Peanut Butter Cookies

This last weekend I had a hankerin' for some peanut butter cookies.  I found a recipe in my own cookbook and decided to give it try.  There is some brown sugar so this is a  Low Sugar  recipe.

This is a pretty simple recipe:

• 1/2 c. Splenda
• 1/4 c. Splenda Blend brown sugar
• 1/2 c. shortening/butter
• 1/2 c. peanut butter
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 c. flour
• 3/4 t. baking soda
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/4 t. salt

 Mix the first 5 ingredients.  Beat until well combined.

 Next, add the dry ingredients.  Mix on the lowest or "stir" setting.  This will prevent the flour from going all over you and your counter.  Stop once during mixing and use a spatula to scrape down sides and combine well.

 Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for 3 hours.  This is always the hard part for me.  I want to eat the dough... lucky if I have any to make cookies out of.

 Once the dough is firm, preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Roll dough into balls and place on a sprayed cookie sheet.  It's not necessary, but I just don't think they are peanut butter cookies if they aren't criss-crossed with a fork.  What can I say; I'm a traditionalist.

Bake for 9-10 minutes.  Cookies will be a little soft when you take them out of the oven.  Allow them to sit on the pan for just a few minutes before you remove to a cooling rack.

These are not quite as moist as a regular peanut butter cookie, but the taste is good and when you have a hankerin'... well they are just pretty good!

Raspberry Cupcakes

It has been a while since I have made some cupcakes.  A colleague of mine recently retired and so as most people do, we had a small retirement lunch in his honor.  I asked him what his favorite flavor was and he said "garlic".  I just didn't think that garlic cupcakes sounded very good, so I asked him for an alternate flavor; this time he responded "raspberry".

Once you understand about using sugar-free flavorings, like gelatin powder or drink mix powder, it really is just left up to your imagination to combine them in any number of ways to create new flavors.

 The first step is to enhance the sugar-free cake mix:

• yellow sugar-free cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 c. vegetable oil
• 1 c. 2% milk
• 1/2 c. non-fat yogurt
• 1 box of sugar-free raspberry flavored gelatin powder

Add in the box of flavored gelatin.  This is of course where you have the option of using any flavor you or your guests might like.

Mix together well.

 For these cupcakes, I decided to add a filling of raspberry jam.  So to start with, I added about a half of a scoop of batter to the cupcake liners in my muffin tin.

You can coordinate your jam flavor to your cupcake flavor.  Mix and match; there are a lot of flavor combinations.

 Put about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of sugar-free raspberry jam in the center of each cupcake.  Next fill up the cupcake liner.  I know that most recipes only tell you to fill the liner 2/3 or 3/4 of the way full.  But if you would like a full, almost overflowing cupcake, you need to fill the liner almost to the top.  You won't get a full 2 dozen cupcakes, but those you have will be big and beautiful.

Bake according to the package directions.  After removing from the oven, cool for a few minutes in the muffin tin.  After a few minutes, remove to a cooling rack and cool completely.

Now comes the fun part; the icing/frosting.  What do you think is the difference between icing and frosting?  I guess that I have always just used them interchangeably.

I wanted to make the frosting raspberry as well.  It just so happened that I had a half a can of chocolate and a half a can of vanilla sugar-free frostings left from some other desserts.  So, I mixed them together and added another box of sugar-free raspberry gelatin powder and beat them together well.

I used a piping bag and a pretty tip to swirl the frosting on, but I didn't go all the way to the edge since I wanted the pretty deep pink color of the cupcakes to show.

The lunch was wonderful and everyone enjoyed the cupcakes...even if they weren't garlic flavored!

Cake Sugar Cookies

You know those amazing, soft, pillowey, cakey, sugar cookies that you can get at your local superstore?  When the different holidays roll around, they always have them out with the appropriate colored frosting.  As I strolled through a few days before St. Patrick's Day, those luscious cookies with the beautiful green icing were calling me.  I resisted and made some of my own when I got home.

 So you get those cakey cookies by using a cake mix.  All you need to do is follow the package directions:

• sugar-free cake mix
• 3 eggs
• 1/3 c. oil

All you need to do is eliminate the water.

 You will notice that the batter will be obviously thick; although it won't quite be as stiff as regular cookie dough.  My daughter and I wanted to get into the St. Patrick's day spirit and added some green food coloring to the batter -- about 3 or 4 drops did it.

 Spray your cookie sheets and preheat your oven to 365 degrees.  In order to handle this sticky dough, you should wet your hands.  This will allow you to roll the dough into balls.








Once you have the dough in balls, use your fingers to flatten them out to around 1/4" thick.  Bake for 7 minutes.  Cookies will be pretty soft.  Allow them to sit on the cookie sheet for a few more minutes before you move them to a cooling rack.

 To frost the cookies, I used a half of a can of sugar-free vanilla frosting.  Again, in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day, we added about 10 drops of green food coloring to the frosting.

(FYI:  since the sugar-free cake mix only comes in yellow and not white, we had to add some yellow food coloring to our icing to make the greens compatible)

Enjoy these soft cookies for any holiday or season with the coloring of your choice.  It's the perfect irony...Sugar-free  sugar cookies!