Peanut Butter Cap'N Crunch Cookies

     The other day I had a weird existential moment. The dog was barking, The Spud was screaming and I was slowly losing my mind. For whatever reason, the sanest thing to do was not head for the liquor cabinet, but to the kitchen. With total mindlessness, I just started baking cookies. No clue why. I didn't even want cookies. It just seemed like the right thing to do. It was like an out of body experience. I was barely aware of what I was doing. I grabbed a cookbook to check how much flour and sugar I'd need and then I went to work.  I started to get strange looks from The Wife when I grabbed a box of Cap'n Crunch. The end result of this transcendental experience was a batch of really tasty peanut butter cookies with a sweet crunch. Totally worth it. As always, notes are in blue.

Ingredients

• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup Cap'n Crunch cereal (Peanut Butter Crunch would really step it up. I'd stay away from Crunch Berries for this recipe, though)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350F (180C, Gasmark4)
2. In a mixing bowl, combine peanut butter and oil. Add sugars and mix.
3. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix some more.
4. Add flour, baking powder and salt. Mix some more.
5. Add Cap'n Crunch. Mix until incorporated.
6. On 2 two ungreased baking sheets (if you have a silpat mat, I'd recommend using it here. If these cookies stick at all, you're going to be screwed), drop tablespoons of the dough about 2" apart on the sheets. (The dough will be oily. Don't panic, that's normal.)
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the tops look like they're cracking. Cool for a couple of minutes before transferring to a wire rack. (BE SUPER CAREFUL WHEN TRANSFERRING THE COOKIES! Until they finish cooling, they are unstable at a molecular level. Not even joking. Rough handling will cause them to totally fall apart. Once they're totally cooled, everything will set and solid.)

Good times!

Too Damned Easy Cookie Stuffed Brownies

     The more I do this whole food blog thing, the more fancy recipes I see. One thing I have always been mystified by is the baking layers inside of layers trick. I always figured it was too complicated to bother with. It never occurred to me that the process could be dumbed down so far that even I could convincingly pull it off using nothing but a couple boxes of mix. It can be done! The Wife was terrified when I went to make these, knowing exactly how bad they would be for us. Naturally, they tasted fantastic and we greedily shoved one after another into our faces. I anticipate you'll do the same. Shovel them into your own face, I mean. It would just be weird if you tried shoveling them into ours. As always, notes are in blue.

Too Damned Easy
Cookie Stuffed Brownies

Ingredients

• 1 - 10 ounce box of store bought chocolate chip cookie mix (ideally the cheapest you can find. I found one on special for 80 cents)
• 1 - 18 ounce box store bought brownie mix (I went with Duncan Hines Dark Chocolate Fudge brownie mix I found on sale for 99 cents. Such a deal!)
• Glass of wine. (You deserve it for putting together a dessert for under two bucks. Take the money you saved and get a couple bottles of Boone's Farm)

Directions

1. In a bowl, prepare cookie dough according to directions on the box. Take 12 teaspoons of dough and roll them into balls. Go ahead and eat the rest of the dough right out of the bowl.
2. In another bowl, prepare brownie batter according to directions on the box (use the "cake" style brownie that uses an extra egg, if they give you that option in the directions. Otherwise, just add another egg and hope for the best)
3. Spray a muffin pan with nonstick cooking spray. Fill each muffin cup with half the brownie batter.
4. Put a ball of cookie dough into each muffin cup, pressing it down into the brownie batter

   

   At this point you would be forgiven for just getting a spoon and eating it as is.

5. Us remaining brownie batter to completely cover the cookie dough in each cup. If there's any brownie batter, go ahead and eat that right out of the bowl, too.
6. Cook according to the directions on the brownie box (for us it was 350 for about 20 minutes), or until a toothpick inserted into the the cup comes out clean.

Good times!

Loaded Oatmeal Cookies

     Sometimes you find recipes in odd places. This particular recipe came by way of a book I found at a garage sale last fall. When I dropped fifty cents on Southern Recipes and Legends, I didn't expect to find any real gems. Mostly I thought the legends would be fun to read. Once you get past the shaky editing, you start to find some recipes that are genuine winners. A particularly good one was for Bonnie Doone Plantation Thanksgiving Cookies. That's a hell of a mouthful to say. The cookies are also a hell of a mouthful. They are packed with all sorts of goodies. There's chocolate, oats, cranberries, raisins, walnuts (if you want them). I wound up renaming them Loaded Oatmeal Cookies. They are super easy to make and the recipe yields over 3 dozen cookies. As always, any notes and changes are in blue.

