Well, I woke up this morning and was thinking of my blog, and what can I do to make our lives easier. After my last blog, the recipes were great and the pictures were droolingly delicious, (isn’t that a good use of words), I have the fixation of saliva dribbling from my mouth. Yuk. I am not “that” old…but when I think of cookies, I want to think easy. Well I searched my pea-sized brain (by the way it is made of 1 part flour, 1 part sugar, 1 part butter, and the rest is up to you) to find something “easy”, I looked through a lot of my recipes and ran across these. You will laugh, but they are made from cake mixes. Many of you out in “blogger land” have probably baked cookies this way (now don't lie)…but I feel that I have the need to make your lives easy and give you some examples. You are probably gasping, or using your fingers for the "devil" cross, at the audacity of me to suggest this. As a baker I don’t cheat, (isn’t it in the bible somewhere) I have to make recipes by scratch, a lot of us scratch our head when we look at some of these delicious recipes and say “what have I done” and try our “darndest” (no such word exist in the dictionary, but use it a lot when you are frustrated or “damdist”, which is also not found…but anyway you get the pictured …hmmm…or you might as well get it out and say “damn” wait that doesn’t sound right either ) to create our “masterpieces. You know the more I think about it “scratch your head” seem very unsanitary for one thing, and for another, you would get a lot of flour in your hair and make yourself look older, (if any of you were in plays) doing that supposedly aged you visually, making you look smarter, and you end up baking your head off…LOL boy am I a mess. (remember it is early in the AM) I have to get away from this “frame of mind”. Oh, Oh, I did it again. Getting back on task, here are some fantastic “easy” cookie recipes that taste great and look great…I hope I haven’t lost some of my reader here…

Lemon Cake Mix Cookies

Orange-flavored liqueur and citrus-flavored vodka add a grown-up taste to our Lemon Drop Cookies made with Betty Crocker SuperMoist lemon cake mix.

Prep Time: 15 min

Total Time: 60 min

Servings: 24

Ingredients:

· 1 box Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ lemon cake mix

· 2 Tbls. Orange-flavored liqueur

· 2 Tbls. Citrus-flavored vodka

· ¼ cup Vegetable oil

· 1 Egg

Icing

· 1 cup Powdered sugar

· 2-3 Tbls Orange-flavored liqueur, or a couple drops of orange flavoring with milk until you get the right consistency

(Finally the Directions, and if you haven’t been imbibing in the liqueur part of the ingredients, you can follow easily)

· Heat the oven to 350°F. Line the cookie sheet with cooking parchment paper.

· In large bowl, beat cookie ingredients with electric mixer on medium speed or mix with spoon. Drop dough by tablespoonful (just use one of those pampered chef’s scooper gadgets) about 2 inches apart onto cookie sheet.

· Bake 12 minutes or until lightly golden. Cool 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheet to cooling rack. Cool completely.

· In small bowl, mix powdered sugar and enough liqueur until desired consistency is reached. Drizzle the icing over cookies. (you can look at the picture to see the pattern)

Tips:

· Drizzle icing over cookies with a spoon, or use a quart-size reseal able food-storage plastic bag. After filling the bag with icing, cut off a small corner and squeeze bag to pipe icing over cookies.

· To prevent cookies from browning too much on the bottom, freeze cookie sheet for 15 minutes before using and in between batches. (This is a good tip, but where in your freezer would you put the baking sheets??? (If yours is anything like mine)..LOL

Cake Mix Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies

Get a jump start on delicious homemade oatmeal cookies with Betty Crocker® SuperMoist® cake mix.

Prep Time: 60 min

Total Time: 60 min

Servings: 66

Ingredients:

· 1 box Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ yellow cake mix

· ½ cup packed brown sugar

· ½ cup butter or margarine, softened

· ½ cup shortening

· 2 Tbls. water

· 1 ½ tsps. ground cinnamon

· 1 egg

· 2 cups quick-cooking or old-fashioned oats

· 1 cup raisins or chopped dates

· ½ cup chopped nuts, if desired (and the answer is “YES”)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375°F (350°F for dark or nonstick pans). In large bowl, beat cake mix, brown sugar, butter, shortening, water, cinnamon and egg with electric mixer on medium speed about 1 minute or until smooth. With spoon, stir in oats, raisins and nuts.

