Raspberry Coconut Sandwich cookies

This is a modified recipe from one of my cookie magazines.

Yield 2 1/2 dozen

3/4 C Butter
1/2 C sugar
1 egg (OR 1T  milled flax seed, 3 T water, set for five minutes)
1tsp Vanilla
2 C flour – (low carb or gluten free? – try Almond flour)
1/2 C flaked coconut
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Filling:
1/4 cup butter
3/4 C confectioners sugar
2Tsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 C raspberry preserves

I’m pretty sure that cream cheese can be substituted for the butter, confectioners sugar, and milk part of the filling. and for those of you on low sugar diets, cut the sugar down to 1/4 cup or less. The coconut does a nice job add some sweetness to the dough.

Instructions:

Cream softened butter and sugar, add egg and vanilla and cream together. Combine Flour, coconut, baking soda and salt in a separate bowl and sift together slowly into the mixture. Combine well.

Shape into 1” balls and place on a cookie sheet. Use a glass dipped in flour to flatten them out. Bake for 12-14 min at 350 or until edges begin to brown. Let cool on wire racks.

Beat together butter, sugar, and milk for filling in a small bowl. Spread 1/2 tsp preserves and a short of a tsp of filling onto half the cookies. Top with the remaining cookies.

Enjoy!

Dessert 1!

This week’s meal of the week is actually dessert! I love dessert and certain desserts remind me so much of my childhood. This is one of the best memories and a super tasty treat that you could almost count as healthy! I had to ask my mom for this recipe because its not one in a cookbook that I own. Humorously, when she pulled out her recipe to email it to me she found that whatever marker she had originally written it down in had blurred over the years. The runny green marker recipe card didn’t yeild much help, but, because my mom is BRILLIANT, she found a similar recipe online for me. So, while I’d like to say this recipe is my mom’s… its actually from cooks.com (Read more about it at www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,186,158186-233200,00.html Content Copyright © 2011 Cooks.com - All rights reserved.) with my mom’s modifications. We found it quite tasty. I hope you enjoy it!
Butterscotch Apple Cake
Today’s ingredients: All the basics for cookies plus a few extras
Beat together: (I don’t have an electric mixer, but mixing with a fork worked just fine)
2 c. sugar (I only used 1 1/2 C)
1 c. cooking oil + 2 tbsp. oil 
3 eggs
1 tsp. each cinnamon and vanilla (could probably use a little more cinnamon. I found it a bit lacking on the spice)

Mix dry ingredients and add:
2 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt (scant)

And now for the best two ingredients:
APPLES

and Butterscotch chips… mmmmmm

Fold in 3 cups diced apples.
We had a little issue while cutting the apples… my chopper didn’t like the idea of tough apple skin…
But it turned out ok...
(Remember that I folded in the Apples AND the Butterscotch chips. so if you’re following my mods, skip the last step below)

Pour into greased and floured oblong pan.
Sprinkle 1 package (6 ounce) butterscotch chips over top of cake batter.
Bake at 350 degrees approximately 45 minutes.
My mom’s modifications:
I highly suggest using these mods as the result was basically awesome. I used only 1 1/2 cups of sugar – and I probably could have used less. Because of the butterscotch chips and the apples, the cake would be WAY too sweet if you actually used the whole 2 cups of sugar. Next time I’ll probably only use 1 cup and maybe use some apple sauce as well. I wish I had added more cinnamon – 1 tsp would have added more spice!! (I like spice). I also used whole wheat flour instead of white flour (mostly because I didn’t have any white flour… shhhhhhh! don’t tell anyone) but actually using whole wheat flour is exactly what my mom used to do! It would have also been fluffier (it was pretty dense on tast testing) if I has used more flour. Probably a 1/2 cup extra would have been nice. I also folded in the butterscotch chips instead of putting them on top (that’s the way momma always did it!) A 9x13 pan works perfectly.
Watch out for snacking kids with this one! Happy Eats!

P.S. Mom email me this morning. Said she probably peeled the apples. It tastes amazing either way, but peeling the apples definitely makes chopping easier... :-)