Salted-caramel glazed oatmeal cookies

I love it when a recipe goes wrong, then turns into something oh so right!

One of my favorite cookies is sunflower seed oatmeal cookies. (Gibbers', too.) I made a batch today to take to a neighborhood get-together tonight, but I played with the proportions a bit too much, and they came out kinda bland. So I thought a caramel icing might balance that out.

And it did! But I couldn't just leave it at that. Since "salted caramel whatever" is everywhere these days, I thought I'd give them just a light sprinkling of kosher salt.

Perfect! The cakey/crispy texture of the cookie contrasts nicely with the gooey caramel, and they do balance each other out. That icing would also rock drizzled over banana cake, muffins, or banana-nut bread!

I can't give you the cookie part of my recipe, because I swapped Splenda for some of the sugar, just added the dry ingredient mix till it looked right, and same on the oatmeal. But the base recipe I was working from is the standard one on every carton of Quaker Oatmeal: Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. I leave out the cinnamon and swap sunflower seeds for raisins.

On to the icing...

I started with a recipe on AllRecipes.com, but changed it substantially. Here's what I ended up with:

Caramel icing

covers three dozen cookies

 2 T. butter

 1/4 c. cream

 1/2 c. packed brown sugar

1/2 c. powdered sugar (or less)

1/2 t. vanilla

Kosher or sea salt to taste (optional)

Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Then stir in the cream and brown sugar. Boil vigorously for 1 minute.

Remove from heat, and beat in half of the powdered sugar. Cool slightly, and beat in the vanilla and the remaining powdered sugar. Taste it as you add a bit at a time; you may not need all of it. 

It sets up pretty quickly, so have your cookies all ready before you make the icing. If it gets too thick, add more cream and/or return it to low heat for a moment.

Drizzle over the cookies. Sprinkle lightly w/ kosher or sea salt, if desired.

Pumpkin pecan muffins - low carb!

Crumbly muffins, hot out of the oven, fragrant with cinnamon... These are so good, my kids gobbled them up, even when they were at their pickiest stage. Probably because I never mentioned to the munchkins that these muffins are low carb!

This recipe is adapted from a recipe in Eating Stella Style -- Low Carb Recipes for Healthy Living. 

Pumpkin Pecan Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

3 cups almond flour

1 can canned pumpkin (NOT pie filling)
2 T. wheat bran (or ground flaxseed, to make it gluten free)
1 T. pumpkin pie spice*

2 t. baking powder

2 t. baking soda

6 large eggs (corrected 5/17/13; previously listed as 3)

1 1/2 c. Splenda (or sweetener of your choice)

2 t. vanilla extract

1/4 t. salt

1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a 12-muffin tin with paper liners, and spray the inside of the liners with no-stick spray.

Stir all the ingredients until well blended. Fill the prepared muffin cups about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out pretty much clean.

Let muffins cool for 5-10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temp. (Warm with butter - YUM!) Refrigerate any leftovers.

If there are any. Which there won't be!  :)

* If you don't have pumpkin pie spice mix on hand, you can use this recipe. But you'll need to make a little more than the recipe calls for. 

Nutrition info, from myfitnesspal.com; great carb-to-protein ratio!...

Nutrition Facts
Servings 12.0
Amount Per Serving
Calories 295
% Daily Value *
Total Fat 24 g	36 %
Saturated Fat 2 g	12 %
Monounsaturated Fat 5 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 2 g
Trans Fat 0 g
Cholesterol 123 mg	41 %
Sodium 375 mg	16 %
Potassium 80 mg	2 %
Total Carbohydrate 14 g	5 %
Dietary Fiber 6 g	23 %
Sugars 3 g
Protein 11 g	22 %
Vitamin A	90 %
Vitamin C	1 %
Calcium	15 %
Iron	12 %