Category: cookies

merry christmas and happy chanukah from pete bakes! i hope you’re having a happy holiday, and if you’re not too cookied out yet, i hope you make your family some of these cinnamon crackle cookies. they go perfectly with a cup of cocoa or coffee after a long day of entertaining, and might just cause your guests to go back and reward you with a few more gifts.

i’m writing this post from my parent’s house in beautiful and freezing king of prussia, pennsylvania on christmas eve, and the house is bursting at the seams with cookies. my mom bakes 18 (seriously) different types of cookies every year. so yeah, i’ll be coming back with some new recipes.

the citrus and the cinammon work together perfectly, and although they literally crackle into a million pieces when you bite down, it’s nothing a quick dunk in a big mug of cocoa won’t fix. speaking of cookies, i hear some pitzels and pressed almond tuiles calling my name right now, so i’ll just say have a safe and delicious holiday!

there are just some recipes that will never get old. the tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe is a great example. another is the quaker oats “vanishing oatmeal raisin cookie recipe.” you don’t have to look far for a good oatmeal cookie recipe; just flip over the lid to a can of quaker oats. it’s been there, unchanged for as long an anyone can remember. i tried doing a little research on the history of the recipe, but i couldn’t nail anything down. anyone out there know anything?

the only change i make with the quaker oats recipe is to completely melt the butter instead of just softening it and slightly underbake the cookies so they are simultaneously chewier and crispier. raisins are great and all, but i love using chocolate chips in these cookies. the best part is that since they have oats in them, you feel like you’re eating something healthy.

there’s good reason to call these “vanishing” cookies. i brought a batch to an election results watching party and they disappeared long before obama was officially declared the 44th US president. you might want to make more than one batch. just throwing that out there.

no doubt about it – it’s time to start breaking out the pumpkin recipes. there’s no wrong time of year for it, but there’s just something about the chill of the fall and the colors of the trees that makes every pumpkin flavored thing more magical. and while pies are going to be dominating everyone’s lives over the next month, i wanted to try something new.

these cookies are like taking tiny pumpkin pies with you wherever you go, and there’s definitely nothing wrong with that. the combination of white chocolate and pumpkin is surprisingly refreshing – i can’t believe i haven’t seen more recipes featuring both.

i based this recipe on the never-fail tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe, with the ingredient amounts slightly tweaked to adjust for the moisture of the pumpkin. there are 2 things that happen as a result: the cookies have to bake for almost twice the amount of time, and the texture becomes much more moist and cakey. they’re irresistible with a giant glass of milk.

i’ll be honest: these cookies are ridiculously amazing. i cannot stop eating them. if you’ve got weak self control in the presence of delicious sweets, you might want to make these and give them to your best friends as halloween or thanksgiving gifts. and if you’re already overloaded on pumpkin recipes, save this one for later and bring back the flavors of the fall all year round.