Cookie Galette!

The chickens are still not laying and they're just a little over 6 months now. It's getting unbearable, anticipation of finding a tiny egg between the straw. Instead, all I have found is a small and timid mouse I tried to shoo away with the back of my glove. But, I'm waiting as patiently as I can, watching their combs grow a little darker, closing the barn door when the sun goes down.

I'm trying to keep busy while I wait. Finding new things to do with the time that autumn somehow offers me. I'm reading more, taking a bath in the evening. I'm cleaning the garage and painting the living room. We're visiting my sister, going out to dinner for my birthday. Spending more time together. Starting new TV shows. Falling asleep by ten, waking up at six to feel the morning fog that surrounds us in the mountains.

And with all this extra time I find, I'm practicing my piping skills. My unsteady hand and lack of artistic talent prevented me from trying it for too long. But, now I'm eager. Now I want to learn. Now I have the patience to sit down and sketch what's in my head. And now, with it slightly chilled by 6 o'clock, I don't mind spending time in the kitchen with the stove on and the dogs waiting patiently for samples.

So I made a cookie. I adapted a recipe I had for childhood desserts I wanted to reinvent. This one was originally an oatmeal cookie, the crisp and chewy iced ones you buy in a 30 pack at Wal-Mart. But so sharp and brittle, so thin and browned, it felt less like a cookie cake and more like something else. With its iced border and buttercream center, I got to calling it a galette. A cookie galette--which will henceforth be my stripper name and the new rebrand for cookie cakes. Join me in this, won't you?

Oatmeal Cookie Galette!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup +2 TB AP flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 TB honey
• 1/2 TB molasses
• 1/2 TB pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup quick-cooking oats

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper
2. In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugars until light and pale
4. Add your egg and beat to incorporate
5. Add honey, molasses, and vanilla
6. Now, using a wooden spoon (I found the stand mixer mixed the dough too much), slowly add in your flour while stirring
7. Stir in oats until fully mixed
8. Transfer dough to a floured work surface (I just did mine directly onto the parchment) and roll out to about a quarter inch
9. Using a dinner plate, cut dough into a circle and tap the edges in a bit if they crumbled slightly
10. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until edges are browned and center is firm, but not burnt
11. Allow to cool before decorating (see notes below)

Decorating note: As always, feel free to decorate however you'd like. For me, I whipped together 1/2 cup shortening, 1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract, 1/2 teaspoon orange juice, and 1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar until light. Transfer to a pastry bag fitted with

Oatmeal Skillet Cookie with Crumble Topping

I spend a lot of time by myself. I've read four books since we moved to Ligonier. We get to name our house this month and I have a list narrowed down. I make sure the dogs get fed, my work gets done. I hate folding laundry and I love when I smell the dirt and concrete in the air from a passing truck kicking up gravel.

I told Nolan we can't leave anytime soon. We can't move again. I showed off my house to my best friend, Carissa, when she was visiting last weekend. I called it ours instead of mine and that shift in a possessive pronoun echoed like a foreign chord in the dining room. I'm still not used to having it be ours, but I love the idea of it all the same.

I told him we can't leave until our dogs are ready and they may never be. They've moved too much, from California to Pennsylvania. Milo flew home with me when we thought we could start all over again. They need consistency, we owe it to them now.

And for me? Home was never a place, but has always been something to run away from. I would walk up a hill in front of my childhood home and see how far I could go before it got dark, before I got tired and scared. Before anyone would know I wasn't in my bedroom. Home has been invented over and over and over again. And each time I found myself awake in the night, I'd be anchored to the spot by the sounds from my window.

The frog in the creek bed. 

The lazy moths that hit the window.

The lost cricket from the woods and the only thing separating me and the coyotes was a chain link fence.

We moved back last year and bought a house. Things have changed and I go back to the theme of creating home through food. One that I can't run away from. And so here is a skillet cookie with butter and oatmeal and a crumble topping. It smells the way comfort does and tastes just as good as normalcy can. I make oatmeal for the dogs a lot; they've come to expect it. So this recipe, in the silliest way, feels like home for us, too.

