Category Archives: Cookies

Double Chocolate Cranberry Cookies

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When just beginning in my bakery, I started with a small box of baking soda. On the back was a recipe for a combination I had never considered – Chocolate Cranberry Cookies. The bakery kept me busy, enough so that I had little time to experiment. Once I switched to writing recipe books, I have had more opportunities. Nearly nine years later, I finally made my version of this cookie – and it has proven to be a delightful combination!

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If you are reading this, you are also getting a sneak-peek!  These delicious Double Chocolate Cranberry Cookies are one of the recipes that will be featured in my upcoming Thanksgiving / Christmas / New Years cookie recipe book.  This project has been in the works for a few years now, and it is my plan to publish it around September this year.  Keep an eye on this website along with my social media locations for updates.  If you would like to know when this book publishes, I would be happy to add you to my notification list — email me!  Don’t worry, I won’t send you newsletters — those things drive me bonkers.

INGREDIENTS

    • 12 Tablespoons – 180 ml Unsalted Butter, softened
    • 3/4 cups – 120 ml White Sugar
    • 3/4 cups – 120 ml Brown Sugar
    • 2 Large Eggs
    • 5 Tablespoons – 75 ml Strong Coffee or Espresso
    • 2 teaspoons – 10 ml Pure Vanilla Extract
    • 1 1/2 teaspoons – 7.5 ml Baking Powder
    • 1/3 cup – 80 ml Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
    • 2 cups – 480 ml All-Purpose Flour
    • 1 cup – 240 ml Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
    • 1 cup – 240 ml Dried Cranberries

mix ingredients chill drop cookies

MIXING

  1. cookies stacked allow coolIn a mixing bowl, cream butter and then combine the two sugars. It may be necessary to stop mixing and scrape the bottom of the bowl so that butter and sugar are mixed uniformly.
  2. Beat in eggs, coffee, vanilla extract, baking powder, and cocoa powder.
  3. While mixing, add one cup of flour at a time. Avoid over-mixing the flour; if necessary, stop mixing between making measurements and adding flour.
  4. Add the chocolate chips as the last of the flour becomes completely blended. Mix in the dried cranberries by hand.

BAKING

  1. Heat oven to 375° F/190° C/Gas Mark 5.
  2. Using a spoon, scoop small amounts of dough – 1 1/2 tablespoons or about the size of a ping pong ball – onto a cookie sheet. Space these apart, about 6-9 at a time.
  3. Place cookie sheet in the oven for 9-13 minutes. The cookies should be done when the edges are slightly browned.

TIPS THOUGHTS

Experiment with changing the extract – orange, almond, or rum should compliment the chocolate and cranberry flavours. Also, white chocolate chips might add a festive look if you want to use these as Christmas cookies.

PSST!!! You may notice that the ingredients above are similar to my Chocolate Ginger Cookie Squares in the Christmas cookie section. Yep – I just reused and modified my recipe and made it as a drop cookie. Which means, of course, that you can do either of these recipes as drop cookies or cookie squares!


A NEW Version of
Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies

Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies Update Cover artFor years I have wanted to get new cover-art for my debut book “Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies“.  I have also wanted to find a printer who could affordably give me interior pictures in colour.  I am excited to announce … IT’S HERE!!!

Available now through LuLu.com, I have re-released MYODGCookies — and it’s so new, I haven’t even received my proof copy yet!  If you go to their site you will find 2 listings — look closely — one is standard-bound paperback, the other is comb-bound.  Only the standard paperback will receive global distribution — which should start soon — so look for this new version through online book retailers and ask for it at your favourite local bookshop.

Let's Bake Cookie Squares and Biscotti!Do You Want To Try Before You Buy?…

Click the picture to get a copy of my FREE SAMPLE E-BOOK!

Also, check me out online at FacebookTwitter, and now Instagram for further updates on my upcoming books.

 

Thanksgiving & New Years Photo-Help!

Shutter-bugs, Photographers, Folks with Photo-collections – I need your help!

