Caramel Sea Salt Cookies

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix

10 oz. bag caramel sea salt baking chips

½ cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine cake mix, eggs, and oil in large mixing bowl, and beat well.  Stir in caramel sea salt chips.  Chill dough in refrigerator for 1 hour.  After dough has chilled, drop onto ungreased cookie sheet in rounded balls.  Bake for approx. 7 – 9 minutes or until done. 

Blueberry Cheesecake Cookies

Ingredients:

2 boxes Jiffy Blueberry Muffin mix

4 oz. cream cheese

1 stick butter

½ C. light brown sugar, firmly packed

2 eggs

1 ½ C. white chocolate chips

Cream together butter, cream cheese, and brown sugar. Add eggs one at a time until blended. Combine muffin mix with the butter mixture and mix well. Fold in white chocolate chips. Chill for at least one hour.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Drop by spoonful onto greased cookie sheet, 2 inches apart. Bake for 14-15 minutes or until just turning brown around the edges. Cool on cookie sheet for 1-2 minutes. Transfer to wire rack until completely cooled.

If you like blueberry muffins, you must try these cookies! They came out a little flat even though I chilled them overnight but the taste is great.  

White Chocolate Lemon Cookies

Ingredients:

1 ½ sticks butter, softened

¾ cup white sugar

¼ cup light brown sugar

1 egg, room temperature

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 Tbsp. lemon zest

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 Tbsp. cornstarch

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 ½ cups white chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugars together. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix in lemon zest.  In a separate bowl combine flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture. Stir until combined and gently stir in white chocolate chips.

Form into balls about an inch or slightly more in diameter. Chill for at least 2 hrs or a couple days if you don't want to eat them right away. Preheat oven to 350 and grease cookie sheet. Bake for 8-11 minutes until edges are lightly brown. Do not over-bake. The centers may still look doughy. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes and then cook on wire rack.

These cookies taste like summer and magic! Although they would be great any time of the year, the taste is light and refreshing.  They are a lot of white chocolate chips in this recipe.  If you don’t like overly chunky cookies, scale back to 1 cup instead of an entire package of white chocolate chips. 

Cranberry white chocolate cookies

My sister gave me a big bag of dried cranberries after she realized she didn’t really like them.  My first thought was awesome, I’m going to make some cookies! And I’m glad I did.  These were delicious!

Ingredients:

3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

3/4 cup dark brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg, at room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup white chocolate chips

3/4 cup dried cranberries

Directions:

In a large bowl using a hand-held mixer or stand mixer with paddle attachment, beat the butter for 1 minute on medium speed until completely smooth and creamy. Add the brown sugar and granulated sugar and mix on medium speed until fluffy and light in color. Mix in egg and vanilla. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt. On low speed, slowly mix into the wet ingredients until combined. The cookie dough will be quite thick. Add the white chocolate chips and dried cranberries, mix for about 5 seconds until evenly disbursed. Cover dough tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap and chill for at least 1 hour and up to 2 days. Chilling is mandatory for this cookie dough.

Remove cookie dough from the refrigerator and allow to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 350F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Set aside.

Once chilled, the dough will be slightly crumbly, but will come together if you work the dough with your hands as you roll into individual balls. Roll balls of dough, about 1 Tablespoon of dough each, into balls. Bake for 8-9 minutes, until barely golden brown around the edges. They will look extremely soft when you remove them from the oven. Allow to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet. If the cookies are too puffy, try gently pressing down on them with the back of a spoon. They will slightly deflate as you let them cool. Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.

According to the recipe on Sally’s Baking Addiction, the cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week. Baked cookies freeze well - up to three months. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well - up to three months.

Caramel apple cheesecake cookies

Review by Lyndee:

Ingredients:

1 box caramel apple cake mix

1 small box instant cheesecake pudding mix

½ cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

¾ cup white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Spray a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper.  Combine pudding, cake mix, oil and eggs in a medium bowl until dough forms. Mix in white chocolate chips.  Place balls of dough 2 inches apart on cookie sheet.  Bake for 8-10 minutes or until cookies began to brown.  Remove from oven and let cool. 

Saturday was a rainy day and of course, I got the urge to bake. I had wanted to try a new cookie recipe. I love everything apples and was excited when I found this one.  They were super easy to make. The hardest part was finding a caramel apple cake mix. I had to go to two stores, but that didn’t stop me, aka, the cookie monster.  I wasn’t super impressed with the raw dough when I tested it but the end result was awesome! Totally satisfied my sweet tooth and I will definitely make them again.

Valentines cookies

Review by Lyndee:

I wanted to do some fun cookies for valentine’s day. I had the idea of doing the muffin tin cookies my mom makes where she puts either a peanut butter cup or chocolate kiss in the cookie.  Hers are delicious! So my thought was to make chocolate chip cookies and top them with a chocolate heart for the holiday.  Sounds easy, right? Well, I’ve never been able to master muffin tin cookies.

Start with your favorite chocolate chip or peanut butter cookie recipe.  You can use a store bought dough as well. I love these paradise cookies I’ve made before.  The recipe I found said to roll into one inch balls and place in an ungreased muffin tin. Bake for 8 minutes at 375 degrees.  Take out of the oven and immediately place your unwrapped candy on top. 

I took the cookies out at 8 minutes but probably should’ve went 10.  When I started placing the candy’s on them, the middles sunk.  But I figured maybe that was supposed to happen to some degree.

I tried the next batch on a normal cookie sheet instead of the muffin tin and that went better.  The problem was, the candy started melting into blogs. A friend said, I should’ve put them in the freezer or fridge to set but this was too little info, too late.  So my cookies no longer look like they are sporting fancy chocolate hearts, but rather, big chocolate blobs of goo.  Sigh. 

While they still taste really good, they vanity and fun of what I was trying to accomplish was gone.  Next time I will cook the muffin tin cookies for 10-12 minutes and then chill to set the candies.  Lesson learned.  

Super simple bisquick chocolate chip cookies

Review by Lyndee:  1/2 cup butter, softened 1 cup brown sugar, packed 2 teaspoons vanilla 1 egg 2 3/4 cups Bisquick baking mix 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (6 oz) Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, mix butter, sugar, vanilla and egg. Stir in Bisquick mix, chocolate chips and nuts. Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet, d about 2 inches apart; flatten slightly. Bake 8-10 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack. These were a very easy cookie to throw together and they tasted great. I did small cookies for portion controls o we ended up with 36 and the boys enjoyed a few bites of cookie dough as well.  You could easily add white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, cranberries or nuts to these for some variety.