Sugar & Spice Cookies

These are another one of my favorite Christmas cookies!  They are a perfect blend of sugar and spice... hence the name. :)  Seriously though... if you don't have a gingersnap on your annual holiday cookie baking list, you should add these!

Servings:  Recipe will make 4 dozen

Size:  1 cookie

Points Plus: 2pp

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Bake Time:  6-8 minutes per batch

Rating: 5 stars – Excellent

Ingredient List:

¾ cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1 egg

¼ cup molasses

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cinnamon

¼ tsp. salt

½ tsp. ginger

2 cups flour

1 cup powdered sugar (to roll cookies in after baking)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375°. In a medium bowl, mix together the shortening, sugar, egg, and molasses.  Next, add in the baking soda, cinnamon, salt, ginger and 1 cup of flour; mix well.  Add the remaining cup of flour and mix until thoroughly combined.  Roll into walnut sized balls.  Bake for 6-8 minutes in a 375° oven.  Roll in powdered sugar while still warm.

Tip:

 Depending on how warm the cookies are when you roll in powdered sugar, you might need to roll your cookies in two different steps to make sure the sugar sticks to the warm cookies.  The ones in the picture above were rolled twice as a reference point.  However, if you prefer less sugar, only go through this step once!

XOXO Megan

Peanut Butter Kisses

We wanted to share some of our FAVORITE Christmas cookies with you this week!  I know that Christmas cookies are not necessarily healthy or low in pp, BUT it is important for you to know how many pp you are eating if you do give in and have a cookie or two over the holiday season!

That said, this is one of my absolute favorite Christmas cookies!  These cookies have always topped the list when my family gets together to bake holiday cookies.  I’m sure you’ve had some variation of this recipe at some point, but like I said earlier, now you know how many pp each peanut butter kiss cookie is!!

Servings:  Recipe will make 3 dozen

Size:  1 cookie

Points Plus: 3pp

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Bake Time:  12-15 minutes

Rating: 5 stars – Excellent

Ingredient List:

4 Tbsp. butter

4 Tbsp. shortening

¾ cup peanut butter

½ cup sugar

½ cup brown sugar

1 ½ Tbsp. vegetable oil

1 egg

1 ½ cups flour

½ tsp. baking soda

Hershey kisses

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly grease your cookie sheets.  In a medium bowl, cream butter, shortening, peanut butter and sugars until well mixed.  Stir in the oil and egg.  Add flour and baking soda.  Stir until just combined.  Roll into balls and then roll in sugar before baking.  Bake for 12-15 minutes.  Transfer to a wire cooling rack immediately after they come out of the oven and gently press a chocolate kiss in the middle of each cookie to flatten. 

Tip:

Make sure you un-wrap all your Hershey kisses and place in small bowl ahead of time!  Once your cookies are out of the oven you will want to work quickly to place a kiss in the middle of each cookie.

XOXO Megan

Frosted Pumpkin Cookies

I have had this recipe saved to my Pinterest dessert board for quite awhile.  It comes from the Parent Pretty blog – check out the original recipe here.  I made a few modifications, most notably, I cut the recipe in half.  I wasn’t ready to have 5 dozen cookies staring me in the face and testing my self-control!  2 and 1/2 dozen seemed like a much more reasonable amount for me to make.

Servings: 2 ½ dozen (or 30) cookies

Size:  1 cookie

Points Plus: 4pp

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Prep Time: 25 minutes

Cook Time:  10-12 minutes per cookie sheet

Rating: 4 stars –  Very good

 

Ingredient List:

Cookies:

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground nutmeg

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

½ 15 oz. can pumpkin

2 cups flour

Frosting:

¼ cup butter

¼ cup packed brown sugar

2 or 3 tsp. milk

½ tsp. vanilla

2 to 3 cups powdered sugar (depending on frosting thickness/consistency)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°.  Using a mixer, beat the butter for 30 seconds.  Add in sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg and beat until well combined.  Add the egg and vanilla, mix well.  Next, beat in the pumpkin.  Finally, add in the flour in multiple steps, not all at once.  On an ungreased cookie sheet, drop heaping teaspoons of cookie dough a few inches between each cookie.  Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Cool on a wire cooling rack.

To make the frosting, heat the butter and brown sugar in a small saucepan on the stove.  Make sure the mixture is well combined and smooth.  Transfer the butter/sugar into a bowl, whisk in the 2 tsp. milk and vanilla.  Beat in powdered sugar, add more until frosting is to your desired level of thickness vs. more of a glaze.   You may need to add additional milk to acheive the frosting thickness you prefer as well.  Once the cookies have completely cooled, spread frosting on top.

Tip:

I can't stress enough the importance of waiting until your cookies have cooled before you add the frosting to the tops.  I was impatient and my cookies although started out looking great (see picture above), but I quickly watched my frosting droop and melt off the top and setlle into small pools at the edges of each cookie. :(

XOXO Megan

White Chocolate Snickerdoodle Pudding Cookies

It’s important to remember that it’s totally okay to indulge a little every once in a while!  I wouldn’t recommend you make these weekly by any means... especially because they are so good it will be hard to stop eating these cookies. :)  I made these to bring into work to share with my coworkers. They loved them!  This is one of my many recipes I have pinned on my ‘desserts’ board on Pinterest.  I was intrigued that these cookies had instant pudding mix as one of the ingredients.  Apparently pudding cookies have become really popular in the past year or so, who knew??

Yield:  4 dozen

Points Plus: 3 pp for one cookie 

Level of Difficulty:  Easy

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time:  10-12 minutues per batch

Rating: 4 stars – Very good

 Ingredient List:

1 cup unsalted butter

¾ cup brown sugar

¼ cup white sugar

1 3.4 oz package white chocolate instant pudding mix

2 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

2 cups white chocolate chips

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/3 cup cinnamon sugar (used to roll cookies in before baking)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350°.  Lightly spray cookie sheets with cooking spray.  Cream together the butter and brown and white sugars.  Add in the eggs, one at a time; make sure they are mixed well.  Next, add in the instant pudding mix, vanilla, flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon.  Use a spatula to make sure you mix in all the dry ingredients thoroughly.  Fold in the 2 cups of white chocolate chips with the spatula.  Scoop out the cookies (about 3 Tbsp. per cookie), roll into a ball and then roll in the cinnamon sugar to evenly coat each cookie.  Place on the cookie sheets about 2 inches apart from each other.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until slightly golden and just set in the middle. 

Note: I chose to make my first dozen cookies rolled in cinnamon sugar, but I did all others rolled in just white sugar.  I thought the cinnamon sugar was a little too overpowering for my taste.

Tip:

To keep your number of cookies you eat in check, plan to bring ALL of them into work to share and keep them at work in tupperware! That way you won't be tempted by having dozens of cookies at home AND your coworkers will appreciate your generosity. :)

XOXO Megan