Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Yields 24 cookies

1 cup salted butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup creamy peanut butter (low-sodium)
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cup quick-cooking oats

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. In a large bowl, blend butter, brown sugar, and creamy peanut butter. Add eggs one at a time and beat well. In a separate medium bowl, mix flour and baking soda. Slowly add dry mixture to wet mixture and mix well with a wooden spoon. Add in oats and mix well.

3. Drop onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake in preheated oven until lightly brown, about 15 minutes.

Recipe adapted from allrecipes.com.

I originally tried to add candy corn to this recipe and it was an epic fail. The original recipe asks you to include white sugar but if you do, your cookies will be too sweet to eat.

Baked Christmas Cake Doughnuts

I love donuts. I've always wanted to make them but shied away due to the oil factor. If a recipe involves oil, something will catch on fire, generally the oil and my kitchen cabinets, so I avoid cooking with it if at all possible.

A few months ago, I ran across a fabulous baked vanilla donut recipe on Fake Ginger that I absolutely needed to make. I had never heard of baked donuts! After purchasing a donut pan for that very recipe, I unfortunately never got around to making it.

The recipe below, while not being the fabulous donuts aforementioned, was found because I wanted to avoid using buttermilk in my recipe. Why I just didn't substitute milk in the Fake Ginger recipe, I do not know. Milk will make your donuts thicker, like cake batter. For lighter donuts, use buttermilk in place of milk.

Recipe adapted from allrecipes.com

Yields 18 donuts.

3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
1 cup white sugar
1 cup milk
3 eggs
2 tablespoon honey
1/2 cup butter, melted

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Lightly grease donut baking pan.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and cardamom. In a separate medium bowl, beat sugar, milk, eggs, honey, and butter until well mixed. Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture using a wooden spoon. Spoon the mixture onto the donut pan.

3. Bake until the donuts are golden brown in the preheated oven, about 12 minutes.

You can add maple icing to the donuts. I don't have any maple extract on hand, but the recipe is easy (scroll down to the bottom of the post).