Fabulous Fall Cookies!

I love the fall. The colors, the weather, the end of summer's oppressive heat. Not a big fan of being hot, or wearing shorts, or sweating. You get the idea. So when fall begins bringing it's cool breezes, spicy smells, and falling leaves, I get much, much happier. It's been my favorite season since I was little. Perhaps because my birthday is in November and I knew when fall started my special day wasn't far off, but now it's more because I just really enjoy almost everything about this time of year. Halloween, pumpkin lattes and pumpkin beer, apple picking, leaf rubbing, Octoberfest, squash, soups, fires in the hearth, wow, I love it. Plus I get to put away all the summer clothes that I get so tired of and bring out my cold weather stuff. Long sleeves, sweaters, layers, accessories, BOOTS!!!! I love boots. They go with everything, they never go out of style, they come in every color, and they are by far the most comfortable form of shoe for my feet. If I could wear boots all year long I would be soooo happy, but summer robs me of that for almost four months! Fall brings back all of my cuteness. So, to celebrate fall's arrival this year I decided to make a cookie that takes some of my favorite fall flavors and blends them into a relatively healthy, yummy, fall-licious snack. Originally these cookies were going to be called Pomegranate Cranberry Walnut Maple Oatmeal Shortbread, but that's quite a mouthful, so I went with something a little simpler. An ode, if you will, to my favorite time of year, Fabulous Fall Cookies!

Fabulous Fall Cookies!

1 cup butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp maple extract
1 cup flour
2 cups oats
3/4 cup chopped pomegranate infused dried cranberries (crasins from Ocean Spray in pomegranate flavor)
3/4 cup shopped walnuts


Beat butter and brown sugar until creamy. Add everything else except cranberries and walnuts. When everything is incorporated add the chopped cranberries and walnuts. This is a thick dough. Flour a smooth surface and pat the dough into a large rectangle. You can try to roll it out with a lot of flour on the rolling pin so it doesn't stick. I usually use a combination of rolling and patting until I get a rectangle about 1/4 thick measuring about 20x12-ish. Cut the dough into small bars or rectangles about 1x2" each, this recipe yields about 4 dozen bars depending on size.



Place bars on a parchment or tinfoil lined baking sheet about an inch apart and bake at 350 degrees for 1-12 minutes or until just getting brown around the edges. Let cool, but not for too long, they taste fantastic a little warm and crumbly with a cup of hot apple cider. Sit by the fire with a plate of these, a good book, and some soft music while you dream of buying more boots. That's what I'd like to do, but it's more likely I'll be grabbing one on my way out the door to pre-school pick-up, in between arguments on whether I'm allowed to make a halloween costume instead of buying one, and chasing after an almost crawling Connor who wants nothing more than to eat my iphone. Either way, they're yummy, and remind me of fall.

Laylah's Magic Wand Cookies

September is birthday month around here. Yes, I said month. Not only is Laylah's birthday in September, but Connor's, two of my nephews, a brother, and a brother-in-law. Plus an anniversary in there somewhere too. It's a lot to remember, plan for, organize and celebrate. This is why I have not written anything in a while. September may be crazy, but it's also fun and full or excitement. Laylah starts asking when her birthday is the day after her birthday, so you can imagine as it gets closer, she can hardly talk about anything else! This year she wanted a Cinderella theme, and somehow Laylah always gets what she wants. We had Cinderella come to her party, she dressed as CInderella, she got not one, but four Cinderella dolls as presents. In keeping with this theme, we decided to make magic wand cookies for her treat to bring to school on the day of her birthday. I didn't want to make them too complicated so that Laylah could help make them, and I also didn't want to use actual sticks for the wand part, which almost all the recipes I found online and in books did. I figured a bunch of three and four-year-olds with left over sticks might just poke someone's eye out. Better to make the sticks edible too. Then inspiration. Pretzel rods! From there all we had to figure out was how to keep the pretzel and cookie firmly together and what shape to make the top cookie part. Laylah chose hearts, pink cherry icing, white decorations and sprinkles, lots of sprinkles. They were a big hit at school and Laylah loved making them. I would not recommend them for adults so much, a little too much icing, way too many sprinkles, but the kids? They loved 'em.

Laylah's Magic Wand Cookies

Shape Cookie dough recipe
1/2 c Fruit preserves (we used blueberry but you can chose what you like)
Large pretzel rods, not the little sticks, the big ones that are about 10" long
icing of choice
sprinkles




Begin by making the dough for the Shape Cookies. This recipe is in the August posts of this blog. When the dough is ready, roll it out as usual, but instead of using lots of different cookie cutters, pick one, relatively large one, like a heart or a star and make an even number of cookies. You will need two shape cookies per magic wand. Our recipe made about 20 magic wands, so 40 shapes.

Put parchment paper on your pan and place the bottom shape cookies about two inches apart on the pan, make sure to leave room for the pretzel rods, check the picture below to see spacing. Spread about a half teaspoon (or more if you want them really fruity) of the fruit preserves on each bottom cookie. The preserves are what help the pretzels and cookies stick together, so make sure to spread right to the edges. Press the pretzel rod in the center of the cookie with about an inch inside and the rest sticking out as the stick part. Do not press all the way through the cookie, but press a little to secure it. Place a top shape cookie over the bottom one to sandwich the preserves and the pretzel between two cookies. Press the edges closed and pay special attention to the area around the pretzel, kind of molding the dough together around the pretzel to get it to stick.





I got about eight cookies per baking sheet. Place in a 350 degree oven for 10-15 minutes or until the edges start to get golden brown. Remove them from the baking sheet while still on the parchment paper and let cool. Decorate as desired. Laylah had great fun with the decorating part, mostly eating the decorations as I was trying to put them on. Her teachers said they were a big hit with the kids. I liked them because they were cute, fit the theme, and were sturdy enough that a kids could wave them around like a wand and the cookie was not going to fall off. Plus the whole not having a dangerous stick left over part. I'm sure using peanut butter, nutella, cajeta, or any other sticky filling would work if you want to change it up. I'm not sure they granted any wishes, but my little princess was very happy with them. May all your cookies be magical too, Bippity-Boppity-Boo!