Betty Crocker Butter Pecan Cake Mix Cookies, MImicking La Moderna Marianita Cookies

It'd been awhile since I'd baked cookies using cake mix. Betty Crocker caught my eye with the Butter Pecan cake flavor. The sale price of $1 was compelling. I tried to duplicate La Moderna Marianita pecan flavor cookies, cheap at about 68 cents for a roll of 28 cookies (6.5 ounces).

The Marianita cookies are crunchy and don't contain actual pecans. The flavor has a hint of pecan nut skins, smidge of bitter aftertaste. For attempting crunchiness, I had hoped baking at 325, not 350, and baking cookies longer than typical cookies would work. I also hoped that the BC's reduced amount of powder (from 15.25 to 13.25 oz) wouldn't affect the outcome.

Wellll, the lessons learned for the next time will be to raid some other cake mix box for two ounces of powder to add to the recipe. The dough didn't firm up like in other cake mix cooky dough. It was stickier and harder to load into my cooky press and dispense. Also, next time, I'll try baking the cookies at least 13 to 14 minutes. Sure, I like soft and chewy, but I was trying to obtain the Marianita crunchiness.

View the video for step-by-step process. See the final image for comparison of a plateful each of BC Butter Pecan cake mix cookies and La Moderna Marianita pecan flavor cookies.

Making cookies at home take way more time and energy than buying shelf-stable store cookies. Be sure to block out time for gathering ingredients, equipment, mixing, dispensing, baking, and cooling. Oh, yeah, remember cleanup time and effort!

Cookies and other wheat-dominant products have gotten pricey over time. On the good side, the ingredients for the project came to less than $2: $1 for box of cake mix, 29 cents for 1/3 C oil, and 50 cents for 2 eggs. The yield was 42 cookies. FWIW, cookies baked at home seem to take longer to consume than store-bought. More appreciation for the effort expended? Definitely tastier!

Calories and Sodium

As a side thought, I considered adding chocolate chips. Doing so would have added extra calories (~30C/cooky) and cost ($1.50 additional for project). Mmmm, butter pecan flavor with chocolate chips! Related: "Low-effort Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies" (article, video)

La Moderna Resources

La Moderna cookies are a niche item at HEB. I've not been inclined to seek other products from this Mexico-based company. Memory aid that Moderna is one of the big-name Covid-19 vaccines.

• La Moderna manufactures pasta and soups as well as cookies. Amusingly, La La Maderna's cooky page does not include the pecan flavored ones.
• "La Moderna Marianitas Cookies", 71 cents for 6.5 oz Nutrition info claims 6 servings, 5 cookies per serving. I counted 28 cookies.
• "La Moderna Pecan Marianitas, Authentic Mexican Pecan Cookies, Fun Snacks For Kids, 6.53 Oz, Pack Of 20"

Pt 1 Revisiting Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies, Plain and Chocochip Batch

Almost 10 years ago, I blogged "Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies". At that time, I included a few images, not having learned to make movies yet. My methodology was simpler but more labor intensive.

Back then, I used a manual pastry blender, and measuring-tablespoon-and-rubber-spatula method to dispense the dollops. This time, I used a tilt-head mixer, helpful for saving on elbow grease, and a cooky scoop for dispensing most of the dollops. (For the chocolate chip batch, I took a shortcut, flattening the dough, then dividing it with an icing spatula for most of the dollops.)

This oatmeal cooky recipe uses the minimal amount of ingredients, for those who want a nekkid cooky that has lots of oatmeal. The ingredients are simple—oatmeal, flour, baking soda, oil, eggs, and brown sugar. As a bonus, I include information for resoftening a brown sugar brick into its spoonable form.

Because I like chocolate chips in many of my cookies, I split the dough into two parts, plain oatmeal in one batch, and addition of four ounces of chocolate chips in the other batch. Tasty results, somewhat delicate. The yield was 25 for each batch. (Deviating from only scooping when dolloping the chocolate chip batch probably affected the number of cookies.)

Chocolate chips in 25 cookies: ¾ C (4 oz) contains 806 C/Cup for 604 among 25 cookies, so, 24 additional calories each chocochip oatmeal cooky. 88 + 24 → 112 C. No sodium.

Bottom line: Oatmeal-only cookies, 88 C each; oatmeal chocochip cookies, 112 C each

View the video for detailed info and process to bake the two kinds of oatmeal cookies. The process shown is not real-time, but you can see visual changes to the ingredients over time—mainly the dough increasingly dense. So glad to have my Cuisineart tilt-head mixer!

Note: Oops, I forgot to mention the oven temperature. Preheat oven 350, maybe near the end of dough mixing time(s). Baking time is about 10 minutes per batch.

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"Pt 1 Revisiting Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies, Plain and Chocochip Batch"

"Pt 2 Revisiting Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies, Closer Looks at Process"

"Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies"

View more cooky recipes.

Low-effort Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies

 

How low effort are these cookies? Only four ingredients, for starters. The cake mix itself conveniently includes the flour, sugar, and leavening. (I prefer yellow cake mix because of the psychological color of eggs and butter, but other mixes also work.) You mix eggs and oil together, mix in the powder, and fold in the chips. Dispense, bake, cool.

The video shows still images and clips for the steps. Note: The cookies are doable using a pastry blender, but a tilt-head mixer cuts down on elbow grease.

One instruction I've seen in many cooky recipes is chilling the dough, from an hour to a few days. Fuggetaboutit for my recipe! Another skippable item is parchment paper. Cake mix cookies have never stuck to my baking pans, except once when I tried using a Trader Joe's cake mix.

One other item I took a leap of faith in skipping--pressing the dough dollops flat, sometimes using fingers, other times using a glass. Without extra help, the dollops (using 1 1/2 T cooky scoop, level fill) expanded and spread during baking, but not too wide.

Dough Dispensing

A cooky scoop works same as a spring-release ice cream scoop, but faster than tablespoon-and-spatula method of scoop cough with one hand and push with spatula using the other hand.

After I had baked the cookies, I searched on the web for fast dollop dispensing. "The fastest way to scoop drop cookies" showed me that I've been really pokey. When she used two spoons, she dispensed 15 cookies in 1:34. When she used a 1-teaspoon cooky scoop, she dispensed 15 in 54 seconds. BTW, she shows her 1-teaspoon baked cooky as a 2 1/4" wide. My baked cookies were about as wide, but taller, I think. YMMV.

My smoothing dough against a spatula to flatten the dough before dispensing was slow. Method 1 (using side of bowl for flattening dough) in "How to Scoop Cookie Dough" shows a more streamlined method. Method 2 is much slower with 2nd hand handling. Useful info is seeing that the dough handler uses food gloves, which seems to help keep fingers dough-free.

