Cupboard Cookies (working title)

 It has been quite a while! I've been immersed in savory cooking and working as of late. However, I am back with a quick, easy, and super-tasty cookie recipe! It started out with a simple cake mix cookie recipe from allrecipes.com ... then I transformed it into my own. I want to call it my Cupboard Cookies for now, since I pretty much dumped things from my cupboard into it! Here's the recipe my way:

• 1 box (18.25 oz) yellow cake mix (I used Pillsbury butter recipe yellow cake mix)
• 1/2 c rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 2/3 c butter, melted
• 1/2 tsp almond extract (or vanilla!)
• 1 c semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 c walnuts
• 1/2 c Heath bits 

*note- you can use any combination of things that you find in your cupboard for these-- M&M's, raisins, dried fruit, even-- I just made sure it equaled 2 cups so I didn't overwhelm the cookies (they must stay together, now!)

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. In a large bowl, mix together the cake mix, oats, and baking powder.

Add the eggs, melted butter, and extract. Mix well. Fold in the chocolate chips, walnuts, and Heath bits.

3. Drop rounded teaspoons of the dough onto an ungreased baking sheet (they can be about an inch apart since they don't spread that much) and bake 8-10 minutes. Let the cookies finish cooking on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before placing them on a cooling rack.

Yum!

Mmmm nom x 3

I only wanted to bake off a dozen,so I rolled the remaining dough in a bit of bench flour, wrapped it in wax paper, and popped it in the freezer.

Voila! Now I can slice off however many cookies I need whenever I get a hankering. :)

Pumpkin-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies (with Walnuts)

The weather is still dreary, and I have some leftover pumpkin puree in my fridge, so I decided to play with more pumpkin ideas. I came up with Pumpkin-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies! I stole borrowed lovingly used my beloved's oatmeal, so I had all the ingredients already in my house (he might not notice, right?) I searched far and wide for a good pumpkin oatmeal cookie recipe and came across a pretty fast and easy one at www.cooks.com. The link to the original recipe can be found here. I decided to tweak it a little bit and make half with walnuts and half without.

2 c flour
1 c (two sticks) butter, room temperature
1 c oatmeal
1 c pumpkin puree
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice (I decided to add this. Love it!)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1 c brown sugar (I used light brown sugar, and I didn't pack it... but feel free to pack it if you want your cookies a bit sweeter)
1/2 tsp salt
1 c chips or raisins (I used the semi-sweet chips from my cupcake recipe)
1 c chopped walnuts (I added these toooo)

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Cream butter, brown sugar, egg, vanilla, and pumpkin puree.
3. Combine dry ingredients (including nuts and chips) in a separate medium bowl.

My dry ingredients with the walnuts standing by

4. Add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture and mix well (at about low-medium speed)

5. Spoon balls of dough evenly onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Oh, yeah. You love my seasoned cookie sheet on the right

6. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove from pans and place on cooling racks to stop cooking process.

I cut the whole recipe in half (I beat the one egg and only used half as well), so I was able to make 15 tablespoon (cereal spoon)-sized cookies. They don't spread much while baking, so putting them about an inch or so apart on the cookie sheet is OK. I would guess that the recipe makes 4 dozen teaspoon (soup spoon)-sized cookies. They were so delicious, and they weren't overwhelmingly sweet. So which one did I like better? I must say, I enjoyed the one with walnuts. It added a nice crunchy texture. These would go perfectly with a cold glass of milk or the pumpkin spice coffee I recently acquired.

 Enjoy!

Pumpkin