海角大神

In the coming week, we鈥檙e going to be giving a few early small seasonal gifts to people, so with that in mind, we put the final finishing touches on our first gift basket, utilizing some of the items we already made.

One component of many of our baskets this year is going to be cookies. Sarah is a spectacular cookie maker and she delightfully packages them up for people as well. This year, she decided to use a peanut butter-based cookie recipe for her cookie bundles.

In the , Sarah is making cookies using tofu as an egg substitute 鈥� these actually turn out really well and were well liked by someone who thinks tofu is disgusting, so it works. 贬别谤别鈥檚 what you need.

6 eggs (or 1 1/2 cups whipped tofu)
2 sticks margarine or butter
3 cups brown sugar
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups peanut butter
2 teaspoons baking soda
12 oz. chocolate chips (milk or semi-sweet, as per your preference)
3/4 cup chopped nuts (a little more or a little less, as per your preference)
1 1/2 cups M&Ms (a little more or a little less, as per your preference)
9 cups rolled oats

Making cookies is easy.

Mix together the butter/margarine and the sugar. Then, add the eggs/tofu, vanilla, and peanut butter and mix until smooth. Add all remaining ingredients, then . Shape into small balls (about the size of a golf ball) and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 F (175 C) for 8 to 10 minutes. when they hold together but are still really chewy.

Naturally, we wanted to package these fairly nicely. Sarah鈥檚 simple solution was to take a large square of clear Saran Wrap, place three cookies in a stack in the middle, draw the Saran Wrap up around the cookies, twist the top, and tie it with a ribbon.

Of course, you might want to just make big batches of these cookies for any family events and dinners you have coming up, either at Thanksgiving or at Christmas.

We wanted to give some of these cookie bundles away as part of larger gift baskets that incorporate other homemade gifts. Over the last few months, we鈥檝e been searching a wide variety of supply stores looking for small gift baskets, eventually finding a large box of them for about $0.40 a basket.

the basket we prepared.

This basket contains a cookie bundle, a jar of the , and an hand-painted by our daughter (who likes blue and purple). It鈥檚 nestled on a piece of blank newspaper from our .

This is a small example of the gift baskets we鈥檒l be giving out this year. Some will be larger and contain other items that we鈥檝e made, and I鈥檒l show you some of these later.

This may be the last entry in the series. We may be making one more item 鈥� if we do, we鈥檒l show it to you in two weeks. There will also be a final post showing some of the packaging that we鈥檙e using for these gifts.

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