If I ever need to perk up my kids I bring out the sprinkles. There is literally nothing that seems to lift spirits like a healthy dose of sprinkles. I keep a jar in the pantry to add to waffles, hot cocoa, and - it turns out quite often - cookies. This snickerdoodle recipe is perfect on it’s own, but rolled in sprinkles seems to take it totally over the top. And that’s my favorite place to be.

SPRINKLE-DOODLES

makes 2 dozen large cookies

2 cups sugar

1 cup butter, room temperature

2 eggs

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

5 ½ cups flour

 STEP 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together sugar and butter.  Blend in eggs, milk, and vanilla until completely incorporated. 

STEP 2

In a separate bowl, mix together all dry ingredients.  Working in three batches, add the dry ingredients to the wet incorporating fully after each addition.

STEP 3

Roll two ounce balls of dough and press into sprinkles.  Bake 10-12 minutes until golden brown on the edges.

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I do love carrot cake.  It's really the only cake that I like to eat.  It's possible that's largely because of the cream cheese frosting.  I love a good cream cheese frosting.  When I think of Easter, carrot cake naturally floats to the top.  But ugg, I don't want to eat cake.  

But I love love love cookies.  Cookies are the best.  I could eat cookies all the time.  So I had an idea - can I turn carrot cake into a cookie?  It makes the ultimate dessert mash-up/solution.  I don't have to eat cake, but I still get the carrot cake + cream cheese frosting.  Well, this one is really icing.  But you get the idea.

Oh, and for the love of pete, grate your own carrot.  It takes one minute and it's so much better than those weird carrot sticks you can buy "pre-grated."  

Carrot Cake Cookies

how to

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder and all of the spices.  Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer cream together sugar and butter until smooth and fluffy.  Add apple sauce, egg, and vanilla.  Beat until incorporated.  Stir in carrot and raisins.  

Scoop batter on to a baking sheet and bake 8-10 minutes until browned on the edges, but still a little soft in the middle.  I smash down the tops when they come out of the oven so they don't 'bump up.'  Let cool on a cooling rack until completely cooled before icing. 

icing

4 oz cream cheese, melted

2 oz butter, melted

2 cups powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Whisk together cream cheese and butter.  Add powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth.  Dip cookies in soft icing.  Let cool.

ingredients

2 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon allspice

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup apple sauce

1 egg

1/2 cup grated carrot

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup raisins (optional)

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Rainbows and St. Patrick’s Day go hand in hand. Usually this time of year I make sugar cookie cut outs of shamrocks (don’t worry, I still will) but I thought it would be fun to mix it up. I don’t think anything is better than those fluffy soft cookies that stay soft and fluffy even when they’ve been out of the oven for more than an hour. These stay fluffy for a whole week. It’s like they’re fresh out of the oven even when they aren’t.

I’m addicted to these. And there’s nothing stopping you from having rainbow cookies all the time.

SOFT RAINBOW COOKIES

makes 3 dozen cookies

1 cup butter (at room temperature)

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoon vanilla

2 egg

2 1/2 cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup sprinkles

STEP 1

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until fluffy.

STEP 2

Add egg and vanilla to the sugars and beat until combined.

STEP 3

Add flour, baking powder, cream of tartar, and salt. Mix to combine. Then add sprinkles and just combine. Don’t over mix!

STEP 4

Scoop out cookie dough and bake 12 minutes until just set. Let rest 5 more minutes on the baking sheet once the cookies are out of the oven. Store up to one week in an airtight container.

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It seems the history of the chocolate chip cookie is very similar to the current state of the chocolate chip cookie recipe.  We can all agree on the basics, but the details are subject to interpretation.  

Some sources claim that Ruth Wakefield, owner and chef at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, invented the cookies when she was looking for a way to jazz up her butter drop cookies.  Another source claims she expected the chocolate pieces to melt into the cookie completely and turn it into more of a chocolate cookie.  Another source claims she knew what she was doing the whole time.  

 Whatever Ms. Wakefield’s intention, the cookie invention is firmly set at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Mass sometime between 1936 and 1938.  Ms. Wakefield and her husband opened the inn in 1930.  According to the forward in her own cookbook, the sight had originally been at the location of a toll house where passengers ate and horses “were changed” on the way from Boston to New Bedford.  The house was a halfway point on the road and the point where the toll was collected for traveling the road.  Wikipedia disagrees, so we’ll leave it alone.   Whatever the origin of the name, the Wakefield’s purchased the home in 1930 and used their mutual dream of owning an ‘eating place’ into the Inn.  

Ms. Wakefield had been a home economics teacher at the high school before marrying and turned her interest in cooking into serving meals at the Inn.  Her cooking was so popular, her cookbook, originally published in 1930, went through 39 publishings.  The 1938 version of Toll House Tried and True Recipes is the first copy to feature the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie.  Let’s assume the recipe had been created the same year.  

