Coconut & Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

I can't wait, one more week and me and the hubby will be off to the east coast for a much needed vacation.  I think its been about 2 years since we've been on a vacation.  Our last one was in 2011 after we came back from a 8 month deployment in Iraq.

In the military we earn 30 days of leave a year and when you dont use that leave up they just roll over to the next year. Basically we earn about 2.5 days of leave every month.  

Some people dont normally have issues with taking leave from their work centers. But then if you are one of those unlucky people who have jobs where its very hard to coordinate leave, you can end up not taking leave for several years and have about 70-80 in the books to use. But it doesn't help to save that much leave because you are only authorized to use 30 days at anyone given time, you can never go over 30 days without commander approval.  When I was a mechanic it was extremely hard to take leave beause of low manning and workload so I only took a vacation about every other year.  My new job as a paralegal is pretty much the same, only because we dont have many people in the office and we can get pretty busy with court-martials.  Im fortunate enough that I was able to coordinate some leave for about 3 weeks and now we are off to a family reunion in New York plus a Dave Matthews concert in Hersey PA! Plus I'm pretty excited to go back to the states and shop.

These cookies were a big hit at work the combination of chocolate and coconut combined within a oatmeal cookie seemed like the perfect match. Plus it helps when you just overload the batter with chocolate chips so every cookie and every bite took you got come chocolate chips and coconut. 

Coconut & Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
Adapted from the Messy Baker

Yields: 25-30 cookies depending on size

Ingredients

1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temp
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups old fashinoned rolled oats
3/4 cup chocolate chips (your favorited kind)
3/4 cup sweetened coconut flakes

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a medium sized bowl, whisk togehter the flour, baking soda, salt and oats, set aside.

3. In a electric mixer on medium speed, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy about 3 minutes, add in the eggs and vanilla extract until completely combined.

4. Switch the mixer to low speed and gradually add in the flour mixture until combined, making sure the scrape down the sides of the bowl to incorportate everything together.

5. Fold in the chocolate chips and coconut into the batter and depending on how big you want to make your cookies roll a 1 to 2 inch ball together slightly flatting it and place it on the parchment paper 2 inch apart from each other  Bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Remove cookies from oven and cool on a wire rack. Enjoy with a giant glass of milk!

*This cookie dough can be made ahead and kept in the fridge up to 5 days in an air tight container.

Baked Chocolate Chip Donuts

The inspiration for these donuts became an idea when I was so unjustly deprived of donuts on a Sunday morning......Flashback sequence now......We woke up early Sunday morning because we went to bed around 9pm on a saturday (what can I say we are a pretty boring couple sometimes). Anyways since we went to bed early last night and woke up early in the morning we thought we would go and catcht a matinee playing at the Japanese mall, figured we could buy some coffee inside the mall and go to Mister Donut and sneak them into the theater for our breakfast.  As we arrive at the mall everything was closed until 9am (expect the movie),  so sad to say I never got to sneak some donuts into the movie and since I had to make a dessert for a bake sale going on Monday I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and make some donuts for my contribution and one for myself (birthday gift to me :) 

Chocolate Chip Baked Donuts
Adapted from Food.com 

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter + 2 tablespoons, at room temp
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
3 cups flour
4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup milk
1 cup your favorite chocolate chips

Directions

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a donut pan with cooking spray and set aside.
- In a small bowl combined your dry ingredients: flour, salt, baking powder and whisk together, set aside.
- In a electric mixer cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy about 4 minutes.
- Add in your eggs one at a time until completely combined and add your vanilla extract.
- Mix in your dry ingredients with the milk in alternate batches starting with flour and ending with milk, the dough will start to become thick and sticky.
- Once the batter is fully combined, fold in your chocolate chips.
- Using a pipping bag fill it with your batter and cut a large enough hole at the end to let chocolate chips easily pass through, fill each individual donut mold about 3/4 full and bake for 15-16 minutes.
- Remove from oven and using a butter knife go around the edges of the donut to help you lift it gently out of the pan and cool on a wire rack.




Dark Chocolate Glaze

1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips like Ghiraradeli
1 cup powdered sugar
2-3 tablespoons hot water


Directions

- In a medium bowl, melt your butter and chocolate chips together in the microwave at 30 second intervals until melted.
- Whisk in the powdered sugar, the mixture will get really thick to help thin it out add 2 tablespoons hot water and whisk until the glaze becomes smooth.  If still having trouble place it in the microwave for another 15 seconds and whisk until smooth.
- Dip your donuts in and place on a wire rack, keep whisking the glaze together after each dip so the donut will always get a nice smooth consistency on top.

Chocolate Chip Banana Cake

I've had a nice short vacation this week, just what I needed to recharge for the next couple of months of courts, school and volunteer work. We spent the first 3 days in Sapporo Japan experiencing the extreme cold and the snow/ice festival. 

