One Pound of Butter, Two Batches of Cookies

I was in the baking mood yesterday so I took a pound of butter out of the refrigerator to soften. I didn't have any idea of what cookies I was going to make so started by looking in my recipe folder on my computer as well as browse through some blogs. Then I recalled that I had some cookie recipes saved on the Martha Stewart website. I looked over the small list I had compiled. Hmmm...then I saw it: Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies. I love any cookie that involves my all-time favorite ingredient, oatmeal. Oatmeal just makes eating a cookie a little more healthy. And dried cranberries was a bonus with their antioxidant power and anti-inflammatory properties. So I went ahead and started making the cookies. I used a blend of whole wheat flour and all-purpose flour. As I grabbed the bag of dried cranberries from the pantry, I thought I heard the chocolate chips calling me. Why not? So I added a cup of them to the batter. The recipe called for chilling the batter from 2 hours to overnight. It was late so I covered them with plastic film and put the bowl in the refrigerator. So much for baking last night.

This morning I took the batter out. I laid out the baking sheets and lined them with parchment paper. As I dug into the batter I knew I would have to trade in my cookie dough scooper for a soup spoon and hands. The batter was so hard! I tried to make each of them uniform in size (a little smaller than ping pong balls). I put the first two sheets in for 18 minutes but were on the crunchy side so I made sure that I put the next two sheets in for 16 minutes. They were just the way I like them.

I still had 1/2 a pound of softened butter left. I didn't want to put it back in the refrigerator so I decided to make a different batch of cookies. I had a lot of coconut shreds so I decided on Coconut Oatmeal Cookies. The last time I made them I found them too sweet and too cinnamon-y. I decreased the brown sugar to 3/4 cups and the cinnamon to 1/2 teaspoon. I also used the whole wheat/all-purpose flour blend for this batch of cookies. I didn't bother with chilling the dough and didn't have any problems with the end result. It was yummy.