My mother gave me this recipe for Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, haven't made them myself but she did a while ago, and they're goooood!

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter
1 tablespoon water
1/2 cup white sugar (or substitute honey)
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract (or almond extract)
2 egg whites
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour (or whole wheat flower)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips (or dark chocolate chips)

Directions

- Preheat over to 350* degrees

- Mix together butter, water, white sugar and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in egg whites and vanilla. Combine flour, baking soda and salt; stir into the creamed mixture. Blend in oats and chocolate chips. Drop dough by half-teaspoonfuls onto prepared cookie sheets

- Bake 7-9 minutes until brown, allow to cool, and enjoy!

this thread is going to be the death of me. LOL
between you and Aussie, you guys are starving me to death!
I promise to post some of my diet defying recipes hopefully tomorrow. Will have to get my old recipe books out.
yummy stuff in those old books.

hahaha...beautiful chocolate-y oatmeal death, muahaha

A quick tasty treat for kids.

Apple fritters.

Mix 50% self raising flour with 50% plain flour. Add a pinch of salt. Add water to get a batter consistency and whisk briskly. Batter done.

Core, peel and slice an apple into slim rounds. Dip in batter and drop into hot oil. I use peanut oil but olive oil is good too. Deep fry until golden brown. Remove from oil and sprinkle with icing sugar.

Try this using a whole peeled banana.

Potato Cakes

As above but substitute thin potato slices for apple (and sprinkle with a little salt - not sugar )

here's one my grandma used to make for us when we were little.
whenever she was baking pies, she would take the left over pie crust dough and roll it out and dot with soft butter and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. If she had chopped pecans or walnuts, she'd sprinkle those on as well.
then, roll into a log and cut about half an in or so thick and bake.
Us kids would fight over them!
they were really good because her pie crust was to die for!

Keep the recipes coming. But I have a disclaimer: I am useless at baking sweet things. I don't really like sweet baked stuff so I don't have any kind of intuition for them. One day, after great begging and whining at length, I agreed to make cupcakes for my daughter's birthday to take to school.

They should have been called canadian cupcakes because they were so awful and hard and flat that the kids called them hockey pucks!

She never asked again...scarred for life

just kidding, she's got a sense of humor... but she never asked again

Alli, you crack me up!
you sound like my mom. she couldn't bake a cake or cookies worth a damn but man oh man, could she bake bread!
Mom never used a recipe really. to her, a recipe was optional.
It was just to give a cook a general idea!

White Bread
Here's how I do it.
Take a big bowl, put in about 6 cups of plain flour. If you want you can substitute a few cups of white flour for whole wheat or rye flour but they are heavier and need a bit more leavening.
In another bowl put a couple cups warm water, you want it to feel warm to your hand but not too hot or you'll kill the little yeasties. you can add milk or sometimes I add powdered milk to the water. Add about 2-4 TBS sugar, you can use honey too. Add a tsp salt and either some lard, like about a piece the size of an egg, or some liquid oil. You can use Crisco too if you you have it.
Add a packet of yeast or if you're using loose yeast add about 1/2 tsp yeast.
now, here's the thing.
What you are trying to do is create a growing environment for your yeast. They are plants and want warmth, moisture, and food. The yeast will fluff up and begin to work. That's a good thing, they will make Carbon dioxide and that forms the bubbles that lift your dough and make your bread light and beautiful.
after the yeast seems to be happy add it to the center of your flour and begin to mix it in. If you need more liuqid add some warm water, if it is too loose add a bit of flour.
Bread making is an art and once you understand the basics you'll be able to whip some up in no time.
Now, once you have your ingredients mixed, turn out onto floured surface and knead the dough.
This is the fun part!
Don't let your dough be dry though, you want it moist and alive, you are after all working a living thing at this point.
After working the dough take the bowl you used and grease the inside of it. Put in the dough and turn it over so that it is greased all over. Cover with a damp dish towel and put bowl in a warm spot.
Now wait.
your dough will double in size.
If you don't keep an eye on it it will sometimes run out of the bowl! LOL
A good way to be sure your dough is ready to knead is to take your finger and poke in the middle of the dough, if it collapses, it's good to go.
turn out onto floured surface and knead.
the dough will feel elastic and stretchy. That's a good thing, fear not the stretchiness!
When you've worked the dough down to it's stretchy goodness it's time to put it in baking pans.
You can use muffin tins or bread pans, or cookie pans.
Pinch off enough dough to fill pans half way.
When I use cookie pans I make loaves and braid or twist ropes of dough together.
you can do lots of neat things at this point.
You can have a little bowl of melted butter and make balls of dough, dip them in the butter and put three in each muffin tin. That makes good dinner rolls.
you can sprinkle the dough with herbs or garlic butter or sesame seeds, what ever you like. Experiment! Dough is a very forgiving medium!
Now, cover your greased tins or pans with damp cloths and let the dough again double in size.
Preheat your oven to 450 for a few min. then turn down heat to 350 when you put the bread in.
some people will put in a pan of water to add steam in the over before baking. I've not tried that but it sounds like a good idea.
Bake bread till golden brown and it sounds hollow when tapped. also, if you take the bread out of the pan and the sides or bottom seem undone, put it back in the oven and bake a bit more.
I like to rub my loaves with melted butter after they come out of the oven. It softens and adds flavor to the crust and it very yummy!
well, hope that gets you at least started on bread baking. Don't worry about failing, just keep trying!
you can always feed the failures to the chickens. LOL

When I got married in the mid '70s, I could barely boil water without it sticking to the bottom. I had to learn how to cook so I bought cook books and tried to learn. Son arrived a year later. When he was about two I baked him brownies. I will remember this for the rest of my life...He tasted it and then placed it on the floor and pushed it around like a hot wheels going wrooomm....

LOL Kitty!
that's great!