Erica's recipe for delicious peanut butter cookies.

Happy Halloween, everyone!! I hope you all had a fun weekend of Halloween parties and your kids got more than enough candy. Please show me pictures of your costumes... I LOVE Halloween costumes (especially pet ones)!! Speaking of pet costumes, Wes & I took Athena to the Spooky Pooch Parade at the Myriad Gardens over the weekend. Athena didn't dress up but we saw a bunch of other cute dogs who did.

Geppetto & Pinocchio on the bottom right was one of my favorites. My other favorite is a family dressed in rain ponchos. They were carrying umbrellas with stuffed cats & dogs dangling off of them. It was raining cats & dogs!! LOL I really wanted a picture but they never walked our way.

We met up with my coworker, Jennifer, and her dog, Martin. We've been wanting to get Martin & Athena together for a play date all year. They liked each other & had a fun time sniffing butts <3 

For Halloween this year, I baked peanut butter chocolate chip cookies for my coworkers. I baked these once for my ICP Presentation over the summer. (Everyone in my department had to do a presentation over some random topic my manager assigned us. Mine was beyond boring so I bribed everyone into paying attention by promising cookies after my presentation was over.) The cookies were a huge hit! I baked somewhere between three & four dozen and they were all gone by lunchtime. A few coworkers have asked for them again so I decided to bring that for Halloween (instead of candy).

I have the most basic recipe for peanut butter cookies in my recipe collection. I tweaked it some by adding crushed peanuts and chocolate chips (and removed some of the sugar content). Here is my version of peanut butter cookies.

Soft n' chewy peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe:
       Ingredients needed- 1 cup butter, 1 cup all natural peanut butter, 3/4 cup white sugar, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 2 eggs, 2 1/2 cup flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 cup crushed peanuts*, 1/2 cup chocolate chips, plastic wrap
*To make crushed peanuts, put raw unsalted peanuts in a food processor.

1. Cream the butter, all natural peanut butter and both sugars in a bowl.

2. Add eggs and continue to cream together until smooth.

3. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

4. Slowly add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. I pour in 1/2 a cup of the flour mixture at a time while mixing. If you do too much, flour will fly everywhere!

5. Add in the crushed peanuts. Mix well.

6. Add in the chocolate chips. Mix well.

7. Pour the dough onto a large piece of plastic wrap. Shape into a giant ball, wrap and chill in the refrigerator for an hour.

8. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

9. Roll the chilled dough into small balls and place on a baking sheet. The cookies don't expand too much so you can place them close together.

10. Bake for 10 -12 minutes. Place on a cookie rack to cool.

Mmmmm.... cookies!!!

How to use up raw pecans & chocolate candies...

Pecan cookies with chocolate caramel center.

I am now an expert at shucking pecans.
       At Thanksgiving, Wes went over to his grandparents' house and he and his grandpa picked pecans. I wasn't there but I imagine they picked pecans for appropriately seven hours and eighteen minutes while discussing the complete works of Krisnamurti. Wes returned with a large paper grocery sack FILLED with raw pecans (still shelled). I like pecans. I was excited. Raw nuts are expensive and we just got about 5-6 pounds for free! But I've never shucked nuts before in my life. I wasn't aware how difficult those little suckers would be to open. The excitement ended when I picked up a nutcracker for the first time. LOL
       Over the course of the next three months, Wes & I took shifts shucking them. We'd do a few handfuls at a time. Shuck nuts, hurt fingers, enjoy healthy snack, repeat. When we whittled down the amount in the paper grocery sack and had few enough left, we placed what was left in a Pyrex for storage. The time came for me to need to transport cupcakes to my Arbonne + RagsReborn party. The rest of the pecans had to go. Commence mass nutcracker pecan shucking party!

Text courtesy of Lacey.

After a night of labor, I was left with a rather large bowl of pecans. What to do with them? ... 

                                           

The literal fruits of our labor.

