 Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. Welcome back to another fun video. So this day we were planning to bake up a bunch of cookies. Before I started baking though, we went to a Christmas festival that was near us and just enjoyed that and got some food to take home and eat lunch before we got started into the baked goods. I love this time of year and enjoying every minute of it right now. So I had a few reasons I wanted to bake up a bunch of cookies. I wanted to bake them for our neighbors. We wanted to make some little cookie containers up for our neighbors. And then also I'm going to be doing a cookie exchange. So I wanted cookies for that as well. And then just to have them in the freezer for anywhere we might go that we need to take something with us through the holidays. And of course I have my little helpers around. So you're going to see them in and out of this video. So the first cookies that we are going to be making today, if you guys have watched my channel for a while, you already recognize them. They're one of our family favorites and that is maple cookies. If you don't know what maple cookies are, you definitely need to try out this recipe. If you like pancakes, you will love this. If you love waffles, you will love these. And they are basically like a buttermilk style cookie. And then you cook the icing that goes on the top. And I would consider it almost more like a glaze. And this recipe is got brown sugar and maple flavoring in the glaze or the icing that you cook to melt on top. So I did actually multiply this recipe by four. So you're going to see here after a while how many cookies this made. But it made for a lot of cookies to give away to different friends of ours and for a nice stash in the freezer that of course will be delicious through the winter time because maple cookies are good anytime of year. But I think they're especially good when you have a hot drink to drink with them and just enjoy, I don't know, it's good seasonal cookies. So it's pretty simple. I will leave the recipe linked below with all of the other recipes that you're going to see in this video. And a little side note, my husband grew up eating maple cookies a lot. I didn't as much, but now it's something that's kind of gone into our family. So I am putting these Amazon silicone mats down on my cookie sheets. And I actually didn't end up using these the rest of the day. I just felt like I had washed them in my dishwasher and they smelled a lot like my dishwasher soap. So I was a little concerned that that taste of the dishwasher soap could potentially transfer to my cookies. So I decided to go ahead and just use my pans. And these cookie sheets do so well for the non-stick factor. They really do good even without the silicone mats. So if I can remember, I will leave the link for these cookie sheets below because they are on Amazon. So another little tip I have for you if you're going to be doing large amounts of cookies because you're scooping them obviously onto the pans, grab some of these two gallon buckets. I know they have them at Lowe's. They are a food grade two gallon bucket and they are so incredibly convenient for having extra dough to just be able to put the dough into the buckets and then still use your mixing bowl to continue on with the next batch of cookies that you want to mix up. So obviously here I'm putting the maple cookie dough into the bucket and then I went ahead and made another double batch because I did them kind of in double batches at one time because I couldn't do any more than that in my mixer or it would have overflowed. And I wanted to show you this cookie recipe. It's out of my mom's cookbook and as you can see it is well worn. So take a screenshot of that but I have a picture of it there and it is our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. It's the one that she made growing up and it just doesn't match any other recipe I've ever tried, tasted nothing. And the secret ingredient is instant pudding. So I actually like to get my instant pudding from Aldi. You all know I'm all about giving you all of the budget friendly tips when it comes to cooking and baking because we've got mouths to feed and a penny to save. So I like to get my pudding at Aldi. I find that most of the time it's about half the price of my normal grocery store. So instead of a dollar or a dollar 25 for a pack of the pudding you might be paying more like 59 cents which is an excellent price. So you use a vanilla pudding but I need to tell you you can get very creative with these cookies. So obviously for a traditional chocolate chip cookie like what I'm making today you would like the vanilla but you can make a double chocolate cookie by simply just putting a chocolate pudding in the mix instead of the vanilla pudding. I know my mom has made so many varieties of this. You can get a Oreo. I've done that in a video before where I've gotten an Oreo pudding and crunched up Oreos through that in the mix instead of the chocolate chips. You can do pistachio pudding without the chocolate chips and adding some nuts in. You can really go crazy with the pudding. You just switch up the type of pudding as long as it's the same amount in the box you'll see the ounces there on the recipe. You're good to