26- Jalapeño Chocolate Chip Cookies + Hospital Awards Cinnamon Treats

This is the final week for the July theme of Favorites. And this week I’m pulling out the big guns.

The department favorite.

Drum roll, please.

No, I don’t know why I typed that because it’s in the blog title.

Of course the perfect cookie to round out Favorites month is the Jalapeño Chocolate Chip Cookie.

I’ve already pulled my butter out to rest at room temperature and next I will be rehydrating the dried jalapeño pieces. Because I don’t know about you, but I have serious reservations for purchasing raw salad stuff this month.

You know why.

I’m going to do the mis en place work so I can just bake in the morning.

I have 2 things to bake.

The first is the jalapeño chocolate chip cookies for the OR but the second is the make for the hospital awards that I am still in charge of, but the ending is in sight.

The big thing with the Daisy Award is to have Cinnabon cinnamon rolls at the ceremony. This is because it was what Patrick Barnes was interested in eating in his final days and he asked his family to bring in enough for the nurses. After his death, his family set up the Daisy Award to recognize outstanding nurses. I could go on, I’ve given the speech about the award enough times.

However, the local Cinnabon shop closed down a couple of years ago. This left us in a quandary. Ever since I have either been making cinnamon rolls, buying cinnamon rolls, or making treats that evoke cinnamon rolls. Quarter 1 2026 awards ceremony, I made a stunning cinnamon roll shortbread.

But I don’t like to repeat myself.

By now you should know, I collect recipes. Not all recipes; just the ones that catch my eye. That is what I am making for Quarter 2 2026 awards ceremony.

You’ve had garlic bread? It was one of the first things I learned to bake. French bread, butter, garlic salt/garlic powder. Spread the mixture on a halved loaf of French bread and bake until browned. But what if it was cinnamon toast flavored instead?

Brown sugar, cinnamon butter on ciabatta. Bake until the edges are golden brown and then cut up to serve to the nominees and winners. I plan to use ciabatta because it was the only loaf that was the right size/shape when I was at the store.

Well, in theory.

I think it will be a winner.

***time lapse***

It is now Thursday afternoon and the awards ceremony went off without a hitch. I have been involving my newish co-chair in the details and the ceremony and the choosing of the flowers.

I struggled a bit to describe the cinnamon make for the awards ceremony. I said garlic bread, but make it cinnamon sugar toast and most people got it.

However you explain it, the make was yummy.

I have notes. Of course, I have notes, have you met me?

The first note is that the cheaper bread from the grocery store bakery would be better. The spreading of the cinnamon/brown sugar/butter mixture went well and it baked well. But when it came time to add the glaze, the little pockets on the ciabatta swallowed every bit of it. That meant there was no visible glaze after I spread on the glaze. And the bread was squishier and harder to cut.

It tasted great and people went back for seconds. Which is good because it made A LOT. 2 entire 8×12 containers, with lids. Both containers were half full at the end. I gave one to my friend to give to her family and I took the other to the OR along with the jalapeno

After the ceremony, I dropped off the cinnamon French bread container and the jalapeño chocolate chip cookies make for the week. No word yet on how they were received. I’ll drop by tomorrow and pick up the containers. I did leave a sign that said Cinnamon French Bread but who knows if anyone opened the container.

Mystery to be solved later!

Cookie Thursday 7/16/26- Twix cookies

This week is continuing the Favorites theme for July.

First favorite we had was Chex Mix, to kick off the 4th of July weekend.

The second week was my birthday so no cookies were made.

The third favorite is one of the first cookies I ever made for CTIAT. It wasn’t called CTIAT at that time. It was called “Let’s take turn making cookies for the evening shift, I’ll start”.

And there were other bakers.

For a minute.

I’ve done it ever since.

The Twix cookie was one that I remember being so excited about. Except I couldn’t choose just one flavor.

I mean there are TWO flavors of Twix. Peanut butter (my favorite) and OG caramel.

