Iced Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies

I have laid off the blogging for a few weeks, but I have still been making cookies. I left out a few entries - for Gingersnap Palmiers (not my fave) and Buttery Pecan Rounds (tasted like Butter Pecan ice cream) - and maybe I'll make those cookies another time, and blog about them then.

For Memorial Day, we joined good friends for a wonderful barbeque and I made some Iced Oatmeal Applesauce Cookies (page 77) to bring along. As usual for our kitchen, I omitted the golden raisins called for in the recipe. The recipe also calls for chunky-style applesauce, which I didn't have. I just threw in one single serve no-sugar-added applesauce container that my son usually has for lunch.

The icing was very easy, and the maple syrup gave the whole cookie a delicious maple flavor. The kids and adults liked the cookies, and afterwards, our host took them to his poker game, where they were devoured.

White Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Today my daughter was supremely disappointed by a couple of her friends. As many mothers in the past, I decided to make cookies with her to assuage her sadness. We flipped through Martha's cookbook and decided on White Chocolate Chunk Cookies (page 172) because (a) we had all the ingredients and (b) it was the one cookie that both of my daughters and I could agree on.

These cookies are supremely easy to make - just mix up the ingredients, drop onto the baking sheet and slide into the oven! A relief after the last recipe! This recipe is rightly included in the "chunky and nutty" section as it has all kinds of goodies - oats, coconut and walnuts - which make it a very satisfying cookie. The recipe also calls for golden raisins, but my daughter requested I omit those and I happily obliged.

One of the comments on the web version of the recipe suggested substituting macadamia nuts for walnuts, and I think that would be a nice variation.

She was delighted with the result and declared them delicious!

Banana-Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies

The Cigarettes Russes were very popular and almost gone, so I made another batch of cookies tonight. We are buried under a ton of snow here in Columbus, OH, so I wasn't able to run out to get any special ingredients and I just wanted to make some comfort food. The recipe I chose was Banana-Walnut Chocolate-Chunk Cookies (page 170), from the "crunchy & nutty" section of Martha's cookbook.

These cookies were extremely easy to make. Since I didn't have whole wheat flour, I simply used all-purpose flour for all the required flour. I substituted semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of chopping up chocolate into chunks (so this should probably be called Banana Walnut Chocolate Chip cookies in this case). As Martha says in her little intro to this recipe, these cookies combine "two bakery classics" - they are a delicious blend of banana bread and chocolate chip cookies. Yum!

My husband has been complaining that I like my cookies too crispy, so the texture of these were perfect for him, a little cakey and nice and soft.

Everyone enjoyed them - these are my kids and my brother-in-law noshing on the cookies after dinner.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Tonight I made Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (page 228) for dessert after our Shabbat dinner. This is a fairly simple recipe, but the cookie is loaded with goodies. I made a couple of substitutions - I do not have whole wheat flour in our pantry, so I used all-purpose flour and I hate natural peanut butter, so I just used regular old Jif (yum).

My daughters helped me measure out and pour the ingredients and we used our medium sized Oxo cookie scoop to ladle out the dough. The optimum baking time for our oven was 14 minutes and the cookies needed about two minutes to cool on the baking sheet before transferring them to the wire rack.

My mom's boyfriend suggested that the peanut butter flavor was a little understated, but I thought the cookies were delish!