go and then you can trade out the chocolate chips or take them out. However, you want to do that. So you saw Kailia working. She was my biggest helper this day and did a great job at scooping cookies off the trays when they came out of the oven and putting them on the cooling racks before we transferred them to some flour sacked towels. So here on the stove top I am putting together the maple cookie glaze. I'm gonna keep calling it a glaze because that's really what it reminds me of. And you just melt down the butter along with the brown sugar. You get it all melted together and you're also going to add in some powdered sugar as well. But the main reason in cooking this down is you really just want it to become a very smooth consistency. Get rid of that granular texture throughout and just have a nice smooth sauce that you can pour over each individual cookie. And the way that I have found that this is easiest to do is I get myself a big serving spoon or something like that where it's easy to just kind of ladle it over the cookies. And then you obviously let them cool and they will harden. So I have never tried emitting the milk from this and putting an almond milk in but that's definitely something you could try if you're going for a dairy-free version. I don't see why that wouldn't work but I have never tried it myself. So as you can see, like I said, I made so many maple cookies but these are going to go into the freezer beyond all that I gave away which I did give a lot away more than what I even showed in this video to the neighborhood containers and to friends. I got some other disposable containers to make up cookie trays and it's so fun. I feel like it's something, an art maybe, a home-making art that has been a bit lost in the last couple of years. So I encourage you, whip up some cookies for someone. You will make their day, particularly older people or people that maybe can't accomplish baking anymore. You can really put a smile on their face. So any guesses of why we're dumping out a bunch of Hershey kisses? If you make these every year, I'd love if you comment below and let me know. And these are the Hershey Kiss Cookies. That's what we call them around here. I know that they are also referred to as the peanut butter blossom cookies but they are just delicious. I feel like they are a cookie that has to be made around Christmas time. My mom always made them around Christmas time and we just love them in our house. So the girls, I set them to unwrapping the Hershey Kisses and of course they had a few in between so this job was really fun for them and it was fun for them to press them into the cookies which you're gonna see here in a moment. So these are the containers that I picked up from Walmart. They had them there. I felt like they were nice sturdy containers. I wanted something that if someone wasn't home we could leave it on the doorstep and not have to worry about the neighborhood. Cats getting into them or anything like that. So I just started to put some of the cookies in as they were cooling and just started putting them together so they weren't sitting out and drying out too long and they were already in the container in a somewhat air sealed container. So here you've seen the finished product of the chocolate chip cookies and I actually did them with a smaller scoop. I kind of wanted more of a mini version of them just because I think this time of year bite-sized stuff is kind of fun since we're already getting into a lot of sweets and things. Sometimes you want a variety and to have a few of each so having smaller sizes is also really a great idea. So if you're making up cookies and maybe you're just making one of your favorite recipes make it a little smaller. That kind of gives it a more cookie tray look. So here I am mixing up the peanut butter Hershey. I keep saying Hershey but it's Hershey. Hershey and we do live in Pennsylvania. So we've been to the Hershey Chocolate Factory times before but it's been a while and we've been talking about going again and counting it as a field trip since I homeschool for this year. So we will see since we live only a few hours away from there. But this recipe is extremely simple and it just calls for some shortening, some flour, some sugar, some peanut butter obviously. And I think you could swap out that shortening for butter if you wanted to. I just had shortening on hand. I wanted to use up. I'm not one that normally purchases shortening unless it's something, unless there's a specific recipe that I really need it for. So I just had it in the pantry and I wanted to use it up and this recipe did call for shortening in the recipe. So this is another job that little hands can do. You after you mix up the batter, you go ahead and you put that into some sugar, just some granulated sugar and you roll it around. And I decided to make these a little bit bigger. Sometimes the cookie is almost the same size as the Hershey kiss depending on who's making it. And I prefer to have a bigger cookie with the Hershey kiss in the middle. So that's what we went ahead and did. And then this first batch, I actually baked up exactly like they are on the pan. And then the second batch, I took my palm and just kind of smashed them down just a little bit because as you're