Chewy Coconut Cookies (New favorite recipe)

 

i recently got this giant bag of shredded coconut to review. It's a little different than the bagged sweetened coconut i usually buy, and figured out it makes amazing cookies!!  

This coconut is raw, organic and unsweetened.  It's a little different than the sweetened bagged coconut i usually buy from the grocery store. It's a finer shred and slightly dry. While trying to figure out what to make with it, i decided to try baking it into cookies. They are currently our favorite cookie!! 

The recipe makes 3 dozen, and i usually do one dozen plain, one dozen chocolate chip and one dozen chocolate chip with mini M&Ms.  They are always a big hit!  The recipe is very easy and they come out perfect every time. 

Ingredients

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour 

½ teaspoon baking soda 

¼ teaspoon salt

 ½ cup butter (room temperature)

½ cup packed brown sugar

 ½ cup white sugar 

1 egg 

½ teaspoon vanilla extract 

1 ⅓ cups flaked coconut 

*optional chocolate chips, mini-M&Ms, 

Directions

 Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). 

First, combine flour, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl; set aside.  Next, beat butter, brown sugar, and white sugar together in a large bowl with an electric mixer until smooth.  Add egg and vanilla; beat until light and fluffy. Gradually blend in flour mixture, then stir in coconut until well combined. Add chocolate chips and/or m&ms if using.  Drop dough by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets, about 3 inches apart. 

Bake in preheated oven until golden brown, about 8 to 10 minutes.  Allow cookies to cool briefly on the baking sheet before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Additional adds-in that we've tried include dried cranberries and walnuts. They cookies are chewy and delicious.  Enjoy! 

i received this product at no cost in exchange for an honest review, my opinions are my own. As an amazon affiliate i earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. 

The Journey Begins..

 

So it seems that most people got into sourdough during Covid time (2020-21).  i admit, i was already baking bread regularly, and didn't really understand the appeal of sourdough.  We have a local sourdough bakery here in Floyd, VA and my daughter started bringing home loaves from them and they were super delicious. 

So when i had the opportunity to review a sourdough  starter, i jumped at it! This sourdough starter by Sunrise Flour Mill worked wonderfully. i have never made sourdough before, and was really a bit clueless about the process. The starter comes dried and includes a booklet on how to activate your starter and bake your first sourdough loaf. The instructions say that you can bake with your starter on day 5, but my kitchen is pretty cold and my starter was not ready.

 i continued to feed it and ended up moving it closer to my woodstove. It seemed to like that and began bubbling and doubled it's size after just a couple days. It has a wonderful sourdough smell. If you have never made sourdough before, i suggest watching a few youtube videos of the process before you start.

 The booklet does come with written instructions, but i found i needed the visuals from video tutorials to really understand the stretch and fold technique and the shaping. One of these days i'll put together my own sourdough video to show my process. 

This is my very first sourdough loaf. It wasn't perfect, but it was delicious. One of the fun parts of  sourdough starter is that it's a living, symbiotic culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria that needs to be fed. If you are baking regularly, you can leave it out on the counter and feed it daily. If you don't plan to bake regularly you can keep it in the fridge and feed it once a week.  Each time you feed it, you'll want to discard a portion of starter first. The discard can be given away to friends  as a starter, or you can save it to use in discard recipes.  Since starting my sourdough journey, i'm now making bread 3 times a week and cinnamon rolls and bagels once a week using the discard. 

So, i'm a little late to the sourdough game, but i'm completely addicted now that it's cold and i'm stuck inside.  i'm sure once garden season starts my baking may slow down.  Although i can already imagine the amazing garden fresh sandwiches we can make with our homemade sourdough. 

My usual disclaimer- i received this product at no cost in exchange for an honest review, my opinions are my own. As an amazon affiliate i earn a small commission from qualifying purchases

We weave because we have to...

 

i currently have about 40 handwoven dishcloths available. Most singles and some tied together in neat little bundles of 3. These are made with 100% cotton and are washing machine safe.

It's not often that i have time to sit, and these require sitting. i used to only make these on long car rides and sitting in hotels while traveling.  The last couple years there has been a lot of that. So i've spent a lot of time with my loom. What was once just a fun craft i did occasionally, became a much needed respite.  i don't weave for fun or just to make dishcloths, i weave because i have to.  To care about weaving is to be in touch with a 10,000-year-old human tradition that binds us to our ancestors and to each other.  

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 If you've been following my summer adventures you know many of these were woven at various outdoor concerts and music festivals.  Sierra Ferrell, Del McCoury, Molly Tuttle, Sister Sadie and more! So i do believe each dishcloth holds the spirit of the music & magic. 😉 Of course each one is also made with love. ❤

In the evenings i've been working to get them finished and listing them in my Ko-fi shop.  Each set has 3 cotton dishcloths, woven on a loom and finished with a crocheted border.  These sets are $15 per pack. i also have individual dishcloths for sale for $5 each. If you are local i can meet up in town this weekend. For everyone else, i do ship. For anyone interested the looms are made by my FIL.  You can find them on Etsy in the BigFam15 shop, i believe mine is the 10" mini loom in oak. 

Many people weave all of their lives without knowing that it is not cloth they are after. (Attributed to Henry David Thoreau, but not exactly his quote.)

Stolen Moments.

“I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectability) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”  

-Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.