Cookie Sticks

The other day in the check out line I got suckered (well, besides the fact that I was there for the upteenth time last week).  It was taking the checker forever to get the person in front of me finished and I started looking at the cookbook magazines-you know, the Betty Crocker and Taste of Home ones.  Usually I'm really good at not purchasing them.  Taste of Home has all of their recipes online, so if I see one that looks good while flipping through, I jot the recipe name down on my grocery list and look it up when I get home.  The "Back to School" edition got me though, and in a weak moment, I bought it.  We'll just add that to the very much blown grocery budget.

Later, the girls were flipping through the magazine and found "Cookie Sticks" and begged to make them.  I've sort of been putting them off, but having bought chocolate chips this past weekend and having already celebrated a daycare birthday this week, I ran out of reasons to put them off!  So this morning we cranked out a batch of cookie sticks.

Sitting here eating one, I have to say they are pretty good.  I think I might have gotten a little carried away with the chocolate chips, but I'm not a huge chocolate person so don't hold that against them (or me).  Don't get me wrong, I like chocolate, but not large quantities of it at once.

Of course you know that I won't leave a recipe alone, so here's how I changed it.

• 1/2 cup coconut oil
• at little less than 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon molasses
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups whole white wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, optional (I opted no.)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Mix the wet ingredients in one bowl and the dry in another.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet a little at a time stirring together as you go.  Divide the dough in half and press into rectangles approximately 15" x 3" on a cookie sheet.  I used two cookie sheets because I wasn't sure how much they would spread and while you could get away with one, I'd use two just to make cutting them easier.  Once the dough is pressed out, add chocolate chips and press them into the dough.  If you are using nuts, do those the same way.  Bake 7-8 minutes (the recipe says this make crispier cookies, but I thought they were still plenty soft and at 5 minutes they still looked uncooked to me).  Cool 5 minutes then cut with a serrated knife.  I used a pizza cutter and I wouldn't recommend it.  The first batch cut fine, but by the time I got to the second batch, there was a lot of melted chocolate on the cutter and it tore the sticks up pretty bad.  Maybe at some point, I should follow all of the directions.  Or, I'll just aspire to be a direction follower!