on a stone! I use the same stone throughout so that it is always hot. As you can see from the pictures, my stone is "well-loved"!
2. In a large bowl, cream butter with sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla.
3. In a medium bowl, mix flours, flaxseed, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon.
4. Slowly mix flour mixture into creamed mixture (I use a handheld mixer on med-low). Stir in oats. Then fold in chips and nuts. 
5. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto stone. Bake 9 minutes (time will vary depending on what you bake them on. Nine minutes is perfect on my stone!)
6. Cool for about one minute then place on cooling rack. Store in tightly covered container.

Yield: approximately 46 cookies. Hard to count though... the kids and I sneak a few as they come out of the oven...

Mmmmm!!! COOKIES!!

I have become completely, totally addicted to Reese's Minis the past year. I seriously go through withdrawls when I don't have any to snack on!! Soooo.... time to break my addiction AND test out some of the yummy looking cookies I have pinned!!

Since I am addicted to the peanut butter-chocolate goodness that are minis, I looked for a cookie that had both peanut butter and chocolate. I figured it wouldn't be any help if I included minis in the cookies-there are tons of yummy recipes that include minis or chopped up bits of regular sized reeses. Looking through the hundreds of dessert recipes I have pinned (I almost got sidetracked!! Almost started looking for MORE recipes to pin rather than actually trying one out!!), I decided to try Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies with Sea Salt from Recipe Girl. Here is the link to her recipe: http://www.recipegirl.com/2012/03/12/peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies-with-sea-salt/.

I couldn't follow the recipe exactly...

The is what I did to her recipe...  
PB-CC-PBC Oatmeal Cookies   ;-)

Ingredients:

 1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter flavored Crisco
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup chopped walnuts
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. I used a pizza stone instead of a cookie sheet-I love how cookies bake on stoneware! I placed the stone in the oven when I turned it on to preheat. I have found that heating up the stone first helps.
2. In medium bowl, mix flours, baking soda, and salt.
3. In large bowl, mix butter, peanut butter, and sugars with an electric mixer on medium. Add eggs one at a time. Then slowly add the dry ingredients from bowl until mixed.
4. Stir in oats. Stir in peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, and walnuts.
5. Drop the cookies by teaspoonful onto cookie sheet. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt.
6. Bake for 13 minutes. Cool for 1 minute, then remove from stone.
(See the note on baking time from the original recipe-13 minutes is what worked for me)

 I wanted to make them a little more nutritious, hence the wheat flour. I was going to add flax seed meal as part of the flour as well, but didn't want to change too much. I used Crisco instead of butter because I had some that needed to be used. I generally prefer butter in baked goods... Also-I only had old fashioned oats on hand-so that's what I used. I was going to use oat flour as well, but since I'd already swapped some of the flour, I didn't want to add oat flour...

I LOVE walnuts in cookies, that's why I added them. I think I should have added more than 1 cup. Also, I wanted to use peanut butter and chocolate chips, so I did one cup of each instead of 12 ounces of chocolate chips.

I sprinkled sea salt on the first two dozen cookies that I made. After that, I skipped the sea salt. I didn't think they were all that great with the sea salt. I thought they were just as good without...

Overall, the cookies were good. I think I was more in the mood for a more traditional oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough rather than a peanut butter cookie dough. I thought maybe there was too much going on-maybe that was because of all the modifications I made?? My kids didn't find ANY problems with them at all though, lol.

They were yummy, just didn't exactly match my mood!
One batch made approximately 52 cookies.
My son came home from college for a couple of days. Between him, the girls, their friends, and myself, the cookies were gone in about three days!! :-/  I'll take that "proof" as another success.
Maybe tomorrow I'll make some more cookies...
I'm dying for some Reeses right now...