Since I’ve been losing my mind due to age, I now have two full pounds of butter in my fridge. I figured I might experiment with some new kinds of cookies - I usually make chocolate chip cookies, but I think it’s time to spread my baking wings. What are your go-to tasty, easy cookies? (By easy I mean no chilling, no rolling, no fillings, no fussiness.) Chocolate cookies are more than welcome.
No-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies
My grandma used to make these (the linked recipe is the same as hers), and they’re great!
(I wish I had her persimmon cookie recipe.)
Dead Spider Cookies
Bag of chocolate morsels
Bag of butterscotchie morsels, though cinnamon morsels would work
Can of chinese noodles [the little sticklike ones]
Can of nuts [traditionally peanuts, but I hate peanuts so she makes it with chopped macadamias]
Melt the chocolate, mix everything in and blorp onto wax paper in tablespoon dollops to cool. They are a little pile of twigs and lumps, it originated in some ladies magazine as cookies for a halloween party that are suppsoed to be chocolate dipped spiders … quick and easy to make.
You’ll have to convert the measures, and maybe multiply up, but I know this awesome peanut butter cookie recipe off by heart and have been making it since I was 9 years old:
Cream together 125g butter and 125g crunchy peanut butter. Mix in 125g white sugar and 125g brown sugar. Beat in 1 egg with 1 tsp vanilla extract. Sift together 150g all-purpose flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 tsp baking powder and fold into the batter until smooth. Place walnut-sized balls of batter about 4" apart on a greased baking tray and flatten them down slightly with the back of a wet fork. Bake for about 15 minutes at 170C, or until the edges of the cookies start to brown (this keeps them chewy - if you want them crunchy, leave them until the tops are beginning to brown). Cool on a rack. Makes about 20 big cookies. Damn they’re good. It’s the salt that does it.
I think that this is pretty easy, and I happen to have the basic recipe in my palmpilot:
Vanilla wafers
Thoroughly cream 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup shortening, and 2/3 cup sugar. Add 2 teaspoons vanilla, 1 teaspoon salt. Add 2 eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each. Stir in 2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour. Mix well.
Drop dough from a teaspoon onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten the dough with a flat-bottomed glass. Bake in moderate oven (375 F) 8 to 10 minutes or until cookies are delicately browned at the edges. Remove immediately from sheet and let them cool on a wire rack. Makes somewhere in the vicinity of 7 dozen.
I just made a batch of these over the Christmas holidays, substituting some kind of bake-ready low-calorie sweetener for the sugar. They came out okay - maybe slightly more crumbly than usual, but very delicious!
Gooey butter cookies have replaced chocolate chip cookies in the heirarchy of standards. They’re quick, simple, and nomilicious.
Like every reviewer that gives a recipe 5 stars, but then changes every dang thing, I will note the following:
- Use butter cake mix, not yellow cake mix. I have made them with chocolate cake mix - it really doesn’t matter. But, if you want butter cookies, use butter cake
- Let them sit for a minute on the cookie sheet before removing to wire racks. I also sift a little powdered sugar on them while cooling
- If your kitchen is warm, the dough will become very sticky. Cover with saran wrap and refrigerate for a little bit.
- The dough lasts a week in the fridge. It makes a decent batch, and it’s not something you can halve. If you don’t want to have cookies until the cows come home, just tightly wrap in saran wrap and fridge or freezer it.
Looks good, except for the PB. Can I leave out the PB? That’s a whole cup of semi-solid that’ll be missing. Will it still work? I love chocolate, but I’m not into PB and chocolate the way most folks are.
No, the PB is necessary to bind it all together. (I’ve found the timing is as well.) FWIW, I don’t find the PB taste to be especially strong; like not as strong as in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
How about using almond or hazelnut butter instead? I’ve had the PB version, and loved them, but I was thinking of trying them with roasted almond butter just for a change.
My Ultimate Ginger Snap recipe.
Ooo, me, me! I have a great recipe that makes the softest, chewiest cookies ever. I make white chocolate macadamia, but the recipe can be used for anything.
