Holly’s Happenings

At one of the forums that I frequent, someone recently posted a thread asking us to share our favorite cookie recipes. She posted one for Ginger Snaps that I’m DEFINITELY going to have to try sometime because it sounds AWESOME! So I’m going to share with you two of my all time FAVORITE cookie recipes, both of which I just made the other day…LOL! But be warned, they BOTH are very addicting and could easily make it necessary for you to have to enter a cookie drug rehabilitation center once you start eating them!

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Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon backing soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla
2 eggs
1/2 package milk chocolate chips

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Line cookie sheet(s) with parchment paper or grease thoroughly.
2. Mix/sift flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3. In a medium sized bowl cream together butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in vanilla and eggs until creamy. Mix in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda and salt) until well blended. Stir in milk chocolate chips by hand with a wooden spoon.
4. Drop cookie dough onto prepared cookie sheet(s) by tablespoon, making sure they are about 3 inches apart.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until the edges get a golden color. Remove from oven, allowing them to cool on cookie sheet(s) for a few minutes before moving them to wire racks or table to cool completely.

This batch makes approximately 4 dozen cookies if you make them on the smaller side, less if you make them larger, so if you want to make a large batch I would suggest mixing up a double batch of the ingredients. I’ve never really cared for Chocolate Chip Cookies, but I LOVE these ones! They remind me quite a bit of the soft version of Chips Ahoy cookies that you can buy in the stores!

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Soft Sugar Cookies

Ingredients
3 cups sugar
2 cups Crisco oil
4 eggs
2 teaspoons baking soda (dissolve in liquid ingredients)
6 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups buttermilk (I’ve used both the fresh and the powdered, both work fine!)
6 cups flour
3 teaspoons vanilla
Colored sprinkle sugar

The MOST important things about this recipe are A). It makes a HUGE amount of batter, so you may want to cut it in half and B). dissolving the baking soda into the liquid ingredients HAS to be done or the cookies don’t turn out correctly! I’ve also found that it’s best to have at least 2 cookie sheets when baking these, but more than 2 is even better! Also, if you don’t have a stand mixer, it’s VERY helpful if you havea
Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (232 Degrees C) and line cookie sheet(s), or grease thoroughly.
2. In a LARGE mixing bowl sift together the flour, sugar and baking powder and set aside.
3. In another large mixing bowl mix oil, eggs, vanilla, buttermilk and baking soda.
4. Slowly pour sifted dry ingredients into liquid ingredients mixing continuously until thoroughly mixed. It is a very “runny” mixture, with almost a paste consistency.
Baking Directions
This is where things get REALLY REALLY busy, I have made these many, many times and the one thing that I’ve learned is that when you start baking these, you absolutely cannot walk away!
Drop dough by tablespoon onto lined or greased cookie sheets, sprinkle with colored sugar if desired and bake in the oven for 6 minutes.

That six minutes they are baking gives you just enough time to get the next sheet ready to put into the oven when you take one out. The “method” that I’ve found that works well goes like this. A). Prepare first sheet and put into the oven B). Prepare next sheet to go into oven C). Pull sheet out of oven when the timer goes off, remove from sheet and place on table or counter (I usually cover a small folding table with aluminum foil or waxed paper to put the cookies on when I remove them from the cookie sheet) D). Put next cookie sheet into oven.

These cookies are VERY light and almost fluffy. I have found that I don’t like how they taste when they are frosted, so that’s why I sprinkle the tops of them with colored sugar before baking. I change the color of the sugar according to what season I’m baking them in or for the occasion I am baking them for (i.e. red and green sprinkle sugar for Christmas, pastel colored sprinkle sugar for Easter, etc.) They also freeze VERY VERY well, so I rarely cut the recipe in half, I just freeze part of them after I bake them. It’s probably one of the most time consuming cookies I have ever baked because of the fact that you cannot walk away from them, but I’ve found that they are well worth the time and they’ve become a family favorite! My other family members have come to expect a big plate of these every year for Christmas, almost to the point that I’ve thought about telling them they need to find out if there is a drug rehab program for cookie addicts…LOL!

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So, there you have it, my two MUST HAVE cookie recipes! Let me know if you try them out and if you like them! HAPPY BAKING!!!!!

I know that life is never easy, I know that stress is a part of life, whether we like it or not! But I had something “happen” this morning that kind of freaked me out! So if you would, please keep reading and give me your thoughts.

The past two weeks have been extremely stressful! It was two weeks ago yesterday that my nephew passed away suddenly, two weeks ago today I spent the day with family, trying to do what I could to help out. The day after that I spent the entire day putting together the tribute video for my nephew, and ran into problems in the end stages because the program I was used to using didn’t publish DVD’s and I was totally unfamiliar with the program I ended up using, which really made me freak out!

Then there was the day that everything blew up with my family over the video, which ended up with me spending the visitation day and the day of the funeral with the vast majority of my family pissed off at me and completely avoiding me, leaving me feel completely abandoned by them.

Since then, there has been some fairly major financial stresses, my kids freaking out over really dumb things, two weeks with little to no communication with family members, a dog totally destroying a sofa, finding out that we lost our health insurance because of letters that were mailed to us that we NEVER received, and then there is the fact that I spent three days kind of stressing out over going on the first job interview I’ve been on in over 5 years.

I know that stress can mess with your mind and your health. But can it also make you completely forget something you normally do on a regular basis? I recently joined a forum and would visit it several times a day. Out of the middle of nowhere, I completely forgot about giong there and haven’t went to it in quite a few days. My brain feels like it’s complete mush right now, I’m feeling so tired all the time lately, yet when I go to bed, I can’t get my brain to shut down, so I lie there flipping channels on the TV for a while before I can finally fall asleep.

What I’m wondering is, do I need to be worried about this to the point that I should see a doctor? To me it just seems like something that will eventually pass, but the fact that I completely forgot about something I did on a daily basis kind of bothers me. I don’t have health insurance right now, so going to the doctor today, or even this week, is not at all possible! I don’t know what to do honestly. I think if I just try to chill out, it will eventually pass. And it’s not like I’m not used stress, because it’s been a part of my life for a long time. So, what do you think?