sweet & salty

I do apologize for the lack of posts lately…we were traveling and now relocating and it has just been a very busy summer with our family! Tonight will be my last wine club meeting (oops, I mean, book club haha!) with a bunch of lovely ladies that invited me to join their club three years ago. It is definitely bittersweet to be moving closer to family but having to say goodbye to friends we have made in this community. 

In the spirit of purging and using up what we have…I decided to bake some cookies for tonight’s club meeting. It started out as “I’ll just bake some cookies with pie pie as an afternoon activity” to “hmm…what can I bake that will get rid of some of my pantry??” Thus the birth of the kitchen sink cookie. It might sound a little nuts (there are nuts in it!), but it actually has a great sweet and salty kinda thing going on, and also has a nice crisp outside with a chewy soft inside. Really it’s quite a satisfying little cookie! Give it a try…and feel free to play around with what you have in your pantry! Maybe you use pistachios instead of cashews…or dried cranberries instead of raisins…maybe don’t use a ketchup flavoured chip…as long as the base is the same (butter, flour, sugar, eggs, etc) your cookies should turn out!

prep: 15 min   bake: 9 min per batch   yield: 50 cookies

what you need:

• 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar (not packed)
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 2 cups crushed chips (I used lightly salted kettle cooked chips)
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 1 cup cashews (crushed)

what to do:

1. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper and preheat oven to 350 F.
   

   checking out the fluffy butter & sugar

2. In a large bowl, mix butter with sugars until light and fluffy.
3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, oats, and baking soda. Stir to mix.
4. Add eggs and vanilla to butter and sugar mixture. Once this is mixed well, add dry ingredients – do not over mix.
   

   crushing chips in a ziplock bag

5. Add chocolate chips, raisins, chips, and cashews to cookie dough and mix just until evenly distributed.
6. Spoon large dollops (about golf ball size) onto parchment paper and leave enough space so that the cookies don’t bake into each other, about 6-8 per sheet. Bake for 9 minutes (convection oven) or slightly longer to get the edges golden brown.
7. Remove from oven, then once cool enough to handle transfer to cookie rack to cool completely. Enjoy! Store in airtight container for several days
   

   this recipe will feed a crowd

   

   cooling cookies