It wasn’t until World War II that the cookie gained national fame.  During the war, care packages were sent abroad to soldiers.  The care packages from the state of Massachusetts must have carried an inordinate amount of Toll House Cookies because soon soldiers from other parts of the country were writing home and asking for the cookies.  Ms. Wakefield became overrun with letters asking for the recipe.  Nestle also saw a spike in sales and worked with Ms. Wakefield to publish the recipe on the package – her payment?  Chocolate for life.  The recipe is still on the chocolate chip package to this day.

The original recipe is not EXACLTY what you see on the modern package.  Who knows when it changed, but the OG recipe includes a splash of hot water.  As copied from the Toll House Cookbook: 

Ruth Wakefield’s Chocolate Crunch Cookies

1 cup unsalted butter, plus more for baking sheets

3/4 cup firmly packed light-brown sugar

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved into 1 teaspoon hot water

2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon table salt

2 bars Nestle’s yellow label chocolate, semi-sweet, which has been cut into pieces the size of peas

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat your oven to 375°.

Cream the butter and sugars. Add the beaten eggs. Add the baking soda dissolved in hot water.

Sift together the flour and salt and add to the butter mixture. Then stir in the nuts, chocolate chips, and vanilla.

Chill the dough

Drop by the tablespoonful onto lightly greased cookie sheets and bake until browned at the edges, 10 to 12 minutes. 

Here’s what’s interesting to me – the vanilla is added last!  And the baking soda is dissolved into hot water?  Both felt very confusing before starting baking, and I will admit that these quirks made me want to try this recipe.  I physically had to restrain myself from adding the vanilla to the egg step and even adding at the end felt weird and like it would not be incorporated.  But it seemed to?  Dissolving the baking soda was a new step for me too.  So I had to look it up.

It turns out that by dissolving the baking soda into water before incorporating you are actually ensuring that the chemical is evenly distributed and begin the chemical reaction early. Since cookies typically don’t have a lot of moisture in them, the baking soda isn’t usually activated until the butter melts in the oven. When it’s been activated earlier, the CO2 can release as soon as the cookies hit the oven, rather than partially through the baking process.  

The job of baking soda is to leaven the cookies and making them soft and fluffy.  I imagine that’s why these cookies turned out much fluffier and taller than the cookies I regularly make?  It led to my sister and I wondering if our grandmother dissolved her baking soda in her cookies because her oatmeal/chocolate chip/coconut cookies were always very puffy.  It appears quite regularly in old fashioned cookie recipes which makes me wonder why we abandoned the practice?

After trying several versions now, I think I can confirm that a chocolate chip cookie is good, no matter what.  If you want to try MY version of this classic recipe, I think it’s pretty decent.

 Ali Hedin’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about 35

1 cup butter, room temperature

½ cup sugar

1 ½ cups brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 ½ cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

2 cups chocolate chips

STEP 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine butter and sugars until creamy and lightened in color.

STEP 2

Add eggs and vanilla and whip until light and fluffy.  In a separate bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients.

STEP 3

Add in dry ingredients until just barely incorporated.  Then add in the chocolate chips and mix well.  It’s great if they break up a little bit.

STEP 4

Scoop dough onto a cookie sheet and bake 8-10 minutes until the edges are browned but the center is still light brown.  Let rest 5 minutes on a cookie sheet then transfer to a cooling rack.

Store in an airtight container for up to a week – but no longer!

Bottom line is there are enough chocolate chip cookie recipes out there for every person in America to have their own version of this popular cookie.  This super subjective topic means that “the best” chocolate chip cookies are probably just the ones your mom made.  If you’re looking for a new recipe to try, give mine a shot.  I’m no Ruth Wakefield – but they’re still pretty good.  You can’t lose.  

Do you still have one lingering question? Is it “What is a Butter Drop Cookie?” Because that’s the lingering question I had after reading pages and pages about Ruth Wakefield. There are also a million recipes for Butter Drop Cookies but basically it’s a Chocolate Chip Cookie without the chocolate and adding in almond extract along with the vanilla. Believe me when I tell you that’s the next batch of cookies I’m making. Stay tuned.

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Pumpkin Spice isn't my favorite.  I won't order it in a latte and I really don't want it in a pie.  But I tried it as a fluffy and delicious cookie this week and I might be sold.  These crinkle cookies are easy to make and thanks to the addition of a little pumpkin, they stay super tender and fluffy even after they've cooled.  Usually you can only get that from a fresh out of the oven cookie which is why I usually only eat cookies the minute they come out of the oven.  But these suckers are light and fluffy and have a hint of fall flavor which is exactly what I need right now on these blustery fall mornings.  

Because clearly, cookies are for breakfast.

PUMPKIN SPICE CRINKLE COOKIES

makes 24 one inch cookies

STEP 1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

In a mixing bowl whisk together flour, baking powder, and pumpkin pie spice.

STEP 2

In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat together granulated sugar and butter and whip until light and fluffy.  

STEP 3

Mix in pumpkin, egg yolk, and vanilla until just combined. 

STEP 4

Add dry ingredients slowly until just incorporated. 

STEP 5

Scoop cookies in one inch balls and roll in powdered sugar.  Place on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake 10-15 minutes.  Let cool on a wire rack.

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup softened butter

1 cup granulated sugar

¼ cup pumpkin puree

1 large egg yolk

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup powdered sugar