Coconut Oatmeal Cookies

Happy Hinamatsuri (a.k.a Girls' Day)! When I was a little girl growing up in Hawaii, we celebrated girl's day every year. Although I said this week would be eat me, delicious tribute week, I really wanted to make hishimochi. So my dad and I set out on a mission, we drove to three different stores but none of them carried glutinous rice flour. I guess we're the last gluten-loving people on the planet. Oh well, next year! I'll keep my eyes peeled, though, because I'd love to figure out how to make red bean stuffed mochi and mochi ice cream. Maybe I'll try somewhere like Ranch 99 next chance I get. Any other suggestions? Where would you all get glutinous rice flour from?

I needed to make something delicious to celebrate those double x chromosomes and my new favorite food blog, so I set to search and found a coconut cookie recipe. Given that I spent my early childhood in Hawaii eating mostly tofu, fruits, and vegetables (okay, and spam musubi and manapua, too), I love almost all things fruit, coconut especially. I had never baked with coconut before, and wasn't quite sure what to expect, but it is undoubtedly of my new favorite baking ingredients. I used the thicker unsweetened coconut (so good!) and organic oatmeal (mmmm!) and ended up with incredible cookies, but they were certainly a mouthful because of the large hunks of coconut. I didn't add the chocolate, and decided to make them more soft and chewy than crunchy, which I think is a personal preference. They were gone less than twelve hours later!

I received this phone call around 4:30: "Hey Erin, I just got home and I ate about three of your cookies in thirty seconds. I hope you don't mind, I was calling to make sure you wouldn't be upset if they were all gone by the time you got back. Your cookies are amazing, sweetie. Love you lots."

I was overjoyed. That was totally the purpose of making them.

May your baking adventures be as fruitful as mine (bad pun intended)!

Makes about 29 medium sized cookies
Coconut Cookies
adapted from: eat me, delicious, Barbara Boczany & This Week for Dinner

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar, packed
6 tbsp sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 cup flour
2 1/4 cups oats
1 1/2 cups dried unsweetened shredded coconut*

Preheat oven to 375F. Beat butter and sugars at high speed until fluffy. Add eggs and beat till blended. Beat in vanilla, baking soda, and salt. Add flour and mix at low speed until blended. Stir in oats, coconut and chocolate.

Arrange 1/4 cup mounds about 3 inches apart on large buttered baking sheets. Pat down to 1/2 inch. Bake on middle rack, 10 minutes (note: my rickety old oven is really inefficient, your baking time should probably be around 8 minutes). Cool one minute. Transfer to cooling rack.

*I made these with 1 heaping cup of unsweetened shredded and 1 cup of flaked coconut, and used ener-g egg replacer and earth balance to make it vegan. less nutritional value/ more ethical. i used semisweet chocolate chips on the last batch of cookies. Makes about 36.

Peanut Butter Cookies

This week, and honestly on a craving for eating peanut butter cookie dough, I decided to make peanut butter cookies. Since I came back from New York, Profe has been following me around nonstop and curling up in this circular pseudo-fetal position in my lap, on my bed, and burrowing into the blankets to snuggle with me on the couch. Drawing my inspiration from his warm, endearing, and cuddly shape, I decided to return to cookies as a comforting expression of our reciprocal love.

Also, in both weird and awesome news: I found my doppelgänger. We both write food blogs, prefer vegetarian food, particularly enjoy baking desserts, post pictures of our cats, have or are working on a bachelor's degree in psychology, and talk about how our food was received by our significant others and family in our posts.

Scrolling through her blog, I found the recipe for these cookies, adapted from Dana Treat, which she got from Baked (phew!). I actually stumbled upon "eat me, delicious" after googling the recipe for a lemon coconut cake, wishing to emulate the incredibly moist and delicious lemon cake a woman was sampling at the farmer's market yesterday. What I found was even more irresistible. These are certainly the best peanut butter cookies I've ever made, maybe the best that I've ever tasted, and oh man, they are incredibly addictive. Normally I can stop at a sliver of pie or a half a cookie, but I think I've eaten roughly about eleven cookies, not including delicious heaps of dough I ate, of course. I forlornly gaze every couple hours at the dwindling cookie supply, which is down to single digits in the jar. This recipe is amazing. Please try it for yourself and succumb to inevitable cookie overdose with me.

Recommended beverage: unsweetened soymilk and/or coffee with a dash of cinnamon. (Dipping the already soft peanut butter cookies in unsweetened soymilk is heavenly.)

