My Recent Favourite Cookie Recipes

My interest in baking is built based on the fact that I love watching things grow and raise in a very short time interval.  Yes, that's right, I like to watch all kinds of chemical reactions.  Explosions are chemical reactions too, but with too much consequence to deal with afterward (if everyone still remembers that juice explosions at our home resulted us 4 hours of ceiling cleaning), so I stick with baking only.  Although the excess body weight from eating baked goods is still a negative consequence.  But I have a Bear at home so the eating part is always taken care of.

I continue to bake from time to time, despite the fact that I never really like the cookies I made.  I have been using a cook recipe book that I got from Sara for Christmas 2009.  It is called "Ultimate xxxxxxx".  The book is great, it has colour pictures, clear instructions, and recipes for very cute looking cookies.  But I don't think the book like me, I have been making the worse cookies with the recipe from that book.  The cookies always ended up too hard, so that's why I never like the cookies I made.

Recently, I have been craving for sweets, so I decided I need to make cookie for my own consumption.  So I looked for the recipe for my favourite type of cookie, SHORTBREAD COOKIES.  This is my favourite short bread cookie recipe so far:

Ingredients
1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions
1.Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2.Whip butter with an electric mixer until fluffy. Stir in the confectioners' sugar, cornstarch, and flour. Beat on low for one minute, then on high for 3 to 4 minutes. Drop cookies by spoonfuls 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
3.Bake for 12 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Watch that the edges don't brown too much. Cool on wire racks.


For some reason, we had 3 jars of peanut butter at home, so I had to make some peanut butter cookies too.  This is my favourite peanut butter cookie recipe:

Ingredients
1 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions
1.Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2.In a large bowl, cream together the peanut butter, butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until well blended. Beat in the egg, milk, and vanilla one at a time. Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into creamed mixture. Roll tablespoonfuls of dough into balls. Place cookies 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Press each ball once with fork tines.
3.Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are lightly browned.

Both recipes are from allrecipe.com.