Two Fun Cookie Recipes

I've got a couple yummy cookies to share. First up are some delightful little cookies from the blog of my Taste and Create partner this month, One Little Corner of the World. Katie has several wonderful recipes, and seems to be able to do wonders with pasta. But when I saw her sour cream cookies, I knew that was the recipe I wanted to try!



Sour Cream Cookies
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup cup sugar
1/2 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon peel (Jeff doesn't like citrus zest, so I used lemon extract)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease two cookie sheets. In small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.

In large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat butter until creamy. Gradually add sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Beat in sour cream, lemon peel, and vanilla. Reduce speed to low; beat in flour mixture just until blended.

Drop dough by rounded teaspoons, 1 inch apart, on prepared cookie sheets. Bake until set and golden around edges, 10-12 minutes, rotating cookie sheets between upper and lower oven racks halfway through baking. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheets; with wide spatula, transfer cookie to wire racks to cool completely.


These cookies came out delicious - they have a slightly crispy edge with a delicate cake-like interior. I loved the mild lemon flavor.

And they were fun to eat with a little bit of frosting and sprinkles!



The other cookies I want to share have a fun story behind them. I have a ten-year-old sister, Rheanna, who is shaping up to like cooking and baking just like her older sisters. When we were visiting my family on Saturday, Rheanna asked my mom if she could invent a cookie recipe. Mom gave her okay, so Rheanna set about listing ingredients. She called her cookies "Rainbow Sugar Cookies" - because she wishes her middle name was "Rainbow" and because the cookies are a mixture of peanut butter, chocolate chip, and sugar cookies! Isn't that so cute!


Here is the recipe as she wrote it, including her slightly atypical instructions. :-)

Rainbow Sugar Cookies
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup milk
1/2 bag chocolate chips
1/2 cup softened butter
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 eggs
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix sugar, peanut butter, and milk in a medium bowl. In mixing bowl, mix chocolate chips, butter, salt, eggs, vanilla, flour, and baking soda. Gradually add sugar mixture. Bake for 10 minutes.


The cookies turned out pretty yummy when she made them as written. They were chewy and had a good flavor. But here are a few notes on the recipe that might make it a bit more manageable.

Notes:
~~Rheanna made these cookies very large, so they took closer to 15 minutes to bake.
~~I think she ended up only adding one egg instead of the two she originally planned on.
~~When she measured 1/2 bag chocolate chips, she actually laid the bag out on the counter and cut it in half so she could have exactly half the bag! Later I gently told her that one bag of chips has 2 cups, so if she wants half of the bag, all she has to do is measure 1 cup. :-)
~~To mix this in a more traditional manner: Cream butter, peanut butter, and sugar. Add egg(s?), milk, and vanilla and mix well. Stir in flour, baking soda, salt, and chocolate chips. Bake as directed.


Here's the little baker-in-training along with her helper, my little brother Samuel. They had so much fun making these cookies!