Make your own Power Bites

Power Bites
2 c. rolled oats (feel free to toss in some oat bran too.)
1 c. unsweetened, shredded coconut
1/2 c. raisins (or try dried cherries, cranberries, or apricots.)
1/2 c. almonds, soaked*
1/2 c. raw cashews
1/2 c. sunflower seeds, soaked
1 1/2 c. raw almond butter or peanut butter
3/4 c. honey
1 t. vanilla
tiny pinch of salt
1/2 c. water, as needed

*Soak raw nuts in a water for about a day. Rinse thoroughly before using. Soaking the nuts begins the sprouting process which helps make them easier to digest and more nutritious. Learn more here.

Mix everything together using a stand mixer. Use a cookie scoop to shape “dough” and then use hand to slightly flatten each ball. Place in a food dehydrator at 115°F for about 8 hours, or until dry to the touch. Store in an air-tight container.

If you don’t have a dehydrator, place Power Bites on a parchment lined cookie sheet and “bake” in the oven at the lowest possible temperature. You lose a bit of nutrition by roasting the nuts in the oven–but it still tastes great!

This recipe makes a big ol’ pile of Power Bites, which just means more fuel for your workouts.

Fuel for your workouts.

Injinji running socks

As a Cookie Athlete I’m about as far from a gear head as you can get. I definitely have more cookie scoops and whisks than cycling gloves and running shoes.

Example: I once rode 150 miles without padded bike shorts, fancy bike shirt, or gloves. That probably wasn’t the wisest decision. But the point is, gear does not an athlete make. Instead, I use gear sparingly. And I only commit to the stuff I really love.

And I love Injinji running socks.

I resisted running socks for a while, but once you run more than a few miles (6 miles to be exact), running socks are a must. I’ve tried four other brands, and the Injinji wins my favor.

Likes:
- The individual toes keep the entire foot blister free.
- Not sure how they do it, but the light socks wick moisture away from the foot. No steamy feet here.
- Love the fit. Nothing slips or wrinkles or bunches.
- The seams are perfectly flat. Zero bulk, even around each tiny toe.
- They come in black–my favorite color.

Dislikes:
- Tracking them through the laundry. Come back to me little Injinji!

There you have my two cents on running socks. Pick up a pair and let me know what you think.

In future gear reviews I’ll give you the scoop on the one and only sports bra for the big girls, I’ll introduce you to the biking shorts I’m in a long-term relationship with, and for any Ultimate fans–the greatest Frisbee you’ll ever dive for.

*No Cookie Athletes were given socks, gear, or compensation of any kind in exchange for reviewing Injinji. We just honestly like these socks.

Fill in the blank. #RunHappyIs...

Visit Brooks Running at http://is.runhappy.com/and make your own #RunHappyIs graphic for free. Here’s ours.

Make one too at http://is.runhappy.com/

Easy to make...Easy to eat...Fun to work off.

Yesterday I had a hankering for peanut butter cups. The problem is, I only like them if they are homemade. Luckily, making these is about as easy as falling off of a log. So I busted out a batch. Here’s the recipe. Enjoy (and workout!)

Peanut Butter Filling:
Your treats will only be as good as the ingredients you use. So skip the big brand peanut butter and use the natural, creamy kind. If your store has the grind-it-yourself option, choose that.

1/2 c. peanut butter (I just eyeball it.)
2-3 T. butter, softened (Adjust based on the texture of your peanut butter. Mine seemed a tad dry.)
1/3 c. powdered sugar

Stir until completely mixed and smooth. Set aside.

Assemble the Peanut Butter Cups:
1.    Line a 12-cup muffin tin with paper cupcake lines. Don’t use the foil liners.
2.    Place about 8-10 good quality chocolate chips in each cup.
3.    Place the tin in a 170° F oven for a couple minutes, just until the chocolate chips are soft and melted. The chips will look shiny when ready.
4.    Spread the chocolate evenly with the back of a small spoon.
5.    Place the tin in the freezer for a couple of minutes to set chocolate.
6.    Using a small cookie scoop, place a dollop of peanut butter mixture in each cup. Spread it evenly with the back of a spoon.
7.    Place the tin in the freezer for a couple of minutes to set the peanut butter layer.
8.    Place about 5 chocolate chips on the top of each peanut butter cup. Keep this chocolate layer thin, or it will be hard to bite.
9.    Place the tin in a 170° F oven for a couple minutes, just until the chocolate chips are soft and melted.
10.   Spread the chocolate evenly with the back of a small spoon.
11.   Return the tin to the freezer for a minute to set the chocolate.