One of my nutcrackers — not these — will stand guard for Christmas

My latest cookie recipe book is on track to publish Spring 2022.  This book will feature tasty treats for winter holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years.  Although time is getting snug, I think I’ll make it – but I need a few pictures …

The photos of my cookies are in good shape.  I have found that getting other people involved makes my books more fun.  What I lack are pictures for the chapter openings.

What I am looking for are simple photos with a single icon that is immediately recognizable with its holiday.  I have a small collection of nutcrackers, and I will be taking a picture of one to represent Christmas.  I still need photos that represent Thanksgiving and New Years*.
* Update – I may have some New Years fireworks photos to choose from already.

I will of course need colour photos with good composition, lighting, and resolution.  These pictures be used in multiple products – print books, e-books, etc – possibly in some marketing.  The contributors of these photos will be mentioned in the Acknowledgements section of the book and receive a complimentary copy of the book in gratitude.  Also, the copyright section of the book will acknowledge you as the owner of the image.
(Note that the primary product will be a print book with black & white photos in the interior, including these chapter openings.)

Have photos or ideas for these pictures?  Send me an e-mail.

Hope you can help — Happy Holidays to you & yours!

Don

FREE Recipe e-Book … SOON!

There’s Olivia — everybody say HI!

I am EXCITED to say that I am in the final stages of making a free-sample recipe e-book*.  Yesterday I contacted OliviaProDesign, whom I’ve worked with once before, toward handling the cover-art.  An author friend recommended her a few years ago — her work POPS!
(*Here’s a secret — I’m actually working toward TWO free recipe e-books!)

I have proposed using two of my favourite photos — one a cookie square, the other some Toasted Almond Biscotti.  Olivia is so clever she suggested including my company logo, too — why didn’t I think of that, DUH!  Thanks for the pick-up on that, Olivia.  My aim is to do the final stages of publishing around the 15th of this month.

Watch here along with my Facebook and Twitter profiles for more announcements!

All the Best ~ Don

Quarantine Baking

HEY GANG!

My April 2020 Recipe Of The Month is uploaded to my website — grab my March recipe while you still can!

As it happens, with just standard baking ingredients most of us keep stocked at home — where many of us are at right now — the upcoming April recipe is well timed.  It’s simple, fun, and takes no special kitchen implements to make — coco powder, powdered sugar, and a hand mixer is about as fancy as this gets! Quarantine

WITH FOLKS BEING COUPED UP IN
QUARANTINE-VILLE…

fortune cookies
Imagine making your own custom fortunes…

I am considering posting a recipe for some big, soft Ginger Snaps I recently made. Dang if those things didn’t disappear within 24 hours…  This could give everyone another activity and something tasty to take the edge off. Watch this website, Twitter @WIBakingCo, and my Facebook page for announcement of this recipe-post. Quarantine

With some luck I will be trying a modified version of this recipe later today — as a Ginger Snap Biscotti. I’ve also been looking to experimenting with making (flavoured?) fortune cookies lately ….

But things have been busy here in
The Apocalypse…

arnold schwarzeneggerBaking has taken a bit of a back-seat lately. Everyone in the house here is dealing with some medial stuff — no, it’s not the virus or a toomah. I’m the most healthy and able person so I’m carrying a bit more of the work around here. Add to that… the pump on our well is threatening to go out any day, the well-guy has a Corona-reduced staff, so we’re working to establish temporary water supplies. ALL GOOD FUN when already juggling the adjustments that come with quarantine life (YAY!) — but we’re keeping our chins up and plowing forward. To that end…

WHILE YOU ARE DEALING WITH
WHATEVER IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW…

TP for your bunghole!I encourage you to do everything you can to take care of yourself, your family, your friends, and your neighbors.  Strive even to be extra-kind to everyone you meet when/if you are out & about — yes, even when you’re fighting over toilet paper. I know it’s tricky, but please do your best. This can be as simple as picking up the phone to call folks — just ask how they are. I’ve been doing this and it’s amazing the relief you can bring to someone when you present something so simple and so human. Quarantine

