Stress Busting with Oatmeal Scotchies and Project STIR

I bake when life gets stressful. My family can usually tell when I’m under more stress than usual because there are cookies in the house.  Lots of cookies.  

There is a zen to baking: quietly collecting the ingredients, the steady purr of my prized Kitchen maid mixer, and naturally the smell of comfort food. Baking melts my stressful thoughts and unwinds the knots in my shoulders. Cookie making soothes me from start to finish.

My love of baking was a legacy gift from my Grammie.  Grammie brought kindness, comfort, and cookies to many folks over the years.  I remember watching her bake in her tiny Texas kitchen and “helping” by tasting cookies fresh out of the oven to tell her if they were good (they always were).

Memories of Grammie are an essential ingredient to my stress reduction in the kitchen.

My blogger buddy Sarah Shotts is on a mission to rekindle family recipes through Project STIR. Sarah is a young person with a wise soul and a creative eye We met at the Arkansas Blogger Conference and connected through our mutual appreciation of the family/food connection.  Project STIR is a series of documentary films capturing the universal language of love in the family kitchen. The films will take place in kitchens around the world and will tell the stories of Abuelitas, Nans & Mothers passing on their heirloom recipes to the next generation. I am one of Sarah's “Project Stir Ambassadors” promoting the project through social media.  I was eager to participate because of my support of family time, comfort food, and creativity.

In my warming Oklahoma kitchen Grammie and I still connect over her hand written baking recipes even though she passed away many years ago.  My stress busting in the kitchen this week is creating Grammie’s Oatmeal Scotchies – aka “Scotchies.” My family loves this recipe because it is sweet and savory.  Perfect for a fall day. The insider giggle is that I looked all over for this recipe and delighted to find it in her spiral notebook, only later to learn that she copied it from the Nestle Toll House Butterscotch Morsels bag!

Grammie's Oatmeal Scotchies

1 Cup Flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 Cup softened butter
3/4 Cup Sugar
3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
1 teaspoon Vanilla

3 Cups Quick Oats (we like Quaker)
12 oz package of Nestle Tollhouse Butterscotch morsels (!)

Preheat Oven to 375 degrees

In small bowl mix together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon- set aside. In large bowl beat brown and white sugars, eggs, and vanilla "until fluffy." Gradually add in flour mix from small bowl.Stir in oatmeal and morsels by hand.  Drop by rounded spoonful of dough onto greased cookie sheet.Bake for 7-8 minutes. 

Yum. 

This month my blog focus is on managing stress.From process to product baking has potential for reducing stress for you with the added bonus of creating opportunities to share the love and comfort (cookies) with others.  I hope this inspires you to explore creative ways to cope with stress in your life.  For more information about Project STIR please click on the link you will be treated to a morsel of Sarah's talent for videography and I promise you will feel the love. If you share Sarah’s passion for rekindling family recipes please support her mission with a donation or by spreading the word (word of mouth, Facebook shares, etc. . . .)  

Caring is sharing- how about a cookie?  

Feelings Friday: The Cookie Project on OWB

Just in time for Holiday parties and Cookie Exchanges- the Oklahoma Women Bloggers have featured The Cookie Project on their website.  

Follow the link here to see what's cooking in my Christmas kitchen.  

Hope you have fun making memories and baking cookies this weekend . . . "don't forget to stir in the love!" 

The Cookie Project: Krispie Date Cookies

Welcome fall, football, and Krispie Date Cookies! This special recipe comes from my fellow Inkling, critique partner, lake neighbor, and dear friend Martha Bryant.  Martha is like a soft steady rain—quiet, comforting, and nurturing.  She also has a winning smile and laser sharp critique skills! You are going to love these yummy nibblets of goodness.

New technique alert: Krispie Date Cookies are made on the stove!   It was one hundred degrees outside when I decided to try Martha’s recipe so keeping the kitchen oven off was a welcome relief.  The cookie mixture is very “hands on.” Not only do your upper arms get a work out from all of the stirring, you get to “play” with the dough as you roll it in the coconut.  I can see how this would be fun to make with kids because making the cookie balls is very similar to play dough and you can eat it!

Krispie Date Cookies from the recipe files of Martha Lea Bryant

Martha is Contest Queen at OWFI!

1 Cup Butter

1 Cup Sugar

1 ½ Cup chopped dates

1 egg (lightly beaten)

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 Cups Rice Krispies

1 ½ Cups Pecans

Coconut

Put Rice Krispies in a large bowl.