Makes 30 large Cookies

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
(make sure you have really fine salt. I used fancy larger-clumped salt and as a result the first cookie I bit into was a little salty)
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, cut into 1-inch pieces
(I used salted butter)
1 cup granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling
(I used 1/4 cup of light brown and 1/4 cup of granulated)
1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
(I used about 1 tbsp vanilla extract)
1 cup creamy peanut butter
(I always buy the peanut butter with the fewest possible ingredients. The peanut butter's label I use reads: "dry roasted organic peanuts, salt")

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and both sugars together until fluffy. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. The mixture will look light and fluffy. Add the vanilla and peanut butter and beat until just incorporated.

Add half the flour mixture and mix for 15 seconds. Add the remaining flour mixture and mix until just incorporated. Cover the bowl tightly and refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat baking mats.
(I didn't grease or line the baking sheet, used a very thin spatula to transfer the cookies to the wire racks, and had absolutely no problems)

Drop the dough by rounded tablespoons onto the prepared sheets, at least 2 inches apart. With the palm of your hand, very gently press each cookie down so it forms a very tall disk shape. Do not press too hard and do not press it flat.

Sprinkle the tops of the cookies with granulated sugar (I eliminated this step) and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through the baking time (I didn't do this either), until the tops of the cookies just begin to brown.

Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the individual cookies to the rack to cool completely (Ashley of "eat me, delicious" said "although they are delicious warm" and I completely agree: I always prefer freshly baked cookies).

Cookie Monster

Generally, I am not a huge fan of cookies. On top of that, I absolutely abhor nuts in desserts, but these cookies completely changed my mind.

The backstory: I am at my boyfriend's Aunt's house talking about baking during the holidays when Aunt K. mentions that during the holidays she wasn't up to making a fancy dessert, she runs to the other room and retrieves a giant aqua colored tome enscribed with "Zov" in thin green lettering. The word "simply" sits nonchalantly in the "O". Aunt K. opens the book to page 341 to the much raved about recipe entitled "jumble cookies". The titles are all lowercase reminiscent of an e.e. cummings poem. I'm skeptical. There's several kinds of nuts, chocolate, and dried fruit. The combination sounds overwhelming, but Aunt K.'s sister, daughter, and husband all assure me that these are the most delicious cookies they've ever had. She photocopies the recipe and sends me graciously on my way.

About Zov: She's a proprietress of a bistro not so far from my home in California. Her middle-eastern inspired recipes have been called "brilliant"by the Zagat Guide according to the review of another cook book on amazon.com.

So, this evening, I set myself to the task of recreating Zov's recipe as best I could.

Here it is:

Makes 20 cookies

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups whole almonds
[I used Trader Joe's Dry Roasted and Unsalted Almonds]
1 1/2 cups pecan halves
[I used Trader Joe's Raw Pecan Halves]
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
10 ounces (2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature)
1 cup grandulated sugar
2/3 cup (packed) brown sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
[I used at least twice as much as this recipe recommended]
1 12-ounce package Hershey's dark chocolate chips
[I used Trader Joe's Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips]
2 cups raisins
[I used organic raisins from a local health food store]
Parchment paper or nonstick vegetable-oil cooking spray
[I used salted butter- yum!]

Directions:

Position the rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the almonds and pecans on a heavy, large baking sheet and bake until golden brown and fragrant, about 11 minutes, stirring halfway through the baking time to ensure the almonds brown evenly. [note: unless you have a gargantuan baking sheet, you'll probably have to toast your nuts in waves.] Transfer the nuts to a cutting board to cool completely. Coarsely chop the almodns and pecans, then set the nuts aside. Maintain the oven temperature

Stire the flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl to blend. Set the flour mixture aside. Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment (or a hand-held mixer), beat the butter sugar and brown sugar in the mixing bowl until well blended, about 3 minutes [it really helps if you can get someone to pour slowly as you beat your ingredients together]. Add the eggs one at at ime, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. With the machien on low speed, gradually add the flour mixture, beating just until incorporated (do not overmix or the cookies willb e tough). Mix in the chocolate chips, raisins, and then lastly, the chopped nuts [note: I was short on nuts so I supplemented the last cup or so with raw walnuts, first baked in the cookies, from Trader Joe's.

Line 4 heavy, large baking sheets with parchment [again, I used butter between batches] or spray the baking sheets with nonstick cooking spray. Using 1/2 cup of dough for each cookie, mound the dough atop the prepared baking sheets, spacing evenly and forming 5 mounds on each baking sheet. With the palm of your hand lightly press down the cookie dough to flatten. Working in batches bake the cookies until they are golden brown all over and the very center is still pale golden, about 15 minutes. Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Transfer the cookies to a rack and cool completely.

I hope these cookies are as much of a hit in your household as they were in mine!