I had to do both. And not just back then.

But remember, CTIAT started the first of the year 2014. Even accounting for several other bakers, my second week would’ve been sometime in February. And not when it was 1000000000000 degrees outside. And 10000000000 billion percent humidity.

Yeah, Twix making in humidity *making a face* doesn’t quite work the same.

I am definitely writing that down and remembering this time.

It took the chocolate hours to set.

Good thing I started baking before the sun came up.

Two mistakes were made.

The first is that I was foolish in thinking that the chocolate would set, even in an air conditioned house.

The second is that I ran the dishwasher at the exact time.

Mostly because we get charged more for “surge” electricity above our normal. Such as the dishwasher. Or the washer. The surge hours are between 1500-1900. And I had a meeting at noon so this was rather a rush job.

Cool, cool.

The chocolate barely set properly hours into my morning.

The leftovers of the chocolate and the peanut didn’t set either. I combined them to see what would happen. Like you do.

What happened? Nothing. Sticky happened.

There was a third mistake. The caramel that I used was fruity. Made for an interesting flavor profile.

On the positive side, next week’s cookie is going to be the perennial favorite of the OR, the jalapeno chocolate chip.

Keep it to yourself, will you?

Cookie Thursday 2/19/26- Feta spinach scone-lets

This is going to sound far, far, far, far-fetched.

And a little woo woo.

I think the oven had performance anxiety because the kitchen had blabbed about Cookie Thursday is a Thing as an expectation of all ovens.

But the oven that I baked in last week behaved COMPLETELY different just a week later.

Last week, the temperature was uneven and the cookies baked in a strange pattern. With odd hot spots and odd cold spots. Don’t get me wrong, they tasted amazing. In fact, still do because there are some left and I am having milk and cookies as I write this. The week-old cookies are still pliable and soft and buttery in the best way. They just look a bit strange.

This week, however, the story of the oven’s performance is COMPLETELY different.

The bake of the week is the feta spinach scone-lets. Yes, again.

As this is one of the recipes I lost in the Pinterest purge I had to find another. I knew what the ingredients were and most of the amounts but there was one that was eluding me. Happy days, I found a substitute recipe.

I started by wilting the spinach and the microgreens in my fridge that had to be used. I added a teaspoon of minced garlic as well. I let it cool while I went grocery shopping; mostly because I needed cream which I didn’t have. Cream prices are outrageous so I substituted buttermilk.

I mixed the dries and added the egg and the buttermilk and mixed it well. This dough is sticky and needs some hands on work. Once it was incorporated I added in the spinach and mixed again. The last ingredient I added was the feta.

With no small amount of trepidation I pre-warmed the oven and portioned out the dough into the wells of the mini muffin pan. Since I was adapting this recipe, I baked until browned and done. About 12 minutes.

After cooling, this particular muffin tin released the makes easily.

These were the prettiest feta spinach scone-lets that I have ever baked.

I took them off to the hospital and left them in the designated drawer, with a note on the white board to microwave them for 5-10 minutes for best results.

I am very pleased with the oven learning curve and look forward to next week.

Cookie Thursday 1/7/26- Feta spinach scone-lets

Welcome to the first Cookie Thursday is a Thing of 2026. The theme is “Why is there so much cheese?”. This is a repeat theme from 2023.

That’s all right. This is a repeat make.

When Pinterest parted ways with me in December I lost all my recipes. All of them. When I last checked I had over 3,000 cookie recipes. Some I had tried, some I wanted to try, themes I wanted to explore. All neatly categorized on a board.

Of course my appeal for reinstatement was denied.

But I know something they don’t. Y’all know something they don’t. My attention to detail is impeccable and my recall is above expectations. And my note taking and note retention is also none too shabby.

I will begin anew, aided by my notes and my memory and my newly developed research skills. See, the PhD program was good for something even as I struggle.

And Pinterest is just a place to dump and organize the data. Which I do. Well, did.

As the bible says in Ecclesiastes 1:9, What has been will be again.

