COOKIES!

Here are my favorite "Breakfast Cookie" recipes.  They are somewhat big recipes; you may want to cut them in half.  The apple sauce I use is homemade, which gives better structure than store bought.  I haven't actually tried these with store bought apple sauce, so if you try it, let me know how it turns out.

Ginger Cookies
4 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
4 teaspoon ginger
2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter or vegetable oil
3/4 cup apple sauce
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 cup molasses
Cream butter with sugar before adding apple sauce.  Or not, it may not matter.  Mix together wet ingredients, add dry ingredients.  Bake at 350 for 13 minutes.


Pumpkin Cake or Cookies
29 ounce can -or- 4 cup Pumpkin puree
3/4 cup apple sauce
1/2 cup oil or butter
7 eggs
1 2/3 cup white sugar
4 cup whole wheat flour
4 teaspoon baking powder
4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoon ginger
2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Add chocolate chips as desired
Mix wet ingredients, add dry, the usual.  Spoon out as cookies, or pour into a cake pan.  Bake at 350, 13 minutes for cookies, 30 or more for cake.

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
(My favorite!)
1 1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup apple sauce
1/2 cup butter or vegetable oil
1 1/2 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
4 eggs
2 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cup flour (I've made it with whole wheat flour, but the cookies turn out kinda hard, and my kids won't eat them)
4 cup old fashioned oats
Chocolate chips
Mix the usual suspects, add the other guys.  Bake at 375 for about 12 minutes.
UPDATE:  I tried replacing the peanut butter with almond butter.  It's yummy, but it needs a half tsp of salt added and a little extra flour (almond butter is less salty and less thick than peanut butter).


Sorry, I never measure the chocolate chips.  I add about 2 1/2 hand fulls.  And I haven't paid much attention to how long it takes to bake the pumpkin cake.  I check on it at 30 minutes then decide where to go from there.  Did I mention I approach baking the same way my horticulture professors approached soil science?  It's just food!  It's just dirt!  What's the point of being accurate, when it all gets mushed together anyway?

...Time Passing...

It has been a whole year since I have posted in my blog.  Winter in the Old Homestead will do things like that to you.  Also, my laptop died.  I spent the spring focused on moving out, though I did plant the garden just in case.  Pumpkins, sunflowers, salad, beets, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, and some flowers.  The beets and cucumbers did really well, though it was difficult to find uses for the beets.  Someone told me that their greens are delicious.  Maybe I planted the wrong kind of beets.
We moved to Washougal in June.  We love it here.  I haven't been able to get back to my garden much, and it has not been thriving under the stingy watering practises of my parents.  It looks sad and weedy, except for the sunflowers.  I may not be doing any serious gardening for a few seasons.  Sigh.