View the image of different dollops and scoops, accompanied by helpful info for size and capacity. Another good resource for cooky scoops is "12 Best Cookie Scoops in 2022 – Reviews and Buying Guide", which also includes a table that summarizes brands and characteristics. "How to use baking cookie scoop [ Cake Decorating For Beginners ]" provides good info about five portion scoops for batters and various cooky types. The size numbers refer to the number of scoops obtainable from a quart-size container.

Baking and Results

The yield was 40 cookies. Tasty, soft, chewy! I wondered why they were perfect for softness and chewiness, compared to some of my other chocolate chip cooky variations. The web listed several results WRT chewy cookies. One suggested ingredient was cornstarch. Not much, but enough to affect dough. "From What Does Cornstarch Do in Cookies? (Plus Simple Substitutes to Use in a Pinch)":

Cornstarch isn’t used as a thickening agent in cookies, but it does have a very important purpose. When a recipe calls for cornstarch, it’s basically going to be there to help provide structure. ... Certain types of cookies are meant to be very chewy, and cornstarch is a common ingredient in those.

The cake mix box did list cornstarch. I also recall a trend awhile back of cake mix companies touting the addition of pudding mix. A main ingredient of pudding is cornstarch. Another ingredient some sites list for chewy cookies is brown sugar. The box did not list that. Thus, I infer that the cornstarch contributed to the texture.

Calories and Sodium

These rich-tasting cookies are 98 calories each, fewer than the 139 each in "Triple Choco Granola Cereal Cookies".

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"Pt 1 Cooky Pressing Choco Chip Cooky Dough, Not One-at-a-Time Dollopin"

"Pt 2 Cooky Pressing Choco Chip Cooky Dough, Closer Looks"

"Low-effort Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies"

View more cooky recipes.

Triple Choco Granola Cereal Cookies

I've long wanted to make a granola variety chocolate chip cookies using H-E-B Select Ingredients Triple Chocolate Granola. That cereal is yummy, and cookies sound like a handy way to skip the bowl of milk. Not a milk-and-cookies type myself, maybe others might take a shine to the idea. Poking around the web, one prospective recipe was "Granola Cereal Cookies".

The list of ingredients looked reasonably short and simple. Some comments looked like good suggestions for deviation, such as using granulated sugar instead of brown sugar, and oil instead of butter. I'm more partial to granulated sugar; easy to pour. As for oil for fat, butter is twice to triple the cost of oil for similar quantity. (Butter seems to be the most common fat for cooky recipes.)

I further deviated by reducing the sugar. I figure the cereal already has plenty of it. As the cereal is already a finished product, I also skipped the vanilla and additional chocolate chips. The video is a slide show for baking these chocolatey chippy granola cookies. The process is intended for those who have cooky preparation experience. You should know about recipe utensils and equipment, ingredients, recipe steps, and reading between lines. Note: The cookies are doable using a pastry blender, but a tilt-head mixer cuts down on elbow grease.

Dough Dispensing

I used a 1 1/2T cooky scoop. The first panful took 7 minutes, the subsequent cookies much longer. A few dollops tended to fall apart upon dispensing--not enough dough to act as "glue". Or too much cereal for dough amount. Adjustment for future batches would be to lessen the amount of cereal by maybe 3/4 C.

Baking and Results

The yield was 39 cookies. They were tasty, but crunchier than I preferred. Also, small pieces tended to crumble off upon chompdown. A main reason for crunchiness is baking at higher temperature and longer than necessary. Cookies continue to bake with residual heat from the goodies and also the pan. I baked at 375 for 11 minutes each batch. Google search results for "why are my cookies hard when they cool" provide insight. I'm leaning more towards temperature and time being the reasons for my outcome. Adjustment for future batches would be to set the oven for 350, and bake between 9 1/2 to 10 minutes.

Calories and Sodium

I was mildly surprised to see the cookies calculated for 139 calories each. I chalk that high number to the granola cereal already loaded with calories. Also, dispensing might have been easier if I had more dough base or less cereal. Maybe I could have squeezed out a few more cookies for the session for the same total calories.

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I've made numerous batches of cookies over years. Want to see more?

Kool-Aided Cake Mix Cookies Combo Batch

Around winter holiday season, chocolate-covered cherries tend to float into my consciousness. Another chocolate and cherry concoction has also been staring at me recently when I open the freezer: ice cream with cherries and chocolate chips "H-E-B Select Ingredients Creamy Creations Cherry & Chocolate Limited Edition Ice Cream". One yummy I wanted to buy so I could add chocolate chips and make cookies with is a cherry-chip cake mix. Unfortunately, have heard the supply is spotty "Betty Crocker Super Moist Cherry Chip Cake Mix".

The basic cooky recipe uses cake mix, eggs, and oil. For flavor and color enhancements, I added a package of Cherry Kool-Aid and 10 drops of red food coloring. Another cooky variation is a chocolatey covered one. BTW, I used Black Cherry Kool-Aid for my "Kool-Aided Cake", an experiment. It turned out so well that I rationalized that Kool-Aided cookies could turn out well. View the video for full details of preparing one, two, or three types of cherry-themed cookies.

While thinking about implementation, I decided that chocolate in a form or two would be interesting. My recent foray into chocolate coating and also chips with mint themes inspired me to borrow from those ideas. The intention, besides making tasty cookies, was to improve on similar processes. Additional ingredients for this combo-batch cooky recipe are red food coloring, chocolate chips, and optionally, white chocolate "bark".

Because of the nature of dough stiffness, I recommend using a tilt-head mixer. If you use a pastry blender, wire whip, or hand mixer, stamina would be helpful. Another helpful item is a cooky press for shaping and dispensing cooky dough pieces. Or you can use a tablespoon-and-spatula method.

Cooky Press Thoughts—Disks

I misplaced my Wilton cooky press container, which showed the baked cooky shapes for each disk. The images for the following models look mostly similar.

• "Preferred Press Cookie Press, 13-Piece"
• "Wilton Cookie Pro Ultra II Deluxe Cookie Press". View the useful image of the disks.
• "Wilton Cookie Pro Ultra II With 3 Bonus Disks. (20)"

Cooky Press Thoughts—Dispenser Trigger Squeezes

Using 1 1/2 trigger squeezes of the cooky press yields suitable size cookies.

• "A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch"
• "Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter"

For the cookies for "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies", I used two trigger squeezes per cooky. I think the heavier cooky made chocolatey dipping more awkward and used a lot more coating. The yield was fewer than I liked. I'll use 1 1/2 trigger squeezes when using a cooky press.

Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies

These cookies are actually Plan B use of remaining unadorned mint chocolate cookies from "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies". I had run out of melted chocolate after having coated only about one-third of my 40 cookies. It wasn't until the third day that I thought about gussying up uncoated ones. Hmmm, I didn't have spare frosting, but had ingredients for buttercream frosting.

