I know, it’s been like an eternity since I posted anything on here. Do me a favor, and don’t look back at the last post to see just how long it’s been. Life got crazy busy, with plenty of good things, and sadly, this is one of the things that suffered.

What better reason to re-enter the blog world than with a pumpkin recipe in October? I came across a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie recipe while browsing the endless pumpkin recipes on Pinterest awhile back. It claimed to be a soft but chewier cookie than most of the cake-like pumpkin cookies out there. I pinned it right away and knew it would be at the top of my fall baking to-do list.

I followed the original recipe, that you can find on Tessa’s blog, Handle the Heat, right here. I only made one little tweak along the way. I replaced all the ground cinnamon, ginger, and clove spices with doTERRA essential oils. I made a double batch of the recipe, using 1 drop of Clove Bud, 2 drops of Ginger, and 4 drops of Cinnamon Bark.

Our family jumped into the world of essential oils a little over a year ago, as a way to cut back on some of the synthetic products we were using in our house, and they’ve quickly found their way into every nook and cranny of our lives, even what we eat. I love that these oils are so safe that we can ingest them. I can’t say the same about all brands of essential oils. Do your research first!

I highly recommend that you make these cookies and even better if you can make them with these oils! If you want to know anymore about other uses for essential oils, I’d love to share, but didn’t want to bore everyone here for a cookie recipe with that. You can find me on Instagram at @oilsallthetime or on Facebook at Oils All The Time to learn more about them or get in touch with me about how to order some of your own oils to use in your home.

love and butter,
amy

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It’s been too long since I’ve had a chance to bake something up in my kitchen and share it with all of you. Last week this recipe came through my blog reader, and it immediately went to the top of my “must make” list. All I needed was a reason, make that a chance (because who needs a reason for cookies?) to try them out.

Earlier this week, I got just that chance when a few friends were getting together for a little class about essential oils (more about that another time). My dear friend, Laura, offered to host us at her house, and since she doesn’t eat anything with gluten, I knew these were the PERFECT cookies to bring along.

Before we get to the recipe, a couple notes…

Oat flour is the backbone of this cookie recipe. You can certainly purchase oat flour, but I keep rolled oats on hand, for making granola and overnight oats. So, I just threw some oats into my Vitamix (best blender ever, by the way) and, in less than a minute, I had oat flour. You could also use a food processor to make oat flour, although you might not be able to get it quite as fine as if you were using a high speed blender.

Bridget calls for a teaspoon of potato flour to add to the tenderness of the cookies. After discovering that a bag of potato flour was $6 at my local market, and doing a little bit of internet research, I decided that she might have meant potato starch and that cornstarch was a similar ingredient. So, I went with cornstarch.

There are several yummy spices in this recipe. One is allspice, which I happened to be out of. So, these cookies didn’t get any allspice. Adding that to my grocery list now to make sure I’m restocked for the next fall baking that’s guaranteed to happen soon. The other spice I want to mention is the freshly grated nutmeg. If you’ve ever grated nutmeg for a dish, you’ll know what a difference it makes. It’s so much more fragrant, and so easy to do. All you need is a grater and some whole nutmeg. The other great thing is that this allows you to grate just what you need for the recipe you’re making, and the whole nutmeg stores and lasts much longer than grated nutmeg.

The original recipe calls for 2 sticks of salted butter. If you know anything about me, you know I’m not afraid of butter. That being said, I was curious to see if I could sub out some of the butter for something a little lighter. Really, I just wanted to be able to eat more cookies without feeling quite as guilty about it. I did a little more internet research and decided to try greek yogurt, because I had a bunch in my fridge already. I’m sure the original recipe with the full amount of butter is even more decadent, but these did NOT taste like they were missing anything.

Finally, I wanted to use some brown sugar in addition to the white sugar, just to add a little more depth. So that’s what I did.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from this recipe
makes approx 40 cookies

2 cups Oat Flour
1 teaspoon Corn Starch
1 & 1/2 teaspoons Cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon Ground Ginger
1/2 teaspoon Freshly Grated Nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon Ground Cloves
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
3/4 teaspoon Kosher Salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) Salted Butter at room temperature
4.75 oz Brown Sugar
4 oz Granulated White Sugar
1 Egg at room temperature
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
1 cup Canned Pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
2/3 cup Semisweet Chocolate Chips

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Prep your cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, corn starch, spices, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

3. In a large bowl, or the bowl of your stand mixer, cream together the butter, greek yogurt, and both sugars. Because of the greek yogurt, it doesn’t get super fluffy, but make sure to let it mix together well.

4. Turn off the mixer, add the egg & vanilla extract, and beat to combine.

5. Turn off the mixer, add the pumpkin, and beat to combine. I noticed here that the texture definitely didn’t look like normal cookie dough. It almost looked a little curdled? I hate to even use that word, and I was nervous, trust me. I’m blaming it on the greek yogurt, but don’t worry, it gets better.

6. Turn the mixer off, add the flour mixture, and mix on low until thoroughly combined.

7. Turn the mixer off, add in chocolate chips, and incorporate with a spatula.

See, much better?

8. For evenly sized cookies, use a scoop to measure dough onto your parchment-lined cookie sheets. My scoop made about 40 cookies, and I put 12 on each tray to give them enough space to spread a little when they baked.

9. Bake for 8-12 minutes. Because of the color of these cookies, it can be a little bit difficult to know if they’re done. You can tap the top of one to make sure its not super squishy still.

