Day 5: Best Oatmeal Cookies Ever

jump to the new blog and oatmeal cookie recipe

Day 4: Butterscotch Cookies

It's time for another chewy drop cookie and this time it's made with a butterscotch flavored dough using lots of vanilla and brown sugar and then adding butterscotch chips paired with some toasted hazelnuts. The hazelnuts are optional since I know not everyone is nuts (sorry I couldn't resist) about nuts. Anyhoo, back to the cookie. I'm a big fan of big bakery cookies so this recipe should make about 12 - 16 large cookies. Oh and don't forget the glass of milk!

Chewy Butterscotch Cookies with Hazelnuts
Inspired by Cook's Illustrated Chocolate Chip Cookie

2 1/8 C AP flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 C packed brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks butter, melted and cooled
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 C butterscotch morsels
1/2 C hazelnuts, toasted and chopped (optional)

Before you start: toast the hazelnuts if using.
Toast the hazelnuts at 350 degrees F until the skin turns dark brown and starting to separate from the nut and the nut underneath is looking light brown, about 10 minutes. Pour the hazelnuts onto a clean kitchen towel and cover them up with the towel to let them steam for 2 - 3 minutes. Come back in a few minutes, and rub the skins off the hazelnuts while still in the towel. Not all of the skin will come off, but you can try rubbing them with your fingers if they don't come off in the towel. Roughly chop for the recipe and go shake out the towel outside so the papery skins don't fly everywhere in the kitchen.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

In a bowl whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and yolk with the brown sugar, then add the melted and cooled butter and vanilla. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until the dough comes together. Stir in the butterscotch chips and chopped hazelnuts if using.

Using a large spoon or ice cream/cookie scoop, scoop 1/4 C of dough and lightly flatten the balls of dough, spacing them about 2 - 3 inches apart.

Bake at 325 degrees F for 15 - 18 minutes but start checking them at 13 minutes. The edges should have hardened and cooked but the center should still be a little underdone.

Makes about 16 cookies.

Day 1: White Chocolate Cashew Macadamia Butter Cookies
Day 2: Shortbread Bars with Mango Jam
Day 3: Pumpkin Butter Thumbprints

Day 3: Pumpkin Butter Thumbprints

On the third day of cookies, my oven baked for me, something more holiday-y. The original inspiration for the cookie came from my new favorite baking book, Dorie Greenspan's Baking. In her "Thumbprints for us big guys" recipe, she paired hazelnuts in the dough with raspberry jam, and like Dorie, that is one of my favorite combinations. However, for a more seasonal twist, I decided to use pecans and pumpkin butter. Pumpkin butter is one of the elusive seasonal Trader Joe's items that everyone madly raves about. So the last time I was there, I picked up a jar of the stuff to see what the big deal was about. It's full of warm spice flavor (almost a little overpowering) but a little lacking in the pumpkin department. Overall it's pretty tasty but way too sweet for me so I like to use it as a baked goods filling. If you don't have a Trader Joe's near you, you can use some homemade pumpkin butter (Smitten Kitchen has a recipe) or apple/pear butter or any other jam. You can also play around with what nuts you use, from walnuts to hazelnuts to almonds or even a combination. The dough is actually the same one I use for Mexican wedding cookies/Russian tea cakes, another holiday favorite, but with the exception that I can stick my finger in these and fill their little cookie tummies with jam.

Pumpkin Butter Thumbprints
With inspiration from Dorie Greenspan

1 C + 2 Tbsp whole pecans
1 C AP flour
1 stick of butter
3 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp of vanilla extract
Powdered sugar
Pumpkin butter (or your favorite jam)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

In a food processor process the nuts until they resemble coarse cornmeal. Do not overprocess otherwise you'll end up with pecan butter. Then add the sugar, salt, and flour to the nuts and pulse a few more times until there are no distinguishable pieces of nuts.

Cream the butter with a hand or stand mixer then add the extract and mix. Add the processed pecans and flour and mix until the dough comes together.

Scoop about 1 1/2 teaspoons balls of dough. I use a 1-tablespoon cookie dough scooper and break up the dough in half for 1 1/2 teaspoons. Roll the dough into a ball and press an indentation in the center of cookie with your finger (my thumb is too big so I used my index finger) or the back of a wooden spoon (this might be a little small so you'll have to make the indentation a little bigger). Space the cookies about 2 inches apart.

Bake for 15 - 18 minutes, they will be lightly colored but not too brown.