My buttercream frosting recipe called for 3 cups of powdered sugar and typical additional ingredients. "Vanilla Buttercream Frosting". And rather than making pedestrian sandwich cookies, I added 7 drops of blue food coloring to the frosting. Why blue? Eh, I didn't notice that the cap was blue instead of green until I mixed up the frosting. Maybe weirdly, the color looks more mint green than baby blue.

I had only 19 unadorned cookies remaining. I dispensed 1 T frosting each for 10 cookies, mated them with 9 others. (I indulged and ate the single cookie with excess frosting. Yum!) Yield: 9 ~3" diameter sandwich cookies (each ~2 ounces, 255 calories), and one oddball (~ 190 calories)

Note: For future possible sandwich cookies from cake mix recipe that yields 40 cookies, an entire 16-ounce can of spreadable frosting might be enough for 20 sandwiches.

How did I decide the amount of frosting per cooky sandwich? From experimentation with these ~ 3" diameter unadorned cookies, I felt one tablespoon of frosting filled in well.

Musing: Oreo Mint Creme Chocolate Sandwich Cookies are similar to the cookies I made. Mine are bigger, and softer and easier to take small bites of.

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Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies

Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies

My journey started out as intent to make chocolate-covered mint-flavored chocolate cookies. Such examples are Girl Scout Thin MInts, Hill Country Fare Fudge Mint Cookies, and Fudge Mint Cookies (Back to Nature brand).

This cooky recipe uses cake mix, eggs, oil, mint extract, and chocolate chips. The ingredients and methodology are very similar to "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies". The biggest differences are the cake mix flavor and chocolate chip use.

I visited mostly video sites for melting chocolate and also methodology for coating the cookies. I bought a dipping tongs gadget. Some unknowns going in:

• Cautions about melting process (temperature, durations, microwave vs. double boiler)
• Number of cookies I'd get from my favorite cake mix cooky recipe
• Tablespoon-and-spatula dispensing of dough vs. cooky press
• Baking time—chocolate cookies not as easy to spot browning edges
• Amount of chocolate for coating the cookies—enough vs. too much

The yield was 40 baked cookies. The 12 ounces of melted chocolate chips was nowhere enough—only 12 cookies well-coated and 2 half-topped. Why'd I so badly underestimate the amount of chocolate I needed?

• My inexperience (clumsiness) with coating methodology and failure to revisit sites on baking day
• Too-late thoughts about scraping excess chocolate back into bowl, resulting in overcloaked cookies
• Fear of breaking cookies while coating, thus, handling them gingerly during dipping and transporting

What happened to the 26 unadorned cookies? Most of the remaining cookies wound up in my Plan B sandwich cookies that I didn't think of until three days later. Visit "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies" for details.

On to the cooky making!

Implements

• Pastry blender or electric mixer
• Bowls for mixing wet ingredients
• Bowl for mixing dough
• Rubber spatulas
• Cooky spatula
• Cooky pan(s)
• Cooling rack(s)
• Spoons
• Dipping tongs
• Parchment paper
• Measuring spoons
• Resting plate

Ingredients

• 1 box of chocolaty cake mix
• 1/3 to 3/8 cup of oil (I forgot that my standard recipe uses 1/3 cup. Results were acceptable.)
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 teaspoon of mint extract
• Chocolate chips or other chocolate form for coating (Note: I severely underestimated the amount of chocolate I needed. I managed to coat only about 1/3 of the baked cookies.)

Dough Process (Using Pastry Blender or Electric Mixer for Combining)

For mixing this few-ingredients cooky dough, I used a manual pastry blender. For parceling out the dough onto baking pan, I initially used the method of measuring spoon and spatula, then switched to a cooky press. A cooky press is fast if the dough is single-texture consistent. It's not appropriate if the dough has chocolate chips, nuts, or other items too big to fit through smallish disk holes.

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Mix oil, eggs and mint extract in a large bowl. (Most of the times, I usually break each egg separately into the bowl before adding the other wet ingredients.)
3. Mix in the cake mix.
4. Parcel out tablespoons of dough onto pan, leaving ~1" margins for baking expansion.
5. Bake each batch for up to 7 minutes. (Because the dough is chocolate, checking for browning edges is not helpful.)
6. Cool for ~ 2 minutes before using cooky spatula to transfer them onto cooling rack(s).

Chocolate Coating Process

1. Set aside a large surface for this process. It's also helpful to have a plate for resting dipping tongs, spoon, or fork for handling the cookies.
2. Lay out parchment paper for laying chocolate-dipped cookies onto.
3. Melt chocolate chips or other chocolate forms in a medium bowl until syrupy.
4. Coat each cooky separately, lightly scraping excess chocolate before transferring onto paper.
5. Carefully pull parchment sheet or partial sheets of coated cookies onto rack or pan, and place inside fridge to cool and harden the chocolate.

How long before melted chocolate sets? From "Chocolate-Dipped Cookies"—"Refrigerate until the chocolate just sets, 10 to 15 minutes." From looking at my camera's pic date stamps of cooky refrigeration and bringing them back to the kitchen island, 40 minutes passed. (I probably did some other task during that time.)

Resources for Melting Chocolate and Dipping Items

• "Dipping Cookies, Pretzels, Cherries in Chocolate"
• "Dipping Cookies, Pretzels, Cherries in Chocolate Part-2"
• "How to melt chocolate in microwave : How to melt chocolate"
• "How to Melt Chocolate, the Right Way! - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph"
  This site provides corrective action if the chocolate misbehaves in the melting process.

Cooky Stats

Yield: 40 ~3" diameter unadorned cookies
 12 fully coated (each ~2 ounces, 189 calories)
 2 half-coated (each ~1 1/4 ounces, 129 calories)
 26 unadorned (each ~2/3 ounce, 65 calories)

Note: I used a cooky spatula to divide the coated cookies.

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Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies

Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies

The journey to these simple-to-make munchies started out with a discussion about chocolate mint cookies. I meandered to researching mint flavoring and food coloring for mintifying chocolate chip cookies. I wanted them have the color, taste, and chippy looks of mint chocolate chip ice cream, but avoid overdosing.

"Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts" describes my initial journey towards my cooky recipe. It started out with a friend's recommendation for a minty iced chocolate cooky. I got to thinking about similar cookies, then about other sweet, minty yummies. I wondered about mint flavorings, of which I included some info.

"Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips" describes my deeper dive into making a mint chocolate chip cooky, greenish to resemble mint chocolate ice cream. As I would add food coloring and extract, I wondered about their shelf lives. I pointed to various recipes, calculating dough weights for inferring appropriate amounts to use. The toll house mini-chip recipe ingredients help me conclude reasonable amount of chips to use.

My ingredients for these cookies are a box of yellow cake mix, 1/3 cup of oil, 2 eggs, 5 drops of blue food coloring, 3/4 teaspoon of mint extract, and a 10-ounce bag of mini chocolate chips. For saving time and elbow grease in mixing up this dense cooky dough, I used my tilt-head stand mixer. I mixed the liquid ingredients with the balloon whisk, then switched to the flat beater paddle to add the cake mix, then the chips. I doled the dough portions onto a baking pan using a measuring spoon and rubber spatula.

