Healthy Twists

I needed some cookies yesterday. I mean, I sort of need cookies all the time, but this time I was baking them for a bake sale at work. Since these would be revenue-generating cookies, I knew they had to be good, so I picked a recipe that was supposedly pretty foolproof.

Read on, my friends.

So the recipe is so crazy easy (again…keep reading) and only calls for two, uber-processed and unhealthy ingredients.

This:

Plus this:

Was supposed to equal these cute little cookie/candy cups. I bought a mini-muffin tin over the weekend specifically for this purpose (although, now I can make mini muffins, so it’s all good). I was going to take shots of the “baking” process but then I decided that The Pioneer Woman is a hundred million times better than I am at that, so check her website (but not if you’re hungry or against butter, cheese or beef) to see how the cookies were supposed to turn out.

I’m sure you see where this is coming. Big, huge, giant FAIL and it was funny because they were supposed to be easy, and I had just left a comment on Susan’s blog about how I didn’t have any big baking fails to speak of. They dough was raw, the Reece’s sunk into the cups and looked all weird, and they they stuck to the tins even though I sprayed with Pam. I didn’t document it because I want to forget it ever happened.

So at that point it was 8 PM and I didn’t want to go to the store to buy cookie mix, and although I now have a fairly well stocked pantry of baking items, I didn’t have a few important items like unsalted butter, chocolate chips, or regular ole flour (all I have is cake flour and ww pastry flour). So I did some internet searching and figured out I could make that classic recipe for flourless peanut butter cookies. The basic recipe is 1 cup PB, 1 cup sugar, and 1 egg. Mix bake and you’re done. So that’s what did. And they came out pretty good!

I tasted one (since it fell apart and therefore was un-sellable) and although they were good, they weren’t awesome. Since I can’t leave well enough alone, I added vanilla, cut the total sugar by 1/4 and used a mix of brown and white sugar, per the recommendations on the recipe review site I had on my iPod Touch. However, I bet those testers used regular PB that contains sugar, but I used up Mitch’s all-nautral peanut butter (I finally got him to stop eating that reduced-fat Skippy crap he was hooked on) which only contains peanuts and salt. I think the lack of sugar actually made them more rich and peanut-buttery.

I’m now on a mission to perfect these cookies (because that’s a mission I really need…sheesh, Hallie) . I want to try them with agave (and maybe a flax-egg for a vegan version), or with add-ins like chocolate or butterscotch chips. I love the idea of having an easy go-to dessert recipe where I have all the ingredients on hand. Do you have a never-fail dessert recipe?

Tonight I’m checking out December Nights here in town with some girlfriends. I’m excited! It’s a San Diego institution and I’ve never been before. Tomorrow, I’m running errands with the boy, including picking up my very first Christmas tree (including the gym, I hope!! I have been loving my weekend exercise time lately).

Then we’re doing to decorate the condo, and I’m going to hand in my Jew card. I already handed in my healthy-foodie card to write this post

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