Back to Blogging and And 2 Cookie ReMakes

It came to my attention recently that I was suffering from over-loaded-summer-schedule-itis.  Generally, I was able to keep things together.  No one went hungry or without clean socks--unless by their own choice--I'm talking to you, Little Man, my sock obsessed boy.  We did so much every chance we could, it just didn't involve the blog.  :)

But here in Southeast Alaska, the weather has already begun to change.  The cold, hard reality is that...IT'S DONE!  The trees are starting to change colors, the flowers are withering, there's a crispness already in the air.  I actually wore a winter hat this morning when I walked the Little Miss to the bus stop.  (That part may or may not be directly related to the temperature.  It might have had something to do with me still been in my yoga pants and having not brushed my teeth yet...possibly.)  Sorry folks, summer is over here...sniff, sniff. 

Putting up with the short, cool summer is probably the biggest personal sacrifice I make to live in such a beautiful place.  I can put up with the cold winters (they're not too bad--the way winter ought to be in my opinion), the isolation of our capital city (you can only fly or ferry in to Juneau), and the wildlife traipsing through my backyard (a small black bear actually did last week and I saw it with my own eyes!).  But the summers...just not enough for me.  Not that I want the 45 consecutive day streak of 100+ temperatures that our family and friends are experiencing in Oklahoma, but I'd love to take a 10-15 degrees off their hands.  I'm sure they'd be ok with that. :)

So you can see why I go CRAZY when the summer weather heats warms up.  We head to the beach, the park, pick berries, go out on the boat, grill, play in the sprinklers, make ice cream (more on that to come), work in the garden and yard, ride bikes, hike, visit the glacier, and generally soak up all the natural vitamin D possible.  No matter what the temperature actually is, if it's sunny out, we pretend it's hotter.  As in years past, we made lots of great memories and captured most of them on camera...they just didn't make it on to the blog...yet. 

So as you can imagine, I'm behind.  There's so much to blog about and "catch up" on that it's almost a bit overwhelming.  So much so that I found myself ignoring the blog for the past week or so.  Trying to pretend it wasn't there, needing attention.  But I can't ignore it anymore.  So today, I'm back to blogging.  But to keep things realistic, I'm going to just start where I am.  Sort of a "bloom where you're planted" approach.  I hope to get back to sharing some of our summer memories in the near future, but I don't want to continue to ignore the blog and not share future memories.  So here goes...

The other day I made some cookies that I'm really excited about.  Not only are they delicious and beautiful, but they are both second tries at recipes that flopped the first time. 

A few months ago, I was seeing recipes involving malted milk powder on several food blogs that I check.  I became intrigued and started searching for a cookie recipe.  I found one on the Taste of Home website that I thought was fail safe.  But I was really disappointed with the results.  Instead of soft, thick cookies like the picture posted with the recipe, mine looked flat and sad.  They basically fell apart in your hand.  I reviewed the recipe trying to figure out what I had done wrong and tried baking the second pan a little differently, but the results were the same.  So I sort of gave up on it....until this week.  I wanted to make cookies for my husband's hunting trip and started scouring my recipes.  I saw that print out from Taste of Home and felt challenged to not let this recipe remain a failure.  So I surfed the web and found another recipe with excellent reviews and slightly different ingredient amounts.  The resulting cookies were these beautiful babies.

 

Chocolate Malted Cookies (click on title for recipe)

I was so excited when I transferred them from the cookie sheet to the cooling rack that I started trash talking with myself.  "Wohoo!"  "Look at these!"  "Take that Taste of Home!"

These cookies have plenty of chocolate taste, are a bit on the sweet side, and very soft.  Pretty much my new favorite cookie.
The only change I made to the recipe was using parchment paper.  But I only did that because I had some sheets still handy from the other cookie recipe I had just retried.  I don't think the parchment was necessary unless you really want to save yourself some dishes. :)

Then there were these fantastic morsels, Monster Cookies. (click on title for recipe)

Again, I had seen this basic recipe on food blogs in the past and wanted to try it.  Sometimes they are called Kitchen Sink Cookies because they have everything in them except the kitchen sink.  But for me, that name isn't all that appetizing.  So I googled "monster cookies" and found what seemed like a winning recipe from Pioneer Woman.  The dough was SO good, but again they were flat and not like the ones pictured.  I tried them again, got similar results, started questioning my baking skills, and wondered if the Bob's Red Mill baking powder I had recently started using was a bit too weird.

But Shawn really loved the taste of these cookies and so did I, so I was determined to find another version that "worked" better.  After another google search I was able to find a recipe with promise and from another reliable food blogger.  In fact, it was on a blog I check regularly.  So it was right under my nose all along!  The results were GREAT!  The recipe from Brown Eyed Baker was slightly different from PW and I used a few of the mix in ideas from PW in this latest version.  Instead of using Reese's Pieces I upped the amount of M&M's and added peanut butter chips.  I also liked the use of rice krispies in PW's recipe, so the next time I make these I want to try adding those too.  BEB's version also had A LOT of peanut butter in them, but surprisingly I didn't think the flavor was too much.  It basically worked like the glue that kept all the mix ins from falling out. :-)

 

Hope you enjoyed the glimpse at where we're at right now--or at least what's been going on in my kitchen this week.  And I hope you'll climb back on the wagon to enjoy more memories that I share along the way.