Nuts Are Everywhere.

Anyone who has a peanut allergy or a stalker knows that!

I mean, even watching the Video Music Awards this year you couldn’t escape nutty moments. Poor Taylor Swift had her moment taken away from her by that NUT. See? Nuts! I am positive you can still check that out on www.youtube.com if you like.

I guess nuts have been on my mind lately. Both the stalker-nutty kind and the delicious pecan kind. Walking through the aisles of the “Bulk Barn” tends to do that to me. It is hard not to dream up recipes when you are surrounded by delectable ingredients.

When my life is really nutty I tend to bake. No, I don’t eat everything I bake. It is the whole process I really love. It is soothing to create something and share it with others.

Lately life has been so nuts (and filled with nuts) that a fair amount of baking has been in order!

This recipe I sort of created by chance. It is my traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe without chocolate… but with nuts instead!

“Life is Nuts-So Are People-Nutty Cookies of Wonder”

1 cup butter or margarine (softened)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
2 large eggs
3 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons hot water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups chopped nuts of your choice (I love crushed almonds, pecans or walnuts!)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and get a couple cookie sheets out.
Cream together your butter, brown sugar and white sugar. Make sure it is nice and smooth without any weird brown sugar lumps. Now beat your eggs in one at a time. In a little cup dissolve your baking soda with the hot water. Mix that up really well. Add the baking soda mixture, your vanilla and salt to the batter, mix well. Mix in your flour and your nuts.
Drop nice sized spoonfuls of the dough evenly places on cookie sheets. I bake these for about 9-10 minutes. REALLY watch them. You don’t want to overcook these. The best thing about these cookies is the fact that they stay chewy and delicious and slightly crispy on the outside! I tend to take them out around 9 minutes, leave them on the pan to harden slightly for a minute and I DO NOT LET THEM COOL ON A RACK. I immediately cover them in something, I know this goes against your normal baking rules but trust me with this one. I put them in a Tupperware container. They will stay chewy in there until they go bad. But trust me; none of your cookies are going to go bad because everyone will be eating them immediately!

Enjoy your cookies and try to stay away from nuts. (And no, I don’t mean the edible kind!)

(Side note: How many exclamation marks can a person really use…geeeze!)

Ciao!
-Megs

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 8:35 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.