Ingredients

• 1 box of yellow cake mix
• 1/3 cup of oil
• 2 eggs
• 5 drops of blue food coloring
• 3/4 teaspoon of mint extract
• 10-ounce bag of mini chocolate chips

Process (using pastry blender or mixer for combining)

1. Preheat the oven to 350.
2. Mix oil, eggs, mint extract, and food coloring in a large bowl. (I tend to break each egg separately into the bowl before adding the other wet ingredients.)
3. Mix in the cake mix.
4. Fold in the chips.
5. Dole out tablespoons of dough onto pan, leaving ~1" margins for baking expansion. (I use the measuring spoon with rubber spatula method.)
6. Bake each batch for ~ 10 minutes, checking for browning at edges.
7. Cool for ~ 2 minutes before using cooky spatula to transfer them onto cooling rack(s).

I preheated the oven to 350 for about 10 minutes while I doled the dough portions onto a baking pan, between level and rounded tablespoons. Baking time was ~ 10 minutes, about the time cooky edges became slightly brown.  YMMV for amount of time, especially if your parcel out bigger dough dollops than mine. BTW, with bigger dollops, you should allow bigger margins and increase baking time.

Newish to Cooky-making Process?

Visit step-by-step details at "Minty Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies" (w/images) and "EZ Mini M&M Confetti Cookies" (narrated video, article w/images).

My baker's basic "pre-flight" suggestions:

• Have plenty of food-preparation surface(s).
• Acquire and line up all your ingredients.
• Line up all your implements (bowls, cooky pans, measuring cups/spoons, etc.)
• Remember to preheat the oven.

For additional help, the web and YouTube are LOADED with cooky recipes and advice. If you want the easiest way to step into cooky baking, start with refrigerated cooky pellets (located near refrigerated biscuits).

Cooky Stats

Raw ingredients weight and the chips: ~35 ounces
Yield: 51 ~2/1/2" diameter cookies (24 for 1st pan, 27 for 2nd pan)
Calories: 78 each (3990/51)
 (cake mix powder, 1800, chips, 1400; oil, 650; eggs, 140 -> 3990)

Post-recipe Notes

• The amount of 3/4 teaspoon mint extract seemed reasonable.
• Baked color was less green than I hoped for, some color interference because of slight browning, maybe. Might have been OK to use 7 drops of color instead of 5.
• Weight evaporation from baking was about 2 1/2 ounces.

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Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies

Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips

My mind percolated about making cookies that would integrate yellow cake mix, mini chocolate chips, mint extract, and blue food coloring. This cooky should resemble mint chocolate chip ice cream. I became curious about some of my ingredients.

Shelf life of food coloring? Shelf life of mint extract? What kind of mint is in my extract? Difference between peppermint and spearmint? Difference between peppermint oil and peppermint extract? How much extract to use? How much food coloring? Use blue instead of green? Amount of chocolate chips?

Shelf Life of Food Coloring

"Does Food Coloring Go Bad? How Long Does Food Coloring Last?" answers, "shelf life of food coloring is almost indefinite. Food coloring does not have raw ingredients in them that can go bad."

Shelf life of Mint Extract

"MINT EXTRACT, PURE, COMMERCIALLY BOTTLED — UNOPENED OR OPENED" answers, "Properly stored, mint extract will generally stay at best quality for about 3 to 4 years."

I'd written my "Minty Choco Chip Pudding" recipe article awhile back, so I wondered about the extract's safety and potency. Still Tasty site's info:

How can you tell if mint extract is still good? Mint extract typically loses flavor over time - if the extract develops an off odor, flavor or appearance, it should be discarded.

I did a sniff test after noting that the fluid was transparent. Yup, strongly minty!

Peppermint, Spearmint, Oils, Extracts

For this article, I'm emphasizing more about the cookies than mint. Visit "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts" for sections where I contrast peppermint vs spearmint, and peppermint oil vs extract. BTW, my bottle of "McCormick® Pure Mint Extract" lists both spearmint and peppermint oils, along with water and 89% alcohol.

Ideas for the Cooky Recipe Extract, Food Coloring

A recent discussion with a friend about mint chocolate cookies spurred me to consider making a batch. A little uncertainty about seeing obvious doneness for chocolate cooky dough got me to thinking of using a lighter-color cake mix. Also, I thought the cookies might look kinda cute if they resembled colors in mint chocolate chip ice cream. Several sources gave me enough ideas about amount of mint and food coloring, and eventually, amount of chocolate chips.

I searched in my blog for mint and found Minty Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies and Minty Choco Chip Pudding, both from 2014.

The cooky recipe is similar to the spearymintal cookies, except for different means of mint flavor, kinds of chips, and cake mix flavor. At that time, I used a pastry cutter for mixing.

The pudding recipe uses both extract and food coloring. I had referred to page 20 of the Cuisinart Instruction Booklet (for soft-serve ice cream maker) for mint ice cream (ingredients: 30 ounces). The pudding ingredients weighed 19 1/2 ounces. The ice cream called for one teaspoon of extract. I hedged my bet and used half the amount for the pudding. Turned out to be the right decision. I had used green coloring; would use blue another time.

"Addictive Double Chocolate Mint Cookies" calls for 1 teaspoon mint extract to make a batch of 36 cookies. I decided I needed to calculate the dough weight (29 ounces), although I consider the recipe to fussy for my taste.

"McCormick® Pure Mint Extract" intrigued me with "Mint Brownies: Prepare and bake 1 package (21 ounces) brownie mix as directed, stirring 1/2 teaspoon extract into batter." One-half teaspoon! Now I needed to find out what recipe with added ingredients would weigh that would warrant a seemingly teeny amount of extract. I found an 18-ounce box fudge recipe that called for 3 T water, 1/2 cup of oil, and 2 eggs. OK, powder amount is close enough. The added ingredients would add about another 9 ounces. So, one half teaspoon of extract for 29 ounces of dough.

Gauging Appropriate Amount of Chocolate Chips

I usually use regular-size chips, commonly packaged for 12 ounces each bag. I wanted to try mini-chips. OK, so mini-chips packages weigh less, and cost about $2.50. Seems the smallness gives the taste buds pretty good bangs for buck. Anyway, the recipe for "Original NESTLÉ® TOLL HOUSE® Mini Morsel Cookies" calls for a 10-ounce package of mini chocolate chips. The weight for flour, sugars, butter, and eggs totaled 31 ounces. I concluded the entire pack of chips was a reasonable amount for my spearymintal cookies.