Wes' brother gave me a really nice (and large) box of chocolates for Christmas. I brought them to Christmas dinner at my mom's but we didn't get a chance to open them because there were already plenty of desserts. So, Wes & I took the chocolates back home and put them away.
       Fast forward almost two months ... today I remembered that I have a really nice box of unopened chocolate covered sea salt caramels just sitting in my kitchen waiting to be eaten. I had some for breakfast (they were delicious) and decided I wanted to use the rest for baking. I could have had more for breakfast but I didn't for the sake of my teeth and waistline.

There was only supposed to be 24 chocolates in the box but I got 25 when I opened it! Yay, bonus chocolate!

       I really like those peanut butter cookies with the Hershey's kiss in the middle--well, more like on top. I think they're called "Chocolate Thumbprints". I also really like Turtle (aka caramel and nut... not the animal) flavored desserts. A former coworker of mine would always bring "Trailer Trash Turtles" to our company potlucks. They're pretzels with Rolo candies and pecans on top. I've never made either thumbprints or turtles before but I imagine they're both pretty easy. And the two could probably be combined into one master cookie. Using that as my inspiration, I decided to bake some cookies with the Christmas chocolate candies in the center & crushed pecans in the dough. This is my first time baking these* & the recipe is mostly made up, except I used a sugar cookie recipe from a baking cookbook to get the correct proportions (because baking without correct proportions is disastrous). Wish me luck!
       *I will add adjustments to the recipe once I'm done baking...and if it's terrible, I'll just scrap this blog and post pictures of Sadie & Athena instead. LOL

Caramel stuffed cookie recipe:

       Ingredients- 

• 1/3 cup of granulated sugar*, 
• 1/3 cup of brown sugar*,
       *sugar cookies call for 1/2 cup each of brown & granulated sugars but I went with only 1/3 cup because I didn't want them to be too sweet with the candy in the center. The lesser amount of sugar did not affect the cookie texture or baking.
• 1 stick of butter (at room temperature & softened), 
• 1 egg, 
• 1 1/4 cup of flour, 
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda, 
• chocolate caramel candies (make sure you have one per cookie; not all chocolates are shown in this picture), 
• 1/4 cup of pecan pieces, 
• a dash of nutmeg & a splash of vanilla (both are optional)
        I was able to make 12 cookies from this recipe. The chocolates were pretty large (about 1 x 1 inch squares). The recipe should be able to make one and a half dozen cookies if the chocolate pieces were smaller. 

1. Get a large mixing bowl and cream both sugars & butter. This is easiest to do with an electric mixer.

2. Once creamed, add egg, vanilla & nutmeg and mix together until everything is well blended.

3. In a separate smaller bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda & pecans.

4. Slowly add the flour mixture into the butter mixture. I always use one hand to pour while the other hand is mixing.

5. Wrap completed dough in Saran Wrap and refrigerate for an hour (more or less... I never time these things.) You can preheat the oven while waiting on the dough to chill. Preheat to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

6. After chilling...time to make cookies!! Take a chocolate candy and wrap dough around it. The cookies will be little dough balls with candy in the center. 

7. Place the balls onto a cookie sheet (you can grease the cookie sheet or use parchment paper but I have a Silpat and I LOVE it) and press down onto the balls until the tops are flat. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until golden brown.

8. Cool and enjoy!! (but don't cool for too long...these are best eaten warm so you can truly experience the gooey caramel center!)

These cookies turned out so well!! So so yummy!! Especially for being the first time I ever made them. I have impressed myself. LOL If I had to tweak the recipe, I'd use smaller pieces of chocolate candy and maybe only one type of sugar. And that's only because they turned out a little sweet for my taste.

Sadie & Athena are getting treats!

Athena loves to cuddle with Sadie. She hasn't realized that she's gotten a lot bigger than Sadie so the dog stacking doesn't quite work out sometimes. Sadie usually just gets frustrated and retreats to the pet bed after a while.

This will be another feel-good blog with plenty of dog pictures. Because life is too stressful without puppies. Am I right? Speaking of stressful, I still haven't registered RagsReborn with the Secretary of State nor gotten a tax ID, yet.  Ugh. I have at least started my research on the topics. Someday soon I will blog about my legal journey and offer any advice I may have learned. Anyway...
       I have two very spoiled pups- Sadie and Athena...you know them as the stars of my Instagram and they have been featured on my blog several times over. They're adorable and precious so they deserve all the attention. I have decided that I needed to bake them some dog treats on this Sunday afternoon. I bake plenty of cookies for myself and Wes so it's time that I whip up something for the dogs.