Enjoy.

How are you planning to work off your peanut butter cups?

First half marathon

I always tell people I was tricked into signing up for a marathon, which is true. (There were tears, and emotions, and begging, and cookies. I caved.) Currently I’m training for Top of Utah, which will be my first marathon. But along the way, I started to enjoy longer runs.

I mean, I’m now a person with a “long weekend run”. Don’t get me wrong, I still do it for the cookies, but now I also enjoy the actual running part.

So when I got the opportunity to run the Zion Half Marathon I thought, sure. How can half of anything be bad?

Do you want the other half of my cookie? Yes!

Want to go halfsies on a plate of cheese fries? Yes!

Check out that cool half moon? Awesome.

Want to run a half marathon? Sure thing.

It turns out; half a marathon ain’t bad either. I liked it. I loved it. My standard response has been, “I enjoyed almost every step“—which is the truth.

Things I liked:
- Plenty of potties. Thanks guys. I used most of them.

Great view even from the potty stop.

- My Pure Cadence 2 shoes from Brooks. (They showed up on my doorstep days after I decided to run the half. Thanks Brooks.) They’re light, they feel great, they look cool, they propel you up hills, and my crippling Plantar Fasciitis is no more.

The shoes for this cookie.

- The hills. Yeah, I like running up hills.

- The frozen trees. There was an orchard that had been watered right before the freeze. The spider-web icicles were amazing.

- Orange slices. Orange slices trump cookies in certain situations, and this was one of them.

- Friendly runners. All the serious people were so nice to us newbies. Loved them.

- Cowbells: I’m a strong believer in, “More Cowbell!”

- The temperate: It sounds like I was one of the few…but I thought the temperature was ideal. 36˚F at the start, 46˚F at the finish. Thanks Mother Nature.

- The Sunrise: I’ve traveled this route in a car a hundred times, but apparently I never really saw it. Running through this setting at sunrise was simply stunning.

How many words is a picture worth again?

Of course there were two things I didn’t love. To be fair, I’ll list them too:

- The last ¾ mile was just plain difficult. Not painful, more like, “I’m done. Where’s the finish line already?”

- I was nervous at the beginning, and that’s just lame. (Hence all the pee stops.)

I will run a half again. I’m planning on signing up for this exact race, in fact. I’ll always remember the Zion Half because this is where I learned something I thought I already knew…

When gobs of people passed me, I was a little bummed. And then I remembered what Keith Pressly (one of the Team Zion runners) said in his bio, “Itʼs very hard to understand in the beginning that the whole idea is not to beat the other runners. Eventually you learn that the competition is against the little voice inside you that wants to quit.”

Since I didn’t have a mantra or anything—that thought became my drive. I will run again, and I will run faster, and I’ll still get passed by gobs of people. But that can’t deter from the sunrise and the cowbells and the fact that I ran for 13 miles!

Join in, it’s a one-man race against yourself.

Inaugural Finisher

Old School Hydration!

As the site name implies, we love food–after all, what’s better than a good drink on the run (or bike, hike, climb, etc.)?

I love clear cool, fresh water. Unfortunately, water from a traditional hydration pack is usually warm, and plastic tasting. The beauty of the new Jetflow Hydration Pack is that it connects directly to a Nalgene bottle of icewater. Voila! Just like that–nasty taste problem solved.

But then Jetflow took it a step further. They designed the system to be compatible with almost any bottle. (See here for a complete list of compatible bottles.) Now you can sip sports drink, bottled water, soda, tea, or even chocolate milk through this hydration pack.

When you get home, clean up is a simple. The whole system is dishwasher safe.  If you’ve ever seen mold growing in your old hydration system–you’ll love that this entire system can be sterilized in the dishwasher. If you’ve never experienced mold–count yourself lucky. You’ll still enjoy knowing the hydration pack is clean when you fill ‘er up and head out.

