She: Brandy Gets Creative

We have this problem in our house sometimes. Well, often. My partner tends to eat/use ingredients I've mentally earmarked for a recipe without either buying more or letting me know I need to (grumble, grumble)...typical stuff, really, but when you're halfway thru making oatmeal cookie dough to find most of your oats gone, ya gotta get creative. In the end, it turned out to be a great new recipe and a really unique cookie.
Ingredients:
3/4C butter
1C brown sugar
1/2C sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup oats
1 3/4 C flour
1 cup shredded coconut
1 cup dried tropical fruit (I used a mango/pineapple/coconut mix)


As usual, cream your butter and sugars with the cinnamon. Add eggs and vanilla, and mix in the flour, salt and soda/powder. I mixed in the fruit stuff by hand and baked it at 375 for 10 minutes. This is a chewy cookie that gives a slightly different flavor than a regular oatmeal-raisin does.

She: Pecan Sandies

I think these were the most polished looking and tasting cookies we had over the holiday. I love pecan sandies, and haven't ever tried my hand at them. The recipe I used said that you needed to have a special cookie cutter, but I ignored that for common sense--I just used a small jar lid, about 3 inches diameter.

Ingredients:
3/4 C toasted pecans (3 oz), plus about 2 cups unroasted pecan halves for cookie tops
2/3 C plus 2 tbs powder sugar
1 1/4 C all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter @ room temp
1 tsp vanilla
1 large egg, separated

To toast the pecans, I just put them on a cookie sheet at 400F for about 5 mts and let them cool. Then you take them and your 2tbs sugar and pulse them together in your food processor til they become a fine powder. Then mix it with your other dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix your remaining sugar, butter and vanilla, then add egg yolk. Mix all your ingredients together (minus egg whites and unroasted pecans). My dough was crumbly, but it held when I shaped it into a ball. Then take what you can between wax paper and roll it til about 1/4 inch thick. Use your jar and cut out circles. Brush it with lightly beaten egg whites, and place your pecans on top. Brush that with egg whites too (I think to keep it in place) and stick em in the oven for 12-15 mts at 325F.

She: Striped Cookies

I think I had the most fun this holiday making these cookies. It wasn't really that difficult, but they looked reeeeally pretty, and since I used Scharffenberger cocoa powder the chocolate came thru nicely. I also did all the steps inbetween other cookies, so I wasn't waiting around for stuff to chill. Here's how it goes:

For each of the doughs, you mix the sugar, butter, then egg, and mix with the dry ingredients. It'll be crumbly, so you add the icewater and then roll it in a ball and put it in a container for a half hour. Now you should have 2 cold balls of dough. What you need to do is divide each ball in half. Put it between 2 sheets of wax paper and roll it out to about 8x12 and stick it in the freezer for an hour. Take off the paper and stack each dough (alternating vanilla and chocolate) so you have 4 stacks. Cut those stacks in half and place that on top so you have 8 layers--I used a rolling pin to press them together lightly. Trim off the excess and cut your stacks into 1/4 inch thick cookies. I baked mine for 12 minutes at 375.

VANILLA DOUGH:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour (about 5 1/2 ounces)
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 large egg yolk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ice water

CHOCOLATE DOUGH:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (about 3 1/3 ounces)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 large egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ice water