Candy Topped Cookies

Here is another cookie recipe for you, and this one is a classic. These candy-topped cookies are soft, chewy, sweet but not cloying. Kids love helping with making them, and everyone loves eating them. The best part of this recipe is how versatile it is—you can add stuff to the dough, put stuff on top of the cookies, or any combination of the two. So without further ado, I present to you the candy-topped cookie recipe.

It all Comes Down to Pizza

I first published a recipe for pizza dough on this blog four years ago. Back then my wife and I were living in Idaho Falls, my wife had just started her internship at EIRMC, and I was looking for a full-time job. My oldest son was less than a year old, and life was a whole lot simpler, but not necessarily better. A lot has changed since then, but one thing has remained constant—I love pizza!!!!

Banana Bread

When I was growing up, banana bread was one of those things that I could only ever remember my dad making. When the bananas would start looking so disgusting (to a young child) that they were ready to be thrown away, it was time for Dad to make banana bread. His recipe came from the Betty Crocker cookbook—you know, the one with the red cover—and it was the only recipe for banana bread that was ever made in our house.

The recipe yields 2 loaves, but in a family with 8 bread lovers, those loaves didn't stick around very long. It wasn't quite as bad as "if you blink you missed it," but it was close. Nowadays, with my family it lasts longer, but only because my little boys can't eat it. I still have to exercise restraint to not eat the entire loaf myself......in one sitting.....for real.

Heavenly Dinner Rolls

I have a thing for breads. My wife says I have a gift for them, in fact. It is true that I love to bake bread, and have been doing so for a long time.

At first, I followed recipes found in books and online. These worked pretty well, and I learned a lot about baking from the experience. Then, when I was serving a LDS mission in Switzerland, I found Betty Bossi's Brot und Brotgerichte, and discovered that one can use a standard bread recipe and technique to make lots of different types of bread. I also learned the basics of the science of bread baking—namely that you can substitute ingredients as long as you somehow make up the difference.

Then, while working for Lofthouse, I was able to take a series of online classes from the American Institute of Baking, called "The Science of Baking." As part of this course I learned about bakers' percentage, which changed how I view baking forever. In short, bakers' percentage, unlike formula percentage, sets all ingredients as a percent of the total weight of flour. Why is this so life-changing? Well, it means that you can easily change the amount of one ingredient without having to recalculate every other ingredient. I always use this technique when I am writing a recipe.

This recipe started as a desire to make a really, really rich and delicious dinner roll to accompany some baked potato soup. I wanted something that was airy yet filling, sweet and rich yet chewy, and full of delicious flavor. The secret to achieving all of this is in the technique, the ingredients, and some patience. And without further ado, let's dive into the recipe for the best dinner rolls you will ever have.

Orange Gingerbread Cookies

Christmas time is a wonderful time. A wonderful time of the year.
Filled with smiles and laughter and fun all around.
With cakes, pies, and cookies your joy will abound.
Gingerbread cottages sparkle with snow,
Yet their fate is to wait til in the garbage they go.
Why not instead, with joy and with glee,
Make a gingerbread cookie? It's easy you'll see.
All you need is some time—and an orange or two—
And then for Christmas treat fixes, your friends will come to you.

I really do love gingerbread. I apparently like it so much that I wrote a (really bad) poem about it. What I don't like are hard "gingerbread" crackers over-flavored with cloves and allspice whose sole reason for existance is to be turned into amateur building material.

Chewy CSID-Friendly Cookies

DISCLAIMER: This recipe is intended to bea reduced-starch/starch-free/sucrose-free recipe.
These cookies are NOT low-calorie, sugar-free, or gluten-free.
Please use caution when adding a new food to a special or restricted diet.

Hello again recipe seekers. I am very glad that you have decided to join me today as I have a great recipe to share with you—CSID-Friendly COCONUT FLOUR COOKIES. Before you scoff and hit the back button on your browser in disgust at yet another failed cookie recipe, give me a minute to explain.

Way back in January of 2013 my oldest son was diagnosed with CSID, which is a genetic disorder which prevents his body from producing the enzymes needed to break down sucrose (table sugar) and maltose (a major component of all starch). Think of it like lactose-intolerance for sugar and starch. A few months later my second son received the same diagnosis. Over the past almost three years we have managed to recreate many "normal" foods in a CSID-friendly fashion, but I hadn't yet really been able to make a really good cookie recipe for them. This was somewhat of a sour point with me as I worked for two years developing cookie recipes for Lofthouse Cookies.

