Ingredient Substitutions (Cookies)

I try to keep baked goods in my apartment and my angel food cake just ran out, so I knew it was time for another baking post. Yesterday I was craving cookies. This is fairly typical, so I decided to try a new recipe. I went to Martha's website (as she seems to always have what I'm craving) and found the perfect recipe: double chocolate coconut cookies. Doesn't the name alone make your mouth water? The only problem was that I currently don't have any walnuts in my pantry. Simple solution: ingredient substitutions. You can easily put a twist on a recipe by substituting ingredients. This comes in handy when you don't own an item that you need, or just to have some creative fun. For this particular recipe, I substituted the walnuts for oats and mmm are they delicious.

There are so many ways in which you can substitute ingredients to work with. The easiest ones to substitute are the final ingredients added to the cookies. These include the chocolate chips, nuts, coconut, oats, raisins, you name it.  The most important things about cookies is having fun and having a sweet treat, so think about substituting some of these ingredients into your cookies next time you have a cookie craving:

applesauce
pretzels
store-bought cookies (oreos, teddy grahams, etc.)
broken candy bars (reese's, kit kat, almond joy)
potato chips
bacon
hot chocolate mix (replacing cocoa)
yogurt chips
jelly beans
M&Ms
pop-tarts
granola
dried/fresh fruit

There is a fascination and allure to cookies being made with unique ingredients like potato chips and bacon, so I say if you don't have chocolate chips, throw in something you do have. The options are limitless.

I hope you enjoyed today's post. My next one is a tutorial about blowing your own Easter eggs, so be sure to check back soon :)