Wait until the cookies are completely cool then dust them lightly with powdered sugar. Then fill the centers with pumpkin butter or jam. You may need to warm the pumpkin butter or jam so you can fill the cookies. The filling will set as it cools.

As a bonus I have also included a Nut Crescent/Mexican Wedding Cookie/Russian Tea Cake recipe.

Nut Crescent/Mexican Wedding Cookies/Russian Tea Cakes

1 C + 2 Tbsp whole pecans
1 C AP flour
1 stick of butter
3 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp of vanilla
Powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Farenheit.

In a food processor process the nuts until they resemble coarse cornmeal. Do not overprocess otherwise you'll end up with pecan butter. Then add the sugar, salt, and flour to the nuts and continue to process until there are no distinguishable pieces of nuts.

Cream the butter with a hand or stand mixer then add the extract and mix. Add the processed pecans and flour and mix until the dough comes together.

Scoop about 1 tablespoon of dough and shape into balls, crescents, logs, or rings. Bake at 325 degrees F for 18 to 20 minutes. The cookies should be pale golden and beginning to brown on the bottoms. Wait until the cookies are completely cool, then roll them in powdered sugar.

Day 1: White Chocolate Cashew Macadamia Butter Cookies
Day 2: Shortbread Bars with Mango Jam

Day 2: Shortbread Bars with Mango Jam Filling

Sometimes on especially cold days, I can't help but reminisce about the glories of summer. These mango shortbread bars served as my departure to a warm, tropical place. The original shortbread recipe comes from my very first cookbook "Butter, Sugar, Flour, Eggs" by Gale Gand - a great title and a great book about the main ingredients a baker cannot live without. The "Austrian raspberry shortbread" recipe of the butter chapter is one of my favorites from the book. You can tell because the book practically opens to this page. Though these are delicious with raspberry jam, you can substitute any jam or preserves for the filling. In this case, I made some mango jam with mango that I saved in the freezer from summer.

The baking powder in shortbread dough make the cookie a little lighter and the egg yolks make it even richer. The most unique step in this recipe that I have never seen in any other shortbread recipe is that the dough is first frozen, then grated into a baking pan, creating a much lighter and delicate cookie. Grating the dough by hand on a box grater is time consuming, I won't deny it, but it's something I've been doing with this recipe for the past couple of years. But for you lucky folks with a food processor, the grating can be done in less than a minute without any scraped knuckles. These are great paired with a cup of tea.


The recipe is slightly adapted from the original. I halved the sugar because the original recipe was much, much too sweet and I also decreased the butter and baking powder. The recipe can be halved and baked in an 8 x 8 pan.

Shortbread Bars with Mango Jam Filling
Adapted from Gale Gand

3 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter
4 egg yolks
1 C sugar
4 C AP flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 to 1 1/2 C mango jam (recipe below) or your favorite jam or preserves
Powdered sugar for dusting

Cream the butter with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer until light and fluffy. Add the sugar and egg yolks and beat (originally wrote cream but that was confusing) until evenly mixed.

In another bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Slowly add this to the butter and mix until the dough comes together.

Divide the dough in half then in half again for 4 equal portions. Shape these pieces into a log shape for easy grating (and if you're using a food processor, make sure it can fit into the feed tube). Freeze the dough for at least 3 hours and it will keep in the freezer for up to a month.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Working with 1 bar of dough at a time, grate 2 portions of the dough onto the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking pan. I like to use a Pyrex pan so I can monitor the color of the bottom of the shortbread. You can line the bottom of your pan with parchment paper for easy removal of the cookies after baking but you won't be able to monitor the color of the bottom. Make sure the pan is evenly covered with pieces of the dough.

Using a spatula or the back of the spoon, spread jam evenly over the dough leaving a 1/2 in border around the edges. Then grate the remaining half of the dough on top of the jam.

Bake on the middle rack until golden brown 30 to 40 minutes but I've had to bake longer sometimes. After baking, cool the cookie completely. Then dust with powdered sugar and cut into bars.


Mango Jam
2 C mango cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 Tbsp to 1/4 C sugar (or more depending on the sweetness of your mango)
1 Tbsp lime juice

In a nonreactive saucepan, sprinkle the sugar over the mango cubes and let the fruit macerate for about 20 - 30 minutes.

Add the lime juice and cook the mangoes until the liquid has evaporated and the fruit is thick and chunky. You can mash some of the mangoes if you prefer.

Keep this in the fridge and use on toast, in a baked good filling.

