Living the Mad Dash

Y'all, it's late - I know it. But technicallyit's still Valentine's Day. I threatened to post this story a year ago and then- well, life happened. It's back. May your little ones be tucked away in bed and you find yourself blessed with some one-on-one time with your Love.

This is NOT my recipe - all credit goes to the author: Siri Daly. I caught this on a Valentine's Day episode of the Today Show. Frankly, it's worth Googling to watch the entire segment on cooking a special dinner for busy parents. "Just a Few" Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies are delicious and soooo quick to prepare.

Short work is made of a few ingredients that come together to satisfy a taste for chocolate and cookie...but not exactly chocolate cookie. You see, the butter is melted! You don't have to spend time creaming the butter and sugar...you can get on with the good stuff and get these bad boys in the oven.

Because the recipe really is for "just a few" you'll only need small amounts of ingredients. A teaspoon of milk that you can steal from milk that you were going to serve with breakfast? Easy. No one will even notice it's missing.

I did deviate slightly. I added some chopped pecans and skewed my recipe a little more heavily towards the brown sugar than the white. Just the flavors I like. I mean- that WE like.

Just one more pic and I'm sending you to the recipe, I promise! These are always a hit- and they really could be ready in the time it has taken you to read this post. Certainly you'll be able to eat them all by the time your kids stumble out of bed because they smell cookies. Just kidding! I hope they don't wake anybody.

As promised, here's the link to the recipe: http://www.today.com/recipes/just-few-red-velvet-chocolate-chip-cookies-t2056

Happy Valentine's Day! Now go enjoy it.

Had I known that carrot cake and cookies as one would be so right, I would’ve been making these a long time ago. Read on if you want to know more about the cookie that almost got away from you…

As usual, the idea for this recipe was born out of a desire to get my kids to intake some kind of vegetable into their stomachs (yes, I’m aware that this is still a cookie). The ingredients aren’t fancy.

I had one of my baking sidekicks around to ‘help’ out although, really, she was just using me for my ingredients.

The result is a very moist, almost cake-like cookie that still has that chewiness of an oatmeal cookie. They aren’t super sweet- in fact, I’d say they are juuuust sweet enough. Add the cream cheese icing and then wow. WOW.

Carrot Cake Cookies

1&1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) softened butter

1 cup dark brown sugar (loose, not packed)

2 eggs (at room temperature)

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 tablespoon coconut oil

1&½ cups of all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1&½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

3 cups of old fashioned rolled oats

For carrots:

1&½ cups shredded carrots

1 tablespoon maple syrup

½ teaspoon vanilla

For icing:

4oz of softened cream cheese (softened)

2 tablespoons softened butter

1 cup of powdered sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons milk

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

Combine the carrots, maple syrup and vanilla in a bowl and allow the carrots to absorb the liquids. In a separate bowl, combine the measured flour, salt and baking soda, set aside. Next, cream the butter and sugar together until well mixed on medium speed. Add the coconut oil. Add the cinnamon until just mixed in. Mix in the eggs. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture by adding it to the mixer by the heaping spoonful, allowing it a chance to disappear into the dough before adding more. Batter will look like this:

Add the oats in batches, letting them become one with the dough before adding more. Then add those carrots, liquids and all. At this point, you should be looking like this:

I scoop giant mounds of dough onto the sheet for baking, but THE SECRET is...you have to press down the middle of the mound so that you don’t have a wet-in-the-middle cookie, make the lowest point of the mound the center. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

For the ICING, cream the cheese butter together. Add in the vanilla. Then slowly add the powdered sugar. Watch this closely because you don’t want to make this too thick. I was looking for a near glaze for the cookie, so adding in the milk by the tablespoon got the right texture going. Once cookies are cooled, slather ‘em up with this sauce. Then grab a cookie. Sit down. Take a bite and close your eyes. You’ll need a moment to collect yourself.