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.