Butterscotch Pecan Oatmeal Cookies

This picture doesn't do these cookies justice. They look kind of boring, just brown lumps sitting there on a boring white plate. I probably should take my food styling up a notch. This picture is testament to that. What this picture doesn't tell you is that these cookies are. . .de-lish-us! Prob my favorite version of oatmeal cookies. Because, really, that's all they are, just regular old oatmeal cookies, recipe right off the canister. But. . .I like to ditch the raisins, my kids hate 'em, and add pecans (you know that's my fave nut.) and butterscotch chips (I love, love, LOVE, butterscotch chips.). My husband usually groans when I use butterscotch chips in chocolate chip cookies, says they're too rich. No complaints when I add them to oatmeal cookies. Thumbs up all around. I also ditched the cinnamon from the regular recipe, it just doesn't work with the creamy mellow flavor of the butterscotch so, it's outta there! Lastly, the key to a soft chewy oatmeal cookie is to let the dough ripen. And when I say "ripen" I mean "chill out", and when I say "chill out" I mean, let the the dough sit in the fridge for a couple of hours or overnight. Trust me, it's essential. Let's get this party going. . .

Strawberries and Cream Cake

Note: I had this post all written and ready to publish a couple of days ago. Sometime during my writing, our internet went out, unbeknownst to me. So I just kept typing away, hitting save here and there and thinking everything was A-OK. Then, like I always do, I hit save one more time, shut down my browser and walked away. I like to let my posts kind of marinate in my mind, then come back a couple of minutes, hours, days later and re-read them one more time before publishing, just to make sure it still reads like I want it to. So when I came back, none, I mean NONE of my work had been saved. It was just the pictures and a couple of rough sentences. AGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!! I was dejected, crushed, the wind had been taken out of my sails. It then took me a day or two to get my thoughts back together and rewrite the post. And the point in telling you all this is: "I'm sorry this post is so over due. I hope you haven't abandoned my blog. Please stick with me." Ok, so, here's the post:

Even though it's past Labor Day, and even though it rained the other day, and even though the kids are all back at school, I'm still not quite ready to let summer go. Fall is just around the corner and all kinds of fall dishes are waiting to be made in my kitchen. I'm totes looking forward to stews and chowders and a whole slew of spicy pumpkiny desserts. I'm just not quite ready for them just yet.

This cake captures summer for me. It's light, fresh and clean. And a cinch to make. I mean super duper easy. It was the perfect dessert with which to wrap up summer. And so, on Labor Day, we did. Prolong summer just a bit longer with this cake. . .

Coffee Cake

Long since before I started this blog I've been on the hunt for a good old fashioned crumb topped coffee cake. I've tried several over the years. Either the cake is too dry or the crumbs are too hard or too sandy. Or too much crumb, or not enough crumb. Some include fruit, and although I'm sure they're delicious, I didn't want fruit. Just plain cinnamony coffee cake. And yes, I've posted Crumb Cake on this blog. But that's Crumb Cake and it's all about the crumb. This is coffee cake, and it's all about the cake. I'm sure you see the distinction. Don't ya? Please tell me you do. 

Anywho, I found this recipe and it looked promising. I was wary of the cream cheese layer, I didn't want a strong cream cheese tang to my cake. I was wary of the sour cream in the batter. Again the "tang" thing. Not that I don't like sour cream or cream cheese, I do, really, I just didn't want that for coffee cake. But the cake in the picture looked moist, and the crumbs looked just right and it had pecans. So, I gave it a try. . .

Chocolate Cherry Shortbread

Hello, long time, no blog. Sorry, lots of summer activities and vacation and no time to cook. No cooking = no blogging = unhappy me. But, I'm back and firing up the oven and stove again and ready to try a bunch of new recipes that I've collected over the summer. So get ready, here we go. . .

I realized that it had been quite a while since I made homemade cookies and that it was time to fill the cookie jar. So, I headed to my fist internet stop for recipes, Pinterest, clicked through a dozen or so cookie recipes and decided to make Chocolate Cherry Shortbread. Partly because they looked different and mostly because I love cherries and chocolate. As I was gathering the ingredients the recipe seemed oddly familiar. And why? Probably because I've made a similar cookie on this blog. HA! You may have seen it here. I decided to go ahead and share this recipe because it is somewhat different. No almond flavor and no two flavors of dough. This cookie is basically a similar flavor combination but the texture is more dense and shortbread like. It's is also a LOT easier to make, fewer steps. The only tweaks I made to the original recipe was to skip the chocolate drizzle and add sprinkles to the outside of the cookie. It was mostly and aesthetic choice, because I liked the look of these cookies. Sprinkles or not, give these cookies a try. . .