Oatmeal Skillet Cookie with Crumble Topping

Ingredients for Skillet Cookie (inspired by one from The Food Network)

• 1 cup flour
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
• 6 TB shortening, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cup quick cooking oats
• 1/3 cup dried cherries

Directions for Skillet Cookie

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prepare a cast iron skillet with oil and flour
2. In a mixing bowl, sift together flour, soda, cinnamon and salt
3. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together fats and sugar using the paddle attachment
4. Add eggs, one at a time, then vanilla
5. Turn mixer off and use a spatula to stir in your flour mixture
6. Finally, stir in oats and cherries
7. Turn out into your skillet and press down

Ingredients for Oatmeal Crumble

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cup quick cooking oats
• 2 TB maple syrup
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 TB candied ginger, diced

Directions for Oatmeal Crumble

1. Put all ingredients in a bowl and pinch with your hands until fats are incorporated wholly into the mixture
2. Pour over the top of your cookie
3. Bake entire dish for 1 hour, cover with aluminum foil (to prevent burning) and continue to bake for another 10-15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean
4. Enjoy with whipped cream for up to three days in an airtight container

Breakfast in Bed: Oatmeal Topped with Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Valentine's Day used to be a tit for tat affair, early on when I was 19 and 20. It was made for show, occasion, the performance. You get older, you grow with your partner. One year I asked Nolan to pay my car insurance as a present, another we went to the spa in my hometown. This year, we bought a house and are going to Cancun on Friday. We grew older, we stopped making it harder on each other. 

I try to make it easy. I get the coffee ready and wake up with our three dogs at six in the morning. I keep the TV off so he doesn't wake. I turn the heater on in the bathroom, so the tile isn't cold when he gets a shower before work. I try to make it easy for him, easier than I used to make it. When I would demand idolatry and independence and everything in between.

We always have Sundays off together. Since we'll be gone next weekend, I made something for him to wake up to. Breakfast in bed, like I do from time to time. Warm oatmeal in our cold house. We sat in the quiet morning frost, in our wood paneled room, under the faux-fur blanket my mother got us for Christmas, and realized how far we've come in six years.

Roasted Sweet Potato Topped Oatmeal

This recipe can be easily adapted to your tastes and quantities, but the sesame against the rosemary, the roasted and caramelized sweet potato against the soft and sweet oatmeal is definitely something to try before you make adaptations.

Ingredients for Roasted Sweet Potatoes:

• 1 large sweet potato, peeled and cubed
• 2 TB olive oil
• 1 TB brown sugar
• Pinch of salt and pepper

Directions for Roasted Sweet Potatoes:

1. Preheat oven to 400*F
2. On a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil, mix all ingredients
3. Bake for 25 minutes or until caramelized and tender
4. Allow to cool before assembling oatmeal (see below)

Assembly: Make your quick cooking oats to box direction for 2 people, substituting the water for almond milk.  Mix in 1/2 TB of peanut butter per 1 cup of oatmeal. Top with desired amount of sweet potato, sprinkle each bowl with 1/4 teaspoon sea salt, 1/2 teaspoon black pepper, 1/4 teaspoon chopped rosemary, 2 tablespoon brown sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon of sesame seeds. Eat immediately with a bit of maple syrup on top.

This post was made in partnership with Le Creuset, making some of my absolute favorite and most envied pieces around. To find out more, visit their website, like their Facebook, or follow them on Instagram!

Cranberry Oatmeal Snack Cake Cake!

My plates are put away, my silverware too. I haven't had time to bake, too many phone calls and delays. Customer service reps and bundle packages. We are trying to figure out how to live on our own again, deer-legged and stumbling a bit. It's different to be back in Pennsylvania; I expected it to be easier because I've called this place home. It's harder than I had thought. Taking longer. It's not like how we rented in California, or Texas, or any other place I ran away to. It's taking the time and energy I don't want to give it and then I get frustrated when things are last minute.

Tomorrow we move. Not officially, but slowly at first. Boxes in my SUV and the dogs meet for the first time in a year on Tuesday. It's not to keep them away, it's to shelter them from any disappointment. We all moved across country a year ago, our family piecemeal as we tried to figure out how to live together again. To forgive again. To move forward again, in a direction that wasn't always backwards.

