baking

Muffins and Thoughts

~ MaryG ~ 22 Comments

I may turn this into a baking blog for the next four years.

As the holidays are over, I wanted to veer away from decadent cookies, and try some healthier stuff. I’ve always liked “morning glory” muffins and this recipe from Sally is a winner. They are moist and delicious. I never make recipes with 18(!) ingredients, but I happened to have most of them in the house already. The only things I had to go buy was ground flax seed and unsweetened apple sauce. I substituted coconut flakes for the pecans, because I am allergic to tree nuts.

Random thoughts from the past two days:

I didn’t watch the inauguration live, but the photos were unavoidable. Melania’s hat was a lousy choice for an indoor inauguration. Even if the inauguration had been outside, she did not need a brim that wide! She looked so severe and frankly, mean, in that navy blue get-up. Major Cruella de Vil vibes.

The Washington DC Episcopalian Bishop has balls, asking Trump to his face to have mercy on the people he attacks. Good for her!

Finally, I loved AOC’s response to all the inquiries about whether or not she was attending the inauguration: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFB3HenR4az/?igsh=MTRuY29xeXc0am51YQ==

Candy cookies

~ MaryG ~ 12 Comments

I’m not sure when cookies with pieces of candy in them were invented, but I feel like they got very popular when I was a kid in the 70s. In fact, I’m just going to go ahead and claim them for GenX. We may not have invented candy cookies, but we sure made them very popular.

I fondly remember my first “hidden treasure” cookie—a powdered sugar-covered cookie ball with a Hershey’s Kiss in the center. My mom made those every Christmas. And remember those first M&M cookies? Those were my second favorite type of Mrs. Fields cookies to get warm at the mall.

As every American who has ever trick-or-treated knows, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the best mass-produced candy in the US, which of course leads to numerous recipes which incorporate them.

These Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Cookies (recipe from Sally’sBakingAddiction.com) are perfect because you sink the candies into the hot cookies and then put them in the freezer for about 10 minutes to prevent too much of the chocolate melting. This results in the perfect integration of candy and cookie. The cookie dough itself has peanut butter in it and is rolled in granulated sugar before baking. It elevates the already perfect peanut butter cup to a whole new level.

As my son says, these are FIRE.

This batch of cookies officially concludes my 2024 Christmas Baking Extravaganza, which may or may not have been partially motivated by election-related escapism. I hope you’ve enjoyed it!

Fortunately, my son has been home to help eat all these cookies.

Related posts:

White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

More White Chocolate

The Holiday Spritz

White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

~ MaryG ~ 9 Comments

I’ve posted about Sally’sBaking Addiction.com before. It’s a great website for free cookie recipes. I’ve tried many of Sally’s recipes over the years and they always come out great. It’s where I discovered my amazing real maple syrup cookie recipe, which people absolutely love!

Last night, I tried making her Soft White Chocolate Cranberry cookies. They looked so pretty for the holidays in her “Cookie Palooza” newsletter. And doesn’t the inclusion of dried fruit make them a tiny bit healthy?

Anyway, they came out great and they are delicious. My only comment is that the dough is pretty crumbly. I needed to use my hands to knead it like bread before refrigerating.

Here’s the recipe in photos, in case the link above doesn’t work:

Here’s how mine came out. I will definitely make them again.

It’s butter – and maple – time

~ MaryG ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
List your top 5 grocery store items.
View all responses

Our top 5 grocery list items are usually milk, pasta, eggs, bananas and yogurt.

This time of year, I buy a lot of butter because I like to bake holiday cookies, especially when my son is home to help eat them.

A few years ago we were gifted a large jug of real maple syrup from a friend’s farm in Vermont and I discovered a great maple cookie recipe on sallysbakingaddiction.com (a wonderful website for free baking recipes). These maple brown sugar cookies are delicious and moist. (I’m allergic to tree nuts, so I make them without the pecans and they’re still delicious.) The icing is reminiscent of maple sugar candy. If you grew up in New England, you probably remember begging your parents for a maple leaf like this from a tourist gift shop in New Hampshire, Vermont or upstate NY:

The dough needs to be chilled for a few hours before baking and highly recommend the parchment paper method she describes, including banging the cookie sheet when first out of the oven to get these nice crinkles. 

The only catch is that the recipe calls for maple extract (in addition to vanilla extract), which is not available in most grocery stores. I had to order some from Amazon. I’ve never made these cookies without the maple extract. I think it may be a key ingredient. The other key ingredient is, of course, real maple syrup. It’s in both the cookie dough and the icing – a third of a cup in each.

I got two of these for Christmas last year (one light, one dark). April’s Maple is a family-owned American (blue state) small business. Check their website for gift ideas: https://aprilsmaple.com/
The icing makes these special and is very easy!