Fall Baking Day

Last Friday my good friend, Kara, and I, had our 2nd Annual Fall Baking Day.  As most of you know, I love to bake.  Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this day with my friend.  Kara had the day off from teaching (after a long week of conferences) and we spent the morning making my kitchen smell of pumpkin and cinnamon.  We decided to make cookies and bread to freeze for impromptu visits or holiday family gatherings.  I also practiced Luke's birthday cake for next weekend.  We made chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal cookies, pumpkin scotchies, pumpkin bread, and cinnamon coffee cake bread.  Everything was delicious.  I am going to share my recipe for the chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal cookies I started making back in college.  This is my GO TO cookie recipe and I absolutely love these cookies.

Chocolate chip, Peanut butter, Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

1 1/2 c flour

1 t salt

1 t baking soda

1 c butter flavored Crisco

3/4 c sugar

3/4 c brown sugar

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

2 c semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 c peanut butter chips

2 c uncooked rolled oats (not instant)

Directions

1.  Sift flour with salt and baking soda.

2.  Cream shortening and sugars; beat in eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy.  Stir in sifted dry ingredients.  Stir in rolled oats and all chips.

3.  Make rounded spoonfuls of cookie dough and drop on cookie tray.  Freeze for 30 minutes and then place in freezer bags.

4.  When ready to bake: Thaw cookie dough.  Drop onto ungreased baking sheets.  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes.  Makes 4 dozen cookies.

We found the pumpkin bread recipe over at my baking addiction.  We modified the recipe by making mini loafs.  These would be great for gifts or just grabbing a loaf for when you have a friend over.  This recipe yielded 8 mini pumpkin loaves (4x2 pans).  I found the paper baking pans on Amazon here.  These paper baking pans are awesome, perfect for gifts.  We changed the baking temperature to 325 degrees for 45 minutes for the mini loaves.

The cinnamon coffee cake loaf looked and smelled so yummy.  Kara found the recipe at food.com.  It is a quick, easy recipe.  We followed this recipe exactly and the loaves came out great!

Who knew there was a recipe for pumpkin scotches?  This is a great recipe from The Girl Who Ate Everything, I love her blog!  We rolled these in cookie sized balls and placed them in the freezer for 30 minutes, then into Ziploc bags they went.  Of course, we did bake a few and the result...so good!  Kevin was even a fan!  

I hope you try some of these fall baking recipes!  

the supplies

the goodies; ready to freeze