2. Drop dough by teaspoonful about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets; flatten dough slightly with fingers.

3. Bake 9 to 12 minutes (centers will be soft). Cool 1 minute;

4. Remove from cookie sheets.

5. And store covered.

Cake Mix Chocolate Cookies

Seven ingredients are all you need for quick homemade chocolate cookies.

Prep Time: 20 min

Total Time: 1 hr. 50 min

Servings: 30

Ingredients:

· 1 box Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ devil's food cake mix

· 1/3 cup vegetable oil

· 1 tsp. vanilla

· 2 eggs

· 2/3 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips (I added this for us chocoholics)

· ¼ cup chopped pecans (optional) This is my own addition, since I like nuts in about everything.

· ¼ cup sugar (to roll cookie dough in)

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F (325°F for dark or nonstick pans).

2. In large bowl, mix cake mix, oil, vanilla, eggs and chocolate chips and nuts if you want, with spoon or mixer on low with dough tool, (if you have arthritis), until dough forms.

3. Refrigerate dough 15 to 30 minutes or as needed for easier handling.

4. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; roll in sugar.

5. On ungreased cookie sheets, place balls about 2 inches apart.

6. Bake 9 to 11 minutes or until set.

7. Cool 1 minute; remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks.

8. Cool completely, about 30 minutes. Store tightly covered.

Cake Mix Gooey Butter Cookies

Using SuperMoist Betty Crocker yellow cake mix, these gooey butter cookies can be melting in your mouth in under an hour.

Prep Time: 15 min

Total Time: 45 min

Servings: 24

Ingredients:

1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened

½ cup butter, softened

¼ tsp. vanilla

1 egg

1 box Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ yellow cake mix

½ cup Powdered sugar to roll cookies in

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 375°F.

2. In medium bowl, beat cream cheese and butter with spoon until well blended. Stir in vanilla and egg. Add cake mix; stir until well combined.

3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls; roll in powdered sugar to coat.

4. Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

5. Bake 11 to 15 minutes or until set.

6. Remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks.

These are my favorite recipes ( and my personal comments) out of the cake mix cookie group, I have one more and the rest in this link:

http://www.bettycrocker.com/search/searchresults?term=cake%20mix%20cookies&src=SH

Cake Mix Sugar Cookies

Our melt-in-your-mouth sugar cookies are made with white cake mix, cutting back on time, not taste.

Prep Time: 15 min

Total Time: 45 min

Servings: 24

Ingredients:

· 1 box Betty Crocker™ SuperMoist™ white cake mix

· 2/3 cup Gold Medal™ all-purpose flour

· 1/3 cup vegetable oil

· 2 Tbls. sour cream

· 2 eggs

· 1 cup sugar (for pressing cookies)

Frosting:

· 3 ¾ cups powdered sugar

· ¼ tsp. salt

· 1/3 cup butter, softened

· ¼ cup milk

· 1 tsp. vanilla

Garnish, if with Decorating nonpareil decors (which I think looks cheesy) I like to frost with a bunch of frosting.

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with cooking parchment paper.

2. In large bowl, stir together cake mix and flour. Add oil, sour cream and eggs; beat with electric mixer on medium speed until blended.

3. Using 1-inch cookie scoop, shape dough into 1-inch balls; place on cookie sheets. With bottom of drinking glass dipped in sugar, flatten balls of dough (dip glass in sugar for each ball).

4. Bake about 10 minutes or until just about set. Cool on cookie sheets 1 to 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheets to cooling racks. Cool completely, about 15 minutes.

5. In medium bowl, beat Frosting ingredients until smooth and fluffy. If too stiff to spread, add a few more drops of milk. Frost cooled cookies; sprinkle with decors.

Tips:

· These have a tendency to over bake quickly so keep an eye on them.

· If you want to make different colors, just separate quantities of the frosting into small sandwich plastic bags, add food color, close the bag and squash bag with hands until desired color is reached. Then cut a hole on one of the bottom tips of the bag and squeeze onto the cookie and (using icing spreader) spread around the top of cookie, or make some designs, up to you and your creativity.