Check out the Jetflow and during January get a 30% discount and FREE shipping. As my grandad always used to say–that’s better than a jab in the eye with a sharp stick.

Jetflow hydration back pack

The greatest snow on Earth

Cookie Athletes make food that looks like this…

Cinnamon Rolls Ready for the Frosting

Then we go skiing. In fact, I’m heading out for a night tour, just as soon as I finish this post.

Ready for a Tour

We’ve already established that I can’t follow instructions. So here’s the cinnamon roll recipe I created. No scalded milk, no sitting around and waiting for things to cool. Just plain old yummy (you-better-workout-if-you-plan-to-eat-these) cinnamon rolls. I was trying to create a gooey Cinnabon type thing. See what you think.

Cinnamon Rolls

Proof yeast in a small bowl.
½ c. warm water
2 T. yeast
2 T. sugar

Make a custard out of the following:
½ c. sugar
1 T. corn starch
1 T. flour
1 scant T. salt
2 ½ c. milk
2 eggs
½ c. butter
1 t. vanilla

In a heavy saucepan whisk together flour and baking powder. Add ½ cup milk, whisk until smooth. Add remaining milk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.

Whisk eggs in small bowl. Temper eggs with hot mixture. Add tempered eggs to milk and bring to boil again. Stirring constantly. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and butter.

Place 6 cups of flour and ¾ t. baking powder in the bowl of your mixer. Add custard and yeast mixture. Knead dough, adding up to 1 cup of flour as needed. Aim for a slightly sticky dough. Need at least 8 minutes.

Cover, rise until double. Punch down and rise again.

Check out my mad rolling-pin skills.

Roll all dough into a large, even rectangle. Spread with the following:
- ¼ c. softened butter
- Brown sugar
- Cinnamon
- Chopped pecans or walnuts
- Raisins (This is a constant source of contention among the picky people—but cinnamon rolls contain raisins. End of discussion.)

Goodness

Lightly press filling onto the dough. Roll tightly. Slice into 1½-inch rolls. Place on parchment lined cookie sheet. Space rolls fairly close. Rise until the rolls are tight in the pan and “poofy”, about 20-30 minutes. Bake 325º F for 15-18 minutes. Cool, frost, eat, workout.

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 pkg. Neufchâtel (or cream cheese), room temperature
2 c. powdered sugar
½ c. butter, softened
1 t. vanilla

Beat all ingredients until smooth and fluffy.

We don’t ship cinnamon rolls, but we do ship gourmet cookies. Check out the Cookie-of-the-Month Club.

Kari spent years perfecting a recipe for The Slice, aka Millionair's Shortbread

For National Cookie Day we asked guest writer, baker, and humorist Kari Beauclair to share the tale of her quest for the perfect Slice aka Millionaire’s Shortbread.

I’ve had several of Kari’s holiday creations, and when I say “perfect”, I mean perfect! Read on for a scrumptious recipe and Kari’s hilarious account of testing recipes, ingredients, and uh…spoons!

Millionaire Shortbread: A Confection Trilogy
It’s holiday baking time, and it’s a long standing tradition in our home. I bake a variety of different cookies, some for almost 4 decades. All of these I bake with little to no fuss, some without a recipe. But there is one problem child that I wrestle with every year. This is the story of a simple bar cookie and my countless failed attempts to create it. Read: Sad excuse for a baker I am!

At first blush, it seems simple enough: three layers of stuff – base of shortbread, middle of caramel, topped off with chocolate. And in the base, just three ingredients: flour, sugar and butter. I should mention that when it comes to baking, I’m like that kid on Glee who has to work twice as hard to do half as well. Other more skilled bakers could probably do this in their sleep. It should then come as no surprise that nearly two decades later, I’m only now able to make something edible.

Spoiler Alert: making this bar is deceptive in nature and not simple at all. Last year alone it took three attempts (that’s 6 pounds of butter) and even then, while edible, didn’t look like the picture on the web page nor taste like the cookie I remember. Some years, I’ve made 5 or 6 attempts. Other years, I’ve just given up after one failed batch, tossed my hands up in defeat and consoled myself with a glass (bottle) of wine. Why do I keep trying you ask?