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Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies

Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts

I recently tried some chocolate-covered mint chocolate cookies, Fudge Mint Cookies (Back to Nature brand), recommended by a friend. Mmmm. Got me to thinking about other minty chocolate cookies. I recalled my supermarket sells Hill Country Fare Fudge Mint Cookies. They're square, minty chocolate with chocolate coating. Decided to look up more similar cookies.

I thought I recalled that Girl Scouts has a minty cooky. Yes! Thin Mints, tersely described in "Meet the Cookies".

The Google results for "girl scout cookies mint chocolate" yielded not only a pointer to the Girl Scouts Thin Mints info, but also loads of pointers to DIY recipes.

All three brands of minty chocolatey cookies, besides sharing characteristics of minty cooky coated with chocolate icing, use peppermint oil. I wondered how that differed from peppermint extract.

Contrasting Peppermint Oil and Extract

"What Is the Difference Between Peppermint Oil & Peppermint Extract?" explains:

The fundamental difference is that peppermint oil is made of pure peppermint, while peppermint extract is essentially a flavored solution—a little peppermint and a lot of something else.

Peppermint oil is the pure, concentrated oil—known as an essential oil—derived from the stems and leaves of the peppermint plant. … An extract is a mixture of an essential oil and a medium—usually alcohol—that helps carry the flavor. … Never ingest pure peppermint oil, which can be toxic in large doses.

Hmm, my bottle of "McCormick® Pure Mint Extract" lists both spearmint and peppermint oils, along with water and 89% alcohol. Speaking of peppermint and spearmint, …

Contrasting Peppermint and Spearmint

From Taste of Home's "What’s the Difference Between Peppermint and Spearmint?":

Peppermint is an incredibly pungent—almost spicy—herb. … And though peppermint is perhaps the better known of the two, it’s actually a natural hybrid of spearmint and water mint. … much more potent than its counterpart. Because peppermint is a mix of two types of mint, it contains a higher content of menthol (40% as opposed to spearmint’s 0.5%).

From Chowhound's "What Is the Difference Between Spearmint and Peppermint?":

Spearmint, containing less than 1% menthol is the far more delicate with a subtly sweet profile, and thus often found in savory dishes; much less likely to overpower other herbs and spices. … peppermint is actually a hybrid of spearmint and water mint. At 40% menthol, it is the surly, punchy and powerful member of the Metha family, and the intensity of it’s “minty” flavor borders on spiciness, earning it a fitting name.

Both Taste of Home and Chowhound sites contain expansive explanations and also links to recipes that use either kind of mint.

Other Sweetish Scent o' Mintal Thoughts

My mind meandered to mint flavored sweets. Hmm, Junior Mints, Peppermint Patties, Andes Mint candies, grasshopper pie, mint chocolate chip ice cream, …

I also thought about articles I'd written that contained mint: Minty Choco Chip Pudding and Minty Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies

My mind started percolating about another cooky recipe that would integrate yellow cake mix, mini chocolate chips, mint extract, and blue food coloring. This cooky should resemble mint chocolate chip ice cream. I needed to confidently determine the amount of extract and food coloring to use.

---

Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies

Pie D'oh to Plan B Cookies, Sweet-Tweaked

Initially, I started out with a rolled, refrigerated pie crust, which I had intended to use in my MayDay lemon meringue pie. The box had info about letting the dough warm up a few minutes to room temperature before unrolling it onto a pie pan. Or could microwave for a few seconds.

My brain misfired and had my fingers microwave the dough for defrost on a low setting. Unfortunately, the defrost setting is meant for FROZEN items. When I pulled out the plate of the rolled dough, I discovered the dough was tepid and soft, un-unrollable. D'oh!

I hatched Plan B—cookies. That plan worked OK. Yield was 13, with confetti sprinkles, but I thought it could use additional sweetening.

I hatched the sweet-tweak the next day after having only three cookies left. I spread some vanilla frosting, then glued additional sprinkles.

During the resolution of the pie dough, I poked around the web for ideas about pie dough cookies. I also expanded my thoughts about easy cooky making. Not addressing no-effort, ready-to-eat cookies nor the other extreme—scratch cookies. (I'm practically on permanent hiatus from physical effort and expense required for scratch cookies.)

Actual Pie Crust Cookies

I stumbled upon some sites for making cookies from pie crust. Some recipes use unroll-pie-crust dough, some suggest either unroll-dough or homemade. One calls for leftover dough. The commonality of these recipes is addition of cinnamon and extra sugar. Looks like adding butter is helpful.

• "3-Ingredient Cinnamon Sugar Cookies" is a true unroll-pie-dough recipe that uses only pie crust, sugar, and cinnamon. This recipe would not have worked in my case, as my dough was already kaput.
• "Easy Pie Crust Cookies" actually calls for a package of refrigerated Pillsbury Pie Crusts! She adds cinnamon, sugar, and melted butter, then cooky-cuts them out.
• "Pie Crust Cookies" provides guidance for using leftover pie crust. I do wonder about the small scale the baker uses—4 ounces of pie dough and rest of ingredient amounts. BTW, she calls for a lot more than three ingredients. The pix, however, are divine!
• "Cinnamon Sugar Pie Crust Cookies" suggests either store-bought or homemade pie crust, along with four additional ingredients.
• "Easy Pie Crust Cookies" also suggests either store-bought or homemade pie crust. Spartan amount of ingredients besides the crust—sugar, cinnamon, and optionally, melted butter. Her recipe uses cooky cutters.

Pretty EZ Cooky Dough Using Room-temperature Kits

Making cookies out of refrigerated rolled pie dough like I did is not economical. The pack of two was ~$3, total of just over 14 ounces. You can buy cooky mix in the cake aisle for about $2 for 17.5 ounces (example: Betty Crocker) with several varieties.

BTW, I used only one-half of my pie dough package for the 13 cookies. From looking at a website for BC cookies, the entire package yield would be 36. Sooo, if I'd used half of a BC package, the cost would have been 1/3 less than the pie dough, and the yield would have been about 50% more.

Almost EZ Cooky Dough Using Cake Mix

The standard easy recipe I use is one box of yellow cake mix, 1/3 C oil, and 2 eggs. Yellow cake is easy because the ingredients are simple. I'm not sure how factory ingredients differ among yellow, white, and butter-recipe; however, I know they require different added ingredients. For chocoholics, chocolate cake mix requires the same ingredients as yellow cake.

As for economy, each boxful weighs about 15.25 ounces. The yield, after adding oil and eggs, can range between 48 and 56. Yield is even higher, but the cost also more, if you add in choco chips and nuts.

EZ Cooky Dough Using Refrigerated Pre-mixed Cooky Dough

Refrigerated pre-mixed cooky dough comes in two forms—pellet-shapes and sausage-shaped wrapped ("chub"). Pellets come usually 24 to a pound. Open the pack, break at edges onto pan, and bake in pre-heated oven. With the slightly more laborious chubbed dough, peel away the plastic wrap, spoon the dough onto pan(s) or cut into pieces onto pan(s), and bake in pre-heated oven.

