It's been too long...

Simple, but an excellent quote.

The World's Best Cookies

For as long as I can remember my mom has been making the best oatmeal cookies known to man. These are not some lumpy, so-so oatmeal raisin cookies; they are spicy, buttery, I-want-to-eat-all-four-dozen oatmeal cookies. As I have gotten older and done more baking on my own, these are always a favorite for me to make. After being away at college for four months with extremely limited baking ingredients and supplies and having to concede to making cookies from a boxed mix (although when I delivered Christmas sugar cookies to all of my friends during finals, no one complained about where they came from), I was thrilled to be home in a kitchen with real ingredients and an electric mixer over Christmas break. No more "beating" in an egg with a plastic fork. Hooray. I actually made these cookies twice this break, once as soon as I got home, and the other the night before I left, so I could bring them back to school to share with my friends. Part of me wanted to better their lives by exposing them to these delectable cookies, but there is also a vain part of me that wanted them to see my baking skills when I have access to more than just tupperware as mixing bowls and stolen milk from the servery.

Anyways, although I have always loved these cookies, they have always been rather flat. While the taste is excellent, we always felt they could be slightly chewier if only they wouldn't spread out so much while baking. The first batch I made at the beginning of break was the same as usual: delicious yet deflated. When I set out to make them the second time, I decided to experiment a little to combat this. The recipe calls for butter, and while I couldn't swap out all of the butter for shortening and risk losing the melt-in-your-mouth buttery undertones that the cookies have, I decided to try about half butter and half shortening. Success. My brother, who is two years older, lives in an apartment, and has been eating these same cookies for years without ever wanting to make them himself, ate one and immediately said he wanted the recipe. Considering he doesn't really bake, that's pretty high praise.

The recipe is just one my mom got off the box of a Quaker oats container years ago, but it's the best one I have ever tasted. Here's how I modified it for the best version yet:

Ingredients
3/4 c. butter
2/4 c. shortening*
1/2 c. granulated sugar
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 tspn vanilla
1 1/2 c. flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
3 c. oats

*The original recipe just calls for 1 1/4 cups of butter or margarine, which I suggest trying if you don't mind slightly flat cookies (they're still delicious) because personally shortening just kind of freaks me out.

Cream together the butter, shortening, and sugars. Beat in the egg and vanilla. Put in the flour, baking soda, spices, and salt and stir in. Finally, stir in the oats. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake in a 375 degree oven for 8 minutes. Cool for 1 minute on baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack. It should yield 4-5 dozen.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I always have! And perhaps they'll even convert an oatmeal cookie hater or two :)

Friends and Food

With Halloween coming up I wanted to do something festive with my friends, but it was a little difficult with our limited resources here at college and in dorms. Initially I wanted to organize a trip to a nearby pumpkin patch (this was dependent upon my two friends with cars wanting to attend), but with the only pumpkin patches being pretty far outside the city and finding a day that everyone had free, we quickly realized that was more hassle than it was worth. I then thought of caramel apples, which ended up being perfect! We have a bus that runs on Saturdays from campus to the grocery store, so I went and bought apples, caramel wraps, and other toppings. About ten of my friends and I gathered in our dorm kitchen and baked away. It was a great experience that yielded some delicious treats!


We had a sort of assembly line going with the various toppings. We had Nutella and peanut butter, both melted to make them a little runnier; M&Ms; mini chocolate chips; and crushed Hershey's Symphony Bar (it's a chocolate almond toffee bar; I wanted a Heath Bar but found this instead. It might be my new favorite chocolate).

We found that the caramel didn't get quite as sticky as was necessary for keeping the candies in place, so we all had to put on Nutella or peanut butter if we wanted extra toppings, but that wasn't a bad thing :)

Mine was a combination of everything, and it was delicious. It was so sweet I had to have a friend eat part of it because I couldn't finish it.

They were so easy to make, even in the dorm, and they were really fun, also! They are a great idea to make with limited resources, and they are a great way to get friends or family together, too!