Category Archives: Cookies

GIANT M&M COOKIES

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It’s a sleepy 4th of July here, which is OK by me.  The morning began with our community’s annual 4th of July parade, with a couple of boy scouts from our troop leading the festivities.  I love seeing the families turn out with their kids, wagons, pets, and bicycles decked out in red, white, and blue.  It’s a small town celebration right smack in the middle of the fourth largest city in the U.S.

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My daughter and I spent some time together this afternoon making Giant M&M Cookies for her to bring to a cookout.  We used a recipe from joyofbaking.com (this is probably the first cooking video I have ever watched all the way through, and I found it helpful — boring, but helpful), decorated them with red, white, and blue M&Ms, and they came out great.  The introduction to the recipe included a little history of M&Ms that I found interesting.  They were invented by Forrest Mars, Sr., who traveled to Spain during the Spanish Civil War and noticed the soldiers eating small rounds of chocolate with a hard sugar coating that prevented the chocolate from melting.  Back home, he paired up with Bruce Murrie, the son of the president of the Hershey company, to invent a similar candy.  The M&M name came from the partners’ names — Mars and Murrie.  Production began in 1940, and the candies were immediately popular.  They were even included in the U.S. soldiers’ rations during WWII.  It’s hard to beat eating them out of hand, but this recipe puts them to good use.

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GIANT M&M COOKIES
Author: 
Recipe type: Cookies
 
Ingredients
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1-1/4 teaspoons baking soda
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • ¾ cup butter, softened
  • ⅔ cup sugar
  • ⅔ cup packed light brown sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1 cup M&Ms
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt.
  3. Place butter and sugars in a large bowl, and using an electric mixer, beat until light and fluffy. Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, and beat to combine. Stir in the flour mixture, mixing thoroughly.
  4. Using a ¼ cup ice cream scoop, scoop out dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Do not put more than 6 cookies on a sheet, as they spread a lot. Flatten balls slightly with palm of hand. Cover top of cookies completely with M&Ms, gently pressing the candies into the dough. Bake for 13-17 minutes, until cookies are golden brown and set around the edges (they will firm up as they cool). Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes on cookie sheets, then, using a metal spatula, transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
  5. Makes approximately 12 giant cookies.

 

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Cover the top of the cookie completely with M&Ms

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Wow — they really spread!

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I think my daughter will be quite popular at the cookout, don’t you?

Cheer for your team with team colors (Go Astros!)

SHORTBREAD STRAWBERRIES

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I found this vintage war poster at an estate sale.  I hung it in my office, as a tribute to myself.  After all, I was a nurse in a former life, and, well, the rest is obvious.  🙂

So what did I do to deserve being chosen (by myself) as “The Greatest Mother in the World?”  Well, if you asked my teenage kids today, they would probably say “nothing.”  But I have actual documentary proof that at one time in their lives, I was, indeed, The Greatest Mother in the World in their eyes.

For example, there is this loving tribute from my son when he was around 6 or 7 years old:

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See!  I was nice, giving, irreplaceable, always doing things for him, etc.  Oh, and let’s not forget #7:

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Interactive?  Like some kind of Mom-bot?  But hey, if that’s what it takes to be The World’s Greatest Mother, I’ll be interactive.

I have evidence from my daughter too.  In her young eyes, I was not only royalty, but I was bright, funny, cleaning, and working nights (huh?):

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But wait, there’s more:

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Mostly truthful?  Wonder what it was I lied about?  Didn’t she think I was telling the truth when I told her she was the smartest, prettiest, funniest, most loving child on the planet?  Then there’s this wonderful anagram of my name:

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Nice mom, A woman, New York in third grade, Cookies, Yarn knitters — as the song goes, put them all together they spell N-A-N-C-Y.  I had to ask where the “yarn knitter” came from, seeing as I’ve never knit, crocheted, or even macramed a thing in my life.  She said it was the only adjective she could come up with that started with a Y.  Guess “youthful” didn’t make the cut.  🙁  On the other hand, I suppose I should be grateful that “yucky,” “yellow-bellied,” and “yappy,” also didn’t make the cut.

Going back to the poster — look at the pained expression on the face of The Greatest Mother in the World.

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If you have kids, you’ve surely worn that face, probably more times than you care to admit.  It’s the one you wear when your kid isn’t invited to a party that all of their friends have been invited to.  Or when the coach only lets them bat once in 9 innings, and even then, tells them not to swing and not-so-secretly hopes they’ll get hit with the ball and walk to first base.  It’s the one you wear when your kid is crushed because they spelled “parfait” incorrectly and didn’t get to be in the Spelling Bee (“It wasn’t fair, Mom, they gave us a French word!”).  It’s the one you wear every time you have to flush a fishie or bury a birdie or hold last rites for a hamster.

Although that face got quite a workout when my kids were younger, it really doesn’t surface that much now that they are older (and middle school is, thankfully, in the rear view mirror).  They’re old enough to handle their own disappointments now, and to brush off the small slights that seemed so huge not so long ago.

Inspired by The World’s Greatest Mother in the vintage poster, and seeing as today is the day we all celebrate our own Greatest Mother in the World, I made a batch of Shortbread Strawberries to bring to my mother-in-law today.  I made these for her many years ago, back when my kids were young and thought I hung the moon, and she had remarked then how pretty they were.  I wonder if she’ll remember them?  You can use any shortbread recipe — the one I used here is adapted from The Silver Palate.  The idea of the cookies is to resemble strawberries, not be strawberries, so don’t get too carried away trying to make them look perfect.

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SHORTBREAD STRAWBERRIES
Author: 
Recipe type: Cookies
 
Ingredients
  • 3 sticks butter, softened
  • 1 cup confectioner's sugar
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla
  • 3 cups flour*
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • Red coarse or sparkling sugar
  • Green coarse or sparkling sugar
  • Black coarse or sparkling sugar
  • *Note -- for extra crisp cookies, use 2 cups flour and 1 cup rice flour
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
  2. In a medium bowl, cream together butter and confectioner's sugar, using an electric beater. Stir in vanilla. Add flour and salt, and mix together thoroughly. Shape into a ball, flatten into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap or waxed paper, and refrigerate a few hours until firm.
  3. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to ½-inch thickness. Using a strawberry-shaped cookie cutter, cut out shapes and transfer to cookie sheet or tray. Sprinkle body of strawberry with red sparkling sugar, and leaves with green sparkling sugar. Carefully place a few black or brown sugar crystals on strawberry to resemble seeds. Using a spatula, transfer cookies to a cookie sheet (wipe off any stray sugar crystals around the bottom) and bake approximately 20 minutes. Cookies should not brown. Allow to cool briefly, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

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Ready for the oven

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 Hot out of the oven

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Happy Mother’s Day to all of The Greatest Mothers in the World!

Mirror, mirror on the wall

I am my mother, after all