Glazed Pumpkin Sugar Cookies

Glazed Pumpkin Sugar Cookies - made dough July 8, 2019 from Together as a Family

Although I'm posting this recipe after my weight loss challenge at work started, I didn't actually cheat with this as I baked the taste test cookies the day before the challenge started.

This is very much like the Lofthouse or Swig Sugar Cookies in terms of taste and texture but with the added (mild) flavor of pumpkin. The cookies themselves weren't really sweet; instead, the sweetness comes from the glaze.

I love big, soft (but not cakey), chewy cookies like these. Don't underbake them too much though or they will just be mush. These are pretty dense and although the original recipe called for baking them for only 7-8 minutes, I baked mine for 12-15 and even then, they could've used an extra minute in my oven. You want to bake them until the edges are set and show some cracks while the middles literally don't look raw. Then take them out.

These are best cooled completely, not just so you can glaze them without the glaze melting but so they'll have the best, moist texture without being gummy.  While I'm a little early for fall baking, these would be good year round but especially if you want an autumn cookie to show off.

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1/2 cup canola or vegetable oil
1/2 cup pure pumpkin
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (I used Penzey's Vietnamese cinnamon instead)

Pumpkin Spice Glaze
2 cups powdered sugar
3-4 tablespoons heavy cream
1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice (I used Penzey's Vietnamese cinnamon instead)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, add softened butter, oil, pumpkin, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, vanilla and eggs. Cream together until smooth and combined.
3. Whisk together flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt and pumpkin pie spice. Add to wet ingredients in 3 additions, mixing on low speed until just combined. Do not overmix.
4. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls and press down on each dough ball with the bottom of a glass to flatten. Dip the glass bottom in granulated sugar to prevent sticking.
5. Evenly space on prepared baking sheets and bake for 8-9 minutes. Let cool on cookie sheet for 5 minutes then remove to wire racks to cool completely.
6. Make the glaze: combine all glaze ingredients in a bowl and whisk together. Use more or less milk, depending on how thick you want the glaze. Spread onto each cooled cookie and let sit for several minutes to set.

Growing Oatmeal Breakfast

Growing Oatmeal Breakfast - made July 2-7, 2019, modified from The Hungry Girl Diet Book

I joined this weight loss challenge at work. It started this past Monday and runs for 10 weeks until the end of September. Person with the highest percentage of weight loss wins. The end of the challenge nicely coincides with my dad’s upcoming birthday party which we’ve turned into a family reunion in late September and my niece’s wedding in October. Both events where it’d be nice to shed a few or 15 pounds for the pictures. So game on.

In serendipitous timing, I’d bought the Hungry Girl Diet Cookbook a couple of weeks prior. At first I thought I was going on the Hungry Girl Diet, lured by the testimonials of people losing 10 pounds in 4 weeks. But past experience has taught me that diets don’t work for me. They work for a couple of weeks and I drop the pounds then I stop and they come back on. Instead, I decided I would incorporate what I liked from the cookbook into my long-term way of eating and substitute or supplement the dishes that worked with my less-healthy choices.

Plus, the work challenge at the office. My vain and petty soul wants to win. I’m undecided whether I’m going to go dark on my baking blog during this challenge or post occasionally with the “diet” recipes that I like. Either way, if you see me posting a full-fat, full-on sugar baking recipe, you know I cheated am taking a foodie break.

As for this recipe, I am normally not a big fan of oatmeal. I don’t mind it, especially in an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie (ha) but it’s not my normal breakfast fare. Still, perhaps it was time to start eating like a grown up. Fortunately, even if I’m not an oatmeal fan, I can at least eat it and find it tolerably okay. 

I didn’t have any canned pumpkin or no-calorie sweetener when I first made this recipe so my first couple of morning breakfasts did without those things. The oatmeal was pretty bland and I kept upping the cinnamon. I didn’t mind the blandness that much because my taste buds themselves are pretty bland but the oatmeal is immeasurably helped by the chopped Fuji apple I added to it each morning. I did eventually end up making a Target run to get the ingredients I needed and made it the proper Hungry Girl way by the third morning. That way turned out a bit more creamy than the incomplete way I’d started with but I adjusted. It’s still bland but that was okay. I do recommend topping with apple chunks or your favorite fruit to provide a little texture and sweetness.

The great thing about this dish? It’s genuinely so filling that it takes me upwards of half an hour to consume the whole serving. I’m normally a fast eater and breakfast can easily be a memory within 5 minutes so this helps slow me down. I've now been having this breakfast every day for the past couple of weeks and have actually grown fond of it enough to keep on with it. It helps that it's only 300-ish calories and keeps me from becoming hungry again until an hour or so before lunch, at which time I eat the rest of the Fuji apple to tide me over until lunch.

1/2 cup old-fashioned oats (not instant)
1 no-calorie sweetener packet
1 teaspoon cinnamon
dash of salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup fat-free milk
1 1/4 cups water
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
1/4 to 1/2 cup apple, cut into chunks

1. In a nonstick pot, combine all ingredients except canned pumpkin and apples. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. 
2. Add pumpkin and cook until thick and creamy, 12-15 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl and let cool and thicken. Top with chopped apple.