On stove-top:  melt butter, add sugar, and stir until dissolved.  Add dates cooking for approximately 3 minutes, stir mixture well while cooking.  Add beaten egg, cook for 5 minutes more.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and nuts. 

Pour hot mixture over Rice Krispies and mix thoroughly (Added bonus: Krispies will do their snap* crackle*pop song while you are stirring!).  Let the mixture cool.  When cool enough to handle, form into small cookie balls and roll in coconut.

Krispie Date Cookies are fun to make, but are best appreciated by a sophisticated palate.The subtle layering of flavors will impress your book club buddies but might get ignored by the little ones- more for you! These are just right for Fall weather and a perfect complement to hot coffee  or hot tea. (Take two they’re small)

This delicious cookie recipe will be the last installment of The Cookie Project until December- where we will expand our collection of “Grammy-like” recipes to include other types of baked goods.

The Cookie Project: Sal's Favorite Sugar Cookies

This week's contributor to The Cookie Project  is Sal, aka "Sweetness." He is the half and half to my coffee, the Hershey's chocolate bar to my s'mores . . . my boyfriend of 24 years and counting!  Sal has generously shared his mother's recipe for sugar cookies. He would prefer you bake these cookies for yourself because he hates to part with any of his personal stash. Sal is a reformed picky eater and at one point in his life these special treats were the highlight of his day.

Sal's mom Emily was a single parent, working sometimes two jobs to provide for her growing boys on Long Island, New York. Any day that little Sal found two cookies in his lunch bag was a good day. Sal can always expect a batch of cookies at his birthday and Christmas- they make him feel special.  We know you will love them.


Sal's Favorite Sugar Cookies

(makes 4 dozen)

1 Cup Crisco
1 Cup Butter
2 Cups Sugar
2 teaspoons Salt*
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract 
4 eggs
4 Cups Flour

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees, bake for 10-12 minutes.

Finished cookies have a golden brown circle around the edge.  I have noticed that on hot or humid days these cookies spread out and are not as pretty- although they taste just as good.  If you want a mounded cookie on a hot day put the dough into the refrigerator for a few minutes before baking.

*Sal's mom never wrote down this recipe, she memorized it.  Once when Sal was home alone he wanted to make the day special by baking up a batch and forgot the salt.  He advises us to to include the salt-not the same without it. 

The Cookie Project: Biscochitos (Frida's Favorites)

If you are a frequent visitor of this blog you will not be surprised by my decision to dedicate a recipe to Frida Kahlo for The Cookie Project. My acquired taste and growing admiration for this artist has its roots in my love of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  On a trip down Canyon Road you will find Frida inspired artworks throughout the many galleries, and respectful tributes to her in the local shops.  This Sunday I am returning  again to Santa Fe for the Creativity and Madness Conference.  In honor of Frida I researched a cultural recipe that is usually served at traditional Mexican weddings on the dessert bar, or given as gifts to the wedding guests.  These Mexican cookies are beautiful, more fragile than they look, and very high maintenance. I like to think that Frida would approve.
 
Biscochitos (Mexican Wedding Cookies)


1 Cup Walnuts
1 Cup room temperature unsalted butter
1/2 Cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 3/4 Cups flour

Powdered Sugar for rolling
Makes 2 dozen medium sized cookies

Step One
In a medium skillet toast the walnuts over medium heat, shaking often until lightly browned (this took me two tries- I had the flame too hot!) for about five minutes.  Transfer toasted walnuts into a freezer container and freeze for at least one hour (I did overnight).

Step Two
Beat the butter until creamy, add sugar and beat again.  Add salt, vanilla extract and beat again.  The cookie dough will be crumbly.

Take the frozen walnuts and crush them to small bits.  I put my walnuts into a baggie then used the flat side of a large knife to repeatedly "wack them" (highly technical baking term).  Some recipes suggested a food processor to "grind" them- you get the gist I hope.

Stir the ground walnuts into your cookie dough and refrigerate for one hour.

Step Three

Preheat oven to 325 degrees

Form the dough into little balls (about tablespoon size) and place one inch apart on a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Bake for 12 minutes.

Step Four

Sprinkle powdered sugar on a clean room temperature cookie sheet.  When the cookies are still warm (about 3 minutes) roll them CAREFULLY in the powdered sugar and set aside.

When the cookies are completely cooled- roll them again in the powdered sugar.

Step Five

Eat them- you've worked hard for this nutty, sweet, crumbly treat!