True, there are many recipes for cookies which do not use wheat flour as their base, and there are even some for cookies which don't use any grains. Meringues come to mind, as do one of my favorite Christmas cookies—Zimtsterne. While both of these cookies are delicious, they are a pain in the rear to make, and they don't really work for the good old American staple, chocolate chip cookies. My wife has searched on and off for a good CSID-friendly cookie recipe, and has found some based on coconut flour, but the cookies they yielded didn't really work for me. They were often dry and crumbly, and I wanted something soft, moist, and chewy.

Then one Saturday I was suddenly hit with inspiration, and I knew how to solve my problem. Chocolate chip cookies are sweet (a no brainer, just add a sweetner), but also chewy, which is brought about by a combination of hygroscopic properties of brown sugar and the protein network created by the gluten found in flour. My revelation was that I could replicate both of these by using agave syrup and vital wheat gluten. The bulking of wheat flour was replaced by almond flour, and the moisture absorption was accomplished with coconut flour. Further structure comes from two eggs instead of the usual one. My go-to replacement for sugar, dextrose, isn't sweet enough to use by itself, so I split the amount 50/50 with fructose. And just like that, a cookie was born.

What was a little suprising for me was that these cookies were actually really good. If you didn't tell me before hand that they were developed to be a CSID-friendly cookie, I probably wouldn't have known. They are delicately coconutty, delightfully chewy, and deliciously moist. These would be a good base for frosting, ice cream sandwiches, or eating with milk. Enjoy!

Peanut Buttery Chocolate Buns

I really don't know what to say about this recipe because I can only say delicious so many times. These buns are truly, completely, and amazingly delicious.

The idea from this recipe came from wanting to create, of all things, peanut butter and jelly bread. I found lots of recipes online for peanut butter quick breads, and for buns made from rolling out regular dough and spreading it with peanut butter and jelly before rolling it up again. They looked good, but seemed really messy, and I have never considered quick breads to be a true bread, but rather a kind of cake. I wanted sliceable sandwich bread with peanut butter in the dough. Once again, I had to make up my own recipe. Oh darn. (^_^)

I made a loaf, and found it to be tasty, and I immediately starting thinking of the possibilities. Then I saw an episode of Cook's Country where they made cinnamon buns, and the idea for this recipe just came together.

Basically, this is a basic sweet roll dough with peanut butter replacing the fat in the dough. I had to take out some of the flour as well to make up for the solids in the peanut butter, but more on that later. The filling is your typical cinnamon roll filling except you replace the cinnamon with cocoa powder. Instead of cream cheese filling I decided to go with a chocolate donut glaze to complete the recipe.

The flavor is intensely peanut buttery, with chocolate permeating the entire bun. If you are fan of peanut butter filled chocolate cups, you will absolutely love this recipe. Just make sure you invite some friends over or you will end up eating the entire batch by yourself.

The BEST Low-Carb Bread EVER!!!

Updated 3/9/2016 to include pictures of pizza made with this dough as the crust.

I have finally posted the tutorial for this recipe. To be honest, this is the longest I have ever worked on a recipe, and I only got it where I think I want it about a month ago. As you can guess by the title of this post, the following recipe is for low-carb bread.

My quest for a good recipe for low-carb bread started two and a half years ago when my two oldest sons were diagnosed with CSID (congenital sucrase-isomaltase deficiency). This disease creates, in very short terms, starch and sugar intolerance. After I got over the initial period of shock and decided to start making recipes—some of which are on this blog—I realized that a really good bread would be hard to find.
The main reason for this is that bread is mostly made up of wheat flour, which is about 75% starch, which is a big no-no for my kids. Low-carb breads, for the most part, rely on almond flour or coconut flour, and wind up more like quick breads or cakes than fluffy white bread. My goal was to find/write a recipe for bread which fit the following criteria:

1. Would be low in digestible carbohydrates.
2. Would have a bite & chew similar to that of "regular" bread.
3. Would be made of easy-to-purchase ingredients.
4. Would be leavened by yeast fermentation.
5. Looked, smelled, and tasted good.
6. Could be used in all applications like wheat bread.

I scoured the internet for recipes, and even tried a few out, but I wasn't ever really happy with what I found. There were some common elements to all of the recipes, so I decided to use those to create my own recipe.

Anyone have syrup?

Um, hi everybody. So, um, sorry that I haven't written anything in a long time. Would you believe me if I said I was busy? No? Oh well. Even if you don't believe me, I promise that I have been really busy—work has been crazy and there's been a lot going on at home, and I just haven't been able to dedicate the time to writing.

