123 PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

This is another "cheater" recipe that uses yellow cake mix as its base and then adds peanut butter, water and eggs. They were actually pretty good but will have to see how they do tomorrow after a humid night. Yesterday's cookies were good out of the oven but were disappointing today. These cookies were better if baked longer--even when they appeared to be too brown. I am hoping they will stay crispy for tomorrow!

CHOCOLATE CREAM CHEESE COOKIES

This is a "cheater" recipe that uses chocolate cake mix as a base with cream cheese, butter, egg, vanilla and coconut added to it. It was quick, easy and delicious. The dough was easy to work with after being refrigerated for about 1/2 hour and then dropped by hand onto cookie sheets. It was too sticky to use a teaspoon to drop them. The initial ones I baked about eight minutes and were good but I like them baked a bit longer. They are also very, very good with ice cream! Enjoy!

MINT MELTAWAYS

These cookies would be great for St. Patrick's Day. They are delicately minty and more of a shortbread than a cake cookie. They don't spread at all while cooking so I put many per cookie sheet and used all the dough on just two trays. A wonderful tea cookie!

CHOCOLATE COCONUT MERINGUE BITES

I haven't done something with chocolate lately so I decided to do this recipe, also because I love coconut. The bars are basically a chocolate chip cookie base with nuts and coconut added and a brown sugar meringue baked on top. Tasty but I feel that the cookie part was a bit dry. The recipe made enough for UH people so hope everyone enjoys them. Have a great weekend!

ALMOND MERINGUE SHORTBREAD

This shortbread has an interesting mix of flavors. The base is a standard shortbread which is baked and then topped with jam ( I used marionberry jam) after cooling it for a bit. While it was cooling, you make a cinnamon meringue which is placed on top of the jam and then returned to the oven to brown. Oh, the meringue is also covered with chopped almonds. I almost forgot that step and had to pull it out of the oven to add the nuts. When it was all done, it looked very pretty and was tasty but almost too many flavors for me with the nuts, cinnamon and fruit jam. I will be interested to get some feedback on this one!

GINGERBREAD APPLESAUCE BARS

Back to using gingerbread mix with some adaptations. This one calls for substituting applesauce for the water as well as adding nuts and raisins. The final touch is icing the bars with browned butter icing. I am a big fan of cooking with applesauce and these bars prove my point. They are moist and tasty. Without the icing they would probably be a good breakfast treat but the icing puts these into the dessert category. I don't care how the game ended yesterday, the Butler Bulldogs are my NCAA champs!!! What a game!!!

ZIMTSTERNE COOKIES

I have gone back to the Christmas cookie section to complete the ones that I did not have time for during the holidays. This is a Swiss Xmas cookie that did not give an English translation for the name. The recipe used Cinnamon and nutmeg to give it that holiday taste but they were not as crisp as I expected. The dough was rolled out and then baked after being washed with beaten egg whites. I never know how difficult it will be to work with cut-out cookies but this dough was actually very easy to roll, cut and transfer. However, I did not make them as thin as the recipe called for as usually that is a disaster and I was making these while watching the Red Sox/Yankees game and the Sox were behind. I didn't have the patience for dough being stuck to the counter. Maybe that is why they are not as crisp as I had hoped but I think it is more that the recipe called for 2 1/2 eggs. So, these are good cookies but not fantastic. Tomorrow night is the big basketball game!!!! GO BUTLER!!!!!!