cookies for father's day, hit and misses

happy father's day to all the dads out there! i used to think M was where i got my sweet tooth from, but when i started baking cookies and watched D inhale 5 at a time, i realized i didn't stand a chance in those genes. so of course for father's day cookies were on the list of treats for him. there's pretty much only one major rule for baking desserts for my dad- something soft for his mouth so i chose two recipes hoping for the best. i woke up early yesterday to bake a super easy recipe before heading off to the beach w/ some friends (a bit of a guilty conscious in baking these since i was going off somewhere else, but he went golfing on his own anyway...)

 these come from picky palate- her fluffernutter cookies. somehow i only ended up w/ a 7 oz. jar of marshmallow fluff (this stuff is dangerousss) and then was guessing on the amount of peanut butter i had and they flattened out too much, i figured i had too much fluff so i added more peanut butter...

 but then i guess i added too much peanut butter and they became too buttery and crumbly in a sad way...so good thing i had another recipe!

it's getting hot outside so even though i got to bed around 2 am (i confess i didn't get to take a shower after coming back from the beach so i was slightly gross going to bed...) but anyway these are from eagle brand- coconut raisin treasure cookies. i wish condensed milk weren't so cloyingly sweet, but these cookies are still tasty and are nice and soft and you can definitely throw in whatever suits your dad's fancy. i used 1 cup of instant oats and increased the flour to 1 cup instead of using graham cracker crumbs. these are like oatmeal raisin cookies w/ more surprises (which i guess is the whole point of the "treasure" cookies name). i love how many add-ins there are, and the walnuts and raisins and coconut together are oh so delicious! now if only D would get back from golfing so i could stop staring (2nd confession, and sampling) all the cookies.

oh, and if anyone is in the md/de/va area and is heading to the eastern shore this summer sunshine crepes in bethany beach makes some delicious sweet crepes:)

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

christmas music has been playing in my car non-stop probably since thanksgiving and there was actual snowfall so christmas is definitely less than a week away! not that any present buying has occurred but that's a work in progress. my sweet shop blog is coming along and i finished my first order (check it out).

walking through old ellicott city the windows for the shops are decked out in full holiday happiness!

 it's amazing how the pink and purple ended up looking so festive!

i almost thought about trying to hanging ornaments with ribbon against the white wall that runs along our stairs but wasn't sure if it would hang right...

and of course, holidays = holiday baking!

Double chocolate coconut peanut butter cookies (now that's a delicious mouthful!)
1 box chocolate cake mix
1 can condensed milk
about 1/2 cup coconut*
about 1 cup peanut butter (we used smooth, but crunchy works too)
about 1 1/2 - 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all ingredients and then roll into however large cookies you would like and bake for 10-15 minutes (depending on the size) until the bottoms are browning (which is a bit more difficult with cookies that are already brown, but they do have a different color!). these cookies sink and harden a bit once they cool so don't worry too much if they are very soft when they first come out of the oven, just make sure the bottoms are brown.

the coconuts give it a nice crunch, i'm sure lots of different add-ins would be great. some holiday colored chips would also probably be adorable. these are about the easiest and tastiest cookies ever