But never fear, for I have another post for you all, and it's one that has been often requested by people whose lives have been affected by CSID. Today's recipe, if you weren't able to deduce it from the title of the post, is for waffles. Yes, I will share with you my recipe for low-carb, CSID-friendly waffles. My son Jayson loves these, and Samantha has even said that they aren't at all bad. Okay, fine, they're pretty good considering that they contain no grains whatsoever.

What is great about this recipe is that it is easily scaled up or down depending on how many waffles you want to make.

Chocolate lovers cupcakes and frosting

Here is another CSID-friendly recipe for all of you, and this is probably one of my favorites. Dark Chocolate Coconut Flour Cupcakes!! My quest for a CSID-friendly cupcake began with my sister-in-law's family, actually, because they have a lot of birthdays all clustered in one part of the year. Because we live so close to their family, we were always invited to the family birthday parties, but I must admit I had some underlying hesitancy because I knew that Jayson wouldn't be able to eat the birthday cake, and I didn't want him to feel left out.

So I started searching for chocolate cupcake recipes that would be CSID friendly, and I was rather lucky in my search because I could tap into the really big paleo-diet movement, which eschews grains and refined sugars for the most part. I decided to go with a chocolate cupcake because I knew that the cocoa would keep the coconut flour content lower, and would just be really delicious.

Anyhow, I found a recipe and tried it out, and the results were decent, but to be honest, I wasn't a big fan. Jayson ate it, especially since I made a sugar-free ganache to go on top, but I wouldn't eat it. They weren't very sweet and the cocoa made them kind of bitter. I wanted something better, something that with a texture more similar to that of real cupcakes.

I found another recipe which looked promising, but the mixing protocol was more similar to muffins than cupcakes. "Wait a second," I told myself, "Why not take these ingredients and adapt them to a cupcake recipe methodology you know works." Brilliant! The result was a light, fluffy cupcake with a deep chocolate flavor, and just enough sweetness to be a cake without getting overpowering with a frosting.

Nut, Sesame, and Cheese Crackers

One of the most difficult things about having kids with CSID is snack-time. Seriously—ever since Jayson learned what crackers were, all he wanted to eat were crackers. So when we found out he couldn't have them we were kinda devastated. What the heck were we supposed to give this kid for a snack? He loves raisins, but they have a lot of fiber in them and kinda made him go more than we liked. He likes cheese sticks, but only sometimes, when he asks for them. Grapes are too sour for his taste right now, and most other snacky foods have either too much sugar or too much starch.

I had spent a lot of time thinking about how to make him something he would like, when I stumbled upon a recipe for low-carb crackers and decided to give them a whirl. I was expecting something really tough and flavorless, but these taste amazing.

Once Jayson got over his fear of the loud evil food processor and realized what I was doing, we were subjected to cries of, "Cacker! Racker! Carcker!" and other such variations that only an almost two-year-old can come up with.

This continued until they came out of the oven when his persistent requests transmogrified into full-blown demands for crackers. In short, these are really delicious, and are a great snack for people with CSID, but also for anyone else who is trying to live a low carb diet.

Root Beer Cookies

I love ice cream sandwiches. They are just so deliciously tasty and fun to eat, not to mention being a great tie back to when I was younger and only had them on very rare occasions. I remember making ice cream sandwich cookies at work one day and I had the idea that a root beer float ice cream sandwich would be delicious, if I could only find a recipe for root beer cookies.

So, I looked around the internet and found a couple recipes, but none of them had everything I wanted. One thing they all had in common was root beer concentrate, so that was a definite must, but the rest of the recipe seemed to be up for debate. So I figured, I make cookies for a living, what's one more cookie?

The butter was an obvious choice, and I thought brown sugar would complement the earthiness of the root beer concentrate. To round out the flavor I added vanilla extract. Also on my list of ingredients was cream of tartar to get some of the acidity of root beer. I made a batch and found they still lacked the bite of root beer, so I upped the acidity with a little bit of citric acid. Finally I got some cookies that I felt were worthy of being given the name of root beer.

These cookies are perfect for making ice cream sandwiches. They have a deep root beer flavor that is not overpowering, and pairs perfectly with vanilla ice cream. For tips on making ice cream sandwiches read this post.

