some love from martha...

so my posts have been of the serious nature lately and i thought i'd change it up, just for fun. one of my favorite things i do with the youth group kiddos is cookie points. whenever they do something sweet or make me laugh or are helpful i give them cookie points. when they reach 100 cookie points i hand them martha stewart's cookie cookbook and let them choose the ones they'd like. cookie points not only keep the chaos to a dull roar but they also force me to attempt recipes i'd never go near (ask me about the disaster that was making fortune cookies). i thought i'd share a recent recipe with you. it was pretty simple and ricky loved his cookies so slam dunk!

Vanilla Malted Cookies

ingreidents

- 2 3/4 c flour

- 3/4 c plain malted milk powder

- 1 tsp baking powder

- 3/4 tsp salt

- 2 sticks (1 c) unsalted butter at room temp

- 3 ounces cream cheese at room temp

- 1 c sugar
- 1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped

- 1 egg

- 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

1. preheat the oven and mix the dry ingridents together.


2. Cream butter and cream cheese. Then add sugar, vanilla, vanilla bean, and egg. Slowly add in the dry ingriedents a bit at a time.

3. Transfer dough to a pastry bag (or you can use a gallon ziploc and snip the end of it) fitted with a large star tip. Pipe 2 1/2 inch stips on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

4. Bake until edges are golden brown (for me this was about 7 min). Transfer to wire racks to cool and enjoy!