Cookbook #165: Land O Lakes Cookie Collection, Favorite Recipes™ Magazine, Publications International, 1990.

Cookies, more cookies! Do I really need another cookie recipe? Well no, but just can’t resist.

This cookbook-magazine was published in December 1990. I am sure I was planning my Christmas cookie selection for that year, standing in the grocery line and looking for something to read, and it caught my eye and my interest. Only $2.50! So I put it in my cart and took it home.

Favorite Recipes™ magazine published recipes for various brand names: Best Foods and Karo Syrup are two examples revealed by a google search. Land O Lakes is currently a co-op for milk products and eggs. This little 1990 cookbook, though, is all about butter – butter in each and every recipe. I used to use margarine in cookies, thinking it prevented them from spreading out too much on baking. These days, I much prefer natural butter, and am adapting my current margarine recipes to butter instead. So, Land O Lakes Cookie Collection is of more interest to me in 2016 than it was in 1990.

Today I can buy this booklet online for $1.49! Guess I could have saved myself a little money by waiting.

I don’t think I ever tried any of these recipes. None of the recipes look familiar, and there are no markings, no food stains. There are about 100 recipes in this book, and most of them look pretty good. Drop cookies, bars, fancy cookies, they are all here. I’d love to eat them all, but that old friend/enemy, calories, lurks in every recipe.

I decide to try “Coconut Snowdrops” for this blog. These are simple drop cookies with lots of butter and coconut.

The recipe says you can put everything in a mixer bowl in one step. I am in the habit of mixing the butter and sugar, beating in the eggs, and then adding the flour last, so that’s how I made these.

Coconut Snowdrops
makes about 3 dozen

• 1 cup butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup flaked coconut
• powdered sugar for sprinkling

Beat the butter with the sugar, then add the egg, milk, and vanilla and beat again. Slowly mix in the flour and coconut until incorporated.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto a cookie sheet. (I rolled the dough between my hands to form round balls, but that is optional.) Bake at 350˚ for about 15 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are golden brown. Cool, then sprinkle with powdered sugar.

These are excellent cookies! Soft and rich, but not too sweet. We all liked them, and they disappeared in a hurry!

I will keep this little cookbook and try another recipe someday. I do like the butter-y-ness of these cookies. And it might help me convert some margarine-based recipes to butter instead.

Cookbook #152: Recipes for a Small Planet, Ellen Buchman Ewald, Ballantine Books, NY, 1973.

“If you are already complaining that your don’t want to spend an extra minute in the kitchen, read no further.” So writes Ewald in her introduction to Recipes for a Small Planet. That could be the intro line for this-here blog of mine!

This book goes hand-in-hand with Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Lappé, a book I covered in a previous post. Recipes for a Small Planet provides hundreds of recipes for high protein meatless cooking – combining different vegetables (with dairy) to get complete or complementary proteins, while Diet for a Small Planet focuses mainly on the theory behind the method. (Since Lappé’s book was published, the research her “complementary proteins” is based on has been disputed. Read the Diet post for details.)

The two women, Ellen Ewald and Frances Lappé – or “Frankie”, as Ellen calls her – were close friends. Lappé writes in the Diet for a Small Planet introduction:

“The fun of writing this book was increased immeasurably by the aid and encouragement of friends. First I must thank the person who created the delicious dinner that introduced me to the pleasures of eating without meat – Ellen Ewald. After dinner I went through her kitchen asking: What’s this? What’s that? And she sent me home with a variety of samples – soy grits, whole oats, buckweeat groats, bulgur – all these strange sounding foods which are really amount the most common foods in the world! Ellen is also the person you  can thank for many of the appetizing redipes you’ll find later in the book. Her help made compiling the recipes an adventure.”

Ellen Ewald’s preface reads:

“If we all took a little time to nourish our bodies in the best way possible (instead of in the quickest way), life could be long and healthy. If we choose to disregard the importance of what is in the food we eat, we may as well disregard the importance of having clean air to breathe. (But it should be obvious to all of us that most industries, including the food industry, consider profit before they consider air polution and the internal polution of our bodies.)”

“Food industry”. Unless we have our own gardens, we are dependent on it, for better or worse.

The recipes in this book tend to have long lists of ingredients. Yes, Ellen Ewald likes spending extra minutes in the kitchen! Each recipe is followed by a little box that shows us the “complete protein” combination. Note that hers is not a vegan diet; milk products and eggs are prevalent throughout the book.