So, are you inclined to make pie dough cookies? Various other types of cookies with varying efforts?

Rainbow Nonpareil Cake Mix Cookies

Multicolor sprinkle decorations for packaged cookies, cakes, and cake mixes tend to more often be jimmies than nonpareils. These cookies vary from the ones I made when I used the Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip cake mix. Instead of using cake mix that already includes multicolor jimmies, I used basic cake mix and added rainbow nonpareils. (Wilton's product name is Rainbow Nonpareils.)

"Sprinkles, Demystified: An Explanation of All Types" explains a main difference as shape—round for nonpareils and cylindrical for jimmies.

Round Sprinkles: These can more specifically be referred to as nonpareils. These are those teeny-tiny round balls that can come in a single color or in rainbow.

Cylinder Sprinkles: Sprinkles with a cylinder shape are made by mixing up a paste ...a little slower to “bleed” color than the nonpareil type of sprinkle. ....In some parts of the United States, particularly Pennsylvania and the Northeast, this type of sprinkle (the chocolate type in particular, it seems) are referred to as “Jimmies”.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Stirred cake mix and nonpareils (dry ingredients)
4. Stirred eggs and oil (wet ingredients)
5. Blended dry and wet ingredients in the larger bowl
6. Raw dough in pan
7. Baked cookies in pan
8. Cookies on a cooling rack (some flipped back to right side up)

Implements

• Cooky pan(s)
• Pastry blender
• Mixing bowls (one medium-large, one small)
• Measuring cup (optional for cracking eggs individually before pouring them into bowl)
• Tablespoon for measuring out cooky dough
• Spatula for scraping dough onto pan
• Cooky spatula for lifting and transferring baked cookies
• Cooling rack for baked cookies

Ingredients

• 1 box vanilla cake mix (I used Betty Crocker French Vanilla.)
• 4 Tablespoons Wilton Rainbow Nonpareils
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup cooking oil

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Use the pastry blender to stir the cake mix powder and nonpareils together in a medium-large bowl.
3. Use the pastry blender to stir the eggs and oil together in a small bowl.
4. Pour the eggs and oil mixture into the larger bowl and combine the ingredients.
5. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
6. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet, using the rubber spatula to ease out each lump.
7. Bake for about 9 to 11 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
8. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

The batch made 38 cookies, ~65 calories each.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
Those nonpareils in these cookies "bled" slightly into the dough during mixing, turning the dough a light bluish gray. Interestingly, enough of the nonpareils' texture remained so that after baking, the cookies still had some crunchiness within the soft texture. Eh, at some time, I should try another cooky batch with jimmies in an egg-oil-powder dough to see if the jimmies bleed.

A few months ago, I actually did bake a jimmies version, using Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip cake mix, but I used butter instead of oil. Looking at pix I had taken of the process for "EZ Buttery Confetti Cake Mix Cookies", the jimmies did not bleed and tint the egg-oil-powder dough.

The nonpareils came free with a supermarket promotion. Normal price would run about $1.75 for the 3-ounce jar. The four tablespoons amounted to over half the jar, thus, about a dollar's worth. Cake mix tends to run slightly more than a dollar for a 15.25-ounce box. The oil cost about 30¢, and the eggs cost about 34¢.

If I calculate the cookies as having free nonpareils, each cooky comes to a little over 4¢. If I include nonpareil price, each cooky comes to about 9¢. Sure, a big price difference. OTOH, you make them fresh instead of buying them from a store or bakery. Yum—freshness and lower cost!

For a quick reference to price of eggs and oil, scroll to the bottom table at "Whataburger Pancakes, Mix, or Scratch". (I calculated costs of scratch pancake ingredients, an egg and oil being two of the items.)

Baking Cookies with Trader Joe Cake MIx

I was visiting a relative and wanted to bake some cookies using cake mix, eggs, and oil. She showed me her two boxes of cake mix, a Trader Joe's Golden Yellow cake mix, and a Duff's Zebra cake mix. I chose TJ's. This baking experiment produced results that differ from my standard cake mix cookies.

Standard cake mixes from Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines, and Pillsbury weigh 15.25 ounces each these days. (Grrr! They used to weigh 18.25 ounces apiece.) The Trader Joe mix was 28 ounces. Funny thing, though, is that the pan and well sizes all claim the same thing—2 8" or 9" round layers, 9" x 13" rectangle sheet, or 24 cupcakes.

Wasn't sure I wanted to double my usual added ingredients (2 eggs and 1/3 cup of oil) for making the cookies because TJ weighed nearly twice as much as DH, BC, or Pillsbury. So I hedged my bets. My relative had larger eggs on hand than I usually do, so I used three. For the oil, I upped the amount to 1/2 cup. I should have taken TJ's cake ingredient requirements to be added into account—3 eggs, 1 cup water, 1 cup oil. BC, DH, and Pillsbury each call for 3 eggs, 1 cup or so water, and 1/2 cup oil—half the oil that TJ calls for.

Forged ahead with making the cooky dough with the pastry blender, then shaping cookies onto pans and baking at 350° for about 12 minutes each pan. The yield was 56 cookies. They tasted ok for not having additional enhancements.

Post-Baking Thoughts

• The cookies stuck to the pan, requiring scraping with a spatula. Would put in 2/3 cup total oil AND spray the pans with spray oil.
• I was correct to use more oil and eggs than normal, and ignoring TJ's yield prediction of same amount as BC, DH, and Pillsbury. TJ's yield was 56, compared to the other brands of about mid- to high 30s.
• Would put in maybe 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract for extra zing.
• Would add chocolate chips, coconut, nuts, or combinations for additional textures.

My Non-TJ Cake Mix Cooky Recipes (Try 'em!)

• EZ Buttery Confetti Cake Mix Cookies
• Minty Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies
• Diff Kinda Choco-chip Cake Mix Cookies
• PC Cookies
• Cake Mix Macaroon Cookies
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--German Chocochip Bites
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch

EZ Buttery Confetti Cake Mix Cookies

This recipe features Betty Crocker Party Rainbow Chip cake mix. Over the years, seems that companies have used labels like "party", "birthday party", "funfetti", and "confetti" for including the colorful, sugar mini-rod decorations. Hmmm, BC's webpage shows a Rainbow Chip cake mix, but omits "Party" from the product title and URL.

I'd been curious for a long while about using butter instead of cooking oil in my cake mix cooky recipes. (Try "cookies" in the search field at the upper left.) Rather than use a single-flavor cake mix, I decided on the confetti-ish mix. Interesting contrast between using butter and oil. The process is slightly different with softening the butter first. The buttery cookies came out softer and fluffier than cookies that I used oil instead.

