You can use any kind of chip or baking piece in this recipe, but I used milk chocolate chips, and they are OH SO GOOD! 🙂

What’s different about this recipe is you use corn syrup in the dough. The corn syrup gives these cookies a nice texture! This recipe is a real keeper!

1 cup Butter (no substitutes)
¾ cup Packed light brown sugar
½ cup Granulated sugar
¼ cup Light corn syrup
1 Egg
2 teaspoons Vanilla extract
2½ cup All-purpose flour
1 teaspoon Baking soda
¼ teaspoon Salt
1 pack HERSHEY’S Chips or Baking Bits (any flavor; 10-12 oz) – I used milk chocolate chips!

Heat oven to 350’F. In large mixer bowl, beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Add corn syrup, egg and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt. Gradually add to butter mixture, beating well. Stir in chips or bits. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned and almost set. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. Cookies will be softer the second day.

FOR CHOCOLATE COOKIES: Decrease flour to 2 1/4 cups and add 1/4 cup HERSHEY’S Cocoa or HERSHEY’S European Style Cocoa. For best results use HERSHEY’S/REESE’S Baking Chips and HERSHEY’S Cocoa.

So, pour yourself a nice, tall, cold glass of milk…

and ENJOY! 🙂

~Cecelia Dowdy~

This recipe is a delicious, simple alternative to apple pie! I made this about a week ago and my husband loved it!

4 cups of sliced, tart apples (about 4 medium)
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup oats
1/3 cup butter, softened
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 375. Arrange apples in a greased square pan, 8x8x2 inches. Mix remaining ingredients: sprinkle over apples.

Bake until topping is golden brown and apples are tender, about 30 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Enjoy!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

My email box has been exploding with correspondence about Harlequin Horizons. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just look at yesterday’s post. After sifting through a few hundred emails about this, I feel everything has been said, or is being said, and there’s so many issues that I don’t feel like covering them in this blog post. Suffice it to say, Harlequin just sent an email to all their authors, stating they would change the Harlequin Horizons name so that the Horizons books are not linked with the Harlequin brand…or something like that.

I’m done talking about that for now!

Have any of you tried Godiva’s new baked goods? Usually, during the holidays, hubby and I will treat ourselves to a big box of Godiva candy, or we’ll get the Godiva chocolate-covered pretzels, or their biscuits (cookies). I’ve now noticed they have baked goods and we were wondering if we should purchase the brownies from Godiva. Here’s a pic (borrowed from the Godiva website.)

They also have chocolate cupcakes and chocolate ganache layer cake. They have chocolate coconut macaroon cookies, too, but I’m not a big coconut fan.

If you’ve tried any of these, let me know if you enjoyed them. I’m pretty sure we’ll be trying the brownies for this holiday season! 🙂

~Cecelia Dowdy~

You know how I occasionally talk about food and recipes on this blog? Well, I thought it’d be fun to post Stephen Bly’s article about Menus On The Old West Trail! Interesting information, and some of this new knowledge makes me cringe a little bit! Don’t forget to access the links at the bottom of the article for Stephen’s Chili Recipe and to check out his new release, Creede Of Old Montana!

Pour The Coffee & Pass The Pooch
By Stephen Bly
Copyright©2008

While some big towns like Denver, San Francisco and Virginia City had fancy restaurants, most frontier cafes were of the simple sort. They were often called chophouses, because of the hunk of meat that hung in the backroom. They chopped off a slab and fried it up for you. Not too fancy. Nor sanitary. Most times it was only “slightly spoiled.”
Cowboys on the trail filled up with biscuits, bacon, and beans. There wasn’t much beef because no boss wanted to slaughter his own cattle. If a cow wandered in from some other herd, it could be butchered and fried, but for the most part bacon and salt pork dominated the menu.
Ah, good old boiled coffee. You can almost feel the coffee grounds strain between your teeth. The brand was probably Arbuckles, that tastes something like a Starbucks tall Americano with a quadruple shot…and mixed with a bit of mud.
There was plenty of sourdough bread on long trail drives. The cook’s prized possession was a 5-gallon, wooden sourdough keg. When getting ready for the trail drive or roundup, the cook put 3 or 4 quarts of flour and a dash of salt in the keg. He poured in enough water to make a medium thick batter. Sometimes a little vinegar or molasses was added to hasten fermentation.
When the dough got ripe, this whole batch was thrown away. The keg is seasoned. A new batch is mixed in the same way. Everyday new batter is mixed to fill the keg. Placed in sunlight during the day and wrapped in blankets at night kept it warm. Some cooks slept with their kegs on cold nights. An outfit that allowed harm to come to its sourdough keg suffered the consequence. Most cooks defended their kegs with their lives.
By the late 1880s air-tights (canned food) were available, such as peaches and tomatoes. That provided more ways for the camp cooks to make dessert.
One trail favorite was Hounds Ears & Whirlups. Thin sourdough batter was dropped onto hot grease and fried brown. The dough usually spread out in the shape of a dog’s ear Whirlup sauce was made with water, sugar, flavoring and spices. If available, dried fruit was chopped or mashed into the mixture and bring it to a boil. It thickened a tad as it cooled, then poured over the Hounds Ears. A big hit with hungry cowboys.
That sounds better to me than Pooch…a dessert made with tomatoes, sugar, and leftover bread or biscuits, cooked over the campfire.
Ah, life on the trail. Pour the coffee and pass the pooch.

Download Stephen Bly’s own Spicy Elk Chili recipe here. Other recipes are also listed on that file. There are some other things you can check out on the Free Stuff Page at Bly Books.

