I rarely cook with recipes, but I always have a proportion or formula in my mind. Doing this allows me to make pancakes, gravy, yeast bread, cookies or quick bread wherever I might be visiting, no matter how many people there are to cook for. It's so fun to put the lady of the house to bed for a nap and tinker in the kitchen with my recipes in my brain! By having certain porportions in mind, you can switch ingredients around in any recipe to suit your health or taste preferences and still have a delicious end result. This also helps if you are cooking with what you have on hand and need to substitute ingredients. I'll be posting formulas for other foods too, but today I'm going to tell you all about the best drop cookies! Here's the basic recipe:
Basic Drop Cookies
1 C solid fat (butter, shortening, lard, coconut oil, or peanut butter–or any combination of them)
2 C granulated sweetner (sucanut, turbinado sugar, white sugar, brown sugar, powdered sugar, equivalent of stevia, or splenda–or any combination of them) Note: Stevia is best used with real sugar. Substituting all of the sugar for stevia will mess up the chemistry of your recipe and give it a bitter aftertaste. One teaspoon of granulated pure (undiluted) stevia extract is equal to about 1 cup of sugar.
1 t salt
1 t baking soda (if using acid ingredients such as brown sugar or citrus, 4 t baking powder if not)
1 t flavoring (vanilla extract, almond extract, peppermint extract, orange extract or 2 T orange zest, dried lavendar etc.)
2 eggs (or 1 egg and 1/4 C orange juice or other fruit juice, sour cream or yogurt, or substitue 1 T soy flour and 1/4 C water for one egg.)
3 C flour (white, whole wheat, brown rice, corn, etc.A half a cup of this could be cocoa powder)
2 Cups chunky grain based mix-ins: (if adding chunky grain mix ins–leave out 1 C of flour) Rolled oats, crisp rice cereal, cereal dregs, wheat germ, bran, etc. or any combination of them
2 Cups non absorbant mix-ins: chips;(white chips, butterscotch chips, peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, cinnamon chips, lemon chips etc); nuts (peanuts, almonds, macadamia nuts, pistaccios, hazelnuts, walnuts, pecans); crushed candy such as peppemint or butterscotch, raisins, craisins, currents, or other dried fruit. If your mix-in is super sweet like candy or chips you can leave out up to 1/2 cup of the sugar.
Directions: Cream fat and sugars. Mix in eggs and flavoring. Stir in salt and levening, flour and mix-ins. Place by spoonful onto greased cookies sheets and bake at 350 for 11 minutes.
The applications of this recipe are limitless. Here are some options
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Use 1/2 cup of peanut butter and 1/2 cup butter, rolled oats and milk chocolate chips!
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White chips and craisins with almond extract
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Orange zest, orange juice and dark chocolate chips
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Butterscotch chips and rolled oats
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1/2 c cocoa powder and peanut butter chips
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Crushed peppermints and chocolate chips
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Almonds and crushed Heath bar
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White chips and macadamia nuts
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coconut oil, lime zest, dried papaya and pineapple bits, and macadamia nuts