Shortbread Cookies with Cookie Butter

Shortbread Cookies with Cookie Butter - made July 5, 2019, adapted from My Cookie Journey

I had pinned this recipe awhile ago but couldn’t make it when I was in my temporary digs with two thirds of my stuff packed in boxes in the garage because in those boxes were my star tip and plastic piping bags. But now that I’m (mostly) unpacked and found all my baking stuff again, it seemed like a good time to finally try this recipe. The original recipe called for filling these with jam in the center. You know my feelings about jam. So I used cookie butter.

First, let me say these were delicious. Not too sweet, not too buttery like those (damn delicious) Danish butter cookies in the blue tin, and the cookie butter was the perfect complement to the cookie.

Second, I will also say these were a pain in my flat butt to make. The dough wasn’t hard to mix together and it had the perfect malleable texture. But these were a pain because that perfect malleable texture also meant the dough was too stiff to pipe out of that star tip. I foolishly ignored the suggestion in the original recipe to warm up the dough slightly if it was too stiff before I put it in the plastic piping bag fitted out with the star tip. Once I realized the dough was too stiff to pipe, I couldn’t pop the whole thing into the microwave to warm since the star tip was metal.

So I had to empty the dough into a bowl, warm it up slightly in the microwave, put it back into another piping bag with the star tip, and try again. It was better on the second try except the dough was still a bit stiff. I gamely kept piping rosettes but halfway through, the pressure was too much for the opening of the bag and the star tip burst through. Sigh. Scrape back into the bowl, warm it up for another few seconds, put into a third piping bag.

I eventually got them all piped and I have to say, they actually looked like honest to goodness rosettes. Apparently, a stiff-ish dough can make it look good in the end. They browned easily so don’t bake them too long. I loved the texture and the rosettes make the perfect vehicle for the cookie butter.

Warm the cookie butter slightly to make piping them into the center wells a little easier. The cookie butter will set once it cools in the cookie. Despite my torturous experience, I will make these again.

200 g unsalted butter, softened
80 g powdered sugar
2 egg whites (I used 1/4 cup of liquid egg whites)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
320 g all-purpose flour
cookie butter

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Cream together butter and powdered sugar until well combined. Add egg whites, vanilla extract and salt; mix until combined.
3. Add the flour in three additions and beat each addition on low speed until just combined; do not overmix.
4. Transfer dough into piping bag fitted with large star tip. Pipe rosettes of cookie dough onto prepared baking sheets. Make a small indent in the center of each cookie with the back of a teaspoon and fill with cookie butter. Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges are light golden brown. Remove from oven and transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (Baker by Nature)

Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough July 4, 2019 from Baker by Nature

Another chocolate chip cookie recipe. Yes, I know, I make them a lot. But my sister is a realtor and was holding an Open House last weekend and asked if I could bake cookies for it. I was happy to, as it let me test out another recipe. Since I started working remotely, I didn't have my coworkers anymore to eat my baking experiments. Fine, I'll use random strangers looking to buy a new home instead.

However, since these were for the consuming public, I couldn't default to my usual, let's-make-cookies-as-big-as-my-head size of cookies. These were meant to be dainty samples to be welcoming at an Open House. So I made these a "normal" size. Meaning small dough balls baking into small cookies.

This recipe’s approach to chocolate chip cookies combines the flavor of brown butter with the consistency of solidified butter. Most browned butter recipes have you using the browned butter in melted form as the base of the batter. This one has you brown the butter then chill it until it’s solidified but at “room temperature” or softened. So you will need to plan ahead for a little extra chilling time.

Since I have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, I didn’t worry too much about chilling only until the butter was in the softened state since the paddle attachment could beat the butter into submission if I chilled it too much. 

The cookies were pretty good. The deck was slightly stacked against them though since my usual preference was for behemoth-sized cookies made with milk chocolate chunks or chips. Since these were going to feed strangers at an Open House, I made them smaller and used semisweet chocolate chips. But once I got past that, the cookie itself was moist, had a chewy texture and that caramelized brown sugar caramel flavor of a good chocolate chip cookie.

1 cup (2 sticks or 16 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and browned then chilled until room temperature
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup + 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips or chunks

1. Brown the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, cooking for 3-4 minutes until butter has browned. Pour into a heatproof bowl (I used the mixing bowl of my stand mixer), scraping all the browned bits into the bowl. Place the bowl in the refrigerator for 1 hour, or until the butter has solidified.
2. In a medium-size bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt;set aside.
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream browned butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar and vanilla until combined, light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add in the eggs, one at a time, beating for 15 seconds after each addition. 
4. Remove bowl from mixer and fold in dry ingredients, mixing with a wooden spoon until the flour has been incorporated. Add chocolate chips. Portion into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill for several hours.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space dough balls onto prepared baking sheet. Bake for 9 - 10 minutes or until edges are golden and middles are no longer raw or shiny. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes then transfer to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Chewy Sugar Cookies

Chewy Sugar Cookies - made June 25, 2019 from Butternut Bakery

It's been awhile since I've posted as I've been busy moving, unpacking, unpacking and settling into the new place. Before I moved, however, I made this cookie dough and, fittingly, it was the first thing I baked in my new kitchen.

