I Was In A Baking Mood...

This weekend I made cookies. And when I say that, I do mean I made COOKIES. I made five different kinds to be exact. Let me tell you why I made them.


1. My old roommate’s sister came down to take care of her for a week after surgery. That sort of diligence deserves a reward.

2. I felt that my biggest fan deserved some too. She is such a dear, and I am “forcing” her to read a novel and being quite nagging about it.

3. My best friend deserves cookies whenever I feel like making them. Screw the 1000 miles between us, she’s getting them.

4. I don’t think I’ve told my mother I appreciate her enough yet this month. What better way to do that than through a cookie-gram? (The step-dad won’t mind either I don’t suspect.)

And 5. I had a severe hankering for Macaroons.

So I picked out my five types of cookies and made up a matrix list of ingredients (that’s how I figure out how much of each ingredient to get) on Saturday night. I had a lot of the stuff already I just needed a new bag of flour, some sugar - both white and brown, white chocolate chips and extra coconut. We struck out early Sunday morning (it’s best to go grocery shopping while others are in church) and wer home with the remaining supplies for me to get started.

I consider myself to be a “Smart cookie” when it comes to baking. And I quickly ordered my cookie making into the most streamline of processes.

1. Make Sugar Cookie dough (it needs to cool for 3 hours, get it in the fridge first). I’ll admit. These were my “Filler Cookies.” A back up, if you will, in case one of the others went horribly awry. I was endeavoring to make two kinds of cookies that I don’t have the best batting average at.

2. Make the Oatmeal Honey dough (it needs to cool for 2 hours. I can make the other things while I wait for it to chill). I discovered a long time ago that Oatmeal cookies can be made by substituting the called for milk with honey. It makes a denser cookie, but one that is chewy and perfectly sweet. I haven’t used milk in my oatmeal cookies since.

3. Make & Bake the Triple Chocolate Chocolate Chip cookies. I do these first because they’re easy. They’re easy because they’re the most familiar of all of the cookies I make. I can make a chocolate chip cookie blind folded, and this is just a variation of that recipe. It’s a chocolate cookie with semi-sweet and white chocolate chips in it. You know how you make a chocolate cookie as opposed to a regular old cookie? Pudding. That’s right my friends. Pudding is my not so secret ingredient for all of my chocolate chip cookies. If I wand a chocolate cookie it’s chocolate pudding (this time Devil’s food), if I want a regular looking cookie it’s vanilla pudding. It’s as easy as pie… or a chocolate chip cookie.

4. Snicker Doodles – these are fun… mostly because you get to roll them into balls and bat them about a mixture of cinnamon and sugar before you press them down onto the cookie tray. And frankly… who doesn’t like the light airiness of a snicker doodle, or the sweet and spicy conjecture of their coated exteriors. These are, alas, one of the cookies that don’t always work out for me, but this time, they were perfection. And I let out a small squeak of glee when Earl gave them the thumbs up.

5. Bake the Oatmeal Honey cookies. I chill my dough in gallon Ziploc baggies. No biggie for the sugar cookie dough which has the consistency of slightly mushy pie crust dough, but the Oatmeal… it’s a little trickier. I used the bag as if I was dispensing icing. Squeezing out cookie sized lumps and mushing them with a fork. (don’t worry, they can’t be confused for peanut butter cookies, the surface of OH cookies always settles in the oven.

6. Roll out and bake the sugar cookies. My failsafe cookies were finished before I even attempted to make the Macaroons (I have 50% Success rate with those delectable coconut tasties). But now it was time for a break. I’d been standing on the hard tile floor for three-ish hours and I had an email to answer.

7. Macaroons. I took a break not only for the sake of my terribly flat feet, but also because all of the other cookies had required a 375degree oven, and Macaroons, being mostly egg white and sugar required a drop down to 325. Like I’ve said: these are not my forte, so I approached them with trepidation.

Let me tell you why I have such an issue with Macaroons. I’m sure you’re all familiar with my feelings on patience (if your not, let’s just say that virtue is a work in progress). Macaroons require beating egg whites into stiff peaks, a process which takes a while even when you’re using an electric hand mixer. Electric hand mixers have their own set of annoyances. Namely, they make my forearms jiggle. Ladies and gentleman. I do not have large forearms (Don’t believe me? Wait for the coming post all about my left arm).

So after ages (and I do mean ages) with the hand mixer I was finally at the constancy I needed and dumped in the coconut and….

Everything went smoothly. I succeeded at making macaroons! (Much to my stomach and Earl’s delight).

Here’s a look at a small example of the final creations.

P.S. A house that smells like cookies all day is awesome.