from Kris B.

It is Mix It Up Friday again and boy am I glad of that!  March has been a rough month at our house with an elderly dog with health issues and my younger daughter getting married.  I have a great desire to eat cookies, but honestly, I have zero energy or enthusiasm for making much of anything from scratch at the moment.  It is in times like this that I am most grateful for good quality mixes like these Chaidoodles from King Arthur Flour.

These cookies are a variation on the classic Snickerdoodle.  In addition to cinnamon, which is the signature flavor of Snickerdoodles, Chaidoodles are flavored with chai spice, a blend of cinnamon, ginger, cardamom, allspice, anise, and black pepper.  These cookies are like Snickerdoodles all grown up.  I’m sure they’d be delicious with a nice cold glass of milk, but I ate mine as an afternoon snack with a warm cup of tea.  All I can say is “YUM!”

The Chaidoodle boxed mix, a softened stick of butter and an egg are all you need.  In twenty minutes or so you have delicious cookies!  The instructions say to add all of the ingredients together and “mix until a smooth dough forms.”  I will admit when I first started mixing, I had what looked liked playground sand that I was sure was never going to come together into a smooth dough.  After mixing with my hand mixer for about two minutes, I actually stopped and looked on the King Arthur website to see if perhaps there was a correction to the recipe.  Nope.  I resisted the urge to add a little water, or maybe another egg, and just kept mixing.  Finally, after a good four minutes or so the dough did come together as the instructions said that it would.  As I get older I seem to be getting a little more patient and a lot more willing to follow directions!

One of the cookie making instructions that I still often ignore is the amount of dough used for each cookie.  With this recipe, I did use the tablespoon scoop that the recipe called for with the hope of getting the number of cookies specified by the recipe, which was twenty.  I got nineteen and half.  Since I am a fan of raw cookie dough…don’t judge me…I believe that that half a cookie, which for obvious reasons could not be baked with all of the full-sized cookies, was intended to satisfy my raw cookie need. 🙂

My entire family was home when I baked these cookies.  As the cookies cooled on the rack, I was asked, “Can I have a cookie?”  “NO!, Not until I photograph them.”  That is a familiar refrain at our house.  Once the photos were taken, everyone was right there for their portion of cookies.  Before I knew it, half the batch was gone…and there are only three of us!  I’d say that is a positive review of the King Arthur Flour Chaidoodle Cookie Mix!

This mix sells for $5.95 on the King Arthur Flour website and is also available at some retailers.

 

From Tracey G.

Yay for Mix It Up week! I love this week in our monthly rotations – I’m always game to try a mix especially from King Arthur Flour. And this one did not disappoint, it was easy and it was yummy!

I appreciated this being mix week as it’s been Spring Break around here, so that means I have had Harry home all week! And let me say it’s gone by way to fast, I know I’m going to miss him when he goes back to school next week, even though I do enjoy the quiet time, lol, I enjoy him being around more!

But anyway, when I got the mix out this time, to see what was needed as an additional ingredient to make it work, I had to do a double-take. It said I needed to add 1 1/2 cups of milk. That’s it. Nothing more. Huh? That can’t be right, there has to be something else, but nope. Just the milk. Talk about making easy even easier!! Only thing that would have made this bread easier to make would be if it made itself, lol. Seriously!

I made this mix a day in advance, so I had to keep walking by it without being able to taste it, as it hadn’t made its way in front of the camera yet, lol. I was really happy once I’d gotten my photos taken to be able to finally sneak a piece of it! And it is wonderful! The currants are moist and flavorful, the texture is a bit dense, but not dense in a bad way by any means, it’s flat out yummy. I had it plain, I can only imagine how it would be with a little butter spread on it! I am so glad I tried this mix – now I look forward to trying the recipe Kris made for March 17th Food Friday Post to see how it stacks up. Even though I know both are delicious, it’s always fun to see how a mix vs. a homemade recipe compare!

I purchased this mix right from the King Arthur Flour website, and now I’m thinking it was just a seasonal item – as it’s not there anymore. So, I will definitely know better next year – if I see it, I’m stocking up on a few boxes!! If I had known that, I wouldn’t have chosen it to do as a review, lol, it’s hard to recommend an item that can’t be obtained right now! But I can say that it’s a really great mix – and do try it when you can!