Banana Nut Chocolate Chip Cookies

Finally everyone in the house is starting to feel better.  This cold, wet, white stuff here in New England is just not agreeing with all of us after spending so long in the Mojave Desert.  I am looking forward to spring and summer!  It can't get here fast enough.  The sun and sand and average 68 degree winter temps of the desert spoiled me.  And I can't wait to be able to take the kids to the beach here.  I am looking forward to being able to plant my own garden this year and it not die from the scorching sun and heat.  I've been researching what to plant and when.  SO EXCITED!  We've even purchased our seeds already. 

Wouldn't it be great if we could plant a chocolate chip tree?  I use so many chocolate chips.

This past week I made Banana Nut Chocolate Chip Cookies.  And yum they were good.  Well the kids thought so anyway, they ate 4 1/2 dozen.  I love my momma's banana nut bread and chocolate chips cookies so I tried to combine them and it worked pretty well.  These are easy to mix and quick to bake.

Banana Nut Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 Cup Margarine
1 Cup Brown Sugar Packed
2 eggs, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 bananas, mashed
2 1/4 Cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
12 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup of chopped pecans

In a large bowl mix margarine, brown sugar, eggs, vanilla and bananas until creamy.  In another bowl mix flour, baking powder and baking soda.  Mix the dry ingredients into the margarine mixture.  Stir in the chips and pecans.  Drop by tablespoonfuls onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes, until golden.  Remove to a wire rack.  Makes 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 dozen.

To drop the cookies I use a tablespoon sized ice cream scoop. 

Wet ingredients in large bowl, dry in the smaller one.

All mixed up and ready to bake.

Fresh out of the oven.

Ready for a glass of milk.  These are a soft chewy cookies.  And taste amazing warm.

Anyway, hope you enjoy these.  My kids sure did.  Until next time happy baking.

Winter Break

Hello all.  It is winter break for us up here New England. Winter break what a crazy thing to have. I'm guessing all the teachers scramble to Florida for the week. You see I'm from Texas there is no such thing as winter break. After all didn't we just have Christmas break, and to top everything off we have to make up snow days here??? And we still have spring break coming up. So we could just skip this break and it would be just fine with me. Not that I don't enjoy spending time with my kiddos but when it is too cold to stay outside for very long at a time and the hubby is still having to go to work.....cabin fever starts to sit in. It doesn't help that I caught the baby girl's crud and spent yesterday shivering then burning up then shivering some more. Then off to the doctor today for a shot to hopefully put an end to this mess. So baking this week has been slim. But I did manage a Hot Fudge Chocolate Cake and some Banana Nut Chocolate Chip cookies before I caught this crud. And let me tell you I'm thinking about making the Hot Fudge Chocolate Cake again. Soon. Real soon. Like maybe tomorrow soon. It was sooooo good. What's that you want the recipe for this oh so yummy hot fudge cake? Well keep reading it follows.

Pre-heat oven to 350

Hot Fudge Chocolate Cake
1 cup flour
3/4 cup of sugar
2 Tbsp. Cocoa
2 tsp. Baking powder
1/4 tsp. Salt
1/2 milk
2 Tbsp. Butter or margarine, melted
1 tsp. Vanilla
1/2 cup of nuts chopped (I used pecans)

Mix all the ingredients and poor into a buttered casserole dish. Yes a casserole dish. I never said this was a pretty cake, I said it is OH SO YUMMY. Now this is going to sound strange but just go with it. I wish I had taken a picture of this part but I forgot. New to this blogging, needing pictures as I go thing.  It is going to look like you have royally screwed up but trust me.

Mix 3 Tbsp. Cocoa, 1/2 cup of sugar and sprinkle over the cake. Now pour 1 cup of HOT water over the entire cake.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

See NOT a pretty cake!

          But this cake has an amazing hot fudge sauce in the center and is best served a little warm.  :-)

                
So you may want to dress it up a little when you serve it.  A little hot fudge sauce drizzled over the plate with the cake on top sprinkled with a little powdered sugar.  This is one of those you want to lick the plate to make sure you got it all cakes :-)

I really hope you try this one it is super fast and easy.  I'll go into the Banana Nut Chocolate Chip cookies next time.

About Cookies and Mothers

A house should have a cookie jar for when it's half past three

And Children hurry home from school as hungry as can be,

There's nothing quite so splendid as spicy ginger cakes,

With a glass of milk and great big smile, from loving hands that bake.

A house should have a mother just waiting with a hug,

No matter what a boy brings home a puppy or a bug!

For Children only loiter when the bell rings to dismiss, If no one's

Home to greet them with a cookie and a kiss.

-Author unknown

Today I am a mother and a nurse.  Home with an ill little girl.  She'll be fine as soon as this little bug runs it's course.  But in the mean time she is laying in my lap, hugging my arm so sweet while she sleeps.  With that said, there will be no baking today, I would much rather sit and cuddle my baby.

Instead how about some cookie tips.