Recipe for Disaster
This all began the year after we were married. I’ve always baked at Christmas, taking over where my Grandma left off, and the variety was based largely on what she had made for us, year after year, growing up. Recently married, I thought it would be nice to let my husband’s traditions leach into my own. He had a dear neighbor that baked up a storm every Christmas, and one of her recipes might be fun to add to the mix I thought.

“Hey Dave, what kind of Christmas cookie should I make for you?” I asked. If only he would have said oatmeal raisin, sugar or some other simple drop cookie, perhaps a nice little Betty Crocker deal that mere mortals could conjure.

But he didn’t. He said “Hey, you know the slice from England? Can you make that?”

Just a few months earlier, we had returned from living in the UK for several years. In almost every little tea|coffee shop we stepped in to, a pastry was available, known simply as “slice.” No name, just slice. And it was fantastic: shortbread, caramel (sort of*) middle and chocolate top. Our favorite was from a shop near where he worked in Grosvenor Square. While we tried different slices from different places around the city and for that matter from all of England and Scotland (ok, we ate our fair share) they didn’t taste quite as good as the slice from our place. The memory of it was still fresh in my head.

“Sure, honey. Good idea!” I said confidently. How hard could it be?

The Slice, photo courtesy of peachtreesandbumblebees.com

I’ve learned a few things over the years. First, I figured out it’s officially called “Millionaire Slice” and the web is now crawling with different variations of recipes. When I first started however, I didn’t have a recipe and sites like AllRecipes and YouTube didn’t exist. At that point, I was just winging it. Unsuccessfully I might add.

Starting in about 2003, I started finding online recipes for this shortbread. I made them one by one and discarded the recipes in turn. As each attempt failed for one reason or another, I slowly made the realization that [uh oh] each slice recipe was slightly different, just like the variations of slice we had sampled all over the British Isles. How was I ever going to find the one that represented the slice we liked?? [Flashback to Animal Planet, watching Penguin Parents trying to find their own baby in a biomass of seemingly identical little fuzzy birds...]

Over the next decade, I found myself printing off every recipe for slice I could find and hoping that one would be like the slice we remembered or, more realistically, a recipe that I could make without permanently welding sugar to yet another jelly roll pan. Each recipe needed to be translated, not only from metric measurements but also in terms of ingredients: caster sugar, double cream, and golden syrup are just a few. Compounding the translation issue was the fact that some of the ingredients have similar USA counterparts but they are not exactly the same and behave unexpectedly when tossed into a British recipe, stubbornly ignoring the fact that the US and UK are in fact allies. The double cream called for, for example, is actually unpasteurized in the UK and has a richer, wholesome flavor. We are not able to purchase unpasteurized dairy in the USA (or Canada…I tried) and substituting heavy cream doesn’t yield a very buttery caramel or for that matter, caramel at all. After many trials, the best results for me have been with recipes that skip the cream and use sweetened condensed milk. It’s cheating but frankly I don’t care.

After a recipe had been found and translated, I’ve found there are 9 key dysfunctions in the actual making of slice, not even counting problems with the chocolate top. Just with the base and middle layers then, that gives us 36 permutations of failure, all of which I’ve done at least once. Then add in variables like: flour type, butter type, butter temperature, sugar type (brown or regular), size and material of the pan, elevation, mixing time, what spoon you use (honestly, not kidding), choosing between rolling the dough or patting it into the pan, exact temp of the oven, exact baking time and, seemingly, alignment of the planets and you soon realize the possibility (eventuality) of failure is mighty high. At one point in 2005 I concluded in defeat that it is impossible to make this slice unless you are of British Isle decent and have the shortbread making gene in your DNA or have magical baking elves living in your trees.

Issues I’ve had I’ve listed below (They read kind of like a goldilocks tale “this porridge is too hot…” I like to imagine that I’m telling my tale of baking woes to a family of friendly, albeit put-upon, bears.)

Problems with the Shortbread Base

Challenges with the Middle Caramel Layer

Issues with the Chocolate Top:
How hard can it be after all? For pete’s sake when I was 10 I used to melt chocolate in my easy bake oven. Melting it isn’t the problem.

