cookies | The Spicy Simmer

For the past several months, I’ve had a small container of butterscotch chips in my pantry, just waiting to be used up. I bought them to make butterscotch chip pancakes one morning (idea taken from the Pancake House) and only made them a handful of times – not nearly enough times, though, to go through an entire bag of chips. Let me tell ya – they’re awesome. If you like chocolate chip pancakes, you’ll love butterscotch pancakes.

And the sugar high that may or may not come from them 😉

Anyways, the change in the weather and the drop in temperature gets me all excited for baking. I don’t bake very much, mind you – but when I do, it’s usually in the wintertime. Especially during the holiday season. Lately, however, I’ve realized that part of the gloriousness of baking comes from the fact that the oven helps to keep your house warm on an especially chilly winter night. Then again…the smells are pretty nice, too!

To use up both the container of butterscotch chips and the 1/6 of a bag of chocolate chips that I had left in my pantry (how I ended up not using an entire bag of chocolate chips over the past few months, I don’t know!), I made these cookies. I found the recipe online and simply added my own amounts of chocolate chips & butterscotch chips.

Chocolate Butterscotch Chip Cookies

Slightly adapted from Stuck on Sweet

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
chocolate chips – about 1/2 to 3/4 cup
butterscotch chips – about 1/2 to 3/4 cup

Preheat oven to 350*.
In a bowl, cream together the butter & sugars. Add the egg and vanilla, and blend in.
In a separate bowl, mix the flour, starch, soda & salt. Once it is combined, add the chips in, little by little.
Using a tablespoon, drop the dough onto a baking sheet (I lined my cookie sheets with parchment paper).
Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the edges just start to turn a golden brown.
Remove from oven and let the cookies cool on the sheet for 5 minutes, so they ‘set’ . Remove and let cool completely on a wire rack or plate.

I have to admit that these cookies vanished pretty quickly. They were chewy, sweet, and such a great combination of chocolate & butterscotch. Yum!

One thing to note about the recipe is the cornstarch. I had never baked cookies with cornstarch as an ingredient before, but have read on countless blogs that it’s a great ingredient that makes the cookies so light & chewy.

If you’re a fan of the chocolate & butterscotch combination, or are looking for a new cookie to try, or have butterscotch chips taking up real estate in your pantry for too long…look no further.

Truthfully, they’re so good, I may have to go buy another bag of butterscotch chips…

You may recall that we received a small pumpkin in our CSA in the last few weeks of its run. It sat outside on our stoop with our larger pumpkins & looked nice and pretty for October. After Halloween though, it became fair game for any human or animal to consume (we had one pumpkin fall victim to some sort of wild animal – it chewed a hole right through it!). Thus I decided to bring it into the house to see if we could bake something with it.

I followed Sarah’s directions on how to take apart & cook pumpkin. Instead of canning it, I put it into a plastic container, since I knew I would be using it within the week. Her directions made the pumpkin dissection easier than how I had done it before. I’m thankful that now I have the knowledge for processing pumpkin, and probably won’t ever have to buy canned pumpkin again if I can help it.

We used the pumpkin up in some pumpkin cookies; a team effort of both the Hubs and I.

Iced Pumpkin Cookies – adapted from Allrecipes.com

Cookies:

2.5 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 stick butter, softened
1.5 cups white sugar
1/2 small pie pumpkin, pureed (about 1 cup)
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350*. Combine flour & spices; set aside.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter & sugar. Add pumpkin, egg, & vanilla. Beat until creamy. Gradually add in dry ingredients & mix well.
Drop on cookie sheet in tablespoonfuls.
Bake 15-20 minutes. Makes quite a few cookies (I forgot to count)
One the cookies have completely cooled, frost with icing:
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1.5 tbsp milk
- 1/2 tbsp butter
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- *Mix the ingredients together in a plastic baggie. Cut off the tip of one end – easy DIY icing bag!

Don’t store the cookies like this. The icing will melt away. Oops!

The house smelled absolutely heavenly while these were baking! I highly recommend these to anyone who wants to try cooking with pumpkin.

For the sake of our waistlines, Hubs brought one tub of cookies to work, and we kept the others. These were especially good – however, they only keep for about a week; after that, they start to dry out. Which in our house, usually means one thing: I didn’t eat nearly enough of them! 🙂