The chapters are: breakfast, lunch, soups and stews, salads, dinners, breads, cookies and bars, desserts, and dairy drinks. Some of the recipes do not appeal to me at all: oatmeal soup (stock, milk, garlic, onions, rolled oats, tomatoes), barley and yogurt soup, cabbage soup, garbanzo stuffed cabbage, soybean stroganoff, and split peas in a cheese sauce over rice. I did find several recipes in the bread, dessert, and cookie sections that were more up my personal-taste alley.

My pantry is not stocked with the ingredients to make many of the recipes. Ewald relies heavily on soy beans. Soy products, once the darling of the vegetarian movement, have faded in popularity. It’s not too hard to find soy beans in local stores, and tofu, but soy grits or soy flour can require searching several natural foods markets or online sources.

I choose to make “Banana Spice Bars” for this blog.

I really don’t think these bars will be “light as cake”, not with the whole wheat flour and nuts and seeds to weigh it down. I couldn’t find soy grits, so I used 3 ounces of tofu.

There are 17 ingredients in these bars!

The box at the bottom of the above recipe lists the sources of protein in these bars. The eggs and buttermilk have complete protein on their own; the whole wheat flour and soy grits are complementary; the peanuts and sunflower seeds are complementary. I am making a half-recipe in a 9-inch pan; if I cut them into 9 bars, each will have 5 grams of usable protein.

Banana Spice Bars
makes one 9-inch pan

• 3/4 cup mashed bananas
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup honey (4 ounces)
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1/4 cup buttermilk (or yogurt)
• 1/8 teaspoon almond extract (or vanilla)
• 2 tablespoons soy grits OR 3 ounces tofu
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon cardamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup chopped peanuts
• 1/3 cup sunflower seeds

Put the bananas, egg, honey, oil, buttermilk and almond extract in a blender or food processor. If you are using tofu, add that too. Process until smooth.

Stir together the flour, soy grits (if you are using them), the spices, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and peanuts and sunflower seeds. Pour in the banana mixture and stir to combine (do not overmix).

Pour the batter into an oiled or non-stick-sprayed 9-inch pan. Bake at 350˚ 30-35 minutes, until they test done with a toothpick.

To my surprise, these really are light as cake! And delicious too! They fall into my personal classification as “healthy”: honey instead of sugar, whole wheat flour, very little oil, tofu, and nuts and seeds. A good snack for an active day.

I was going to recycle this cookbook, but this recipe turned out so well that I think I’ll keep it around and try a few other recipes.

Cookbook #137: 101 Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies, Gwen Steege, Storey Communications, Inc., Pownal, Vermont, 2000.

I must have purchased this cookbook in a weak moment! The recipes are great, all of them. But calorie-laden. If you like chocolate chip cookies but are in a cookie-rut, it’s time to open this book and make a slightly different batch of these delights. Me? I love chocolate chip cookies, but I’ve only tried one so far from this cookbook: “Joyous Chocolate Chip Cookies”.

Who contributed the cookie recipes to this book? Well, they are the best recipes from entries to a contest in 1987 sponsored by The Orchards, an inn in western Massachusetts. Entries came from “almost every state, as well as from Italy, Canada, and Mexico”. So, the recipes were contributed by people like you and me. Each recipe has a note written by the person who sent it in. It’s a very friendly book.

And how can there be so many chocolate chip cookie variations? The chips can be chunks and can be of differents sizes or different chocolates (milk, semi-sweet, or bittersweet), or non-chocolate chips can be added to the mix. Flour can be white or whole wheat; a grain like oatmeal can be added. Butter, margarine, vegetable shortening or oil can be used. Different sweeteners are employed: brown or white sugar, honey, corn syrup, molasses. Peanut butter and nuts, fruits and vegetables are nutritious additions.

The first chapter of this book is a great reference for the effects of different oils and sugars on the texture of cookies. For beginners, it’s also a great reference for basic cookie mixing and baking techniques.

Gwen Steege published this and one other cookie book, and a book on gardening. She’s published lots of stuff on knitting.

I decide to make Apple Orchard Chocolate Chippers.

I used the maximum amount of flour and I did add nuts, and I changed the cooking temperature. I had my own apple butter to use in this recipe. Below is my version.

Apple Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes about 3 dozen

• 1/2 cup butter (preferrably unsalted)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup apple butter
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (use less if your butter is salted)
• 6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips (1 cup)
• 1 medium apple, cored and grated
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Cream the butter and sugars, then add the egg and vanilla and beat until light and fluffy. Add the apple butter and mix well.

Stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add this mixture to the creamed mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips, apple, and walnuts.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto lightly greased or parchment lined baking sheets. Bake at 375˚ for about 12 minutes, or until they are beginning to brown.

These are great! They are kind of cake-like, some said they even are like “muffin tops”. They definitely satisfy (or encourage) my sweet tooth.

Cookbook #132: Forrest Gump™ My Favorite Chocolate Recipes, Oxmoor House, Inc., Birmingham, AL, 1995.

“Forrest Gump” was a cultural phenomenon in the 1990s. Probably most Americans of a certain age have seen the 1994 film, starred in by Tom Hanks as the slow but wise and likeable character Forrest Gump who bumbled through life with a Southern accent and a good attitude and lots of amazing adventures. I admit that it isn’t among my favorite flicks, so I am sort of surprised that I own this book. Maybe it was on sale? Dunno.

The book does not credit an author, but the copyright page credits Winston Groom as the author of the Southern-accented introductions to the recipes. Who is Winston Groom? Aha, the author of the novel, Forrest Gump. He also authored several other novels as well as history books.

The recipes are all chocolate and rich. I did use this book – chocolate stains on the pages! Chocolate, cream, butter, candy bars, nuts, sugar, ice cream, cream cheese . . . it’s hard not to make a good tasting dessert. But as I’ve stated before, these lovelies rarely fit into my diet plan. (Moderation, yes, is the answer, but it’s hard to adhere to.)

For this blog? I decide to make Triple-Decker Brownies. With a slight hint of nutrition from oatmeal and pecans, these will be a sweet treat for Halloween festivities, shared with my daughter’s family to spread the calories around. I am already looking forward to my first taste of these brownies!

Triple Decker Brownies, Forrest Gump™
makes 2 8×8-inch pans

Crust

• 1 1/2 cups toasted oatmeal (quick type; toast in dry pan on stovetop until fragrant)
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup butter, melted

Filling

• 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/3 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup pecans, chopped

Frosting

• 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3 cups powdered sugar (sifted if it is clumpy)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/4 cup hot water

Crust: Combine oatmeal, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a bowl. Add the 3/4 cup melted butter and stir well. Press into two greased 8-inch square pans. Bake at 350˚ for 10 minutes.

Filling: Melt 2 ounces chocolate and 1/2 cup butter in a pan. Off heat, add sugar and eggs and mix well. Combine the 1 1/3 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon salt and add to the chocolate mixture alternately with milk. Stir in vanilla and pecans. Spread over the baked crust. Bake at 350˚ for 20-25 minutes. Cool.

Frosting: Melt 2 ounces chocolate and 1/4 cup butter in a pan. Off heat, stir in powdered sugar, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and 1 tablespoon water. Stir in an additional 3 to 3 tablespoons water until frosting is desired spreading consistency. Spread on cooled brownies.

These are sinfully good. I ate one and wanted more more more! Will I make them again? Only if I have help eating them!

Cookbook #127: Cookies, Natalie Hartanov Haughton, HPBooks, Inc., Tucson, AZ, 1983.

Cookies. One of my favorite foods in the world. Homemade, of course!

Cookies was a birthday gift from my mother to me in 1987. My mother was a master cookie baker, as I’ve probably mentioned quite a few times in this blog. Looking through this cookbook today, I realize she put a lot of thought into the choice of this particular book. The recipes are definitely her type of cookie, and the collection reflects her entire repertoire – especially the drop, bar, and rolled cookies.

I have totally under-used this cookbook. There is a coffee-cup stain on one page and I see a couple wrinkled pages here and there, but I didn’t mark any recipes as “tried”. I guess there are huge swaths of my life when I just didn’t make cookies because of the calories. Or, I just baked a handful of same-old-recipes when we all needed a cookie fix.

This will change: today I well reshelve this cookbook with my very-favorites! There are lots of recipes I want to try in this book and all are from-scratch. The photos are great too.

Cookies begins with a few pages of cookie basics. “Successful Cookie Baking” reiterates  the way my mother taught me to bake cookies – and the way I continue to bake them to this day. I actually wrote down some important cookie-baking points in 1993 when I made a bound “Cookie Book” as a present for a friend:

“I always measure flour by dipping a measuring cup into a large canister of flour; I almost never sift before (or after) measuring. I always use unbleached flour. I use margarine (the cheap, stick kind) but you are welcome to substitute butter – I’m sure it would make everything better. Do use real chocolate chips and real vanilla.

