Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are called "Cowboy Cookies" in the one little cookbook I have. I have absolutely no idea why they have that name, but they are delicious. These are an extra good version of chocolate chip cookies that just happen to have oatmeal in them. The cookies are nice and soft and chocolatey. I do suggest you make these. I will be making them again!

The dough seemed a bit too sticky after I mixed everything together, so I added a few tablespoons of extra flour to fix that problem. Whenever I have sticky chocolate chip cookie dough, the cookies end up as flat and melted blobs. You can add some extra flour at the beginning or wait and see how the dough turns out if you follow the recipe.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

2 C sifted flour

1/2 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

1 C white sugar

1 C brown sugar (packed)

1 C shortening

2 eggs

2 C rolled oats (not the instant kind!)

1 t vanilla

12 oz chocolate chips

Sifte together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

Cream together the shortening and sugars.

Beat in the eggs until fluffy.

Stir in the flour mixture.

Add the rolled oats, vanilla, and chocolate chips. Mix until nicely distributed.

Drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Let cool for a minute on the cookie sheet before removing to cooling racks.

Enjoy!

Challah Braid

Monday seemed like a perfect day to make bread so I made a challah braid. While it seems a bit intimidating to make, it's not. The bread has a nice crust and is very soft on the inside. The taste is great as well and it went perfectly with pasta. I don't know a lot about bread (yet), but I read that this bread is considered an "egg bread".

Bread is quickly becoming my favorite thing to make. The entire process of kneading and letting it sit and rise is enjoyable, even if it takes hours to do. Baking bread also acts as a wonderful air freshener!

Challah Braid (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
1 1/2 C milk
1/4 C sugar
3 t salt
1/3 C butter
3 eggs, lightly beaten (reserve 2 T)
2 packets of active dry yeast
1/2 C warm water
1 t sugar
7 1/2 C sifted flour
1 T water

In a small sauce pan, heat the first four ingredients until the butter is melted. Cool to lukewarm.

Meanwhile, proof the yeast in the half cup of warm water with the 1 teaspoon of sugar. Also, sift the flour.

Once the milk mixture is cooled enough, place it into a mixing bowl with the yeast, 4 cups of flour, and the eggs. Don't forget to reserve 2 tablespoons of the egg!

Mix this together until blended. Slowly add more flour until a soft dough is formed. I added around 3 more cups of flour.

Attach a dough hook to your mixer and knead at a slow speed for 5 minutes or knead by hand.

Place the kneaded dough into a greased bowl, cover with a towel, and let rise for one and a half hours or until doubled in size.

Punch down the dough and knead for a few minutes minutes by hand on a lightly floured surface.

Break the dough into 6 sections. Roll these sections into ropes approximately 15 inches long.

Pinch together the ends of 3 of the ropes and place them on a well greased baking sheet.

Braid the strips together. Repeat with the remaining 3 strips. Cover again and let rise for another hour or until doubled in size.

Take the 2 tablespoons of reserved egg and mix it with the 1 tablespoon of water. Brush this mixture on top of the dough braids. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes. The dough will be nice and brown when it is done. Let cool.

Enjoy!

Flour Frosting

This frosting was part of the recipe for the Gobs. I made and tried the frosting but decided not to use it. At first I thought it was okay. It isn't sweet and kind of had a texture like thick whipped cream. But after a few minutes I decided that I didn't like it. It didn't have enough flavor and I had absolutely no desire to consume anymore of it.

Maybe you can find a use for it.

Flour Frosting (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

5 T flour

1 C milk

1/2 C shortening

1/2 C butter

1/4 t salt

2 t vanilla

1 C powdered sugar

In a small sauce pan, heat the flour and milk over medium heat until thick. Use a wisk to stir as this will prevent clumps.

Once the mixture is a bit thick, remove from the heat. Continue stirring. The bottom layer will seem very thick at first, but this will resolve itself after a few minutes. Cool this milk mixture completely. (I placed the small pan in a small bowl of ice water to speed up the process.)

Cream together the shortening, butter, salt, and vanilla.

Add the powdered sugar and mix until combined.

Slowly mix in the chilled thickened milk mixture until combined. It will look awful at this point, but have faith and patience.

Beat on a high speed for several minutes until the mixture is fluffy and resembles frosting (or thick whipped cream).

Enjoy!

Gobs

There has been some complaining lately from the people who eat what I bake for this blog. Those people were complaining about a lack of frosting. To fix that, I decided to make these "gobs" which are filled with a lot of frosting. These are basically two cupcake tops with a glob of frosting in between.

The frosting that comes with this recipe is a flour frosting. I didn't use it. It turned out fine when I made it, but it wasn't sweet and I don't think it had very much flavor. I threw the flour frosting away and then made the old Wilton recipe with 1/4 t butter flavoring added to make it a buttercream frosting. This was a good decision.

The recipe I have only makes chocolate gobs and not everyone here is a fan of chocolate. To appease the taste testers, I divided the ingredients in half and made chocolate and yellow gobs. To make the yellow gobs, just replace the cocoa with flour. You can add a bit more vanilla as well, or any other flavoring you desire. You can also use any frosting in these. They are very customizable!

Gobs (Printer-friendly PDF Version)

2 C sugar

1/2 C shortening

2 eggs

1 C sour milk

1 C boiling water

1 t vanilla

4 C flour

2 t baking soda

1 1/2 t salt

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 C cocoa

Sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder, and cocoa. Set aside.

Cream together the sugar, shortening, and eggs.

Stir in the sour milk, boiling water, and vanilla until well combined.

Slowly mix in the flour mixture. Be sure this is well combined.

Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a cookie sheet. Bake at 425 for 5 minutes. I made these a bit too large, so I had to bake them for 6 minutes.

Let cool completely. Make some frosting and then assemble!

Enjoy! 

Congo Bars

I'm sure you are all wondering by now how I choose which recipe I will make. And even if you aren't wondering that, you could pretend to wonder such a thing and humor me. The proces is: If I don't have a taste for something specific, I just start looking through the recipes while paying attention only to the ingredients without regard to the category or title of the recipe. It goes something like, "I have sugar. Yep, eggs, too. No, no butter milk. Next." And, eventually, I find a recipe that I have all the ingredients for that also doesn't contain too many ingredients that I either can't eat (such as cream cheese) or have no interest in eating (such as figs).

Today I stumbled upon the recipe for these congo bars. The large amount of brown sugar in the recipe. I didn't realize that these "congo bars" are just a type of chocolate chip cookie bar until I was making them.

They are nice and chewy and chocolately. I like these better than the previous recipe for chocolate chip cookie bars that I posted. Unless you don't like brown sugar very much, I vote that you make these. The recipe makes a decent amount of cookie as well. I used two 9x9 inch pans and the cookies are approximately 1/2 inch thick. Be sure to grease and flour the pan or the cookies will be difficult to remove.

Congo Bars (Printer-friendly PDF Version)
2/3 C shortening
2 1/4 C brown sugar, packed
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 t vanilla
2 3/4 C sifted flour
1/2 t salt
2 1/2 t baking powder
1 C chopped nuts (optional)
12 oz chocolate chips

Place shortening and brown sugar in the mixing bowl.

Cream them together.

Pour in the eggs and vanilla.

Mixy mix.

Dump in the flour, salt, and baking powder.

Mixity mix mix mix.

Mix chocolate chips mix mix stir.

Press and spread the dough.

Bake at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 minutes or so. Don't overbake these or they wil probably be rocks and not cookies.

Cool it and then cut into pieces. As many or as few as you want. You can even just have two big cookies if that is what you want.

Enjoy!