       Many years ago, I threw my first dog, Kensington, a birthday party. I lived Downtown and I invited a few of my friends and their dogs to all go to the dog park at the Myriad Gardens. For party snacks, I made homemade dog treats. (from a recipe I found online, most likely from a blog... I get everything from blogs nowadays.)
       A few summers ago, we had a BBQ at my mom's for Kensington and Sadie's joint birthdays. I made the same treats. The dogs love them and they're easy to make. I think it's just chicken broth, oats and peanut butter. They're also gluten free, grain free and all natural with no filler and all that other good stuff that you're supposed to check for when buying dog food. (I swear my dogs eat better than Wes & I do sometimes.)

Homemade dog treats!

#tbt to Kensington's party at the dog park with Cindye, Ninja & Wiggles. They are all waiting on treats. A friend of mine made Kensington a party hat but it must have fallen off. 

Kensington & Sadie's birthday. We are playing catch with the Frisbee and then someone thought it would be hilarious to have Kensington wear the Frisbee as a tutu. He didn't mind.

My vet sends out quarterly pet heath magazines to all of his clients. I think it's call Vet Street or something like that.  There's a pet photo contest in each magazine and I keep meaning to submit pictures...I'll get on that next quarter! The magazine is a pretty interesting read and this last quarter's included a recipe for dog treats. Perfect timing since I was looking for a new recipe! I had already made the other one twice and wanted something different. The recipe that was in the magazine was a bit plain (it was literally two steps... mash together a banana & a cooked sweet potato, then bake). I thought it might be fun to combine recipes. The first one that I have been making is a savory dog treat and the new one in the magazine is a sweet dog treat. Sweet and savory combinations work with human food so why not in dog food?

Homemade Dog Treat Recipe;

      Ingredients- 1 large banana, 1 large sweet potato, 1 cup of oats & 1/2 cup of chicken broth (I don't have any at the apartment so I'll be mixing chicken bouillon into a boiling water to make chicken broth)

1. Cut the sweet potato into chunks and boil until soft. (like really soft... nice and mushy!) 

Remove from heat, drain and peel. If you're like me and find yourself without chicken broth, now would be a good time to make some using the leftover water used to boil the sweet potato. Because sweet potato flavored chicken broth sounds so yummy if you're a dog! 

       To make chicken broth, add 1/2 teaspoon of chicken bouillon powder to 1/2 cup of boiling water. Mix until dissolved. Set aside. 

2. Cut the banana into slices and mash into the sweet potato.

3. Add the oats and chicken broth to the fruit mixture. Mix well. Warning: this will smell disgusting. 

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Shape the dough into cookies, bones, squares or whatever treat shape you want. I went with round cookies because I'm not feeling too creative today. I made mine a little big so Athena would have to chew them. They're also chewy because of the sweet potato & banana. So no just swallowing it whole!!

       Athena doesn't like chewing... if something is small enough for her to swallow, she will. She almost swallowed a Greenie treat whole (and those things are long and shaped like toothbrushes!). She's swallowed entire dog treats and she inhales her kibble. The only thing we can get her to actually chew up is rawhide treats.

       The dogs were waiting patiently for their treats .They're not allowed in the kitchen so they had to sit longingly in the living room. Sadie was still resting but Athena perked up when she started to smell the treats baking.

5. Place on a non-stick baking sheet or parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake for roughly 45 minutes. Let cool, then serve. These only last a few days so have your pups gobble them up before they perish! 

Erica's history with oatmeal raisin cookies.

Oh, oatmeal raisin cookies! Just look at you in all your glory!

They aren't even my favorite but I feel like they're everyone else's favorite. I can name four people just off the top of my head who loves them. Well, lets just do that:

(Brace yourself for a long blog...its story time with Erica!!)

