Soft Baked Sprinkle Cookies

I came across this recipe on Pinterest (of course) Noah saw it and immediately wanted to make them, but I told him if he was good I would make them special for his birthday party, and they were a huge success! I can't believe how delicious these turned out, and the recipe was so easy! You have to follow the recipe step by step, and it's crucial that you chill the dough for at least 2 hours before baking (this keeps there shape and makes them soft).

I am going to give you the website to find the recipe, there is a simple print button that makes it easy, and she does a great job at explaining the ingredients! Visit Averie Cooks for this amazing recipe!

Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!

POST BY MOMMY OLIVIA

Egg-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies

What you will need:
- PAM for baking sheet
- 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp. baking soda
- 1/2 tsp. Salt
- 1 cup of unsalted butter - room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups brown sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
- 1/3 cup milk
- 2 cups of semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat over to 350. Spray baking sheet with pam to prevent sticking. In a medium bowl stir together flour, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl still in butter and sugar- beat until combined. Then add in the vanilla and milk- beat until combined. Slowly beat in the dry ingredients and beat until dough is formed. Mix in chocolate chips.

Scoop 1-tbsp rounds on baking sheet placing them 2 inches apart. Do not press the cookies down, they will spread while baking. Bake in center of oven for about 15 minutes or until golden brown (keeping checking them).

Hope you like this recipe! It great for tots with allergies, and they are delicious. These cookies were gone within the first 20 minutes of putting them out! The batch makes about 24 cookies. Enjoy!


POST BY MOMMY OLIVIA

Rolled Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing.

Since Easter is this weekend, I wanted to share with you a wonder sugar cookie recipe.

 It is perfect to use when making shaped cookies to decorate. It holds its shape when baked which is at times hard to find with some sugar cookies. 

I just love making a batch of cute little bunny shaped cookies and have them come out of the oven looking like scary blobs of terror!

I also wanted to give a try at making Royal Icing for the first time! 

It sounds scarier then it is to make it. I was quite surprised at how easy it actually was to make!

Before they are baked

Right out of the oven!
See how they hold their shape!

I have to say thank you to Mommy Jenn for suggesting this cookie recipe to me. 

Thank you!

The sugar cookie recipe is by Alton Brown. I love that guy! 

You will need:

 Flour, baking powder, salt, butter, sugar, egg, milk, and some icing sugar.

If you have all these ingredients, head on over to this link for the full recipe on The Cooking Channel! 

Now for the Royal Icing, like I said, sounds scarier than it really is. 

You do need to have a mixer though. Having to whisk it by hand would be a heck of a job!

The hardest part was finding meringue powder for a decent price! 

I ended up finding a local bulk shop that sold it by the tablespoon!

Royal icing is a type of frosting that hardens as it dries. 

It is perfect for shaped sugar cookies, especially if you will be moving them or packaging them.

Check out the steps here  at A Spoonful of Flavor, for full details and recipe for royal icing.

From this 

To this!!

    

Here is another picture of my beautiful carrot cookies!!

Are you making any special Easter-y treats this week? Share them with us on our Facebook Group!

By Mommy Melissa

Rockets Frosted Cookies

Halloween passed a few months ago and there is still a large bag of candy in a drawer in my room. In that bag there were rolls of Rockets candy. Seemed like it must have been on sale in this area at the time because there were a lot. And I mean A LOT! 

I decided that they would be made into something else, not just plain ol' candy to crunch on. But what? Then it hit me. If icing sugar is used in making icing, then what if I transformed the Rockets back into a powder format and replaced the icing sugar with it? It was worth a shot!

First I had to do the grueling task of unrolling all of the packets and placing them into a bowl. Once they were all having a colourful rainbow party in the bowl, they needed to be sorted into batches by colour/flavour. Be sure to taste as many as you would like at this point! My favourite was the orange!

Once the batches were sorted I broke out my Magic Bullet Blender and threw a single colour, starting with white to darkest, in at a time and blended it into a super fine powder. Then repeated it with the remaining colours, knocking off any remaining powder from the last batch.

(I used a simple sugar dough recipe from a cook book. Similar to this one here )

To make the frosting, I used a simple icing sugar frosting replacing the sugar with the powdered Rockets. 

(1 cup powdered sugar, 1 tbs melted butter, 1 tbs milk)

Mix all the ingredients together flavour by flavour. The icing is super sweet. Very, very sweet! 

Now ice you cookies with your new rockets flavoured icing and enjoy!

I cannot stress enough about how sweet these cookies are. You may get cavities after eating just one! 