“I always beat the shortening, sugar, and egg mixture extremely well, until quite fluffy. Then, add the combined dry ingredients and mix only until they are all mixed in.”

I have switched to butter rather than margarine in most of my cooking. It used to be that we were told margarine was healthier (and cheaper) than butter, so I used margarine a lot. Health advisories have changed, so it’s butter for me these days whenever I try a new recipe. But: many cookie recipes bake up differently with butter than margarine. I remember an Alton Brown episode of Good Eats wherein he made chocolate chip cookies three ways – with butter, with margarine, and with shortening – and each turned out different. And that is my experience too. (When I was still living at home, a girlfriend came over and we made chocolate chip cookies. She pulled butter out of the refrigerator instead of the margarine the recipe called for, and those cookies spread way out on baking. Wow! A first experience with experiments in baking. (Mother always – always! – followed a recipe to a “T”. I hardly ever do that these days.)

Anyway. I am only gradually changing my older margarine-based recipes to butter-based, making sure each time that adjustments do not need to be made to have them turn out the way I like.

I pick up this cookbook on a morning when my day’s plans include something very special: I am going to spend the afternoon with my 20 month old grandson. Thought I: “Ah, I know what I’ll do! I’ll whip up a cookie batter at home and take some to bake with him!”

Grandmothers and cookies, YES!

Which recipe to bake? I choose “Zucchini Drops”. I think they will pass the strict codes of “natural and healthy” foods that my daughter wants for her child. Except the sugar: I’ll have to play that down. “Just a little sugar in these, honest! A ton of zucchini and walnuts – good foods!”

Zucchini Drops
makes about 6 dozen small cookies

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup grated unpeeled raw zucchini
• 2 – 2 1/4 cups flour (use some whole wheat flour if you want to)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
• some salt – only if you are using unsalted butter
• 1 cup flaked cocout
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Using a mixer, beat together the butter, brown sugar, egg, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Stir in the zucchini. Add 2 cups of the flour along with the baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, (and salt), and beat just until thoroughly blended. If the batter is pretty wet, add up to 1/4 cup more flour. Stir in the coconut and walnuts.

(The wetness of zucchini varies. Basically, you want the batter to be stiff enough to drop onto baking pan – my batter needed the extra 1/4 cup flour. If your first batch of cookies flattens out too much, add a bit more flour.)

Drop by teaspoonfulls onto a baking sheet. Bake at 375˚ for 10-12 minutes, until the cookies are lightly browned. (I first tried these at 350˚ for 15 minutes, but I like them a little better baked at the higher temperature.)

These were a big success! They are very soft and moist and flavorful. And a little healthy. They don’t taste real sweet, actually, my husband calls them “muffin tops” instead of cookies. (Go ahead and eat them for breakfast!)

My little cookie eater takes his cookies very seriously! He ate two and wanted more. They put him in a very good mood!

Cookbook #118: Baker’s Best Chocolate Recipes, General Foods Corporation, 1932.

This small cook book had me totally fooled. Piled in a messy stack of booklets, I thought it was just another manufacturer’s cookbook from the sixties or seventies. The cover is missing. The recipes read “modern”, not dated. I find my mother’s notes on a few of the cake recipes, so it wasn’t mine. Finally I think to ask: “when was this published?” OMG, it’s from 1932! It should have been shelved with the vintage cookbooks.

I have found another treasure, albeit a little one.

Here is a photo of the cover that I got on the internet:

In a previous on the Mexican Cookbook, I wrote about the South American origins of chocolate. “The Spaniard ships that returned to Europe were laden with seeds and cuttings, which flourished in various climates.” By 1932, chocolate had been a part of American cuisine for four hundred years. Here’s a quote from the introduction of Baker’s Best Chocolate Recipes:

“Four hundred years of popularity. Few flavors have ever had the widespread popularity of chocolate. Rich . . . smooth . . . fragrant . . .  its delightful flavor has appealed to everyone wherever and however it has been served.”

And about chocolate milk:

“Foamy, creamy-rich cocoa is a wonderful food with which to woo finicky child-appetites – an easy and delicious way of helping to include the daily quart of milk in their meals. Grown-ups welcome cocoa, too, as a way of building up run-down systems. And in this day of slimmer waists, cocoa is popular because it provides nourishment that is satisfying but not fattening.”