1. One of my best experiences in college was living with my friend, Dominique. She is the most pure, good and innocent person I know. She's just one of those "childlike wonder" people who loves life. She's definitely grown up since we lived together but, to this day, she still sees life with positiveness and hope. 

Oh yes, be prepared for some old school pictures. Like from almost 10 years ago!

She is actually the one who got me into real grown up cooking and appreciating food. I worked and maintained a spectacular GPA throughout my college experience so I didn't have time to cook too much. I just made super simple things like rice or chicken or salads. Sure, I cooked more than the average 20 year old but it was not real culinary cooking. When Dominique and I moved in together, we actually cooked and had meals. Meals, guys, ... not just eating to get full... but real meals where we talked about and appreciated what we were eating. It was great! One of the first things we made was oatmeal raisin cookies. I think we were bored and she wanted to bake. I never used recipes- which both baffled and appalled her that I just made things up in my head- so she decided it was good to start with the recipe on the Quaker oatmeal box. I've tweaked it a bit over the years but I still use that recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies. 

2. Dominique and I had the best neighbors we could have ever asked for. We lived across the parking lot from a group of hilarious and fun guys. It was Jeff, Mike and Dan and their neighbor, Jonathan, was always over, too. We were like the 2 honorary bros to their group. 

Dominique, me, Jonathan and Jeff. The four of us hung out the most.

On a particular depressing Valentine's Day, Dominique and I made oatmeal cookies and brought them over. It ended up turning into one of the best Valentine's Days of my life. It was that day that we learned that oatmeal raisin cookies are also Jeff and Jonathan's favorites.

                                       Before cookies : (                                         Cookies to make it all better : )

We stayed friends as best we could after we all graduated. Oatmeal raisin cookies came into play twice more with this group of bros. Not long after I graduated, Jonathan invited me over just to make cookies! It was pretty great. My cookie legacy lives on!

Jeff and I actually stayed friends for quite some time after our graduations. He is another one of those good and positive people that I adore and need more of in my life. One night when we were hanging out, Jeff decided that we needed to make cookies for Dominique. We baked about 3 dozen, shoved them in a box and mailed them off (she was in Colorado at the time). I have no idea if she ever got them or if they were even any good but it was like the one thing that tied us all together.

Here's a picture of us doing back bends. I'm sure we didn't back bend while baking but I saw this picture on one of my old Facebook albums and just had to laugh. I was in my early twenties but living like a little kid. Childlike innocence is one of the things I hated most about myself as I was growing into adulthood but its pictures like this that remind me it wasn't so bad. 

3. Now fast forward to present day real life. (I've lost touch with Jeff and Jonathan. Dominique and I still call and write occasionally.) When Wes and I were still just friends, I learned that his favorite cookie is oatmeal raisin. He and two of his best friends were heading out for a video game convention in Texas a few summers back. I baked cookies and sneaked them into his apartment with his luggage. All throughout that weekend, he, Travis and Cameron had cookies. It was the first "I'm an awesome girlfriend" thing I did for Wes. 

Enough sentimental chit-chat. Lets bake!

Vanishing Oatmeal Cookies:

Ingredients:

• 1 stick and 6 tablespoons butter at room temperature 
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1 & 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 3 cups old fashioned & uncooked oats
• 1 cup raisins

1. Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix together with any kind of large spoon.

2. In a separate large bowl, cream butter and both sugars with an electric mixer. I used to do this by hand until Wes got me an electric mixer for Christmas the year before last. That saved my life! 

3. Add eggs and vanilla and continue to mix with electric mixer. 

4. Slowly add flour mixture from step #1. Keep mixing with the electric mixer. I add a little flour, mix a little, and add a little more until its all gone.

5. Add oats and raisins; continue to mix well. While mixing, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

6. Shape the cookies into whatever size dough balls you want (I make them fairly small and get 3-4 dozen out of this recipe). This year for the holidays, Wes got me a cookie scooper and a Silpat. Two more things that are saving my life! I like to keep the dough in the refrigerator overnight before shaping into balls & baking but it doesn't say to do that in the Quaker recipe. 

7. Bake 8 to 10 minutes (until light golden brown).