SMiLes by Meg

Category: Cookies

Gluten Free Coconut Cookies

Snuck up to Duxbury for the weekend, which of course means my mom and I baked something coconut. Her birthday is this week, and Mother’s Day was two weeks ago ish, and I’m now officially fully vaccinated, so visiting this weekend made a lot of sense. We had a great time and laughed a lot and generally enjoyed what felt like a return to almost normal. Plus, we made some cookies that “are a cross between coconut macaroons and oatmeal cookies and SO GOOD.” (Quote from my mom.) Start by mixing together the coconut oil, brown sugar and egg in …

Matcha Snickerdoodles

These cookies have been on my “I want to try that” list since I got Weeknight Baking for Christmas a couple of years ago. I just never was able to find matcha at Whole Foods, which is where I assumed I would be able to find it, and I didn’t want to order it from Amazon, even though there are actually a couple of specialty items I should just order at this point since I haven’t been able to find them anywhere. Then, last week, I found matcha at Whole Foods! I never go down the aisles full of random …

Almond Horn Cookies

This weekend I started a two week vacation, and so far it’s been lovely. Yesterday, Erik and I went for a bike ride around Antietam Battlefield, and this morning I baked cookies and read a book that has been taking me way too long to read. However, we are yet to find matzo in DC, so if anyone has any leads (or boxes to spare) we would be very grateful. The cookies are Passover-friendly, which also means they’re gluten free. They come together quickly, are relatively easy to shape, and look like something you’d find in a real bakery (not …

Rainbow Snickerdoodles

This is going to be a quick post because Erik and I are about to sit down to some much needed Schitt’s Creek time, but this weekend I made some very big cookies that are kind of adjacent to a snickerdoodle. When I think of snickerdoodles, I think of cinnamon. But Hummingbird High’s cookbook had a couple of variations to snickerdoodles that piqued my interest. I mostly want to make her matcha snickerdoodle variety. Unfortunately, the Giant supermarket around the corner most certainly does not have matcha powder as a standard item. They do, though, have rainbow non pareils, so …

Peanut Butter Miso Cookies

I’ve had these cookies on my list for months. Originally they were going to go in my Christmas cookie boxes, but we had red miso, not white miso, in the fridge, and I like to follow recipes exactly (much to Erik’s general dismay). But now that I’m back in the baking game, I needed to give them a go, especially because they seemed like a perfect cookie to bring with us on our mini vacation this week. I made these cookies last night right before we were going to try an at-home fancy 5 course meal where the restaurant sends …

Peppermint Oreos

Looking back over the years, I’ve tried to make Oreos a few times. When I first moved into my apartment in Boston after law school, I gave them a go with this recipe. Then, a couple months later, I tried to recreate the Trader Joe’s candy cane Oreos with this recipe for my Christmas cookie boxes. Both seem to have been successes at the time, but they also both pale in comparison to the ones I made for my cookie boxes this year, a much more impressive looking and subtly peppermint variety out of BraveTart’s cookbook, of course. Christmas for …

Checkerboards

Week 2 of cookies from my cookie boxes this year is checkerboards! When polling friends who got a box, this was a big favorite, which I think is probably more due to the fact that they look really impressive than anything else. Oh and also the butter. I first made checkerboards in my pre-blog life sometime in college. Cate was visiting my parents’ house with me, and I remember making them at the kitchen counter while she made wedding cookies. Or maybe I’m totally making up this memory but I think that’s when I first made them. I was surprised …

Nutmeg Teddy Bears

If you follow my Instagram (@smilesbymeg), you know that I made a LOT of cookies this weekend. If you don’t follow my Instagram, you really should start. I’ll post the recipes over the next couple of weeks, but first up (by vote of my Instagram followers): Nutmeg Teddy Bears! Every year in my cookie boxes, I like to make at least one with my cookie press. And every year when I do make a cookie press cookie, I remember that i have presses for every season of the year that isn’t Christmas, too, swear I’ll make more, and then don’t. …

Gingerbread House

Like everyone else on Instagram, I decided this was the right weekend for a gingerbread house. Next weekend is Cookie Weekend (if you live in DC and want a box of cookies, please let me know!) and the weekend after that is Ravioli Weekend and the weekend after that is Christmas, so there really was no other time to do this. I’ve had a set of gingerbread house cookie cutters for a couple of years now, but hadn’t yet successfully baked the components in a way that they would fit together to make a house. I decided I needed a …

Kit Kat Cookies

I think the complexity of my baking actually increases the busier I am at work. This probably makes sense, since baking is one of my favorite stress relief activities, but still is a bit counterintuitive. So this weekend, when I had a lot going on for work, I wanted to make something that was a bit more time-intensive. I also saw these cookies on Cloudy Kitchen’s instagram and couldn’t get them out of my head. Kit Kat bars are my favorite standard candy bar most of the time (Butterfingers are my favorite specifically when I’m golfing with my dad). And …