Cookie Monster

Cookie Monster




It’s almost Christmas and in my house that means it’s time to make cookies. My mom always made cookies this time of year and my sister in law Holly and niece Genevieve are usually hard at work by now measuring, mixing and baking. The last few years I have not baked but certainly have enjoyed the fruits of Holly and Gen’s labor. This year, I was invited to a cookie swap and decided it was time to dust off the old Kitchen Aid Mixer.


My first Kitchen Aid was given to me by my parents as a graduation gift from cooking school in 1977. It was and still is, an awesome addition to my kitchen. I recently had it tuned up and after all these years, it is still cranking out cookies for me! Already having mixed up a batch of Rugulah filled with raspberry jam, it then went on to produced a scrumptious batch of peanut butter bites. Next on the hit list for this week is Shortbread, coconut chocolate bites and I am thinking of making bacon praline and sandwiching it between the peanut butter bites. When I start baking cookies I simply can’t stop. All this obsession from someone who says that she dosen’t really like desserts? Really?

When I say I don’t care for desserts, let me say that I don’t think cookies fall into this category. For that matter neither does Ice cream  I know, I know, but really I mean fancy rich desserts like the ones you get in restaurants. Cookies are much less fussy and more fun to eat. Cookies make people happy.Who can resist a buttery little morsel fresh out of the oven. I know I can’t. I love to mix them, love to smell them baking and yes, love to eat them as well. Everything about them makes me happy.While writing this article I polished off a dozen peanut butter bites. Granted, they are the size of a quarter but that just makes them more fun to eat. They look kind of non descript but yummy they are.

The most colorful cookies I made were the year I decided to make cookie tins for all of my catering clients. My company did a lot of Holiday parties and I liked to leave my clients a little gift to remember me by. That year, it was cookies and t shirts. And so I made rolled sugar and ginger bread cookies. I went out and bought a set of cookie cutters in various assorted shapes. Included in the cutters were the obligatory Mr and Mrs Gingerman. In addition to that, there were flowers, butterflies, stars and other fun shapes.

I started with the ginger people and they turned out nicely. They all had slightly different outfits on and each seemed to have their own personality. I literally had an army of ginger people. I averaged about 20 parties each December and so I had to really crank out a large volume of cookies to have enough for all of my clients. This operation had to be executed over several days because it was just too much to do in a day. That and the fact that I was making them after my staff went home meant I did not have any help. We were in the throws of our busiest season and everyone needs their beauty sleep. Everyone except me the ginger people that is.

One evening about two nights into it, I had finished my ginger army and was starting on my sugar cookies. I wanted to do something fun and so armed with a whole lot of confectioners sugar, many different coloring pastes, a few paint brushes and some other assorted art tools I went to work. The cookie icing was easy to paint on to the cookies and with all that color, I was about to have some serious fun.

Well it sounded good on paper but after working for two weeks straight with out a day off and in addition to cookie overtime, I was a little tired. Question: What do you get when you combine a workaholic, 20 catering jobs, some sugar cookies and some crazy colored Icings? Answer: Timothy Leary meets Mary Poppins! At 2:00 AM on the final evening, or should I say morning, of baking, the cookies were starting to talk to me. No kidding. The ginger arny was making fun of me and the sugar cookies started looking like I had put them in a spin art machine. Either that or they looked like I had taken copious amounts of LSD. They were wild looking! Had I turned out the lights I think they might have glowed in the dark. Satelites probably could have seen them from space they were so bright. So very vivid, they are burned in my memory for ever! They were so bright, the ginger people begged not to be put in the same tins!

Ok, maybe that is a little bit of an exaggeration but they were pretty colorful. The tins were beautiful, my clients loved them and everybody was happy. So maybe you won’t want to stay up all night baking cookies but if you want to give a little tin of happiness to your friends this year, lets get baking. Following is the recipe for the peanut butter bites. I hope they bring a little smile to your face.

Peanut Butter Bites
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 cups Peanut Butter
2 Cups AP Flour (sifted)
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

Method:
1. Cream butter and slowly add both sugars until light a fluffy.

2. Add vanilla, then peanut butter.

3. Add eggs, one at a time mixing thoroughly between additions.

4. Combine the dry ingredients and mix into the butter peanut butter until just incorporated.

5. Refrigerate dough for half hour before baking.

Preheat oven to 350 .

Roll dough into quarter walnut size pieces and flatten slightly on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Cross hatch the top with a fork.

Bake for 12-14 minutes.

Cool on a cookie rack.