Chocolate Almond Cookies

My brother is coming home from college today, and my Mom always like to make sure the house is fool of food for when he arrives. Though the cabinets and fridge are now full of thinks to snack on, the kitchen is still missing one thing that I know my brother will want when he comes home- freshly baked goods.

Usually my Mom makes these decadent chocolate and caramel sandwich cookies for when my brother comes home, but I thought I would try something different. He loves nuts and chocolate so I thought to just put those two flavors in a cookie.

What came out were what my mom proclaimed were "THE BEST COOKIES EVER!"

So here's the recipe for you to try:

Chocolate with chocolate chips and nuts, what's not to like?

Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cup softened butter

1 cup light brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar


2 teaspoons vanilla extract


2 eggs

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa

2 ¼ cups flour


½ teaspoon almond extract

2 tablespoons plain yogurt

1 teaspoon baking soda


¾ teaspoon salt


1 2/3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips


¾ cup chopped almonds

Don't cut the almonds too small, you
want to leave something to bite into.

Directions
:

Preheat the oven to 350 F and grease 2 baking sheets.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Add in the vanilla, almond extract, and yogurt and eggs and mix well. Sift the cocoa, flour, baking soda, and salt in another bowl and slowly add this into the wet ingredients as you mix until just combined. Finally, fold in the chocolate chips and chopped almonds.

Scoop dough into large spoonfuls and roll into balls to place onto the baking sheets.

Bake cookies for 11-12 minutes and remove from the oven.

Let the cookies cool for about 3 minutes before transferring to wire racks to finish cooling.

Whole Wheat Spiced Sweet Potato Muffins

This week is AP testing and since my teachers are therefore not giving any work and I don't really plan on studying, I have more time when I get home to cook and bake. I literally sat in the testing room for an hour after I took one of my exams waiting for the time to be up that I could leave. The people around me probably thought I was impressively fast, but I actually just ran out o things to say on the free response section. (That's not too good of a sign now is it...)

Spiced sweet potato muffin with a brown sugar, oat, and almond topping.

Anyways, I had some sweet potato puree left from the brownie recipe, so I needed to come up with another recipe so I wouldn't waste it. I decided to make muffins. You can make them in any size you want, but I love to make mini muffins since you can easily take one to go  and pop in your mouth.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

All the topping ingredients before being mixed.

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ cup brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cup sweet potato puree

½ cup milk

2 eggs

Topping-

¼ cup oatmeal

3 tablespoons brown sugar

¼ cup almonds

½ teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 and grease a muffin pan well.

In a large bowl, mix together the sweet potato, milk, brown sugar, and eggs. Add in the vanilla and other spices and the baking soda and baking powder. Gradually add in the whole wheat pastry flower. Once all the ingredients are well combined, pour the batter into the greased muffin tins until each is about ¾ full.

In a separate bowl, combine the ¼ cup oatmeal, 3 tablespoons brown sugar, ¼ cup almonds, and ½ teaspoon cinnamon. You can either chop the almonds and then just stir all the ingredients together, or put all the ingredients into a food processor to create a more homogenous mixture.

Sprinkle this “topping” on top of the unbaked muffins.

Now, place the muffins in the oven for 11-13 minutes.

Remove the oven and wait until cooled before removing from tin.

My sweet potato creations, all from one can of puree.

Apricot Almond Oatmeal Cookies

Oatmeal raisin cookies are a classic for a good reason. The combination of oats and dried fruit is tasty, but it can be even better when you se an unexpected fruit combo such as dried apricots.

For this recipe you can use whatever type of dried apricot is your favorite, and any nut you like. I thought almonds worked best with the taste of apricots.

Ingredients:

Almonds and apricots chopped
& ready on the cutting board.

½  cups rolled oats

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup  softened butter

½ cup packed light-brown sugar

¼ cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon nutmeg

3/4 cup roughly chopped dried apricots

3/4 cup chopped almonds

 

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Toast the oats in the oven for 10 minutes. After the oats have cooled, in a medium bowl, combine the oats, flour, baking powder, and salt. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugars and then afterwards beat in the egg and vanilla. Once this is all well mixed, slowly mix in the oat mixture. Afterwards fold in the apricots and almonds (may do this by hand).

Roll the dough into 2 dozen balls on greased baking sheets. Using your fingers, flatten balls to about a 3/4-inch thickness.

Bake cookies for about 15 minutes, or until the edges begin to golden.

Give the cookies 5 minutes to cook on baking sheet, and then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Creamy Almond Butter

I always make baked goods for my English teacher, and though she is always pleased with my creations, she complains all my baking is going to make her fat. To compromise I decided to make her some healthy almond butter. Though this may not be a baked good, it can certainly fill your sweet tooth if you place it on top of sliced apples and drizzle them with a smidge of honey.

To make the butter is very easy, just take 2 cups of whole almonds and spread them out onto a baking sheet and place them in a 350° F oven for 12 minutes, stirring them around halfway through to prevent them from burning.

Ready to spread and enjoy in about 20 minutes.

Though toasting the almonds is not essential, I find it really helps to bring out the “nutty” flavor.

Let the nuts cool and then place them into a food processor. You could also use a blender but you won’t be able to put in as many nuts in the blender at a time as you can with a food processor.

Now for some slight amusement, my food processor is currently not working properly so I had to hold down the button the whole time because it won’t stay down. Fortunately, it only took about 6 minutes for the nuts to become creamy. I periodically scraped the sides as the nut’s oil released and the nuts went from becoming what looked like crumbs to real smooth nut butter.

When it was all finished I placed the end result in a small mason jar. I didn’t add salt or honey, but if you want you can put them in and pulse the food processor a couple times to mix in the flavoring evenly.

After tying a bow around the jar I was finished,

Can you say A+ on that essay I just wrote please?