Maple Snickerdoodles & Toffee Butter Cookies

Below are two cookie recipes that I used for my Christmas 2011 tins, both from Kim at Lovin’ From The Oven. The maple snickerdoodles had just the right hint of maple and were very delicious. For the toffee butter cookies I followed the recipe posted on Kim’s blog, but upped the amount of toffee bits from 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup. The cookies came out extremely soft (even a week later) and had a mild sweetness that I enjoyed.

    

Check out the recipes for Maple Snickerdoodles and Toffee Butter Cookies over at Lovin’ From the Oven!

Candy Cane Kiss Sugar Cookies

Around the holidays I tend to go a bit crazy with the candy. Even worse than Halloween, actually. The reason? Special, limited time only selections. Dark chocolate mint kisses. Candy cane kisses. Cherry cordial kisses. Mint M&Ms. Cinnamon M&Ms. Peppermint bark EVERYTHING. Can we say candy overload?

One thing to do with all of this holiday candy is to include it in recipes, especially baking recipes. Making cookies is one of the easiest to do – simply prepare the dough and then mix in the candy pieces. That is how candy cane kiss sugar cookies were born.

For the base of the cookies I used a recipe posted on Kim’s blog, Lovin’ From the Oven, for Soft Sugar Cookies. Before rolling the dough into balls for baking, I stirred in 1 bag of chopped Hershey’s Candy Cane Kisses. Then I baked the cookies per the time listed in the recipe. These cookies turned out to be very soft and delicious, with the right amount of peppermint taste.

Peanut Butter Blossoms

I’m kicking off my new blog with one of my boyfriend’s favorite cookies — peanut butter blossoms. I decided to surprise him by baking these last week. I must confess, I have never made peanut butter blossoms before. Sure, I’ve made peanut butter cookies in the past (which is essentially a pb blossom minus the Hershey’s kiss), but I had never considered putting a delicious chocolate kiss in the center. Peanut butter + chocolate is by far one of the best combinations ever.

I could’ve made it easy on myself and used a packaged pb cookie mix, but I wanted to put that extra bit of love into these cookies. I used a recipe found on one of my favorite blogs, Lovin’ From the Oven. Don’t be surprised if you see me featuring several of the recipes from Kim’s blog. She definitely knows her stuff.

Check out the recipe over at Lovin’ From the Oven!