Do-It-Yourself Easter Cookies

Another example of Bakerella's brilliant work was her "Cowgirl Cookies". The woman is a slave to detail, ....Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrespect!) Basically, what you do is fill an appropriately sized glass jar in careful stages so that all the ingredients of delicious chewy cookies are on show (a bit kind of like the sand in the bottle trick). You could give them a "theme" for any time of year, Easter seemed perfect, so I started filling jars of D-I-Y cookies in layers, like so:-

Here's the contents of the jar:-

1 1/3 cup all purpose flour, spooned into measuring cup & leveled
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup cooking oats
3/4 cup m&ms
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
1/3 – 1/2 cup chopped pecans

..................................................................................................

And here is the "filling order":-


First: flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt
Second: oats
Third: m&ms
Fourth: chocolate chips
Fifth: brown sugar
Sixth: white sugar
Seventh: chopped pecans

..................................................................................................

And to make up their delicious cookies, the recipient will need to:-

Add:
1 slightly beaten egg
1/2 cup butter (118g) (melted slightly in the microwave) 1 teaspoon vanilla

And....

1. Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Use the back of a large spoon to work it all together.
(Use hands to incorporate everything if necessary)

2. Then roll the cookie dough into 1 1/2 inch balls, place on a parchment covered baking sheet and bake for about 10 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven.

Makes about 26-28 cookies.


I've eaten some round Priya's and they were superb!

Above is as it is on the Bakerella website, some extra points to note:-

I converted a "quart" jar into litres and it was about 1.1 litres
I could only find a 1 litre jar from Asda (£1 each - bargainous!) and there was more than enough room.
I chopped up one large bag of pecans between the 3 jars (150g)
I used 2 large bags of M and Ms between the 3 jars (185g). This was a little under her measurements but I didn't want to crack open a 3rd bag and have them hanging around the house. I love M and Ms, I'm firmly in that Camp not the Smarties one - yeuch!
I used one pack of silverspoon choc chips per jar. (100g)
I think if you were to give them as a kids present milk choc might be better, I used dark but Tom will eat anything to be fair.
Spoon the ingredients in slowly pushing out to the edges first - flour will muck it up otherwise.
A rubber spatula was the best tool for the job here.
I also tried to keep the baking agents away from each other so they didn't start "reacting" so quickly in the jar.
And that's about it...

Here are the filled jars:-

But better than that, here they are with "Easter embellishments"...

And as you can see I made little tags that have a list of what you need to add to the mix and instructions on how to cook the cookies. I always find that the neatest writing you can do by hand is the font that Liz W taught me... you get a permanent black marker (it's darker), write the letters neatly with small balls on the end of each stick, then outline with a gold or silver metallic pen.

Easter chicks were 14 for £1 from Poundland. I looked in Paperchase first but they were £3 for 6!!! I have to say, the Paperchase ones did look a little more "free range" - a few of my Poundland boys had 1 eye, but I only needed a few... it was survival of the fittest :( Ribbons and nests were also cheap from "The Works".

The toppers were stuck down with a Glue Tape roller machine - so much less fiddly than glue.

Check out the original recipe as she presents hers with fabric tops and labels. I suspect you could get these jars in Hobbycraft but they'd be pricey... She also shows you how they should look prior to going in the oven and how they look cooked.

http://www.bakerella.com/mix-things-up/

You can freeze the mixed up uncooked dough for portion control and to test oven timings in smaller batches too.

Eat, enjoy and know that they are on sale in Bristol's poshest deli for £11.50 in a smaller jar. Rip off!
I took a sneaky photo when I lunched there on Monday... Ommmnnnnnn!

Much better to "Do It Yourself". Go on....

J :)