The Cookie Project: Soft Oatmeal Cookies

Warning: These cookies might trick you into thinking you are eating "healthy." My friend Kathryn Trattner Herd (aka "Katie") is a writer, librarian, wife, and mom expecting her second child in August.  Her recipe bakes out wholesome puffs of goodness with just the right amount of sweet- kind of like Katie! Make a batch of good old fashioned oatmeal raisin cookies and show her some blog love by clicking on her link to read about her writing goals and works in progress!



Soft Oatmeal Cookies by Kathryn Trattner

Katie is a garland around your beautiful long blond hair kind of girl!

My mom learned to cook in my Great Grandmother's Kansas farmhouse kitchen. The two story white farmhouse I visited growing up wasn't the one of her childhood but I can't imagine that there was much of a difference when it came to dinners served.

Our summer visits were made up of fresh catfish fried in a cast iron skillet, homegrown tomatoes, sweet corn, and cantaloupe. Ice tea was a given, a big pitcher on the table and everyone's glasses full of ice. And from the oven the scent of oatmeal cookies made from scratch.

Growing up our house wasn't a chocolate chip cookie house like my friends were. If cookies were getting made they'd be oatmeal. And my mom would make them in great big batches - just like her grandmother had. Pan after pan would come out of the oven to cool - all available counter space covered and the whole house smelling like vanilla and raisins.

Recipes were read but rarely followed. I asked my mom what her recipe was for oatmeal cookies and she pulled out my Great Grandmother's cookbook and looked it up. But when I asked her which one she said all of them and then listed the things she'd change.

Soft Oatmeal Cookies
1 cup raisins
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 cup water
1 cup shortening
1 cup sugar (I love the low sugar in these cookies) 
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cup oatmeal- dry (I used Quaker Oats)
2 cup flour

Combine raisins in water and cook 5 minutes (This makes the raisins soft- who knew?!); drain and reserve 5 tablespoons juice and combine juice and baking soda.

Cream sugar and shortening - beat in eggs and flavoring. Stir in oatmeal, salt, and raisins. Add juice, soda mixture, and flour.

Drop by spoon and bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

P.S. From Katie:

Soft Oatmeal Cookie Care Package

"I wouldn't consider myself an oatmeal cookie person - I'd rather have a Snickerdoodle or shortbread. But more and more I find myself reaching for an oatmeal cookie. It's a piece of my childhood. It doesn't matter if the cookie has come from the store or a coworker; it's always going to be a little piece of my mom. I still see her standing in the middle of the kitchen, the sink full of bowls and mixing spoons, flour dusted on the counters, and the ticking of the timer as we waited for the cookies to come out of the oven".

My batch made up two dozen, you might want to double if you were planning to share because they are THAT GOOD!

The Cookie Project: Orange Crisps!

Today's recipe comes from the files of my friend Pam Richardson.  We met through our musical children and bonded on our stint for the Orchestra Board (OPUS) at Edmond Memorial High School. Pam was our President and took the bored out of Board Meetings. I learned of her baking skills through some of those meetings, and her ongoing friendship is a special treat.  Pam is a multi-talented woman who takes great pictures, writes beautifully and can bake just about anything.  Join me in encouraging her to start her own blog really soon!
Orange Crisp Cookies
by Pam Richardson

Hmm . . . Wonder why she picked this recipe?!

As a mom of three boys, I have spent a lot of time in the kitchen over the past 25 years.  I tried to involve them in the meal preparations, usually without much success.  There was without doubt a race to the table when the food was ready, but just not much interest in getting the food from the fridge, pantry, or cabinet to the table.  That was unless I was baking.   Then,  our small kitchen was filled with more bodies than actually fit without bringing back  “The Bump” from the 80’s.  We would dance our way through a Texas Sheet Cake, a loaf of homemade bread, Grammie's Chocolate Pie, or numerous varieties of homemade cookies.  The cookies were the favorite because who doesn't like cookie dough?  If I really needed six dozen and had some helpers in the kitchen, I knew I’d better double the recipe to have a chance of coming out with six dozen freshly baked cookies.  The Orange Crisp Cookies have been a family favorite through four generations.  This recipe card came out of my mom’s recipe box that was passed down from her mother.    In today’s electronic world, I find myself so often going to the internet on my iPad to get a recipe.  So this recipe card, with all its discoloration, takes me back to my grandmothers kitchen.  I see her face and that sweet smile and recall all the features of her very small kitchen.   There’s the porcelain top table and the big sink, the old gas range and grandma's step stool.     I can hear the sound of the screen door slamming and the loud hum of the refrigerator.