3 Secrets of Perfect Ice Cream Sandwiches

I love cookies and ice cream. The combination of sweet, sugary cookie and the rich, mellow ice cream is one that is hard to beat. Maybe I am weird, but I think the ideal sandwich is similar to a FatBoy—soft and tender cookie and firm ice cream. I could eat these ice cream sandwiches by the dozen. Actually, I need to make sure I don't eat one because I have that hard of a time stopping.

But all too often when I am offered a homemade ice cream sandwich I end up being disappointed because the cookies are so hard I can't bite through them without inevitably squeezing all the ice cream out from between the cookies and onto my shirt or—even worse—the floor. My own experiments were not any more successful though, and I had to settle for eating my cookies and ice cream in the form of crushed cookies mixed into ice cream. Not that this is bad, but crushed cookies do not a sandwich make.

There has to be a solution, I would say to myself. After all, ice cream and cookie combinations are found everywhere in the frozen dessert section of the grocery store, in the form of cookies & creme ice cream and, of course, ice cream sandwiches. But it wasn't until I got a project at work to make cookies intended for ice cream sandwiches that I learned the secret to perfect ice cream sandwiches.

And before you run away screaming and waving your arms shouting about chemicals and artificiality, let me tell you the secret isn't as complex or scary as you think, and it's something you can do in your own kitchen and freezer. And now let me share with you the secrets I learned as a professional baker about how to make perfect ice cream sandwiches.

Coconut Flour Muffins

As I have written about a couple times on this blog, my two sons have a condition called CSID—they lack the enzymes to digest sucrose and starch. It has been a trial to find recipes for them to eat, especially recipes for baked goods. So far, my only successes have been adapting some paleo recipes and some low-carb recipes. Believe it or not, the common solution to baking for people with digestive troubles—a gluten-free diet—is a pretty bad place to look for recipes for people with CSID. The reason for this is that most gluten-free recipes have a ton of starch in them to replace flour. But for people with CSID, the starch is the enemy, not the gluten.

Anyway, so low carb and a few paleo recipes are the way to go. Low carb recipes are generally the most easily adaptable to CSID because reducing carbs automatically means you have reduced sugar and starch. In screening recipes the only things to watch out for are nuts and fruits. Paleo diets require a little more scrutiny because a paleo diet, while eschewing refined grains and refined sugars, has no qualms about using fruits high in sugar—bananas and apples—or other ingredients which aren't CSID friendly.

This particular recipe was passed on to me from my older sister (the same one who gave me the recipe for my Caramel Chex Mix). Her brother-in-law is on the paleo diet, and she occasionally makes things for him. To give you an idea of how much my son loved these muffins, let me tell you a story about the first time I made these. Once the first batch was cool enough to eat (barely out of the oven in my opinion) I gave Jayson half a muffin, which was promptly engulfed. He then proceeded to pester me with his calls of "more, more, more," until I gave him the other half. I was hesitant to give him more, partially because he had never had some of these ingredients before, and partially because he doesn't need to have two or three muffins. So he took matters into his own hands and decided to eat the crumbs...and the muffin liner. Yeah, they are that good.

Home, home on the ranger cookie

I know I put a lot of cookie recipes on this blog, but I have a great love for cookies. They are normally small, hopefully moist, and deliciously sweet. Unfortunately for me, too many cookies are far too sweet, and make not only my teeth but also my stomach hurt. Recently I have been a far greater fan of cookies which have more going for them than the simple fact that they are a cookie. That's why when I develop a cookie recipe, I try to use less sugar than similar recipes, so that the other flavors may come closer to the surface.

This being the case, I would have to say that one of my all-time favorite cookies has to be the ranger cookie. There is just something about eating a cookie that is half-way to being a granola bar that appeals to the more my more, shall we say, grown-up tastes. Really: there is so much good stuff in this cookie that I would definitely consider it a decent breakfast food.&nbspBy the way, we are just going to ignore the fact that I consider any cookie to be a good breakfast food. Deal?

Ranger cookies are another thing I can actually remember about my childhood. Back then it was mainly my mom or my brother who made them, and I remember enjoying pilfering what felt like fistfuls of dough to snack on, it was that good. To be honest, I was never completely successful making these cookies according to my mom's recipe, so I have made a couple changes of my own: halving the sugar, increasing the egg, and replacing butterscotch chips with chocolate chips.

I won't promise that these cookies are good for you, but they are definitely good for your cravings. Trust me when I say that every person I have made these cookies for has become addicted to them. They are unlike any other cookie I have tried, but I would try them again and again and again.