The main issue every year is “bloom” or white spots that appear on the top of the chocolate after it cools in the pan. While it doesn’t impact the taste, it makes it look bad and not shiny like say a Twix bar. This is caused by the fat in the chocolate separating and it can be the result of heating too fast, cooling too fast, changes in temperatures, wet utensils, bad chocolate, etc. Some people say adding some butter to the chocolate will solve this. It didn’t for me. In fact, it made it worse.

The pros do something called tempering which is a multi-step heating, cooling and kneading process that demands close attention to temperature and timing, which personally seems really involved and fraught with danger. Imagine still getting bloom after hours of careful tempering! Maybe some year when I have 11 hours to fuss with chocolate I’ll try it (read: no, I won’t.)

As for the type of chocolate, use a high quality milk chocolate. After several complaints, I guess nobody likes dark chocolate in this recipe so use milk chocolate to avoid a waterfall of whining.

Finally, the quantity can be a problem. Too much chocolate and the top will be too thick and will crack when you try and cut the bars. Too little and the caramel shows through and frankly, it’s not yummy without enough chocolate.

You really want to try it?
Now that you know everything that can go wrong, you should have concluded that you don’t want to make this. Haven’t I made it clear? Go out and buy yourself a case of Twix and save yourself years of misery. But if you really want to try, here is my best recipe and one that I can do (knock on wood) without disaster.

The Recipe for Slice
You are going to need:
1 Jelly Roll Pan
Parchment Paper
2 Cups (that’s 4 sticks) Unsalted Butter, the best quality you can find
White Sugar
White Flour. I use King Arthur flour only.
2 cans of Sweetened Condensed milk
Golden Syrup (you can find this at Cost Plus World Market and in the foreign section of some large grocery stores)
More Butter (1/4 cup)
Salt

A pound of the best quality milk chocolate you can find. Whole Foods sells big blocks of good quality during the holidays, as do some other specialty stores. Trader Joes makes a “one pounder” milk chocolate bar that works well too!

An Oven A 2.5 Quart sauce pan with heat dispersing bottom A double boiler A candy thermometer A new set of Wooden Spoons A rolling pin Patience

For the base:
Preheat oven to 350. Don’t even think of putting this in a cold oven.
2 cups butter, unsalted.
1 cup white sugar (some recipes use brown, and feel free if you want but it affects the taste)
5 cups high quality flour
1⁄2 teaspoon salt

Cream the butter and sugar. Add in flour a cup at a time with the salt but don’t mix it too long as it gets dense from the gluten getting all excited. We are shooting for flaky, buttery, shortbread. Make a dough and roll it out on a floured surface. Place it on top of the parchment paper in your jelly roll pan and pat it down to make sure it is even. Then, make
some pricks with a fork all over to let the steam out while it is baking.
Put it in the oven. If your oven cooks unevenly, you will want to watch it and turn it every so often to make sure it cooks perfectly even. As ovens vary, give it 20-25 mintues at 350 degrees. The edges will be golden brown when it is done and the top should be slightly puffy. Let it cool completely and move on to the middle layer.

The Middle:
1⁄4 Cup of Unsalted Butter
1 Cup of Sugar
1⁄2 cup of golden syrup (or, you can use light corn syrup)
2 cans sweetened condensed milk

First, unless you want to keep trying this over and over, get a candy thermometer. Next, remember to keep stirring with your wooden spoon. Put the butter, golden syrup and sugar in a 2.5 quart sauce pan on low heat and stir until it looks like the sugar is dissolving. Then add the two cans of sweetened condensed milk and turn the heat up to medium. Stir. Stir.

Stir. If you don’t, you will get some darker brown bits floating about.
Once it starts boiling, pop your candy thermometer in. You’ll want to get this up to around 234 F, otherwise known as soft ball stage. I like to keep it there a couple minutes just to be on the safe side, but I never let it get higher than 240 or you start to make hard Candy.

Depending on your altitude, this can take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes so recipes that tell you a time here and not a temperature are setting you up for failure. Pour this over the base and let cool completely.

The Top:
Melt your pound of milk chocolate over a double boiler and pour on to the cooled caramel. Let cool. Slice!

Sound like too much work? Try our gourmet Cookie-of-the-Month Club instead.