And even though I am throwing away half-empty bags of flour and plates that got chipped in one of the many moves along the way, I still go to the grocery store and pick up more ingredients. Cranberries were on sale last week, so I made a cranberry cake. Sweetened and tender and warm. The kinds of adjectives I hope to use for this new house of ours.

Cranberry Oatmeal Snack Cake Cake

This recipe is based off of Molly Yeh's Peanut Butter Snack Cake and is so moist (in a good way) with a good crumb and so easy. It really is just a two-bowl-get-er-done kind of cake!

Ingredients: 

• 2 cup sugar
• 1 ½ cup AP flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 cup quick cooking oats + 1/3 cup for topping
• 2 eggs
• ¾ cup greek yogurt
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup flavorless oil (canola)
• ¼ cup melted butter + 2 tablespoon for topping
• ¼ cup peanut butter
• 6 tablespoons water
• ½ cup cranberries
• ¼ cup dark brown sugar for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350*F and prep a ½ sheet cake pan with parchment paper and butter
2. Whisk all dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl
3. In a measuring cup or separate mixing bowl, vigorously whisk together eggs, yogurt, vanilla, oil, peanut butter, butter, and water
4. Create a well in your dry ingredients and, with a wooden spoon, slowly stir as you pour your wet ingredients into the center of the well. You will have a rich, thick batter that is easily spreadable and pourable
5. Fold in cranberries
6. Pour into your cake pan
7. In a small bowl, mix together remaining oats, brown sugar, and butter and top your batter with this
8. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until golden brown. This is a moist cake, so a toothpick will come out crumby but semi-clean
9. Allow to cool slightly before serving

Honey Oat Bread

I sustain myself with simple foods. Foods I can rip by hand—tangerines and loaves of bread. Food I ate when I lived in San Antonio and didn’t have enough money for gas, but still had enough for to make cakes. Simple foods, delicate. Tactile and necessary. I bread a bit of crust off and feed it to Milo. My parents’ dog, Jack, gets jealous and he gets some, too.  I ate this bread for three days, with butter and jam and before bed.  I ate it with crumbs on the plate and then got another slice. It sustained me when I was busy, not wanting to work. Not wanting to get out of bed. Not wanting to check the mail or pay my bills or feed the animals.  I get like this sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. And I wait it out, keep busy. Stay quiet. Eat when I have to and wait for morning to come. 

Honey Oat Bread, makes two loaves

Ingredients:

• 1 cup whole milk
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup honey
• ¼ cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup oats, plus more for top of bread
• 3 tablespoons butter, divided (one of those tablespoons melted)
• ¼ cup beer
• 1 ¼ cup yeast (I use Red Star Yeast)
• 4-5 cups AP flour

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan combine milk, water, honey, sugar, salt, oats, 2 tablespoons of butter, and beer
2. Heat on medium, stirring often until small bubbles appear on rim of liquid and butter is melted
3. Remove from heat and allow to cool until warm to the touch
4. Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, and sprinkle in yeast
5. Allow to stand for ten minutes for yeast to bloom. Small bubbles will appear, but as this is a heavy liquid starter, it will not be foamy
6. Turn mixer on and begin adding flour, one cup at a time. Do this slowly and allow for each cup to be fully incorporated before adding the next
7. When dough is just formed, switch attachment to the dough hook
8. Mix on medium-low for 5-7 minutes until dough is turned on hook and not sticking to the sides
9. Set into a well-oiled bowl and allow to rise, covered with a towel, for one hour
10. When doubled in size, punch down and divide into two loaves
11. Rest 20 minutes
12. While dough is resting, prepare the 2 loaf pans and preheat oven to 350*F and melt remaining tablespoon of butter
13. Gently shape each half into a loaf shape, careful not to deflate dough, and place into pans
14. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle oats on top
15. Bake for about 25-28 minutes, checking at the 20 minute mark for any heavy browning or burning
16. Remove and cool before eating. Can be kept in airtight container for up to 3 days (but fresh bread is always the best bread!)