Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Blah

Sick. Feeling yucky. Baked cookies. Slept a lot. Thinking in monosyllables. Um, except for that one. Why is that such a long word? Anyway, back at work today after being off since Monday afternoon, but as I sit here typing this I'm questioning the wisdom of that decision. Got my orange juice and DayQuil sitting on the desk beside me, and I'm thinking about making some soup.... what was I saying?.... Oh yeah, the cookies....

Tried out another new cookie recipe yesterday, but in my weakened condition, decided not to bother taking pictures. The cookies are called Minnesota Munchers, and I got the recipe a while back from the repository of all good things - Christmas-Cookies.com. Here is the original recipe. It looked like a good enough recipe as is, but me being me I took the liberty of simplifying it a bit.

Minnesota Munchers
makes about 4 dozen cookies

1 C butter, softened
1½ C brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2½ C all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
¼ tsp salt
1½ C crushed Skor bars
½ C semisweet chocolate chips
1 C chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease two cookie sheets.
In a medium bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time, and then stir in vanilla.
Combine flour, baking powder and salt; stir into creamed mixture.
Fold in semisweet chips, Skor bars and pecans. Drop by tablespoons onto cookie sheet.
Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in preheated oven. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to cool completely on wire racks.


The recipe originally called for a cup of milk chocolate chips and a half a cup of toffee bits. Well, that sounded suspiciously like Skor bars to me so I just used a cup and a half of crushed up Skor bars instead. There's nothing quite so relaxing as smacking the hell out of a ziploc baggie full of Skor bars with a wooden mallet, if it wasn't for all the racket.

As you may be able to tell from the recipe, these are just jazzed-up chocolate chip cookies, but the addition of the pecans and the toffee really gives them an extra something. I was planning to use an incredibly pithy and descriptive word there, but my brain hurts right now. However, the pecans give an extra crunch, and the toffee melts, leaving little pockets of crispy toffee crunchies in the middle of the cookies. If I think of it, I'll take some pictures and insert them later. After my nap.

3 comments:

Anne Coleman said...

A certain...je ne sais quoi...perhaps? LOL

I am NO HELP, are I? :oD

Hoping you're feeling better by now!

Ian said...

Hi Anne,

Ah yes, je ne sais quoi. Le mot juste!

And yes, thank you, I am feeling much better now.

Merry Christmas! :-{>

Anonymous said...

Just wanted to let you know that this is not the real Minnesota Muncher recipe. My Mother-in-law won the Taste of Home contest and has full rights to the recipe which is a secret. Not even I, her daughter-in-law knows the recipe. Its a fake...