10. Allow to cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet. Then move to a cooling rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for a few days, if they last that long!

I tell you what, these cookies do NOT taste like they’re gluten free and they do NOT taste like they’re missing any butter. They’re soft, almost a little cakey, and they really do melt in your mouth. I will definitely be making these again before fall is over. I love having a super yummy gluten free cookie in my arsenal too. They aren’t always easy to come by. If you love all things pumpkin like I do, I hope you’ll give these cookies a try.

love and butter,
amy

When I started to think about what the first recipe I wanted to share with the world(or more likely all five of you that read this) was, I knew it had to be a cookie, because of course. And when I started to think about *the* cookie, I instantly thought of this recipe. Is it my favorite cookie in the whole entire world? Probably not. But this is one of the first cookies that I can remember making on my own, and it’s probably the recipe I’ve made more than most other cookies. I can’t take much credit for this cookie, though.

The first time I ever had this cookie was at Brooke’s house. I’ve known Brooke since we were younger than I can remember. She stood next to me as I married my best friend six years ago and I can’t wait to watch her marry hers next May. Brooke’s mom, Tanya, has whipped up many a sweet treat over the years, all of it delicious. This cookie is just one of the sweets I enjoyed at their house. I’m fairly confident that you could always find some of this cookie dough in the freezer, because you never know when you’re going to need a hot-out-of-the-oven cookie or let’s be honest, some cookie dough in all its raw goodness. Growing up, I burned my mouth on plenty of these cookies in the McLeod house, we just couldn’t wait. So, thanks, Tanya, for baking cookies for us, for french braiding my hair every time I slept over(my head hurts just thinking of how tight you pulled those braids), and for starting me on the road to this little blog.

A couple little disclaimers before we jump into the real reason you’re reading this…to get the recipe for these yummy cookies! I don’t know about you, but when I’m trying out a recipe for the first time, I want it to turn out well. If I can get super detailed and specific instructions, I’m thrilled. I want to be told what tools to use, how things should look, smell, feel, taste, etc. As I pass along recipes to you, I hope and plan to give as much information as I would hope to find in a recipe myself. Also, I don’t know how you usually measure your dry ingredients(flour & sugar), but after hearing & reading about weighing them instead of the scoop & level method, I’m a firm believer in the weigh method. In a nutshell, the way that you measure out flour can result in varying amounts of it, ranging by an ounce or more in either direction. To keep things as controlled as possible, when you weigh, you always know how much flour you have. Unfortunately there are also different opinions of how much a cup of flour weighs. Unless a recipe tells me how many ounces or grams it requires, I use the standards from America’s Test Kitchen of 5 ounces for a cup of unbleached all purpose flour and 7 ounces for a cup of sugar(brown or white). I use this scale, although there are lots of options. Just be sure it has the option of grams or ounces.

Now, let’s get to the good stuff.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

1 cup Softened Butter (I always use salted)
1 cup Peanut Butter (I grew up using creamy Jif, Skippy, etc, but now the only peanut butter in our house is the kind that’s made with only peanuts, and it’s crunchy. The cookies were just as delicious, and with a tad less sugar)
¾ cup Sugar (5.25 ounces)
¾ cup Firmly Packed Brown Sugar (5.25 ounces)
2 Eggs (room temperature is best, helps them incorporate better. I try to at least get them out of the fridge as soon as I start making cookies, so they can warm up a bit)
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
2½ cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (12.5 ounces)
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
½ teaspoon Kosher Salt
1 cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips (This amount is definitely up for interpretation if you love a loaded cookie)

• Preheat your oven to 350º (I always, always, always have a thermometer like this in my oven because it can’t be trusted. When I set it to 350, it ends up around 375.)
• Prep some cookie sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat. I always use parchment paper and I needed 4 trays for this batch of cookies.
• Measure or weigh out your flour, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl. Whisk them together and set aside.
• Add both sugars and both butters to the bowl of your stand mixer or a large bowl.
• Cream together the butters & sugars on medium speed for 1 minute.
• Turn the mixer to low and add in the vanilla and 1 egg. Once incorporated, add the other egg and mix just until combined or you don’t see any super shiny streaks of egg left.
• Turn the mixer off and add in about a third of the flour mixture, turn the mixer on low, just until mostly combined.
• Add the rest of the flour in two more batches, just the same way.
• With the mixer off, again, add in your chocolate chips and mix on low until evenly disbursed.

• In order to get uniform cookies, use a cookie scoop to portion out dough onto the trays. I use a scoop like this, which got me 52 cookies that weighed 1 ounce each. I want to make sure my cookies have plenty of space to bake evenly, which means 12 cookies per tray.

• Bake for about 8 minutes, 2 trays at a time, or until just barely starting to brown on the edges, which yields a soft cookie. Again, interpretation is up to you on how well-done you like your cookies. I’m always an advocate of under-cooked cookies.

• Allow cookies to cool on the trays for a few minutes, and then move to cooling racks until completely cool.

One other option with these cookies is to scoop out the dough as individual cookies on the tray, then throw the tray in the freezer until the cookies are frozen. Once they’re frozen, you can put them in an airtight ziploc bag and back in the freezer. Bake them just the same way, adding only an extra minute or two. Perfect for those moments when you just HAVE to have a fresh out of the oven cookie.

love and butter,

amy