I say fittingly because I love my new kitchen. It's made for a baker like me and I chose the options and design that wouldn't just look nice but was also functionally what I needed and used. Lots of counter space to work on, double convection ovens for the first time in my life and enough cupboard space to accommodate the baffling array of dessert platters I seem to have accumulated without my own knowledge.

Having a convection oven is what I missed the most in the past 6 months. I had one in my old house so I'd forgotten the difference it made until I only had a "normal" oven to work with. I found the bottoms of my cookies would end up more baked and a little harder than they should have been, even when I underbaked them. They would gradually soften to match the rest of the cookie after several hours but you're talking to someone who only eats a cookie 10-20 minutes out of the oven. #firstworldproblems

I also say fittingly because not only do I love my new kitchen but I also love this recipe for sugar cookies. In fact - and you know I try to avoid hyperbole unless the recipe really warrants it - this might be the best ever sugar cookie recipe I've ever tried. Seriously.

Usually I find sugar cookies too sweet or spread too thin. Neither is an issue with this cookie. You know how I endorse the cookie recipes I love the most? I eat most of them myself. Usually I'll bake a taste test cookie to try it out for myself then I'll bake the rest off, give them away and move on.

I did bake a few for my family when they came over last week but, I can't lie; the rest of the dough is tucked away in my freezer, to be baked one at a time, once a day, for my afternoon snack. I'm like a dragon protectively sprawled over its hoard, the way I'm hovering over the frozen dough balls in a ziploc bag in my freezer. I'm not proud of it but there you have it. It's not like I can't make more either but I'm running low on cake flour. Time for a Target run.

1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk
Decorative sugar for sprinkling on top, optional

1. In a small bowl, whisk together cake flour, all-purpose flour, salt and baking soda; set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the melted butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar on medium speed until fully combined. Mix in the egg, egg yolk and vanilla.
3. Mix in the dry ingredients, mixing only until just combined. Do not overbeat. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for 10-15 minutes.
4. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Portion the dough into golf-ball size dough balls and place in neat rows on baking sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight.
5. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line another baking sheet with parchment paper and evenly space chilled dough balls 2 inches apart. Bake for 12-14 minutes, until edges are set/lightly golden grown and middles no longer look raw or shiny. Let rest on baking sheets for a few minutes then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. If desired, sprinkle with decorative sugars while cookies are still hot. Cool completely.

Coconut Cream Cheese White Chocolate Chip Cookies

Coconut Cream Cheese White Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough June 4, 2019 from I'd Rather Bake Than

This was another cookie I made to go into the cookie bags for my coworkers. I've been meaning to make these for awhile but they had the random ingredient of 6 ounces of cream cheese and you know they come in 8-ounce blocks. I hate having leftover ingredients that may or may not be used.

But, in a serendipitous move, the Gluten-free Chocolate Chip cookies (experiment #2) that I made, also for the cookie care packages, needed 2 ounces of cream cheese so I could make both recipes and use up the whole cream cheese block without any waste.

Plus, I had some white chocolate chunks that was just enough to include in this recipe so using up the rest of the bag also meant one less thing to pack up and move.

Baking with white chocolate is always tricky. You have to bake the cookies long enough to actually bake but oftentimes, that also means the white chocolate chunks that are exposed to the heat turn brown. Not very attractive.

And I don't like white chocolate enough to bake with it enough to remember until too late that the best way around this conundrum is to tuck the white chocolate chunks into the dough so they're not exposed, bake the cookies then press more white chocolate chunks over the tops of the cookies right when you take them out of the oven.

The heat from the hot cookies will help the white chocolate chunks melt enough to adhere to the baked cookie but won't be hot enough to burn or brown the white chocolate. I have to remember that next time I make these or other white chocolate cookies.

These turned out pretty well. The dough was easy to work with, the cookies didn't spread that much and they were pretty tasty. Not a strong cream cheese flavor but the cream cheese definitely added to the smoothness of the cookie's texture. The coconut added to the chewiness and made for a nice flavor combination with the white chocolate.

If you like macadamia nuts, I'd recommend adding some so you go the full mile with white chocolate, coconut and macadamias.

3/8 cup (6 tablespoons, 85 grams) butter, melted and cooled
6 tablespoons cream cheese, softened, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk
3/4 cup (150 grams) brown sugar
1 cup (60 grams) coconut
2 1/3 cups + 2 teaspoons (285 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/4 cups white chocolate chips

1. Whisk together the melted butter with the cream cheese and vanilla extract. Mix in the egg and egg yolk then add the sugar, mixing until creamy and combined.
2. Add in the flour, baking powder and baking soda, mixing until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in coconut and white chocolate chips. Chill dough if soft. Otherwise, portion into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
3. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough balls. Bake 8-10 minutes or until edges are golden and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven, let cool on baking sheets for several minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.