Or as the US government said of in 1974 Steve Austin in the 10Six Million Dollar Man, “Gentleman, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster.” However, that might not be the best analogy in this technocrat moment.

The point is I can find recipes and my recall of past recipes is immense.

Enter this month’s first make, The feta spinach scone-let.

I actually have this one written down on a gown card.

This is an easy, quick make. Which is good because my ovens are limping their way to tomorrow’s finish line of new stove installation. Good, because it’s been chilling in my garage for 2 weeks.

I find using the bottom oven to be inefficient. It’s too big and takes too long to come up to temperature.

But these sconelets were amazing!

Bit of green, bit of cheese via scone delivery. There is a reason it ranks among the top 10 of CTIAT.

Cookie Thursday 10/24/25- Cotton Candy Cookies

Step right up, step right up!

Get your snacks before entering the big top.

Step right up!

What is a good circus snack?

Cotton candy.

Are there good cotton candy cookie recipes on the interwebs?

No.

But there is some AI slop where the picture doesn’t match the recipe ingredients.

But there is some AI slop where the picture is too good to be true.

Scary right?

And that is why Cotton Candy Cookies is a fitting edition to the Something Spooky This Way Comes October theme.

But I still had no recipe. So I read them all.

I had cotton candy, which none of the crappy recipes included. It seemed a good fit and was on sale.

I had cotton candy flavoring, which only 1 of the crappy recipes included.

You see one of the main problems with the AI generated picture is that the cookies looked like clouds. Like cotton candy. They were all sorts of colors; the palest of pinks and the cheerful yellow and the baby blue.

None of the recipes included food dye.

“Fine. I’ll do it myself!” Growled Obadiah Stane, the bad guy in the first Iron Man Movie.

He wanted control over the trillion dollar Stark Industries.

I just want a cotton candy cookie.

This cookie has been one of the true experiment cookies that I have done for awhile. I mean, Inflation Baking 2022 was the last time I really let my hair down in the kitchen. Experimentally, that is. My hair is always tied back when I bake and all the surfaces are freshly cleaned.

How to get the cotton candy into the cookies, without melting it?

Truly, a question for the ages.

I made a sugar cookie base (the one from the animal crackers week, nice to see that I am continuing the circus theme) and folded in cotton candy hunks.

Would this work?

Probably not.

But it was pretty.

When I pulled the first batch out of the oven, the cotton candy had coalesced into a ball of sugar. Kind of like a chip.

Perhaps these should be called Cotton Candy Chip Cookies.

I think I might be onto something here.

Or I could melt white chocolate chips and add the cotton candy flavoring to make a true chip.

Or I could melt white chocolate chips and add the cotton candy flavoring and the cotton candy and put it into a mold to make cotton candy chips.

Why do I only have these ideas when I am writing up the experiment results?

Cookie Thursday 9/18/25- Jalapeño bacon crescent roll bites

This week continues the month theme of Cookies for Breakfast.

Of course, I am taking the definition of cookie with an extreme grain of salt. Like huge, the size of Gibraltar.

This is more classified as a make. As in it has breakfast type items in it. I would almost call them a biscuit but then that’s not correct, either.

It started when I say these packages of cooked jalapeño bacon at Aldi when I was grocery shopping. They were on steep discount but still within expiration date. I believe they were less than $1.50/each. So I bought 3, with this exact make in mind. Aldi also has a knock off of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, which were $1.29. I bought 3.

Not having to cook the bacon? Priceless. But the entire make cost me less than $9.00.

I became aware of this recipe through a video series called “Dead Greg’s Recipes”. A relative of the cook had died and had left their cousin a ziploc bag full of recipes. The cousin gave the cook the bag of recipes and said let’s try them. There’s a whole schtick where the cook has labeled each bag onto a spinny wheel and they spin the wheel and the pointer lands on a category.

Kind of fun.