My pixstrip shows the following image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Softened and slightly stirred butter
4. The butter and two eggs
5. Blended butter and eggs
6. Blended butter, eggs, and cake mix
7. Raw dough in pan
8. Baked cookies in pan
9. Cookies on a cooling rack (some flipped back to right side up)

Implements

• Cooky pan(s)
• Pastry blender
• Mixing bowl
• Measuring cup (optional for cracking eggs individually before pouring them into bowl)
• Tablespoon for measuring out cooky dough
• Spatula for scraping dough onto pan
• Cooky spatula to lift and transfer baked cookies
• Cooling rack for baked cookies

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup soft butter (2/3 stick)
• 1 box Betty Crocker Rainbow Chip cake mix

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°.
2. Soften the butter in the microwave oven as necessary.
3. Combine the butter and eggs.
4. Use the pastry blender to stir the cake mix powder into the butter and eggs mixture.
5. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
6. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet, using the rubber spatula to ease out each lump.
7. Bake for about 9 to 10 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
8. Use the cooky spatula for lifting and transferring the done cookies onto cooling rack.

The batch made 39 cookies, ~57 calories each. I did spot some other cake mix recipes using the Betty Crocker Party Rainbow Chip cake mix, but several added frosting atop the cookies. Adding the frosting seems to be gilding the lily, adding more calories and sweetness, in addition to using more time and effort. Assuming a hypothetical distribution of an entire 16-oz can of Betty Crocker Rich and Creamy Vanilla frosting, each cooky would have an additional ~47 calories—13 servings x 140 calories/serving ÷ 39 cookies = 46.7 calories/cooky.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
Another time, I'll try making cookies that emulate my "Krusteaz Choco Caramel Squares" from my previous article. However, I'll try making individual round cookies instead of a single slab that I cut up later. Haven't decided whether to use tablespoon/spatula method or use my cooky shooter to dispense the dough.

Cookie Mix Recipe: Fat Deviating

I've been on a roll lately with deviating from sweets recipes—even easy and convenient ones. This time, I deviated from a Krusteaz Triple Chocolate Chunk cookie mix. (Krusteaz has nothing to do with the Simpsons show clown, Krusty.)

The box calls for only 1/2 cup (1 stick) of butter and one egg besides the packaged mix. Simple. But I didn't want to use only all butter for the fat.

Sooo, I used half the butter called for. The other half, I replaced with one tablespoon of sesame oil and enough cooking oil to fill 1/2 cup.

Yes, I realized AFTER I baked the cookies that I put in too much cooking oil. I should have added three tablespoons of cooking oil instead of seven, resulting in 400 extra calories (200 calories x 2 oz. oil).

The results weren't disastrous. The cookies came out crispy, and just a mite oilier than if I'd replaced the correct amounts of fat. The cookie webpage claimed the cookies to be "chewy". They had 400 additional calories spread over 46 cookies, which amounted to less than 10 extra calories per cooky.

According to the Krusteaz box's nutritional table, the dry ingredients total 2160 calories (120 calories x 18 servings of two 2"-diameter cookies). A prepared mix of dry and wet ingredients total 3060 (170 per serving). Anyway, if I had prepared my 46 cookies with the equivalent fat substitutions, each cooky would have been 66 1/2 calories (3060/46). Instead, each cooky came to about 75 calories (3460/46).

The Krusteaz box displayed a table that listed yields as follows:

• 56 2" cookies (2 t dough)
• 24 2-1/2" cookies (1 rounded T dough)
• 2 3" cookies (2 rounded T dough).

The nutritional table estimated a yield of 36 2" cookies. As my yield was 46, I'm guessing my tablespoonfuls were somewhere between level and slightly concave.

Although I increased the number of ingredients from the box's recommendation, it was by only two. The sesame oil, a favorite additive of mine, gave the cookies a nutty flavor. The cooking oil reduced the amount of saturated fat because of butter. Yes, overall fat was higher. Next time, I'll try to remember to substitute the right amounts. :-)

My pixstrip panels show the following images:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients
3. Pan with raw dough/baked cookies
4. Plate of cookies (yum)

To search for other sweets recipes (most of them EZ), use the search feature at the upper left of the webpage, or click keywords in the index at the upper right.

PC Cookies

Personal Computer? Politically Correct? Printed Circuit? Peanut Cluster? Nah! I wanted to think of a way to recall main ingredients for this cooky recipe. Sooo, using a recognizable pair of letters would help—pecan coconut.

Sure, "p" could also mean peanut, peach, praline, and "c" could also mean carrot, caramel, crunch.

In Googling "pc", the most popular hits that come up pertain to personal computers. As I progressed in entering characters of my article title, I saw that Google started autofilling a suggestion for "pc cookies", the topic being cookies on personal computers.

As in many of my other cooky recipes, I used boxed cake mix for convenience. My hyperlinked list at the bottom of the article has only one scratch recipe. I'm a big believer in few ingredients and easy preparation. I came up with this recipe came from wanting to bake cookies without chocolate that was likely to melt in summer weather—no chips, chunks, or ganache.

These cookies surprised me for being crunchy rather than soft and chewy. I think my recollection for soft and chewy is from cake mix cookies I had baked, um, a long time ago.

In the distant past, the standard cake mix cookies called for adding 2 eggs, 1/4 cup of oil, and 2 tablespoons of water to the powder. The cookies came out of the oven initially soft until cooled. They were crunchy like store-bought cookies for maybe an hour or so, then became soft and chewy. I think instructions said to store in an airtight container after they cooled to prevent them from becoming soft and chewy.

The standard recipe now calls for 2 eggs and 1/3 cup of oil. A few years ago, I did try the older recipe with the newer cake mix. The cookies tasted fine, but they were quite crunchy and never softened.

It seems that big-name cake mix companies, within months of each other, changed their recipe and touted the addition of pudding. To my recollection that move came on the heels of a Pillsbury Bakeoff winner having put pudding into a cake mix cake. I haven't been able to find a link to the history of addition of pudding to cake mix powder. Maybe some other baker who reads this article can enlighten.

Anyway, onward to the recipe! Implements

• cooky pan(s)
• pastry blender
• medium-large mixing bowl
• small mixing bowl or large cup or jar (for eggs and oil)
• measuring cup
• measuring spoons
• cooky spatula to lift and transfer baked cookies
• cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients

• 2 eggs
• 1/3 C cooking oil (I replaced 1 T with sesame oil.)
• 1 18ish oz. white cake mix (I used Duncan HInes French Vanilla.)
• 2 C flaked coconut (I broke up the bigger, stuck clumps.)
• 1/2 C chopped pecans (I used a 2 1/4 oz. pack of pieces, which I chopped into smaller pieces.)

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour the coconut into a medium-large mixing bowl, breaking up the lumps.
3. Pour the cake mix powder and nuts into the coconut, using the pastry blender to blend together.
4. In a bowl or large cup, combine the oil and eggs. For a more aromatic flavor, exchange 1 T of the oil with 1 T sesame oil.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the larger bowl and use a pastry blender to stir the ingredients together.
6. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
7. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet. Slightly press the lumps with the bottom of the measuring cup for flatter cookies.
8. Bake for about 9 to 10 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
9. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

Shaping the dough slightly concave yielded 52 cookies, calculated to about 82 calories each. YMMV.

