Pumpkin isn’t the only vegetable that becomes a popular inclusion in desserts and baked goods during the fall. Sweet potato is also very popular. And for good reason, since sweet potatoes have a naturally sweet flavor and a beautiful color to them. They also take to other flavors very well because the sweet potato itself is quite mild. Sweet potato pie is a classic, but sweet potato can be used in other desserts, as well. These oatmeal chocolate chip cookies have some mashed (cooked) swet potato incorporated into them, giving them a bit of extra sweetness and a hint of orangey, fall warmth.

The cookies are fairly standard, as far as oatmeal chocolate chip cookies go. Adding some sweet potato to them makes the cookies very moist and tender. They start out fairly chewy, but will become slightly more cake-like (although still moist) after a couple of days. The biggest change in these from a plainer cookie is the spicing. Some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies rely only on cinnamon, while these use cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. The cardamom in particularly seems to go very well with the sweet potato.

I used regular semisweet chocolate chips and toasted pecans in these. I think they’d be very good with milk chocolate and with walnuts, as well. I think that dark chocolate might take away a bit from the natural flavor of the sweet potato, but will still work if that’s what you prefer to use.

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I originally found this recipe in Demolition Desserts. When I described the cookbook, I noted that it really encourages you to be creative, so while I did make the recipe as written, I also experimented with the size and shape of the cookies in the book. My favorite variation I baked up was for Chocolate Espresso Cookie Cups. These two-bite cookies are baked in mini muffin cups, which gives them a cute look an a fantastic texture. They’re fudgy and soft in the center, not unlike a good brownie, but still retain some of that “crispy on the outside edge” feel when they’re fresh from the oven that ordinary chocolate chip cookies have.

The original recipe called for using a little bit of real coffee grounds in the cookies to give them their espresso flavor. I opted to use instant espresso powder (instant coffee is fine) because I think it it actually lends more flavor to the cookies and I like the way that it fully incorporates without leaving any gritty little bits behind. I actually don’t mind a bit of texture, but I know plenty of people who do. It adds a nice coffee note and makes the cookies seem a little bit darker and richer. The cookies will sink a bit in the center as they cool, so don’t worry if they loose some of their muffin-like dome after taking them out of the oven. It’s just a sign that they’re going to have a nice, moist middle.

I used a combination of chocolate chips here. If you don’t want to mix them all up, I would probably lean towards milk chocolate chips for this recipe because they add some extra sweetness to a fairly dark chocolaty cookie, but dark chocolate chips would provide a little bit more of an intense chocolate flavor if that’s what you prefer.
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Apple is probably my favorite flavor of pie. I never get tired of the flavors of buttery crust, brown sugar, spices and, of course, juicy apples all mixed together. Apple pies are also fun to make, which is a nice little bonus. They are a bit time consuming, however, and lately I’ve been experimenting with other applications for apple pie spices and flavors. These apple pie cookies are the result - or one of the results - of this venture. They have flavor and fruit of a pie, in a cookie form.

The cookies are big, soft and chewy. They actually use fresh apples, which adds a lot of moisture to the cookies and does make them more reminiscent of pie than, say, dried apples would if they were also in the cookies. When I said that the cookies were big, I wasn’t kidding. Each one uses about a 1/4 cup of cookie dough! For me, this is like getting a bigger slice of pie. You get more apples and more cookie. I think that these are a great “breakfast” cookie, one that will satisfy you for a couple of hours if you have one with your coffee in the morning.

Since the apples let off more moisture as time goes by, these cookies will start to stick together slightly after a day of being stored in an airtight container. To prevent this, as well as to make the cookies easier to eat, layer them with pieces of wax paper or parchment paper and you’ll have no problems.
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I am a big fan of the Halloween M&Ms this year. They’re not just black and orange, but black, orange, neon green and purple. The combination of colors looks fun, bold and a bit spooky. I honestly love the look of them. I wanted to showcase their bright seasonal colors in something other than my candy dish, so I incorporated them into a batch of chewy, chocolate cookies. The dark color of the cookie really lets to bright colors of the candies stand out, making the cookies appear a little more exotic and in keeping with the Halloween season than your ordinary chocolate chip cookies.

Don’t let the not look of the cookies in the photo fool you, because these cookies are darker in person than they appear. They have a lot of cocoa powder in them than gives them their color, not to mention their deep chocolate flavor. These cookies are rich tasting and chocolaty, with a hint of fudginess that comes from their chewy texture. The fact that there are some miniature chocolate chips thrown in to add a little bit of extra chocolate doesn’t hurt, either. The M&Ms are, of course, both crunchy and chocolaty. If you get a cookie when its warm from the oven, you’ll get a nice bite of melted chocolate inside the M&M shell. for  The cookies look a little more Halloween-ish than plain chocolate chip cookies would with M&Ms added.

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It’s fun to experiment a little with cookie recipes, throwing in different ingredients to see if you can improve on a regular chocolate chip cookie with some raisins, peanuts, coconut, white chocolate, cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla or any number of other fruits, nuts, spices, etc. The options are endless. And, to that end, I decided to mix some graham crackers, along with chocolate chips, into a regular batch of oatmeal cookie dough and incorporate a completely different type of cookie into the mix.

The result was a batch of delicious cookies with a long name, that are much easier to make than they might sound at first. All you really need to do is lightly crush up some graham crackers before you start making the dough, and stir them in as you would with any other ingredient. If you’re going to use an electric mixer, you don’t even need to break the crackers up much, as the mixer, even on a low speed, will do the work for you. In the finished batch of cookies you get a good butter and oatmeal flavor, as well as a great honey note from the grahams.

If you have them, I would really recommend using Honey Grahams (the cereal) because they’re already broken up and they have an even more pronounced flavor of honey and graham than the crackers themselves have! The graham crackers and the cereal become slightly chewy during baking, mostly because they’re exposed to the liquids in the dough. This hint of chewiness that shows up in the finished cookie - which is also slightly chewy in a buttery, oatmeal-cookie way - seems to emphasize the honey flavor of the grahams well.

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When you’re talking about cookies, it is often said that using brown sugar will result in a chewier cookie. This is partially true, as brown sugar does have a higher moisture content than regular sugar and that can help a cookie stay more moist - and therefore, chewier. It is not the only thing that can make a cookie chewy, however, as the amount of sugar, number of eggs, amount of butter and/or other fats and ratios of various other ingredients can also come into play. In other words, it helps but it’s not the only way to get there.

This peanut butter cookie happens to use brown sugar and bake up to be nice and chewy. It uses brown sugar to help with the chew and add a little bit of a molasses flavor to the cookies. What really makes them chewy, however, is the baking time and temperature. They are baked at a lower temperature than many other peanut butter cookie recipes (at least, most of those that I make) and are baked until just set, not until browned. The cookies turn out with a nice chew to them. Don’t worry if you overbake them, however, as they shouldn’t turn out hard, though they might be a little on the crisp side.

I used dark brown sugar to get the most molasses flavor into the cookies and a national brand of crunchy peanut butter (Jif extra crunchy). I like the crunch that some pieces of peanut add to the cookies. If you don’t have dark brown sugar, any type of brown sugar is a fine substitution.

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