Good Luck :)

By Mommy Melissa

Homemade Oreos - Pinterest Challenge

Here is a perfect cookie to make loved ones this Valentines day! 

They are quite easy and incredibly tasty. This was a pin from the great website MyKitchenAddiction. This lady is insanely talented! 

Now lets talk cookies. Oeros are one of my favourite cookies, ever! So when this popped up, I knew it would be in the works soon. James even helped me make them (thats a big deal!)

The original recipe called for dutch cocoa powder. what the heck? there are more than one kind?! After a little research online, it turns out the difference between dutch and regular cocoa powder is the acidity between the two. Regular is more acidic and dutch is more alkaline. Dutch also has a more mellow taste and darker colour. I used regular and threw in a little baking soda to neutralize the acidity. Worked out fine.

Homemade Oreos 

(original pin here)

The Cookies!

Gather it up!

1 cup of unsalted butter, softened (I used margarine)

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla 

2 cups flour

3/4 cup of Dutch cocoa powder (or regular and a little baking soda)

1.5 tsp baking power

1 tsp salt

Work it!

Beat the butter and sugar on medium speed until its nice and fluffy. Then add the egg and vanilla until its all getting along together. 

In a separate bowl, add the flour, cocoa powder (baking soda if using), baking powder and salt. Using a whisk, mix it all together to make sure there are no more lumps (especially the cocoa powder) 

Cup by cup, add the flour mix to the wet ingredients and mix on lowest speed until there is no longer any flour mix left. 

Divide the dough into two and wrap in plastic wrap. Throw it in the fridge for at least an hour. This step is very important not to skip. The dough is very soft and needs to firm up a little. 

Line you cookie sheets with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350.

Once the dough has been cooled. Roll it out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch thick. I found it very sticky and needed to use more flour than usual. To make them look more like real Oreos, use a circle cutter but that is boring! I used a heart for Valentines day aww sweet eh!? 

Place cookies on a cookie sheet. Since the cookies do not spread much you can put many on at one time just not too close. 

Bake them for about 12 minutes if you want them softer, 14 for a more crisp one. 

Cool them before icing. 

The Icing

Gather it up again!

1/2 cup butter, softened (margarine worked fine)

2 tbs half and half (who even has this? I used milk!)

1 tsp vanilla 

3-3.5 cups icing sugar 

Work it...again!

Mix the first three ingredients together until mixed. Then add the icing sugar about a half cup at a time (or you will be wearing more then you have in the bowl!)

Put in a piping bag, or if you are classy like me, a zipper seal bag with a hole cut in the corner, and pipe the icing onto a cookie. Place a second cookie on top and repeat with the rest of them.

Get a nice glass of milk and eat one, or four! Enjoy!

I loved these cookies and so did the kids and James too. These are added to my cookie recipe book and will be making them again soon with a new idea in mind. 

What if the filling was skipped. Add a little mint extract to the dough and dipped them in chocolate? Sounds like a Girl Guide Mint Cookie to me!

Do you have a favourite cookie recipe for us to try and feature on the blog? 

let us know in the comments or on our Facebook page or even the group! 

By Mommy Melissa

Quinoa Cookies - Monthly Feature

Here is a monthly feature by the one and only Sarah S! She always has great recipes to share with us at 3 Mommies and Friends! Thank you Sarah for another great post! 

Ingredients: 

1 cup cooked quinoa, 

1 cup 100% rolled oats OR uncooked quinoa flakes, 

1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, 

4 large bananas, 

1 tsp vanilla, 

1/2 cup coconut sugar, 

1/2 cup unsweetened chocolate chips (or raisins, walnuts, or any ingredient you want), 

pinch of sea salt

.
Directions: 

Pre heat oven to 375. 

In a large mixing bowling, mash bananas, add vanilla, coconut sugar, quinoa, oatmeal,coconut and a salt. 

Mix well until combined. Stir in chocolate chips (or whatever you're using). 

Line baking sheet with parchment paper and drop batter onto cooking sheet. 

Bake for 25-30 min, remove, let cool and enjoy! 

Switch up: add 1/4 cup cocoa powder to turn into double chocolate chip quinoa cookies.

I didn't put chocolate chips in them because I forgot, but I think it would have tasted amazing with them! Make sure you grease the sheet because I didn't and they stuck a lot haha. But anyways enjoy!!

Thank you again Sarah! They sure look tasty!

Pinterest Challege: S'more Cookies

This Pin I will keep forever! I've already made these cookies a few times, they are delicious and have turned out every time! They are definitely a lot bigger than the pin actually looked, but hey who doesn't want more cookie? You can find the original pin here.