I should’ve checked the fridge before beginning the recipe though. I had less than 1/4 c of maple syrup and I could not find the bottle I had bought to replace it. Oops. But this recipe didn’t exactly have measurements for the ingredients. Beside the bacon, it called for 1 pound of bacon. The rest of the recipe was Crescent Roll tube, maple syrup, and brown sugar. No details on any of them.

I persevered on.

You open the Crescent roll tube by peeling the paper to reveal the fault line. It’s supposed to open itself from that point. Guess what didn’t happen! I used a spoon along the fault line, as directed. I opened and spread out 2 on a parchment lined cookie sheet, pinching the perforations together. I layered in what maple syrup I had, and then the bacon, and then 3/4 c brown sugar. I topped the entire thing with another Crescent Roll tube.

The entire make baked at 350 degree Fahrenheit. Again, no time limit was given so I just baked until browned. This was about 15 minutes.

Interesting result. I cut the entire structure with a pizza cutter after it had cooled. I have thoughts. The result was not very structurally sound. I think it needs a bit more on the bottom layer.

Next time I will definitely have more maple syrup, probably 1/2 c for the size I made. I would also mix that with 1/4 softened butter because this is the bottom layer and I feel it needs to be more substantial. Next is the chopped up bacon. I would increase the brown sugar to 1 c, dependent on the size of the dough. I would also add a spice into the brown sugar. Of course I might feel that way because it is nearly fall and pumpkin spice is EVERYWHERE. I would brush the top with butter and maybe a bit of cinnamon sugar.

Not a bad make with the scant details of the recipe. But sometimes that is fun.

I will not kick this out of the cookie jar, I’ll just tweak it a bit.

Cookie Thursday 8/28/25- no cookies today

No cookies today.

This is a medical appointment pause. Not mine, the husband’s.

It has taken up too much of my brain capacity. No, it’s not my appointment but there are a lot of questions that I am fielding and answering. Not to mention the nutritional consults that are unending.

We could have stopped by the hospital and picked up cookies at the store. After all, what is more no heat than other people’s kitchens heating up because of baking.

But I didn’t want to.

So I didn’t.

I have been having a bit of a thought about the viability and persistence of Cookie Thursday is a Thing.

People are either uninformed or forget when the cookies arrive. I get that new people aren’t informed and that is okay. The information trickles down, eventually. But dumping out a half full container of cookies and taking the empty container home gets old.

There isn’t a rhyme or reason as to how many cookies are eaten.

Even the experiment cookies are popular and the fudgy cocoa no bakes are not popular. It goes week by week.

So I find myself at a bit of a crossroads with CTIAT.

Until we were driving home from the appointment when I brought up the possibility of downgrading Cookie Thursday is a Thing. I said point blank to my husband that was I making cookies to comfort myself or to comfort the department. His response, while high as a kite and doped up, was “It is both. The people who need morale boosting changes every week. And don’t forget the doctors also need morale boosting.”

Huh.

Out of the mouth of someone fresh-ish out of anesthesia.

I’ve long known that the act of weekly cookie making is helpful to me, not only as a weekly appointment with my kitchen to zen out. But I believe, firmly, that is also helpful to those who just need a sweet little something. No strings, no expectations.

Other than someone eats the cookies.

I am also super excited about next month’s theme.

What is September’s theme? Shh, spoilers.

Cookie Thursday 7/31/25- Peanut butter, chocolate, oat bites

It is the most dangerous time for me in the kitchen and Cookie Thursday is a Thing. It is hot, we’ve been enjoying a pretty brutal heat wave here in NC with temperatures above 95. Plus 88% humidity.

Makes me tired.

Makes me bored.

Makes me not want to bake and heat up the house.

And it is too close to No Heat August to concentrate on baked goods.

I could have done what I did last year and started No Heat August a week or, in 2025’s case, a day early.

My brain went nah.

Do you see what I mean?

It’s been like that all month. I normally have a plan with recipes made before the last day of the month.

Today was particularly busy. It is nursing awards day!