gonna see here, when we're pressing the Hershey kisses into each cookie, they kind of sunk down into the cookie. They didn't, the cookie didn't, I don't know, smash out enough or melt out enough when it baked. So the rest of them, I just took my palm and kind of padded it down a bit before I baked them. So here I am putting some of those cookies after they had cooled and hardened into these containers, just adding to it so that I could fill them up. And I know that these are not the most colorful looking cookies. They don't have a lot of sprinkles and icing and all of that. But personally, I don't care for those types of cookies normally. There is a few that I do like that have sprinkles and that stuff on them. But I think a lot of times when I'm looking at a tray of Christmas cookies and picking out what I wanna eat, it's usually things I know that are gonna taste really good and not necessarily something that is going to look really fancy and colorful. So here I am oiling a cookie sheet and I will leave a link below for this oil dispenser. Every single video I put up, I get questions for this link. So I'm going to try to link it for the next couple of videos to make sure anyone that was looking for it can find it and especially it would make a really great Christmas present because you do not have to have cooking spray on hand when you've got that little dispenser because you can just smear it right on and you don't have to have the extra cost of cooking spray. Plus you can put any type of oil that you want to inside of there. That one contains my avocado oil. That is the one I generally use for baking if I'm going to wipe something down with that. It just has a very mild taste and you really can't tell whenever you are baking with it. So now what I'm whipping up is one of my favorite baked treats. I am thinking I'm going to do a sugar-free version of these for my birthday at the end of January just because I'm eating a very low sugar diet just to help out with some of my health problems. But these are called candy cakes and if you don't know what they are, if you've never had them before, they will change your life. I'm just kidding. But they are so yummy. So basically I'm whipping up a sponge cake. That's what goes on the bottom. So that's very, very simple. It takes very few ingredients. It's a very inexpensive type of cake to make. And so once I have the batter all whipped up here, I'm going to be pouring it into the pan. And while this is baking, we're going to whip up some fun homemade candies, Christmas candies, and the girls will be helping with that. That was their favorite part of all of this. So we'll get back to the next step on the candy cakes. But I decided to double the batch, double the recipe I will be linking below, and make a very, very large pan of these. So you're going to see after a while how many little cakes that made. And here I'm getting out some wax paper because we're going to be dipping some wafers. And this is where I felt like I could pull in the sprinkles and the part that was fun for the girls. This is the part that children really look forward to when it comes to Christmas cookies and things like that. And it's a way to add some color to your cookie plates that you're going to be giving out without having them all over the cookies. So I found these fun mixtures at Walmart. This one was a peppermint mocha mixture. And the girls said that it tasted minty, which it smelled minty with the little marshmallows. And then I just had some of the little rounds, red and green and white sprinkles. And then the other one was called a Christmas tree mixture, which had some golden stars and some other things in them. So they were really pretty. So to dip the wafers, I decided to go ahead and use a vanilla or a white chocolate, white dipping chocolate. And it just was a good neutral. I know that I did some peanut butter things and I always am thinking of different people that don't care for peanut butter or maybe they don't care for mint, that there might be something in the plate that they would enjoy. So I melted this down with a little double boiler, little DIY double boiler. I just put one of my glass mixing bowls on top of one of my sauce pans and threw it in there. And then I transferred the wax paper to a large cookie sheet because I thought, you know, we're gonna be putting a lot of sprinkles on these. We probably should have something with edges so all the excess sprinkles don't end up all over the floor. So here I did the dipping and they did the sprinkling and oh, what fun. And oh, the squeals and giggles and laughter that this project brought on. It was such a fun memory. And I'm so glad that I filmed it so that in a couple years, when they're not quite this little, I'll be able to look back on this and remember how much fun we had in getting ready for Christmas and just enjoying creating something to share with other people and to make someone else's day. So you could do this with other combinations. You could get another flavored wafer. You could use regular chocolate instead of white chocolate. I just chose the white chocolate because I thought it would make the sprinkle colors stick out a bit more than the regular chocolate. Once we had sprinkled them all up, then I just sat