Did you know that the best pan to use for cookies are light weight, and shiny?  They warm faster, conduct the heat better and more evenly than the heavy dark non-stick ones.  Something like one of these works great. Airbake Ultra by T-Fal Insulated 20 x 15.5-Inch Mega Cookie Sheet or Wilton Recipe Right Cookie/Jelly Roll Pan, 17-1/4 by 11-1/2-Inch.  And just so you know, I put the little linkies in just to show you what I'm talking about, not to try to get you to order the product.  Though I do love Amazon.

And for the best baked cookie they should all be as close to the same size as you can get them and the same thickness.  I know the thickness can be tricky especially on cut out cookies, but you can either buy the silicon bands that slip on your rolling pin, like these Regency Wraps Rolling Hills Rolling Pin Rings or do what I do, add rubber bands on top of one another until I get the thickness I want.

Some cookies call for a greased pan, other's call for non-greased pan.  Well I do neither I use parchment paper.  You can use the same sheet several times during a batch of cookies. Like I said before, who wants to scrub a pan when you can just toss the paper? So go ahead and buy a roll it will last you a while and has so many uses.  Now just because I use parchment doesn't mean I don't occasionally burn the bottom of a pan of cookies.  Okay you got me EVERY time I bake cookies I get one pan a little done black on the bottom. Well I have a fix for that little problem.  You know that grater in your pantry pull it out and rub it across the bottom of the cookies a few times and wa-la a perfectly edible cookie.

And here's my last tip for today and it has nothing to do with cookies....But did you know that if you put an apple in your potato bin your potatoes wont sprout eyes???

Hope everyone has a wonderful day.  Now go put that apple in your potatoes I know you want to test it out.



Coconut and Oats???

Coconut and oats...well I guess that could be okay...ummm well I just don't know...

I wonder how a publishing company chooses the very first recipe in a book???

I don't normally look at the very first one first, I flip to somewhere in the middle.  And I know, I know you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but when it comes to cookbooks I do and pictures in a cookbook are a MUST.  I'm attracted to packaging.  Cute. Sparkly. Fun packaging.  It really doesn't matter what the product is, I'll look at it if it is packaged properly.  I know I'm a sucker. 

For Valentine's Day my hubby bought me The Golden Book of Cookies
 and yes it has sparkly golden pages, he knows what I like :-).  I don't think I've mentioned yet that I collect cookbooks.  Cookbooks of all kinds, not just sweet baking, though those are my favorite.  The others are a necessity, I can bake, not so much a real food cook.  My daddy used to tell Jayson, before we were married, he felt sorry for him because all he would ever eat was scrambled eggs and brownies because that was all I could cook.  That was a bit of an exaggeration I could make a cake, cookies and pies also, but the scrambled eggs was the extent of "food".  Today I can cook food, but I'm not much of an experimenter with real food.  I follow recipes exactly as written and yes I use recipes for pretty much everything I cook as meals.  Now making sweets, I am good at experimenting with that.  It doesn't always turn out but most of the time it is yummmmmy. 

Anywhoooo I stray. Back on topic.  Coconut and Oats???
I had to write to the owner of the copyright to be able to share recipes with you from this book.  Blah blah blah.  Recipes are meant to be enjoyed and shared, aren't they, well except for the family secret sugar cookies, and my pecan pie recipe you would have to tickle me for a long time to get those.  Those will be passed to my daughter.  So in the mean time while I'm waiting on my response from them I will not share the entire recipe with you from this book.  I guess if you want it you will have to buy the book. The Golden Book of Cookies: Over 330 Great Recipes. But I will share ones that I've come up with on my own.

Coconut Cookies with Rolled Oats.  I want to know if these are just amazing and that is why they choose them for the first recipe.  So preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

This recipe contains the normal flour, sugar, soda, salt, but there are not many wet ingredients, little water, and molasses with shortening and of course coconut and oats.  Old fashioned rolled oats, that is.  UGH you would know all I stock are the minute ones.  Who has time to cook oatmeal in the morning forever when you can pop the minute ones in the microwave and be done in 2 minutes.  When I'm trying to feed 3 kids and they all want something different the quick ones work great.  So that's that and I'm going to use the quick oats.

Let's get baking.

You will need a large mixing bowl, small mixing bowl, measuring cups, measuring spoons, a pastry cutter, and a 3 inch biscuit cutter works great to cut these out.

As usual this recipe calls for you to mix the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet in the other.  In this case it was dry - large bowl and wet small.  This is a very easy recipe.  When all ingredients are mixed it will look like this.

The dough is a very thick heavy dough.  Once it is mixed, shape into a flat circle, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Once chilled roll out to 1/8 inch thick on lightly floured surface and cut into 3 inch circles, I used my handy dandy biscuit cutter.  Re-roll scraps, and cut the rest.  Place on buttered cookie sheet 1 inch apart bake at 300 degrees for 22 to 25 minutes.  I use parchment paper instead of butter, who wants to scrub a pan when you can just remove the paper?.  These cookies do not spread much in the oven.

All that is left is to cool them on a wire rack and then serve.

These turned out nice.  The recipe says it will make 20 to 25 cookies.  I only managed to get 18 out of the dough.  Maybe that had something to do with the different oats, but I really do not think so.