BagpiperDon playing smallpipes on a Washington State FerrySince Friday I have taken to playing mini-concerts with my Scottish Smallpipes on Facebook and YouTube. A number of authors have been reading their books and musicians playing music online, livestreaming to give a little comfort and respite. So far I’ve played three times since March 20th and I plan to keep going. Smallpipes are more somber than what you’re used to seeing in parades. I’ve been playing tunes from an album I have planned and the traditional sheet music book I’m close to publishing, including Scot/Irish recipes. I play and talk about my books. I hope you’ll join me, please look for BagpiperDon on Facebook and Twitter, for announcements of when I’m going to play. Quarantine

Keep your chins up, be good to your self and do good for others, and we’ll all get through this together!

Best, Don

Make Your Own Darn Good CookiesPS — For a limited time my debut recipe book Make Your Own Darn Good CookiesIS ON SALE on Amazon I have priced the paperback version of my book roughly 25% off WORLDWIDE.  You’re home, make something nice for yourself and your loved ones.

Also, ask for Make Your Own Darn Good Cookies by name at your favourite bookshop.

Cookies … In … SSPPAAACCEE!!!

Pigs in Space
(Twitter @TheMuppets)

Do you remember The Muppets?  Do you remember “Pigs In Space!“?  If you do then you understand where the title of this post comes from.

Do you remember when NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren played Amazing Grace on a set of McCallum bagpipes from the International Space Station in 2015?  It was the first time Highland bagpipes were Played In SSSSPPPAAAACCCCEEEE!!!!  (Sorry, had to do that again… here’s a great article about it though!)
(Twitter @astro_kjell, @nasa, and @mccallumbagpipe)

Are you aware that the first cookies have been baked in space and were brought back on Earth?

© Christina Koch Twitter
Image © Christina Koch / Twitter @Astro_Christina

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (@Space_Station) baked dough brought from Earth just in time for Christmas 2019.  Five cookies were prepared over the course of 2 hours using an experimental Zero G oven — the first oven designed to work in the microgravity environment.  The astronauts’ mission was to figure out exactly how long it takes to properly bake a cookie in space.  The first four cookies baked at 300F (149C).  The first cookie was in for  25 minutes and came out underbaked.  The fifth cookie was baked at 325 F (165 C).
(Here’s an article about Space Cookies!)

Houston, we have a bake-off!

SpaceX Dragon
The SpaceX Dragon, on twitter @spacexdragon

Yes, we finally know what happens when you bake cookies in space!  The cookie dough and oven launched to the station in November on a Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft and returned Jan. 7 on the SpaceX Dragon — possibly making these the most well traveled cookie dough, oven, and cookies in the history of mankind!
(@NGCNews)

SPACE …
The Cookie & Bagpipe Frontier!

BiscottiDon
Me as BiscottiDon @WIBakingCo

If you are not hearing the music to Star Trek, go back and read that again… (@StarTrek)

I would like to respectfully point out to both NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine (@JimBridenstine) and Elon Musk (@elonmusk) of SpaceX that they wasted money — and when it comes to space travel, that equals A LOT OF MONEY!  Trust me on this, I’m a small business owner, I cannot afford to waste money.

BagpiperDon
Me as BagpiperDon @BagpiperDon

As we all know I am both a skilled baker and published author on the subject and established Highland bagpiper who has published albums playing my instrument.

Okay — we can all see where this is going — TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE!!!

I’m not one to hold grudges*, therefore I wish to make the offer to both NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Elon Musk of SpaceX that they may compete — as they already are — to be the first entity to send a Highland bagpiping baker into space.  As an added skill I can even eat cookies in space.  My contact information is below.  I am willing to bring some of my own baking equipment and I already play a set of McCallum bagpipes (sponsorship?).  Let’s make “The First Biscotti In Space”!
(*Okay, that’s not 100% accurate, but this is how I’m spinning it.)

Respectfully ~ Don

BakerDon Contact & Press Kit (@WIBakingCo)

BagpiperDon Contact & Musician Resume (@BagpiperDon)
(Please note that I have performed in front of a US President — I am an ideal candidate!)

PS — I need employment.