According to this book, the first chocolate mill in the US was built on the banks of the Neponset river in Dorchester, Massachusetts. In 1780 it became the establishment of Walter Baker and Company. We can still buy Baker’s chocolate today, although it is currently owned by Kraft Foods.

This excerpt from the book gives the story behind the logo:

I will definitely keep this cookbook. Not only because it is old, but because it has good basic chocolate recipes, like for a cocoa syrup if I run out of the bottled kind, and cakes and chiffon pie and eclairs and on and on. I decide to make the brownies for this blog. Sure, I have dozens of recipes for brownies, but this one is from 1932! I think one of my older cookbooks has the original brownie recipe, but that will be the subject of a later blog post.

Here is a scan of the brownies page and the facing page, just to show you the condition of this book:

Here is a larger version of the recipe:

That’s my mother’s “good” on the recipe. The photo of these brownies is on another page:

I made these just like the recipe, except I cooked them a little less. I even used Baker’s chocolate:

Brownies, 1932 Baker’s version

• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/3 cup butter
• 2 ounces Baker’s Unsweetened Chocolate
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Stir together the flour and baking powder.

Melt the butter and chocolate in a saucepan and let cool a bit.

Beat the eggs, then add the sugar and beat it in. Add the chocolate mixture, beating thoroughly, then add the flour mixture, the vanilla, and the nuts.

Bake in a greased 8-inch square pan for 30-35 minutes, until they test done with a toothpick.

Perfect brownies!

Cookbook #111: Cookies, Brownies and Bars, Classic Cookbooks, The Pillsbury Company, Minneapolis, MN, 1991.

If you have a great memory, you will recognize the photo above. I have already covered this cookbook on this blog. But, that was my copy, and this is a copy that I sent my mother. Since I had entered both into my cookbook database when I stopped at 250 cookbooks, I have to cover it again! My obsessive-compulsive rules, my blog.

I sent this copy of Cookies, Brownies, and Bars to my mother. On the first page, she wrote “from Patty Christmas 1991”. Before I mailed it, I hand-wrote “good” and “great” on many of the recipes, and Mother added her own notes. I’m going to hold onto this cookbook just for that. It makes me smile, a little sadly perhaps, and it brings back memories.

For this blog, I decide to make a very chocolate-y brownie: “German Chocolate Saucepan Brownies”. I used to make these a lot when the kids were around to eat them. I wrote on the recipe: “DELICIOUS”. For me to write in all caps is unusual – it’s like shouting – and means these are stupendous brownies!

I make these just like the recipe.

German Chocolate Brownies

brownies

• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 4-ounce bar of German’s Sweet Baking Chocolate
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

topping

• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons corn syrup
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1 cup coconut
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Heat the oven to 350˚ and butter an 8×8-inch baking pan (I use a glass pan).

Melt the butter and chocolate over low heat. Take off the heat and stir in the sugar and vanilla, then add the eggs and mix in well. Mix the flour with the baking powder and salt, then add to the chocolate mixture. Spread into the prepared pan.

Bake at 350˚ for 18-26 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Take out of the oven and turn the oven to high broil (you can leave the oven rack in the middle of the oven).

While the brownies bake, prepare the topping. Mix the butter, brown sugar, corn syrup and milk, blending well. Then, add the coconut and pecans.

Use a small spoon to drop dollops of the topping on the brownies until the brownies are just about covered evenly. Gently spread the topping until the brownies are covered.

Place the brownies under the broiler. Broil for about a minute: WATCH CAREFULLY! The topping can brown pretty quickly, so don’t leave the area!

Remove the brownies from the oven and cool. It’s best if they are completely cool before you cut them.

DELICIOUS!

Cookbook #95: Cookies, Brownies and Bars, Classic Cookbooks, The Pillsbury Company, Minneapolis, MN, 1991.

I have covered several Pillsbury Bake-Off cookbooks in this blog, and three Pillsbury cookbooks that are not Bake-Off associated: Simply From Scratch Recipes (1977), Healthy Home-Style Cooking (1989), and Cookies, Bars and Brownies (1994). I recall a time when these small cookbooks became available monthly, either at the supermarket’s check-out stand or by subscription. I did a little web research and found this to be true:

“Pillsbury Publications launched the concept of digest-sized, full color food magazines in 1979. By 1989, the concept had developed into a monthly series of Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks that were available at supermarket checkouts and later by subscription. The recipes all use Pillsbury name brand products. The wonderful photos are guaranteed to get you in the mood to cook! Advertising Cookbooks is pleased to carry many of the back issues of this popular recipe magazine.” —Advertising Cookbooks, accessed 12/2014.

