Cheesecake Cookies

I think the person who came up with this is a genius. I mean, cheesecake is good, cookies are good, why not bring those two together to create something awesome!?!?!?

Just look at it. Isn't it beautiful? It's pretty much a mini cheesecake. And it's delicious.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/4 crushed graham crackers
• 1 cup of flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 stick of butter, softened
•  1 egg, separated
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
• Raspberry or other pie filling (optional)

The first part is the cookie.

In one bowl, stir together the graham crackers, flour, and baking powder.

Then, in another bowl, you want to beat the butter and the brown sugar. Once those are combined, add the egg white and mix it until combined.

Butter, Bronw Sugar and the Egg White.

For the next part, you gradually add the graham cracker mix to the brown sugar mix. You'll know when its all combined together, when you can make a ball with it.

The second part is the cheesecake filling.

For this you beat the cream cheese, egg yolk, sugar, and vanilla until its all nice and smooth.

The last part is bringing it all together into an awesome cookie.

The first step is to scoop the graham cracker dough onto a cookie sheet. I used an ice cream scoop.

Once they are all scooped, the second step is to shape them into bowls.

The third step is to add the cheesecake filling. Now, this could be the last step, if you want a nice  vanilla cheesecake cookie.

Or you can add a little raspberry pie filing before you put the cookies in the oven. We've had them both ways and I think everyone prefers them with the raspberry filling. It's up to you... why not try both?

The next step is to bake them. They bake at 350°F for about 12 minutes or until the cookies are golden and the filling is barely set. Once they were cooled, we stored them in the fridge. This cookie really blows the boring cookies out of the water at parties, be prepared and bring a couple of copies of the recipe to share with others :-).

Enjoy!

This recipe gets 5 out of 5 cat whiskers!
The original recipe can be found here.

Oatmeal Cookies

I like oatmeal cookies. They're probably the only cookie that can be considered healthy, or at least, a little healthy :-). 

This recipe is kind of like a choose your own adventure, because oatmeal goes with just about anything... so you can put whatever you want in them. We've done them with dried cranberries, chocolate chips, pecans and butterscotch chips. They are ALL great. The batch we made most recently had chocolate and butterscotch chips, which is a pretty good combo!

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 11/2 cup flour 
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 sugar
• 2 tbsp. vanilla
• 3 cups oatmeal
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1-2 cups of whatever you want in it, like chocolate chips, dried cranberries, nuts, etc. I used 1/4 cup butterscotch chips (because that is all that we had in the pantry) and 1 cup chocolate chips.

The first thing you want to do is to cream the butter and sugars together. Once they're creamed together, add the eggs and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Then you add the dry ingredients, mixing well. After that you add 1-2 cups of chips.

Before you start scooping cookie dough onto a cookie sheet, preheat your oven to 350°F.

For your cookie sheets you can use non-stick, or you can lightly grease regular cookie sheets with shortening or oil. Or, you can use parchment paper. I used non-stick cookie sheets.

I used a tablespoon to scoop them onto the sheet, but you can use an ice-cream scoop, or form them with your hands. It's all personal preference. They bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the oven.

My thoughts:  

The amount of butterscotch I put in this batch was the perfect amount. Because we've done it once with just butterscotch and no chocolate chips, and it seemed to be a little over-whelming. I'm not saying that just because I love chocolate, but because I think that butterscotch is a strong flavor.  

4 out of 5 cat whiskers!