October 1st is National Homemade Cookie Day.
National fake holidays like national coffee day, national mac N cheese day, national fried chicken day are kind of stupid to me. I don’t need someone to remind me to eat delicious things. And I definitely don’t need some holiday telling me to eat more fried chicken or cookies, right?
Anyway, there are some things that I will make an exception for and I think homemade anything is always worth celebrating. So Homemade Cookie Day, you passed my not very rigorous standards. haha!
That being said, one of the great things about making stuff yourself is that it is TOTALLY customizable. Since my son has been torturing himself (I mean challenging himself) to not eat refined sugar all year, I am reluctantly supporting him by making treats with maple syrup and/or honey instead. Fortunately, we discovered that Trader Joe’s carries completely unsweetened chocolate chips that are pretty convincing when paired with something slightly sweet. I also realized that I could just chop chunks of baker’s chocolate and use that in the same way.
So for National Homemade Cookie Day I will be including some options that are made without refined sugar as well. I only allow recipes with very high reviews because who wants to waste time and ingredients on something gross?
Here is my list of cookies I am planning to make to celebrate
…and by the way, I hope I don’t need to give you permission to make any of these on “Un-national Homemade Cookie Day” which is EVERYDAY!
1.Maple Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. This title really leaves very little to the imagination, but I like all these ingredients and I think I could actually comfortably eat this for breakfast without feeling guilty. I will also attempt to use the no sugar chocolate chips for half the batch (for my son) and a combo of no-sugar and regular chips for the other half of the batch.
I’ve noticed that Americans tend to overly sweetened most desserts, and by lowering the amount of sugar gradually, most of the time it’s not noticeable. If you have been to France, or other countries in Europe, their desserts seem to taste better in spite of being less sweet.
2. Two-Ingredient Peanut Butter Cookies. This is for my non-baker friends. If you are intimidated by long lists of ingredients and spices, look no further. I think it is always helpful to have a simple and healthy cookie recipe that you can whip up in 2 seconds instead of grabbing for a Reese’s peanut butter cup. These are essentially peanut butter shortbread cookies, which seems like a smart thing. I suppose you could also put some chocolate chips on them when you remove them from the oven and gently spread the melted chips over the tops if you wanted to take them over the top too.
ok, well I think that’s enough of those healthy options, so let’s move on to what we are really interested in…
3. The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever. I mean everybody makes this claim but apparently, over 2000 folks agree on this recipe. So in case you don’t have a go-to recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies, you can try this.
4. Grandma’s Snickerdoodles. Someone in my house really loves Snickerdoodles so I will have to make some of these too. They are a simple cookie with a mild cinnamon sugar flavor. The one thing I don’t like about this recipe is that it calls for “shortening”. Gross, who actually has shortening around anymore? That is the “hydrogenated trans-fat in a can” that used to be in every home until it was OUTLAWED because it’s so terrible for the heart. Now if you want to buy shortening you are basically going to need to get something made out of palm oil and coconut oil. Palm oil can be tricky because you want to look for the “Palm Done Right” seal. Otherwise, it could be destroying habitat for apes and other creatures.
Because of that, I don’t usually have shortening around my house but I do have coconut oil, and I have refined coconut oil which I use to make my homemade deodorant. It is versatile and edible so I use that instead. Coconut oil also has some health benefits because the body understands how to use it, unlike trans fats that are chemical fats. It can still have an impact on blood cholesterol so be aware if that is something you watch. Refined coconut oil doesn’t have as many of the health benefits of unrefined coconut oil but it is also doesn’t have a strong coconut flavor.
5. Thumbprint Cookies. These will be on my list because we went through a phase of every person in the house opening their own favorite type of jam and cluttering up my refrigerator. This is a pet peeve of mine, to look in there and see twenty different jars of the same thing….I’m exaggerating a bit. But now I know what to do! Maybe it’s outside my “sphere of influence” to stop family members from compulsively opening new jars of jam but, I can control how long those open jars stay in the fridge. This cookie is my saving grace. Now if I can figure out what to make with 72 ounces of salsa.
6. Lofthouse Cookies. I actually didn’t realize these cookies had a special name, I just thought they were the yummy melt-in-your-mouth cookies with unnatural colored frosting that you find in the bakery of your chain grocery store. My daughter and I really love them but we don’t like the food coloring in the frosting. Now we can make them at home without the Red #40.
7. Gingersnaps. These are a favorite for my dad. He actually really loves/ prefers Stauffers Gingersnaps and he once drove an hour to get them from a store after we called several places to see who had them in stock. But for national homemade cookie day, I will attempt to make a version that can stand up to Stauffers. They must be as hard as a rock and have no transfats to pass my dad’s test.
So now you have seven options to choose from for National Homemade Cookie Day.
If you can’t make them all in one day, spread it out, you could make a recipe a day for a week. And if you don’t like the idea of having all that temptation sitting around your house, give some away. Some of them could even be shipped and hold up well (text me if you don’t have my new address). There is nothing quite as beautiful as someone bringing you a delicious plate of homemade cookies, in my opinion.