Day 1: White Chocolate Cashew Macadamia Butter Cookies

Day 1: White Chocolate Cashew Macadamia Butter Cookies

To kick off the 12 Days of Cookies, I am posting a recipe that uses an unique product, creamy and fragrant cashew macadamia nut butter (I purchased a jar from my local Trader Joes). The flavor of this cookie is based on one of my all time favorites, a chewy and chunky white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. But macadamia nuts are pretty darn pricey and I've never been able to splurge for them. Even though you don't get the full macadamia nut flavor here since it's mixed with cashew butter, the cookies are still quite tasty.

The dough recipe is very similar to the kind used for peanut butter cookie. If you can't find cashew macadamia butter, you can replace it with peanut butter to make a traditional chewy peanut butter cookie. If you're making peanut butter cookies, you can either omit the chocolate chips or spruce them up with white, chocolate, or butterscotch chips. However, in this original recipe I would only use white chocolate chips because chocolate would overpower the delicate fragrant flavor of the cashew macadmia nut butter. I like to make big, generous cookies so this recipe will only yield about 18 - 20 cookies. If you prefer smaller cookies, use 2 tablespoons of dough and bake them for 10 - 12 minutes instead of 14 to 15.

White Chocolate Cashew Macadamia Butter Cookies

2 C AP flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter
3/4 C packed light brown sugar
1/2 C granulated sugar
1 C cashew macadamia nut butter
2 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 C white chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a bowl whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt and set aside.

In a separate bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter with sugars until light and fluffy. Add the cashew macadamia nut butter, vanilla, and one egg and mix until evenly incorporated then add the second egg.

Slowly add in the dry ingredients. Mix until the dough is almost evenly mixed then add the white chocolate chips and mix until the dough has mixed evenly with no streaks of flour remaining.

Using a large ice cream/cookie scoop (#16 size), scoop about 1/4 C of dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Roll each scoop of dough into a ball and gently press each ball of dough down until they're about 3/4 in thick. Bake at 350 degrees F for 14 - 15 minutes. The cookies will be lightly browned on the edges but they should be a little underdone in the center. Let them set on the sheet for a minute then gently lift them to a cooling rack.

Makes about 18 to 20 cookies.

Traditional Chewy Peanut Butter Cookie Variation
- Replace cashew macadmia nut butter with equal amount of peanut butter
- Use either chocolate or white chocolate chips or omit entirely
- For traditional sized cookies, use 2 tablespoons of dough. Dip a fork in cold water before making the criss cross design
- Bake for 10 - 12 minutes.

I will be submitting these to Susan for her Eat Christmas Cookies Event. So head on over for even more Christmas Cookies!

12 Days of Cookies

I can't believe it's been two weeks since my last post but I'm back. I'm almost fully recovered from a post-Thanksgiving cold and the big interview is over. Now it's time to relax and return to my blog. The blog is falling into a bit of disrepair - the blog clog has gotten bigger, the recipe index is out of date, and it's almost time for a new look.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving but now that Thanksgiving is over, it's time to start thinking about Christmas. One of my favorite things about this time of year is holiday baking. As I was looking at the recipe index, I realized I dont have a single cookie recipe on this blog that's almost 10 months old! For some reason cookie recipes have never made it onto the blog; I think it's because we eat them too quickly. But to make up for the absence of cookie recipes and the recent lack of posts, I decided to do a special "12 Days of Cookies" where I will post a new cookie recipe, holiday or just an everyday favorite, everyday for the next 12 days. I was hoping to start yesterday, Dec 1st, but weekends always go by so quickly and before you know it the day is already over so I will be starting today, December 2nd. The reason why I started this in early December is so everyone can have enough time to bake these and ship these to friends and family in time for Christmas. Here's hoping I can keep up with the cookie baking and the pantry doesn't face a butter shortage.

Note: I thought I came up with a new and unique idea (and not to mention title) here but it turns out Food Network is way ahead of me. But hey, more cookie recipes is never a bad thing. Happy baking everyone!

Day 1: White Chocolate Cashew Macadamia Butter Cookies
Day 2: Shortbread Bars with Mango Jam
Day 3: Pumpkin Butter Thumbprints
Day 4: Butterscotch Cookies with Hazelnuts
Day 5: Best Oatmeal Cookies Ever with Chocolate Chunks, Pecans, and Dried Cherries
Day 6: Torta Sbrisolona
Day 7: Alfajores
Day 8: Orange Cranberry Pistachio Biscotti
Day 9: Brown Sugar Cookie
Day 10: Flaky Black Sesame Cookie
Day 11: Gingerbread
Day 12: Butterfinger Chocolate Chip Cookies