I gotta say you know the one thing that's a little unnerving about living in Japan? the amount of earthquakes and tsunami warnings we get.  Try being on a ferry off the coast of Japan for 8 hours with a tsunami warning flashing on the t.v constantly.  In Japan the minute there's an earthquake there will usually be a tsunami warning that follows, so they will put a small map of japan on the lower corner of every t.v. channel flashing either yellow or red with what areas are in potential danger for a tsunami.  Totally didn't calm me nerves while I was on the ferry for 8 hours, so i decided to turn off the tv and sleep until we reached our destination.   Thank goodness the boat ride was smooth and uneventful. The last few days this week have been spent at home unwinding and making some delicious recipes. I also wanted to share some pictures from Saporro Ice Festival, this is the biggest ice and snow festival in Japan.

Those are real fish and crabs in the ice

The snowboarding ramp was built right in the middle of the city in Odori Park

My Favorite snow sculpture and you can even see the guy on top still working on it

Back to the food, this is a nice healthy banana cake with coconut oil replacing the butter, some rolled oats added to the batter for fiber and of course gotta have some mini chocolate chips for a little indulgence. 

I had some extremely rippen bananas that needed to be put to good use, I also wanted an excuse to use a cake pan and test my new cloth baking strips to see if they actually work, they are supposed to go around the outside of your cake pan and they help the cake bake even with a flat surface instead of a dome shape.  I was pleasantly surprised that the cake came out pretty even, the strip prevented the sides from becoming to overly cooked and hard and for the most part the cake came out flat, with just a very slight dome.  If I didn't use the strips I know the cake would have came out with a larger dome. 

Chocolate Chip Banana Cake
Oishii Treat Original

Ingredients 

1 1/4 flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/3 cup old fashioned rolled oats
1/3 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 ripe bananas mashed
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons skim milk
1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees, line a 8 inch cake pan with parchment or wax paper and spray with baking or cooking oil on the sides of the pan. (to prevent the cake to sticking to the sides)
- In a small bowl combined your dry ingredients flour, baking soda, spices and oats and whisk until mixed together.
- In a electric mixer cream together the coconut oil and brown sugar, add in your egg, vanilla extract and mashed bananas. Mix until combined.
- Add half the dry ingredients + 1 tablespoon milk to your wet mixture and mix till combined. Add in the rest of the dry ingredients with the other tablespoon of milk and mix until the batter is fully combined.
- Hand stir in your chocolate chips and pour the batter into the cake pan and level in out with a spatula.
- Bake for 35-40 minutes and remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes, remove cake from pan and let cool to room temp. or serve warm with some whipped cream and a tall glass of milk.

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M&M Christmas Cookies in a Jar

This is my first DIY project that I will be sharing. This homemade gift is not only bakes into delicious cookies with tons of chocolate chips and m&m's, its also pretty inexpensive to purchase the items you'll need, you can decorate the jars to suit the person your giving the gift to.  I got my mason jars from the Japanese 100 yen store, its basically your $ dollar tree in the states.  and I just bought a bunch of ribbon and stickers to paste onto my jars.  I also went into word and used a nice template and typed the recipe out and printed them on card stock and added the recipe to a Christmas card.

The reason for making homemade gifts this year was I wanted to do something extra special for my family and friends.  I thought hmmm, whats more special then homemade gifts that you can eat.  I can't tell you how excited I get every year knowing that my nana will send me a box of homemade cookies. So I'm hoping that my family and friends will get excited for my special homemade gifts each year, perhaps this will start my own tradition of sending out homemade cookies just like my nana.

I found this wonderful idea at Bakerella and adapted them for a Christmas themed gift.



M&M Christmas Cookies in a Jar

Materials:

Mason Jar ( 1 quart size)
Ribbon any color
Tags
Stickers
glue stick

Ingredients for the Jar
Adapted from Bakerella 

1 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup cooking oats
3/4 cups m&m's
3/4 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 white sugar

How to layer the ingredients

1st layer: Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt together
2nd layer: Oats
3rd layer: M&Ms
4th layer: chocolate chips
5th layer: Brown Sugar
6th layer: White sugar

I used a large spoon to add each layer into the jar, after adding the first layer, pack each layer next tightly by pressing down with the spoon or using your hand make a fist and gently pack each layer down.

Directions for baking the cookies

You'll need 
1 Jar m&m christmas cookies
1 egg slightly beaten
1/2 cup melted butter
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper
- Dump the ingredients from the jar into a large bowl and mix together.
- Mix your wet ingredients together in a small bowl and add to the dry ingredients.  using the back of a wooden spoon, work all the ingredients together.  Though I found that using your hands to combine the ingredients together worked the best :)
- Roll the cookie dough into 1 1/2 inch balls, place on the cookie sheet and back for 10 minutes, makes about 2 dozen cookies.

I apologize for not having a after shot of the cookies, I stayed up extra late to make a batch for family to send out in their packages the next day and i honestly didn't have enough energy to set up my make shift studio and take shots. Plus my hands hurt so much from all the paper cuts from the wrapping paper and boxes lol. Good thing x-mas comes once a year, and too bad I live in Japan so far away from family.

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