Easy Dinner Rolls

A while back I posted about the versatility of a single bread dough. In the entire post I was going on about how a single bread recipe is easily modified to fit almost any application. I think I gave about 8 different ways the "master recipe" could be used.

Anyway, one of those applications was for dinner rolls. It had been a while since I wrote the recipe for those, and I have been wanting to make it again. Well, Sunday I got the perfect opportunity. My sister-in-law had done a roast in the Crock-Pot, and mentioned about 2 hours before dinner that she wished that she had asked me to make bread, because bread pairs well with roast. Enter the dinner rolls. I knew they wouldn't have tons of time to rise, but they would have enough.

Chocolate Chips Cookies

Chocolate chip cookies are, I would say, a truly American creation. They are also one of my most favorite recipes. I can remember eating chocolate chip cookies almost my entire life. Every family has their recipe, and rarely do they stray from it. My family was no different: making chocolate chip cookies meant making my mom's chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate chip cookies are also, I would imagine, one of the first baking experiences many children have. If they aren't helping to crack the eggs (so many eggshells), or pour in the flour (I'm dreaming of a white kitchen), they are helping to scoop out the cookies or...um...remove the evidence. I know, I know, there is some risk involved, but come on. Eating cookie dough is one of those things that every child needs to experience.

Anyway, chocolate chip cookies are one of the few recipes that all of my siblings know how to make. A couple of my sisters have branched out and now have their own recipes, but we all started with my mom's. By the way, before I tell you more about my family's recipe, I need to point out that the following recipe isn't my mom's: this is. I love my Mom's cookies, and they will always have a special place in my heart. The only problem is that when I was younger, I could eat probably a dozen of my Mom's cookies, but now I can only manage one or two before I get sick. I think they are just too sweet for my current tastes. But hey, I've grown up. And my cookies have grown up with me.

I wish I could say that this post's recipe is one of my own devising, but that wouldn't be 100% truthful. To be honest, it is one of my own conglomerating. When I was little I used to read cookbooks for fun, and the habit never really stopped. So I have seen a lot of cookie recipes in my life. This recipe kinda combines some of my favorite things about a lot of those recipes, along with a few tips that I have learned along the way.

Andes Mint Cheesecake

I have mentioned before that a few of the recipes on this blog were inspired by my Mom's baking. This recipe is one of those. We didn't have it that often, maybe only three or four times, but every time we did I remember loving it. It actually was one of my first experiences with cheesecake, and every cheesecake I have had since I compare to this one. After talking with my mom about it, I learned that the original recipe came from the (unfortunately) no-longer-in-print magazine McCall's, specifically from the December 2004 issue.

The texture is silky smooth, and the flavor divine. I love it because the mint flavor is just strong enough to be dominant, but subtle enough to not be dominating.

In fact, I love this cheesecake so much that I figured out how to make it in a smaller size just so I could justify making it for myself. If you are also so inclined, I will include the ingredient amounts for a 6-inch cheesecake at the end of the recipe.

As a note, the original recipe called for 1 1/3 cups coarsely chopped Andes mints. I don't know if you have ever bought Andes mints before, but to get enough for the recipe you need about 3 boxes, which will run you around six bucks. On the other hand, a 10 oz bag of Andes mint chips only costs around $2.50, and is more than enough for this recipe.

Trust me, if you make this recipe you will fall in love with it, and if you bring it anywhere don't expect to take home leftovers, because it will be completely gone.

Sugar Cookies

For some reason sugar cookies just seem to evoke the feelings of childhood in adults. Maybe it's because I only can remember eating sugar cookies when I was barely tall enough to see over the table, or because stamping out sugar cookies reminds me of small hands. But for whatever reason, sugar cookies just seem to mean childhood.

A while back I worked for a bakery and learned some fun things about baking cookies, which when combined with what I learned during my food science classes in school, hopefully let me make a good recipe for you.

Gourmet Boiled Cookies

I can remember making boiled cookies for a long time. They were always delicious: moist, chewy, peanut buttery, and just a little bit sticky. And to me, they were always "boiled cookies." It wasn't until I got to college that I found out that the rest of the world had a different name for one of my favorite cookies: no-bake cookies.
Then when I was in Switzerland serving my mission for the LDS church, I got a real craving for the cookies, but didn't have the recipe. So I borrowed one from a friend, and tried it out. The result was not anything like what I remembered. They were grainy, hard, and overloaded with chocolate.
After I got married, there arose the occasion to make my beloved boiled cookies for some friends, and just for fun I decided to spruce the recipe up a little. The following recipe is the result.