Cookie Ingredients
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 2 large eggs,beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chips of your favorite flavor
• if desired, 1 cup chopped pecans, or chopped walnuts
Cookie Recipe Directions
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix sugar, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and eggs in a large bowl by hand. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt. The dough will be very stiff.
Stir in chips by hand. You can add the pecans, or other nuts, at this time if desired. Keep stirring and folding the chocolate chips and nuts into the dough until they are evenly dispersed.
Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown.
The centers will be soft. Let cool completely then remove from cookie sheet.
This is more of a bar, but I give them out at Christmas and people rave about them and beg me for the recipe. They are SO easy!
Cinnamon Cream Cheese Squares
Take 2 blocks of softened cream cheese, mix (using blender, this is the hardest part! ;)!) with 1 teaspon of vanilla and 1 cup of sugar until smooth. You need 2 packages of Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough, unroll the first one in one sheet (don’t separate) on the bottom of a 9X13 Cake pan. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, it will expand. Spoon and smooth the cream cheese mixture over the dough, then top with the second sheet of Crescent Roll dough. Melt 1/4 cup of butter and pour over top, then combine 1/2 cup sugar with 2-3 Tbsps of cinnamon- mix well and sprinkle evenly on over butter. Cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, refridgerate for an hour or so before cutting into small pieces. This makes about 24 small bars- more than enough!
The sugar/cinnamon mixture carmelizes on top and it’s to die for delicious!
Here’s my favourite easy-cooking recipe, de-metrified.
Take 3.5 oz softened butter, 6 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon corn syrup, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 cup flour, and vanilla extract to taste (sorry, no idea of the conversion rate between Scandinavian vanilla sugar and American vanilla extract). Ground ginger and cinnamon are fine as well if you want to spice it up, and you can add cocoa as well. Mix into a dough and shape it into two rolls the same length as your baking sheet. Move rolls to actual baking sheet and flatten them out until they’re about 1/2 inch. They’ll look uneven, but they’re going to spread a bit in the oven, so don’t worry. Bake at 325 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes, and slice them diagonally when they come out of the oven.
Mmm, they all sound good. Maybe I’ll just have to start at the top and work my way down.
Johnny, I have a recipe much like that for what we call unbaked cookies or chocolate macaroons, except with coconut instead of peanut butter. I like the peanut butter idea - chocolate and peanut butter together is fine by me. 
Ha! Mine’s first! 
I use Skippy creamy peanut butter in mine. I’ve never used coconut or chopped peanuts. Also, I don’t make them into balls. I make them flat.
If you do make them, LMK how you like them. If you don’t, I do have a mailbox. 
Amateur! I have eight pounds of butter and eight pounds of bacon in my freezer. I can’t seem to convince the Ms that things go on sale all the time and that she really doesn’t need to stock up.
Here’s the recipe for my wife’s internationally-famous Carnahan Ginger Drops. They are incredibly good; I’ve been known to request them instead of cake for my birthday.
3/4 cup margarine (for this recipe, it works better than butter)
3/4 cup shortening
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup light molasses
3 1/4 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
2 tbsp. ginger
Beat margarine, shortening, sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. Add molasses. Add flour sifted with baking soda, cinnamon, cloves and ginger. Drop by teaspoonfuls on ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 8-10 mins. at 375 degrees. Makes about 7 doz. cookies.
Enjoy!
Shortbread
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. rice flour
1/2 c. sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 c. butter
Mix flours, sugar salt. Rub in butter with your fingers.
Pat out into a large circle, and scored into wedges.
Or roll out between 2 sheets of wax paper, and cut with cookie cutters, or a glass.
Prick all over with a fork.
Bake at 325 for 30 min. or until golden.
Good way to use up butter, but then you have rice flour left over instead. It keeps well, luckily.
I wasn’t stocking up - I just keep forgetting that I’ve already bought stuff. Sigh.
I use chunky peanut butter (PB & peanuts) AND coconut. So I use and love all 3. Coconut adds a nice extra texture.