Sept. 12: Long overdue cookie joy!

This summer we had our annual summer picnic at work, with the theme of a country fair. My husband's sister does an amazing job of planning the company gatherings down to the smallest detail; she is really quite gifted at events. I was in charge of cookies--blue ribbon state fair winning cookies, to be exact.

After a fair amount of research,  we arrived at the following cookies:

Snickerdoodles with white chocolate chips (Utah)

Molasses cookies (Ohio)

Chocolate chip cookies (Island County Fair)

Peanut butter cookies (Maryland)

Ultimate dark chocolate chip cookies (Wisconsin)

Healthy oatmeal cookies (Virginia)

I have to give big props to Pinterest once again (what else is new?). It was a very valuable search engine for finding official blue ribbon recipes, better than Google in some regards. And, of course, a handy way to save recipes for making later!

I am not a big molasses fan, but I heard more compliments on that cookie than any other. The snickerdoodles were good but had a tendency to dry out (crisp) rather than stay soft as I had hoped. My absolute favorite was the ultimate dark chocolate chip cookie, as it had craisins, dried apricots, two kinds of nuts AND chocolate. A really packed cookie, and very flavorful.

Husband's favorite was the healthy oatmeal cookie, which was similar to the dark chocolate, except not quite as packed with fruit, and only one nut. And healthier. :)

My big takeaway from the cookie making extravaganza (I made upwards of 300, just to cover my bases) was that I'd forgotten how easy cookies are to make! I remarked many times, "I need to make cookies more often!" And have I? Um, no. But still, it was a good reminder that when a sweet tooth hits, warming up the mixer and throwing in some ingredients is not a bad way to go!

What's your favorite cookie recipe? I'm always up for a new one!

Jen and I (and now my mom and Lisa too!) are blog challenging throughout September. You can catch her blog over at Stuff Jen Says. If you want to write along with us, give me a shout and I'll send you the blog prompts.