Additional Past Cooky Recipes

• Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies
• Cake Mix Macaroon Cookies (similar recipe with more process details, using fewer dry ingredients and more wet ingredients
• A Convenient Triple-dose Pnutty Butter Cooky Batch
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--German Chocochip Bites
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch [Valentine]

Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies

This oatmeal cooky recipe uses the minimal amount of ingredients, for those who want a nekkid cooky that has lots of oatmeal, and no raisins, nuts, chocolate chips, white sugar, extracts, or whatever additional ingredients. The ingredients are simple—oatmeal, flour, baking soda, oil, eggs, and brown sugar. As a bonus, I include information for resoftening a brown sugar brick into its spoonable form. (How many of you bakers have found your brown sugar dried out like I did?)

Most oatmeal cookies call for butter (saturated fat!). A few call for oil. In both types of recipes, they seem to call for way more oil than I want to use. After having poked around several online and oatmeal box recipes, I've come up with a recipe that reflects fewer steps and fewer calories. Forget having to let butter soften and creaming it with sugars, in the cream-butter-and-sugar instructions.

The recipe that came with my oatmeal box was appealing because it called for the most oatmeal and claimed the yield to be about four dozen. It was weird that the oatmeal company did not list the calories. I had to look elsewhere for the recipe AND caloric info..

Oddly, I have two oatmeal box lids with the same-name recipe. The only difference is that both call for 1/2 pound of butter, but one lists 2 sticks and the other one lists 1 stick and 6 tablespoons. Cooking measurements typically show 1/2 pound to equal 1 cup to equal 8 tablespoons when talking about water or fat.

My upper pixstrip shows five image areas:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients, dry and wet
3. Mixed ingredients in one bowl
4. Dough spoonfuls on pan
5. Baked cookies

Implements

• cooky pan(s)
• pastry blender
• mixer
• large mixing bowl
• medium small mixing bowl
• measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• additional implements in case of needing to resoften brown sugar
• rubber spatulas
• cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients (adapted from Dale Goodman's Food.com webpage)

• 2/3 C oil
• 1 1/3 C brown sugar, firmly packed (See note in Instruction 4 if you first need to resoften the brown sugar.)
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 C Quicker Quaker Oats or 3 C Old-Fashioned Quaker oats, uncooked

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour the flour and soda into a large mixing bowl, using the pastry blender to blend well.
3. Add the oatmeal, blending well.
4. In the smaller bowl, mix the oil, eggs, and brown sugar.
   Note: If you need to resoften the brown sugar, refer to 10 Ways To Soften Hard Brown Sugar. (I used Quick Tip #1, the 7th suggestion—illustrated in the Brown sugar resoftening pixstrip at the top of this article.)

   Need it soft now? Put it in a container and set in the microwave with a small bowl full of water beside it. Microwave for about 1 minute–check. If it’s still hard, try for another 30 seconds. You can keep doing this until it’s soft, but watch that you don’t melt it.

5. Pour the wet ingredients (oil, eggs, brown sugar) into the larger bowl.
6. Use the pastry blender to stir the ingredients together.
7. Use a tablespoon to scoop the dough.
8. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet.
9. Bake for about 10-12 minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
10. Transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

Calories

The recipe yielded 56 cookies. Initially, I calculated the calories to be about 63 calories each. I've started to include a calorie and sodium table to be more accurate.

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"Pt 1 Revisiting Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies, Plain and Chocochip Batch"

"Pt 2 Revisiting Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies, Closer Looks at Process"

"Simplest Scratch Oatmeal Cookies"

View more cooky recipes.

Cake Mix Macaroon Cookies

How about a macaroon cooky that tastes a lot better than a gluey coconut clump? How about a cooky that chews like a softish cooky and has dominant coconut texture and flavor? Use a cake mix for the dry-ingredient base.

Most of my recipes are about minimal process and few ingredients. Most recipes I read lose me if I see more than six ingredients or multiple steps or time investment, or a combination of those conditions. Some of my ingredients at home drive my baking choices. One item I had was a bag of coconut I got free with a purchase of something else. I also had a box of white cake mix that I wanted to use up.

I based my recipe mostly on the ExclusivelyRecipes.com French vanilla macaroon bars recipe. A main deviation was mixing 1/3 C cooking oil into the wet ingredients instead of cutting in 1/3 C butter into the cake mix powder. I decided to try making individual cookies instead of shaping the dough into a pan and cutting it into bars after baking. I omitted the chocolate to keep the recipe simple.

Another recipe I consulted was the Chocolate Chip-Coconut Macaroons from the Betty Crocker Ultimate Cake Mix Cookbook. I deviated from the recipe as follows: I used only 2 T water instead of 1 C, used half as much coconut, used 1 egg instead of 3 egg whites, and omitted the chocolate. The recipe is online except that they omitted the quantities for the ingredients, which they want readers to request by email. Smart cookies will be able to infer the quantities, based on this paragraph and my list of ingredients. :-)

My pixstrip shows three images:

1. Implements
2. Ingredients, dry and wet
3. Baked cookies

Implements

• cooky pan(s)
• pastry blender
• medium-large mixing bowl
• small mixing bowl or large cup or jar
• fork or similar item for mixing wet ingredients
• measuring cup
• measuring spoons
• cooky spatula to lift and transfer baked cookies
• cooling rack for done cookies

Ingredients, dry

• 1 1/2 C flaked coconut
• 1 18ish oz. white cake mix

ingredients, wet

• 1 egg
• 1/3 C cooking oil (Replace 1 T with sesame oil if desired for flavor twist.)
• 1 t vanilla extract
• 2 T water

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Pour the coconut into a medium-large mixing bowl, breaking up the lumps.
3. Pour the cake mix powder into the coconut, using the pastry blender to blend together.
4. In a bowl or large cup, combine the oil, egg, vanilla, and water. For a more aromatic flavor, exchange 1 T of the oil with 1 T sesame oil.
5. Pour the wet ingredients into the larger bowl and use a pastry blender to stir the ingredients together.
6. Use a round tablespoon to scoop the dough. Shape to rounded, level, or concave height.
7. Drop the spoon's dough onto the cooky sheet.
8. Bake for about 12+ minutes until the edges are lightly browned.
9. Use the cooky spatula to lift and transfer the done cookies onto cooling rack.

Shaping the dough slightly concave yielded 45 cookies, calculated to about 80 calories each. YMMV.

Additional Past Cooky Recipes

• A Convenient Triple-dose Pnutty Butter Cooky Batch
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch [Valentine]
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--Easter
• A Convenient Cake Mix Cooky Batch--German Chocochip Bites