Today was my first of three shifts before I’m on annual leave for nearly two weeks! Wooo!! In my excitement yesterday (and energized by B’s completely awesome behaviour the past two days (and, it turns out, today as well) I decided to do a bit of baking.

oatmeal banana chocolate chip muffins

peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

The muffins were made from a recipe that I found here and they are absolutely fabulous. I used soft wheat flour instead of all purpose and added in a couple small handfuls of chopped pecans since school is out for the summer and I don’t have to worry about a nut restriction for lunches. It’s a good thing I froze six of the muffins for later enjoyment or the entire batch would be gone by now.

The cookies were from an old faithful recipe that I used to use all the time growing up but I tweaked it this time around. The recipe can be found here among other places; my copy came from a Good Housekeeping magazine or something similar in a Criso ad. (I don’t recall my recipe calling for butter-flavoured Crisco, just the regular stuff.) The substitutions I made were to use 1/4 cup of butter along with 1/8 cup each of mayonnaise and applesauce for the shortening, 1 cup of whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup of white flour, and a mix of almond and peanut butters. No matter how much I stir my natural peanut butter each time I use it, the last inch in the bottom of the jar is always quite dry. I had a part jar of almond butter that was a little oily so I mixed the two together and now have a small jar of peanut-almond butter. I’m not sure if it was the result of the natural nut butters instead of sugar-laden "regular" peanut butter but the dough was very soft. I ended up adding in appoximately 1/4 to 1/3 cup of quick oats. I usually roll the dough into balls by hand but used a small cookie scoop this time around. These cookies turned out slightly different than non-tweaked ones but they are no less delicious. Soft, chewy, nut buttery, and with just the right amount of chocolate chips for me. If you make these cookies, be aware that they will not look done at the 7 or 8 minute mark when the timer goes off but take them out anyway. They firm up and get a little browner before your eyes as they rest on the cookie sheet.

And a very happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canucks!