These “advertising” cookbooks can have some great recipes. The Advertising Cookbooks website even offers some of the back issues for sale. They sell my Healthy Home-Style Cooking for $6 USD. Pillsbury, Better Homes and Gardens, Betty Crocker, Women’s Circle, Land O Lakes and many other companies produced/produce this type of cookbook. (If interested, do visit the Food Company Cookbook blog associated with the Advertising Cookbooks website.)

My copy of Zestful Recipes for Every Meal – published in 1931 – is the oldest digest-sized, in-color advertising cookbook that I own. It’s pretty cool.

Cookies, Brownies and Bars is one of my favorite Pillsbury Classics Cookbooks. It was published in 1991, at a time when I was baking a lot of cookies for my young family or for friends at work or for Christmas packages. I tried and liked a lot of recipes in this cookbook: Peanut and Candy Jumbles, Almond Kiss Cookies, Ranger Crispies, Oatmeal Coconut Fun Chippers, Chocolate Chip Cookies Supreme, Chocolate Raisin Smile Cookies, Almond Fudge Brownies, Fruitcake Fantasy Brownies, German Chocolate Saucepan Brownies (these are fantastic! I’ve made them a lot), Chocolaty Caramel Pecan Bars, Mocha Almond Fudge Bars, and Applesauce Granola Bars. And the recipe for Chocolate Pixies is quite similar similar to one of my Favorites: Chocolate Chews.

Now that is a record amount of cookie recipes for me to have tried from one book!

Another thing I like about this cookbook are the “Cook’s Notes” on many of the pages. Next to a recipe for gingerbread bars that calls for molasses, a Cook’s Note explains the difference between light, dark, and blackstrap molasses. Another note helps the cook decide between butter and margarine. The Chocolate Raisin Smile Cookies have a Cook’s Note about dark and golden raisins.

And another good thing! A lot of the recipes call for what we generally consider “healthy” ingredients, such as fruits and vegetables (e.g. apples, raisins, zucchini) and whole grains (whole wheat flour, oatmeal). Most of the recipes are from-scratch. They even give directions for baking at high altitude.

I decide to make “Oatmeal Coconut Fun Chippers”. I made them before and marked them as “good”. This drop cookie recipe has brown sugar, a lot of vanilla, oatmeal, coconut, and M&Ms®. I am sure these are better than just “good”!

Note the note next to the recipe in Cookies, Brownies and Bars. It explains the difference between old-fashioned rolled oats, quick-cooking rolled oats, and instant oats. For this recipe, I have the option of either old-fashioned or quick-cooking oatmeal. I chose old-fashioned, which I am advised will result in a firmer textured cookie. I can also choose between butter and margarine: I chose butter. And, I can choose between M&Ms® or chocolate chips: I chose M&Ms®! Also, since we live at high altitude, I added an extra 2 tablespoons flour.

Getting the M&Ms® required a trip to my small town of Lyons, since I don’t keep them in my pantry. It was a frigid, snowy, icy drive, but I did it – anything for this blog! I was lucky to find them at the gas station store, since the two markets in Lyons carry mostly natural foods. Aah, Colorado.

My version is below.

Oatmeal Coconut M&M® Cookies
makes about 4 1/2 dozen

• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 cup butter (I used salted butter)
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 2 3/8 cups flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups oatmeal (I used old-fashioned, quick-cooking might give a more tender cookie)
• 1 cup coconut
• M&Ms®, about 1 1/2 cups (10 oz.)

Beat the brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add milk, vanilla and eggs and blend well.

Stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt, then add to the beaten mixture and blend until mixed in. Stir in the oatmeal, coconut, and chocolate chips.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheets (I lined my cookie sheet with parchment). Bake at 375˚ for 10 minutes.

Comments

These are not just good, they are very good, and chewy and hearty and sweet! These cookies would be a great energy food on a hike, because they hold together well (like a granola bar).

Here is a batch of cookies waiting to be baked. See the M&Ms®?

I baked the first batch 12 minutes and I think they got a little too browned:

I baked the rest of the batches 10 minutes and liked them better. It’s my opinion that they keep better if they are a little bit under-baked.

I’ll make these again!