These are better than I thought they would be.  They are not very sweet, and do not have a strong coconut flavor.  Which was disappointing to me because I do like coconut.  If you like a crispy cookie you will like these.  Jayson said they were good, not great.  The boys loved them, which surprised me because the oldest does not like coconut at all.  Which just proves to me that there is not much coconut flavor.

Chocolate Crack

                                        The above picture is both Vanilla and Chocolate Crack.

So today since I'm not baking any cookies I thought I would share a super duper easy candy recipe I tried this past weekend. 

Chocolate Crack. Yep it's that addictive :-)

What you need is a box of graham crackers.  I used Honey Maid my favorite , but any will do.
2 sticks or 1 cup of salted butter.  Hey it's candy nobody said it was healthy.
1 cup of packed brown sugar.  I used light you can use either, the dark will be a richer flavored.
1 12oz package of semi-sweet chocolate chips.  I use Ghirardelli  but whatever you like is fine.


A heavy medium sauce pan
A jelly roll pan.  That's the pan that looks almost like a cookie sheet but is a little larger with a little deeper lip. Most are 9x15
Heavy Duty Foil


Go preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  You know you want to make this right now...Anything called Chocolate crack has got to be good.


First you need to line the pan with the heavy duty foil.  If you don't have a jelly roll pan you can use a cookie sheet just leave the sides up about an inch to hold everything in the pan.
Next SPRAY the pan with a non-stick cooking spray.  I use Baker's Joy, huge fan it works great.
Line the pan with the graham crackers.  You can break them to get all the space filled in.

Now we cook.

In a medium heavy sauce pan combine butter and brown sugar.  Now here's the tricky part.  Over medium heat bring this to a boil stirring constantly.  A full breaking boil. That is when the entire surface is breaking in bubbles, it is going to seem like it is never going to happen but trust me it will.   Whatever you do DO NOT stop stirring.  Now as soon as it starts the full boil set your oven time for 5 minutes.  No more no less and KEEP stirring.  When the timer beeps remove from heat.  Careful this is boiling sugar and it will BURN you if it splashes. 

Now carefully pour the hot mixture over the crackers.  I go up and down each row then turn the pan and go over each row the other way.  Then I just pour it over the spots that still need it.  If it doesn't cover all the spots don't worry about it, it will spread out in the oven.

Now slide the pan into the preheated 350 degree oven and bake for 10 minutes.

Remove pan sprinkle the chocolate chips over the candy and let them sit for about 2 minutes.  Take your handy dandy icing spatula or any heat resistant spatula you have and spread the chocolate chips out over the crackers.  Put the pan in the fridge until the candy is chilled. 

When it is chilled remove the foil from pan and peel off the candy and break the candy in random size pieces.
Enjoy.  And if you have any left to store, keep in an air tight container.


Just a tip.  Be sure and boil the mixture for exactly 5 minutes.  If you do not boil it long enough you get a sticky, gooey, mess and if you boil it too long it will burn.  5 minutes and you get a nice brittle.

P.S.  Vanilla Crack is basically the same recipe.  Only it is white sugar and saltine crackers, sprinkled with any chopped nut before baking.  It is YUMMY also. 

Baking Soda Bubbles

     Baking soda bubbles and baking power levels, that is one of the first things I remember learning when it comes to baking. 
     If you know me you know I love to bake.  I specialize in cakes.  But I love to bake anything, especially anything sweet.  I have had several cake decorating classes, and baking classes, but you know the old saying 'everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten', well everything I need to know I learned in my grandma's kitchen.  Well mostly anyway.  I don't know how many hours I spent hanging on her apron strings, well hers and my mom's.  I tried my best to write down every recipe from my grandma I could get my hands on before she passed.  I'll never forget asking her to write down her recipe for her biscuits.  She laughed and said "Well hun, all you have to do is make your ring of flour and then add a couple of eggs, a few pads of butter and milk until you have what you want."  ummmm Well thanks Grandma but I need to know how much of each, and she told me to just watch her and I would figure it out.  So that is what I did over and over again.  To this day I couldn't tell you the measurements but I can make them.  That is how lots of my baking has come to life, L-O-T-S of trial and error.  My mom has always baked sweets for every holiday.  Cakes, pies, cookies, candies, and God bless her she writes down EVERYTHING, it makes it so much easier to make her yummy things.
     A little about me and my family.  I have been married for 15 years, and we have 3 wonderful children.  My hubby is an amazing soldier in the US Army and has been for 12 years now.  We move A LOT!  I needed a career that could move with me and allowed me the time to be with my children and not at work 40 hours a week while my husband is away.  So this year we have been blessed with a duty station in Newport RI.  Yes Newport.  Not a normal place for the Army, but let me say I am LOVING it here.  The only thing about being here is we are only here for a year so that's not really enough time to build another baking business.  So I am going to take the rest of our time here and work on some cookies. 
     I am going to work my way through The Golden Book of Cookies http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Book-Cookies-Great-Recipes/dp/0764161857/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1297738045&sr=8-1 Hopefully all the way through it.  I'll start Wednesday and let you know how it goes one recipe at a time.  Of course I'll toss in other things that happen during everyday life and kitchen tips.