Pam's Grandma Florence

Little did I know at the time, but there was much more going on in that kitchen than I realized.  I thought we were making cookies, but as I have raised my own family, I know we were making memories.  So as a relatively new “empty nester” I look for ways to continue to connect with the boys when they pass through the house and often times it is a good meal shared around the table or a goodie bag of homemade cookies to take with them when they return to the lives they are building as adults.

As I was going through my mom’s recipe box after she passed away, I found a recipe for the Orange Crisp Cookies neatly typed on a fresh new card.  Attached to the card was this message, “I had the pleasure of making these cookies with my mother when I was just a little girl.  Since then, I’ve made them with my girls and now with my five grandsons.  I sincerely hope making and enjoying these cookies create as many precious memories for you as they have for me!”.

Orange Crisp Cookies (makes two dozen)

2 Cups all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2/3 Cup shortening (I used butter!)

2 Tablespoons orange rind (I couldn't find orange rind, and so I used 2 Tablespoons of Orange Extract)

1/2 Cup Brown Sugar

1/3 Cup White Sugar

1 Egg, well beaten

*Mix together ingredients.  Bake at 400 degrees for 6-8 minutes, press with fork.

*The dough looks separated like little brown peas, but it mushes together nicely when you dig in with a tablespoon.  I did a better job of not eating the dough this time- so the two dozen was real. 

These cookies are so different and really delicious-  Happy Baking!

The Cookie Project: Snickerdoodle Momma Recipe

Note to self: Cookies expand while baking

The Cookie Project: Recipe #2

I met our guest cookie baker late one night at the 2013 OWFI writer conference.  Cathy Collar is as warm and down home as my kitchen smells when I'm baking up her Snickerdoodle recipe.  

Cathy is an author, jewelry maker, mom, and joyful grandma. She is a special person I am grateful to know.

Please read the sweet note her daughter Jennifer wrote about "Snickerdoodle Momma." Share some blogger love by visiting Cathy's blog, and while you are nibbling on your snicker-doodles why don't you drop by the websites of her talented daughters: Jennifer McMurrain and Brandy Walker!

Snickerdoodle Momma Recipe

Welcome to the Cookie Project
Cathy Collar!

Ingredients:

1 Cup Butter or Margarine

2 cups Sugar

2 Eggs

1/4 cup of Milk

1 t Vanilla

3 3/4 cup of Flour

1/2 t Baking Soda

1/2 t Cream of tartar

1/2 t salt

Small bowl of Cinnamon & Sugar combined (I mixed 3T sugar with 3t cinnamon)

In mixing bowl cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, 

beating well after each. Blend in milk and vanilla. Thoroughly stir together, flour, 

baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt. Stir into creamed mixture. Form into 1 inch 

balls. Roll balls in cinnamon and sugar mixture. Place on greased cookie sheet 2 

inches apart (Follow this sage advice- my first batch pictured above); slightly flatten balls. 

Bake @ 375 till light brown about 10 min. Makes 8 dozen (IF you don't eat any of the dough and IF you are good at making 1 inch balls. In the Marotta kitchen my batch made up 45 cookies- you do the math!)

Snicker-doodle Momma by Jennifer McMurrain

My mom and I have an ongoing debate on who the above recipe belongs to. She says it’s hers because she passed it down to me and I say it’s mine because I’ve perfected it over the years.

Every year at Christmas I hear, “Jennifer, are you going to make snickerdoodles?” And you know who is asking that question? My mom.

I’d like to think the snickerdoodle recipe isn’t the only thing my mom has passed on to me.

My mom can always find something nice to say about a person. She has an uncanny ability to look at situations and see it from a different light. You may see a group of outcasts in the park, but she sees a group of people who have finally found friends who understand each other.

Mom will go above and beyond to help people and never ask for anything in return. She has sent countless dollars, jewelry, and other gifts to people dealing with terminal and chronic illness. When we lost my younger sister at the age of 24 to leukemia, her first instinct was to start a jewelry design business in my sister’s name and give the bulk of our proceeds to help others. For the past 10 years she has never faltered in this mission. Even in 2011 when she broke her back, she still made it to every arts and crafts show.  

My mom has never met a stranger. More times than not she will have meaningful conversations with people in the grocery line that she’s just met. I can’t count how many people have confessed to her they’ve lost a loved one when we are at arts and crafts festivals selling our jewelry and books. Knowing she has lost a daughter, they see her as a kindred spirit and I know no matter how they felt walking in, they know they are not walking the agonizing path of grief alone. They have a friend who completely understands what they are going through. That friend is my mom.

As I live my own life, as a woman as well as a mom, I try very hard to live like my mother and all of her attributes, including the three above. Hopefully one day my daughter will look at me as her own “snickerdoodle momma”.