Loaded Oatmeal Cookies
aka Bonnie Doone Plantation Thanksgiving Cookies
via Southern Recipes and Legends by Nancy Rhyne

Ingredients

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 2-1/2 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup raisins
• 2 cups cranberries, pitted and mashed slightly (we substituted 1 cup of craisins)
• 1 cup chocolate chips
• 1 cup melted butter
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (omitted)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375F (190F, Gasmark 5)
2. Combine all ingredients (I certainly hope you have a Kitchenaid or something similar, because this batter will be stiff. Mixing it by hand is going to be a chore). 
3. Drop by teaspoon (I assure you, you don't want to do this. Go by tablespoons. You'll still end up with 40 or so cookies) onto a greased cookie sheet. 
4. Bake for 10-12 minutes (this is pretty accurate. Do not go by the consistency of the tops of the cookies; they will be very soft right out of the oven. Lift one up and check the bottom. If it's golden brown, it's done. The cookie will set up once it cools off).

Good times!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

     I don't know why I don't bake cookies more often. Actually, I know exactly why: the wife and I tend to stand in the kitchen and stuff them mindlessly into our faces until we swell up like ticks. Fortunately, I've got my trusty copy of Taste of Home Everyday Light Meals to hook me up with 90 calorie cookies! If you like the chocolate/peanut butter combo, these are right up your alley. The peanut butter flavor really comes through. If you wanted to really do peanut butter overload, you could always swap in peanut butter chips! As always, notes and changes are in blue.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies
via Taste of Home Everyday Light Meals

Ingredients

• 1 cup chunky peanut butter (I used creamy. Fair warning, if you use natural peanut butter, the batter will be extremely oily. This is nothing to worry about; the cookies will come out fine)
• 1/4 cup canola oil (I used corn oil)
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup baking cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup miniature chocolate chips (I used full sized and learned why I shouldn't. The cookies are pretty small. Full sized chips tend to just fall out when you're scooping the dough. Either make the cookies bigger or use the miniature chips).

Directions

1. In a large mixing bowl, combine peanut butter and oil. Add brown sugar and white sugar; mix well. Add vanilla an eggs; mix well (I did all the mixing in the Kitchenaid).
2. In  another bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Add to peanut butter mixture; mix until blended. Dough will be sticky (as I said, my dough was more oily than sticky). Stir in chocolate chips.
3. Drop by rounded teaspoons 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Flatten slightly with a glass (I have made these cookies three times and only now have I noticed the part with the glass. Obviously, you can just skip that. No need to dirty a glass unless it's to put booze in it).
4. Bake at 350F (180C, Gasmark 4) for 8-10 minutes or until set and tops are cracked (if you want a softer cookie, take them out at 8 minutes. If you prefer a crunchy cookie, go the full 10) Cool for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks (no fooling with this part. When the cookies come out, it's going to look like they're not done. They will be notably soft. They will firm up during the cooling).

Good times!

Too Damned Easy Chocolate Pudding Macaroon Pie

     Now that the school year is in full swing, time is of the essence during the week. When I get home, I need dinner to come together in less than an hour if at all possible. I need all the time I can get to focus on unwinding, smoking cigars and drinking bourbon in preparation for the next day. It is this time-consciousness that has caused me to start writing these "Too Damned Easy" recipes. Some of these recipes may seem ridiculous in their simplicity, but you'll thank me when you are able to put together a decent meal after work that doesn't take much time or effort. These are recipes that you should have all the ingredients for at any given time. Okay, maybe you won't have macaroons on hand. Get creative. Bust up whatever cookies are laying around. Throw some Cap'n Crunch in there. Get crazy. As always, any notes are in blue.

Too Damned Easy
Chocolate Pudding Macaroon Pie

Ingredients

• 9" graham cracker pie crust (store bought. If you're making it from scratch here, you're missing the point of this recipe)
• 10-12 macaroons of your favorite flavor, broken up into small bits (for whatever reason, I had a can of cappuccino macaroons, so that's what I used)
•  1 box instant chocolate pudding
• Milk for instant pudding
• Whipped topping, optional (I had better not find out you made it from scratch. You'd better be busting out a container of Cool Whip. I would have used it, but I didn't have any in the house and I sure as hell wasn't making a special trip to the store for a throw-together dessert)

Directions

1. Take broken-up macaroons and lay them in an even layer in the pie crust. 

   

   Like so.
   I assure you, no matter how much that looks like ground beef, it is actually cappuccino macaroons in there.

2. Make the chocolate pudding according to the instructions on the box (this is where you double check that you're using INSTANT pudding or you're going to be sorely disappointed later when you have a bowl of chocolate macaroon soup)
3. Pour the pudding into the pie crust, making sure to completely cover the macaroons.
4. Refrigerate for at least an hour. Top with whipped topping when serving.

Good times!