De-licious Applesauce Muffins

This time of year it’s all about the apples and the pumpkins, both of which I love cooking with. They are both healthy for you and with some extra chocolate chips, almost your pickiest of eaters will dig in. These next two recipes are down-home cooking, no surprise kick at the end. Very hearty and filling at the same time.

If you are a mom/parent on the go, which most of us are in one form or another, between work, PTA, driving kids around, or even shopping, sometimes we need something to eat for breakfast or a snack that is fast and good. These muffins can be kept in the freezer for months and then thawed, microwaved with a little butter, or even eaten frozen. Keep them in the fridge for a similar effect.

I prefer mine fresh out of the oven with a slab of butter on it, or warmed up in the microwave if they are cold. My oldest and very picky eater son likes them cold so he will eat them by the handfuls from the refrigerator or the freezer. I usually make 24 muffins at a time, and they don’t last long.

The first muffin recipe is an Oatmeal Applesauce Muffin that is already on our site. However, I am proposing a few changes to make it even healthier and better!

•  Add a little extra oats than the recipe calls for (between ¼ to 1/3 – every little bit helps!)
•  Add ½ whole wheat flour (they can’t even tell the difference)
•  Use Nestle Toll House Mini’s Semi -Sweet Chocolate Chips (it helps disperse the chocolate evenly throughout the muffin, making every bit a piece of heaven in your mouth!)
The second muffin is a pumpkin chocolate chip muffin recipe. Very tasty, especially in the pumpkin season where you seem to get a taste in your mouth for pumpkin. Is really good served with hot apple cider!

Pumpkin Muffins

2 Cups White Sugar                                                                                          2 tsp. Baking Soda

½ Cup Oil                                                                                                           ½ tsp Ground Cloves

4 Eggs                                                                                                                ½ tsp Cinnamon

1 ½ Cup Pumpkin                                                                                             ½ tsp Nutmeg

3 Cups All Purpose Flour                                                                                   ½ tsp Salt

1 Cup Chocolate Chips

Mix sugar, oil, eggs, and pumpkin. In a separate bowl mix the dry ingredients. Combine the dry into the wet ingredients. Don’t over stir. Fold in chocolate chips. Bake at 400 degrees for 19-20 minutes. Check at 15 minutes to see if done. Makes 24 muffins!

Brown Bag Apple Pie

We’re getting a little heavy on the Cookie side of things around here. The next post will for sure be from the Athlete side of life. But I did promise to post this Brown Bag Apple Pie Recipe. So here we go…

My dad always says he only likes two kinds of pie–hot and cold. I concur. This year we pigged out and had all manner of pie at the Thanksgiving meal.

Chocolate Sweet Potato Pie (My made-up recipe which turned out very nicely. Basically stir dark-chocolate ganache into sweet potato pie before baking.)

Lemon Sour Cream Pie (This Lemon Curd topped with sour cream with a couple tablespoons of sugar mixed together.)

Coconut Cream Pie

Pecan Tart

Pear Pie with Gruyere Crust

Pear Gruyere Pie (A little experiment inspired by Pushing Daisies. Some loved it. others tolerated it.)

Texan Buttermilk Pie (Baked upon request from my niece. I hate to admit it, but this pie is actually too sweet even for my sugar-lovin’ taste buds.)

Brown Bag Apple Pie
This recipe is great for anyone who doesn’t like to roll pastry dough. It features a press-in-the-pan crust. Of course, you can always replace it with a real rolled dough.

Bottom Crust:
1 ½ c. flour
1 T. sugar
1 t. salt
½ c. oil
2 T. cold milk

Combine with a pastry blender. Press into 9-inch pie plate.

Filling:
4 c. Granny Smith apples, sliced (Splash with lemon juice.)
½ c. sugar
2 T. flour
1 T. cinnamon

Toss together and arrange in the pie shell.

Topping:
½ c. flour
½ c. sugar
½ c. butter
Combine flour and sugar. Cut butter in with a pastry blender. Top pie with crumbly mixture.

Bake pie in a brown paper bag.

Place pie in a brown paper bag. Fold and staple closed. Bake 350°F for 1 ½ hours. No peeking.

It’s my duty to insist that you workout before and/or after enjoying this pie.

For tasty cookies and treats from amazing bakeries around the country, check out the Cookie-of-the-Month Club.