New Release October 1, 2009:
Creede of Old Montana (hardback)
Center Point Publishing/Thorndike
Order through any local quality bookstore, online bookstore, public library, or
Bly Books.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post! Check out Stephen’s book and if you try his chili recipe, let me know if you liked it!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

Happy Autumn! Fall is just about here, and when I think of Fall, I think of apples being harvested, and shorter days with cooler weather. I also think about school just starting, children lining up to get on the bus, the smell of a newly sharpened pencil, the feel of a fat crayon or a bottle of glue in my fingers.

I recently made an apple cake and my hubby loved it! Here’s the recipe if you’re interested. I used Granny Smith apples, but I’m pretty sure just about any kind of apples can be used!

When it’s finished, enjoy a slice with a nice, cold glass of milk! Yum!

Apple Cake

2 eggs
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups flour
4 cups peeled, chopped, raw apples
1 cup chopped nuts (I used pre-chopped macadamia nuts)

Combine all ingredients and pour into a 9″ X 13″ pan. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees.

Icing (optional) – I made the icing and placed it on the cake! It was good! I’d recommend using this cream cheese icing, but, if you’re out of cream cheese, you can try using vanilla/buttercream icing instead.

1/2 stick butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 1/2 cups confectioner’s sugar
6 oz. cream cheese

Mix until smooth. Spread over cake while still warm. Sprinkle chopped nuts over icing if desired.

I want to say that I placed the nuts directly into my cake batter? But, I might be mistaken about that! I need to ask my hubby! I don’t recall sprinkling nuts on top of the icing, but I might have! It’s been a few weeks since I made this cake, so my memory might be a bit faulty! 🙂

Enjoy!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

I was going to blog about things I did during my childhood; that should have given me a clue that I’m a writer. But I’m too tired and my brain is too numb to blog about that.

When I was at the store last weekend, doing our weekly grocery shopping, I was hungry. There was a huge bin of Pop Tarts on sale. I got some. I don’t think I’d purchased Pop Tarts since college, or if I have, I haven’t bought them in a long time. When I brought home those cherry Pop Tarts, I tried to sneak and eat some, but my four-year-old son caught me. He said “Mommy, what are you eating? What are those things with frosting on them?” I reluctantly gave him a bite and he was hooked. He said, “I want some of those things with frosting on them.” So, I popped some in the toaster for him too. I told my hubby about the conversation with our son and he said, “We have Pop Tarts? I want some!”

We ate the whole box in less than a day. I even went to the store later on in the week to get more. It’s funny how you forget how much you enjoy something. When I pop those things into the toaster (on a low setting) and then they pop up nice and warm…they’re so good! That frosting and that sweet fruity (or chocolatey) filling…I’d forgotten how much I used to enjoy these things! I’ve rediscovered a food I used to love during my childhood and college years!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

A little over a week ago we made the following baked beans recipe for the first time! They were great! The baked beans is the second recipe listed. The beans are sweet, savory and oh, so good! This was the first time I’ve ever made baked beans in a slow cooker. Plus you need to use bacon and fresh chopped onion, too. Check out this recipe if you have a chance. They’re the best baked beans I’ve ever eaten and my hubby states that we’re never using canned baked beans again! While you’re on Deb’s sight, check out some of the other pages and give her books a try!

~Cecelia Dowdy~

This is, hands down, the best chocolate cake I’ve ever tasted! I made it for my hubby for Father’s Day! I took him shopping first. And, if you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you know how I feel about shopping. See this post if you want to know what I think about shopping! After time in the store with my husband and my almost-four-year-old child, I was ready for a piece of chocolate cake!

Double Chocolate Chip Cake Recipe
3 Unsweetened chocolate squares (one ounce each)

2 1/4 c Cake flour; sifted

2 tb Baking soda

1/2 ts Salt

1/2 c Butter

2 1/4 c Brown sugar

3 Eggs

1 1/2 ts Vannilla

1 c Sour cream

1 c Water; boiling

Preheat over to over 350 deg, butter and flour 3 9-inch cake pans. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate over hot, not simmering, water. Set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl with an electric mixer, cream the butter. Add the brown sugar and then the eggs, one at a time, blending well after each addition. Beat at high speed for 5 minutes. Beat in the vanilla and the melted chocolate.

Beat in the flour mixture alternately with the sour cream in 4 portions, beginning and ending with the flour mixture, beat well after each addition. Stir in the boiling water and pour the batter at once into the prepared pans. Bake for 35 minutes, or until the center springs back when touched lightly. Set the cake pans on the rack to cool for 10 minutes. Then invert the cakes onto the racks to cool completely.

I don’t use the frosting recipe provided in the link. Instead, I use this:

Frosting:
1 and 1/2 sticks butter softened
One cup Hershey’s Cocoa (THAT’S THE BAKING COCOA…NOT THE PRE-PREPARED HOT CHOCOLATE MIX!!)
4 and a half cups powdered sugar
1/3 cup of milk (you may add more if frosting is too stiff)
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Mix first four ingredients until you’ve reached desired consistency. Add vanilla extract and mix again. Frost the cake.

This cake is really moist and it’s good! Since it’s so moist and and full of chocolate flavor, I feel you don’t need a lot of icing! The above recipe for icing will frost a three-layer cake if you place a small amount between the layers, on the side and at the top. If you want a thicker layer of icing, then you can adjust the recipe accordingly!

Get yourself a tall glass of cold milk and enjoy! If you try this recipe, be sure to let me know if you liked it! Leave a comment about this recipe if you wish!

~Cecelia Dowdy~