I procured the cinnamon rolls yesterday afternoon, like I usually do.

Our balloons failed to achieve lift and so my co-person asked me to procure balloons. Happily Michaels opens at 0900 and solved that problem.

And then I needed the flowers.

And then someone’s Mustang was parked in the shade, which I would normally admire but they were taking up 2 parking spots as they were straddling the line. Rude.

I loaded myself up with the CTIAT container, the flowers, the cinnamon rolls, and the balloons and staggered into the hospital. I really could’ve used two trips.

Good thing that the front desk staff know who I am.

I arrived at the awards with 20 minutes to spare.

Which, if you know me, is practically late.

I ran the CTIAT container down one floor to drop off the cookies.

But, Kate, what did you make? You haven’t written that yet.

Oh, boy, heat does not make my brains work too well.

I decided to make an oatmeal, chocolate, peanut butter bar that I’ve been meaning to make for a bit.

I started it last night when I got home from the hospital.

The recipe looked easy. Butter, sugar, brown sugar, 1 egg, vanilla, peanut butter for the wet. For the dries flour, baking soda, salt.

Pat into the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan and bake for 20 minutes.

While it is baking, make the peanut butter frosting.

When 20 minutes is up, sprinkle chocolate chips over the baked bottom immediately so that they melt. Swirl on the peanut butter frosting.

Quick and easy, took me 40 minutes.

That wasn’t the long part.

The long part was when I walked upstairs to shut the computer down for the night and I noticed that I had not finished Wednesday’s post or posted it to all the places.

That took a minute. Okay, it took 30 minutes.

Long story short, I am tired of this heat.

And I am ready for the promised break from the heat starting on Saturday.

Fingers crossed.

Cookie Thursday 6/5/25- Cake mix cookies

You know how it goes, late night surgical case, you are shooting the breeze with the CRNA, they start telling you about the cookies they baked with their kids that were so easy and so fun. You say interesting. And they text you the recipe.

No?

Just me then. Okay.

For those who might be worried, the entire exchange took less then three minutes as they were just bursting to tell the department cookie lady about the cookies that they made.

But that got my brain thinking. After the initial ew, no reaction.

When I got home one of my friends had sent me an email of a baker making nearly the exact same cookie. Their recipe allowed for more creativity.

I decided to theme June as cake mix cookie month.

Baking is often seen as elitist. Because baking is very demanding of attention to detail. And precise measurements.

Unless you want to experiment.

I do like an experiment. See also the entire reason that Cookie Thursday still exists and has been going strong for over ten years.

The email from my friend laid out how to be experimental. Within the strict bounds of baking.

I started making lists of combinations of cake mix flavors and mix-ins I could do. A pairing, if you would.

It didn’t hurt that the cake mixes were on sale that week.

I did a quick math in my head. Each recipe takes 1 stick of butter and 2 eggs, plus the mix. Normally in a month I would use 2 pounds of butter as a recipe usually takes 2 sticks. There are 4 sticks in a pound of butter which means I normally go through 2 pounds per month. Butter is still egregiously expensive and is running around $5 a pound. This makes the butter cost of each CTIAT $2.50. The butter cost of these cookies will be cheaper IF I keep the cake mixes under $1.25.

The buy one get one free cake mix deal was looking pretty good. Even better was the coupon I had. AND the place where I bought them doubles coupons with a face value of $1.

The cost of the eggs is the same as a normal batch of cookies takes 2 eggs, just like this recipe.

Not only that but in the scratch and dent produce section, where they sell soon to be expired food stuffs, there was an entire bag of pink chocolate shavings, like you use on cake frosting for decoration. For $1.00. You cannot get chocolate chips for anything near the price.

I used half of the bag in the cookies.

My first thought as I was mixing these up is that there isn’t enough liquid for the amount of solid.

Spoiler alert- there was. Also the 1 tsp of vanilla was helpful.

I will delay judgement on what I really think of the cookies until week 4.