them on the table to cool and to harden. They really hardened quickly. I feel like the almond bark chocolate, that's what I usually get. It's in the baking aisle, hardens pretty quickly. So we just sat them aside. Then the next candy that we're gonna make, I don't really have a name for it, but you get the buttersnap pretzels, I almost said cookies. The buttersnap pretzels, the square pretzels, and some Hershey Kisses and some M&Ms. And this is also a very fun project for children. I don't know, there's something about unwrapping Hershey Kisses that my girls love and they find so satisfying and fun. So you just take a cookie sheet and I didn't even put any oil or anything on the bottom. I just did an ungreased cookie sheet and we laid out all of the buttersnap pretzels and then you can put a Hershey Kiss on each pretzel and you're going to set your oven for 200 degrees and you're gonna put the pretzels with the Hershey Kisses on them in the oven for around five minutes. And I'm going to tell you this just because I had not done this before where we did different types of Hershey Kisses, but if we did this again, I think I would do each type of Hershey Kiss separately because they melt at different rates. So the blue bag of Hershey Kisses, they are a sugar cookie Hershey Kiss. You can see them with some like red and green sprinkles in them. And then the red and white striped ones are a peppermint and then obviously we did a chocolate. And I don't know, you may be able to see once we're pressing the M&Ms in that they are melted kind of differently. Like the chocolates ones were not quite melted good enough. I probably would have had them in a bit longer, but the sugar cookie ones were very melted. So we pulled them out. So we just did our best, but you wanna press the M&Ms into the Hershey Kisses as quickly as you can. So it was great to have multiple hands doing this because till we were done, they were starting to harden and would have been a little harder to press the M&Ms into. So basically when you press the M&M down into the Hershey Kiss, it kind of forces the Hershey Kiss to melt further into the pretzel. And you have a fun, sweet and salty treat that also adds a lot of color to your cookie plates. All right, so now we're back to finishing up the Tandy Cakes. So you want some semi-sweet chocolate chips and I threw them in my homemade double broiler. You could also try microwaving them. I just find with the double boiler that they melt a little better than trying to do it in the microwave. So while those were melting, I just took some regular creamy peanut butter and I topped off that sponge cake. And you can do a thick layer of this. You can do a thin layer of this. I actually wanna try a different variation of Tandy Cakes where in the place of the peanut butter, I do like a green mint frosting and do maybe like a chocolate mint Tandy Cake. I feel like that would be really delicious. I'm a mint lover, so that was the thought that came to my mind. But once you have your chocolate chips melted, you're going to evenly pour it over the peanut butter. And you wanna be a little bit ginger as you do this because you don't want the peanut butter to kind of mix with the chocolate. You want them to be separate layers because you'll see once I cut into this that you can kind of see the layers. But the part that makes Tandy Cakes so yummy is that chocolate layer of the melted chocolate chips hardens into almost like a chocolate bark on top of the sponge cake. And it just gives you this wonderful texture where you've got the soft spongy cake underneath but you've got this crunch of biting into a layer of chocolate on top, a little hint of peanut butter, and it's just so delicious. So to get that chocolate to harden a bit more, I actually put it into the refrigerator for a few hours to really make sure that it was hardened and I wanted to make sure whenever I cut it that it was in nice squares and it wasn't going to melt all over. So you can cut this into whatever sizes you want to. I will admit, I wasn't quite happy with how thick the sponge cake got on this. It's supposed to be a thinner bar, not quite so cakey looking as you're going to see when I pull these out. But either way, it's fine. It just has to do with the fact that I doubled the recipe and then put it into this pan. I think if I doubled the recipe, I would put it into a slightly larger pan. This is a half sheet, half baker's sheet, I think is what they call it. And I think I maybe would do a full baker's sheet and double the recipe. So it calls for a jelly roll pan for one single recipe. So that's what you may want to follow. But here you can see how perfect and satisfying they look. So perfectly square and these are just so, so yummy. I hope this video gave you guys a bunch of ideas or even just inspired you to bake something for someone else this holiday season. Even into January, after the Christmas craziness is over, you can bake things for people. I think with the cold weather, it's such a nice treat. And so if you're new here, don't forget to subscribe, leave a comment below, let me know what you're up to this holiday season or which of these baked goods looked the most delicious to you and give this video a like and I will see you all in the next video.