First Step: Make your cookie dough

It can be any chocolate cookie dough recipe you like, this is the one I used:

What you will need: 
- 2 cups all purpose flour

- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

- 1 cup packed brown sugar

-1/2 cup white sugar

- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract

- 1 egg

- 1 egg yolk

- 1 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Whatever recipe you use, add half the amount of chocolate chips it's calling for.  

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.
2. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.
3. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon.  

Second Step: Make a S'more
What you will need:
- 2 Hershey's milk chocolate (or hazelnut) chocolate bars
- 1 cup of marshmallows (I used giant marshmallows cut into 4's, use whatever you have on hand)
- 6 Graham crackers

1. Take 1 tsp of your cookie dough and lay it flat, pile on some graham cracker, chocolate, and marshmallow, then put another tsp of cookie dough on top. Carefully push both sides of the dough together so none of the middle is showing. (You may need to add a bit more flour to your cookie dough, because if it's really sticky it will be hard to work with). Place on a baking sheet. (NOTE: These cookies expand, spread them out generously, I only put 5-6 cookies per sheet. Cook for 17-20 mins (check after 15 mins).

Recipe makes approx. 12 cookies.

 

POST BY MOMMY OLIVIA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pinterest Challenge: Frosted Corn Flake Cereal Clusters aka Scotchies

A few weeks back, I received a box of amazingly tasty clusters. They were so crisp and peanut-buttery with full peanuts in them. My husband thought that it was fried chicken at first glance, then was sad when he found out there were not! Anyways, they were so good that I did some Pinterest searching for the recipe for them. I came across a few but this one was the most simple and all the ingredients were in my pantry all ready. What makes it even better? They are a No Bake cookie!
You can find the link to the recipe I followed here.

I ended up making a few changes along the way that I believe needed to be done without causing my teeth to fall out!

What you will need:
1 cup of butterscotch chips
1 cup of peanut butter
3-4 cups of corn flakes (original used 1 cup of frosted flakes)

What you do:
Melt butterscotch chips and peanut butter over low heat in a pot.
Mix cornflakes into pot and stir until it is all covered with the peanut butter mixture.
Spoon onto wax paper covered cookie sheet then chill in the fridge until firm. About 1 hour.

I cannot stress about how good these things are! Once you make them, you will make them over and over again they are that good. Adding some other extras would make them even better, like peanuts, mini marshmallows, chocolate chips, the possibilities are endless. James even made up his own name for them, 'cluster f**ks'! That man, I tell you!

Simple, Fast and Tasty!

By Mommy Melissa

Healthy Oatmeal Peanut Butter Cookies

These cookies are so delicious and less than 100 calories per cookie. No flour, no eggs, and only 1 tbsp of sugar for the whole batch! Crazy isn't it? Guilt-Free cookies :)


What you will need:
- 2 ripe bananas
- 1 tbsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup peanut butter
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 cups Quick Oats
- 1/2 cup coconut
 - 3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. In a bowl, mix together bananas, peanut butter, vanilla and spices until evenly combined. Add in all other ingredients and mix thoroughly.  scoop 1 tbsp of the mixture for each cookie and slightly flatten on the baking sheet. Cook for 20 mins. Let cool and enjoy :)

I made half the batch without coconut for Noah, Toddler Safe! (except if they have allergies to peanuts) Noah gobbled his cookie down!

Don't want to use sugar? Try applesauce instead.
Don't have ripened bananas? Easy, peel the banana cut up, place in microwave safe bowl and pop it in the microwave for 2 mins. The natural sugars will release making your banana extra sweet.
Don't like dark chocolate? Try semi-sweet

I'd love to hear your different variations!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies are possibly the best cookies ever! I have people who ask for them often! I even paid for my stove in these cookies! This exact batch that the picture was taken from to be exact! 
I will let you in on a little secret. Take them out of the oven BEFORE they look fully cooked. Cookies continue to cook for an additional two minutes when take out of the oven (learned that while working at Subway!).
So, I hope these will become a part of your cookbook! 

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup butter - melted
1/2 cup shortening - melted
2 beaten eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour (more may be needed)
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
2 1/2 chocolate chips (more if you want!)

Preheat oven to 375f.
Cream together sugar, brown sugar, butter, shortening, eggs and vanilla.
Add flour, baking soda and salt. (if dough is very sticky, add more flour until it is still soft, but not sticky)
Add chocolate.
Roll out teaspoon sized balls, 2 inches apart on cookie sheet.
Bake around 6-8 minutes. Cookies will look under cooked.

Toddler

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