Not a lot to report, so I wander

[kinzel]

Not a lot to report. I'm going back to bed in a little bit. Last night's triumph was getting Pandora to play on the netbook -- Haysus the Asus -- meaning I can have my music wherever I want in the house. Like bedside, near the humidifier and the Kleenex. Otherwise, a ramble.



I have it on good authority (like from an unattributed info line on a Christmas gift calendar!) that the average American eats 35,000 cookies in their lifetime. They don't say if that's 35,000 commercial Llf/Nabisco/Archway/Hydrox cookies or cookies of all types. I think I'm an overachiever there, despite my recent slowdown -- on account of my mother. You see, in our neighborhood, once we moved to the country, my mother became known among a certain group of neighbors as "Cookie" ... so much so that some were surprised to discover in later years that her name is actually Helen.




Oh, but she got to be called Cookie because the first three or four times the local neighborhood morning coffee-sitters came by the house, my mother was baking cookies. *And,* when my mother went "up the road" (a technical term for driving north-west a half mile and turning right on a ridge road rising into a strange area of natural wonder called Soldiers Delight) to have coffee, she took cookies with her. It wasn't until later that she began taking some of her other favorites (like peach cake) and whoever heard of anyone named"Peachcake", anyway?"

The whole cookie thing happened because my mother was a city girl suddenly remarried and tucked away in a house in the middle of nowhere. Consider someone who grew up in a Baltimore row house, moving to place where the nearest neighbor was a little over a quarter mile away, if one was willing to trust the shaky hand-built wooden bridge across Locust Run (one of the major contributors to the Liberty Lake reservoir). With two kids in school, one underfoot, and soon enough another in the way, she needed to do *something* and so she did what her grandmother and aunt did -- she baked. And since the house in the country had a pretty good-sized pantry, she accumulated 5 gallon potato chip cans from various of our relatives, lined them with waxed paper or aluminum foil, and filled them. With cookies. Sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies (Tollhouse when they could be afforded, of course), rum cookies, cookies using our own walnuts, sugar cookies with colored sprinkles on them, plain sugar cookies, cookies shaped by any of dozens of cookie cutters she'd fallen heir to. I liked the train, but soon only the locomotive was left, I also like the stars....

The cookie baking, for years -- for decades! -- started before Halloween and ran until New Years at least: it wouldn't do for the house to run out watching a bowl game! We're not talking a few dozen cookies here, we're talking a hundred dozen here and a hundred dozen there ...

So, I ate cookies. Far too many, I'm sure.




So, what cookies do you bake for yourself, which do you bake for company? And how many hundred dozen do you do a year?

For me, time for a nap.

Comments

[kalimeg.livejournal.com]

Snickerdoodles for myself.

Swedish Wedding cookies (aka Butter Balls) and peanut butter with chocolate stars for my late husband (though he would also eat Snickerdoodles). Toll House with pecans for general sharing.

[kimuro.livejournal.com]

I bake a pan of chocolate chip bar cookies on average of every ten days - that's how long it takes for my son and husband to go through them. It's a recipe based on the so-called 'blonde brownie' recipe in the Better Homes and Garden New Cookbook with some modifications based on my family's specific preferences. (4 doz cookies per batch.

At least once a year, I bake up a batch of gingerbread people and send them naked through the mail to my sister's kids - along with frosting for decorating. Sometimes, I might send the same cookie recipe for Valentine's day, Halloween or St. Patrick's days - the three other holidays that mean much to me. (6 to 8 doz cookies per batch)

[sb-moof.livejournal.com]

Mom and I bake for the Holidays, and invite any friends and neighbors over to bring their own recipe. The regular list is are recipes Mom has from school in Switzerland. There are Zimitsterne (cinnamon stars) which use almonds (or hazelnuts) instead of flour, Mailanderli (Milanos?) a type of sugar cookie, Spitzbeube (translates to mischievous boys I'm told) a shortbread cookie sandwich with a jam in between the cookies, and of course Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies which Mom never made in school. :-) Some years we've also baked macaroons, wedding balls, and a variety of other recipes that we found in a book or online somewhere. This year we baked ginger snaps, and they may get added to the "every year" list. Time will tell.

If I didn't have this danged cold, I'd be helping Mom bake one final batch of Zimitsterne tomorrow. And that will be it for the Holiday baking.

[caoilfhionn.livejournal.com]

My guy does the cookie baking in our house for most of the year. He makes chocolate chip cookies. In the last two years, a wheat allergy forced him to experiment with gluten-free cookie recipes as well as the Tollhouse standby.

My mom is most likely to make bars for company, not cookies.

Every year in early December I get together with my grandmother, mother, aunt, and sometimes a cousin or two, and we bake for three days straight. In addition to a dozen kinds of "modern" cookies (like the peanut butter ones with a Hershey kiss on top), we bake family recipes for sugar cookies, lebkuchen, zimtsterne, spritz, springerle, Berlinerkraentzer, and lace cookies. We give most of them away, but I eat most of my cookie quota during December and January. I think that our record was thirty-two different kinds (though some were baked ahead of time).

[mardott.livejournal.com]

When the kids were little, I baked a batch of Toll House cookies every week. I loved experimenting with other kinds, too. I often made peanut butter cookies (one of my favorites), or snickerdoodles. And my very favorite - oatmeal/peanut butter/chocolate chip. With coconut, maybe. And walnuts.

Now, though...

Sadly, age and hormones have caught up with me, and I simply cannot eat cookies like I used to, given that I also do not want to weigh 300 pounds. So I no longer make cookies. If they aren't in the house, I can't eat them.

But I do make them during the holidays. Spritz, Pizzelles, Viennese Crescents, Bourbon Balls. Those are the basics. Sugar cookies if I'm feeling adventurous, but rolling and cutting is not my favorite activity.

I overdid it this year, and got REALLY sick after gorging on cookie dough and the finished product. It will be a while before a cookie tempts me again.

[cailleuch.livejournal.com]

Oatmeal/raisin, chocolate chip and ginger cookies with big chunks of candied ginger. The candied ginger is an addition to the original recipe from my mother. One batch of cookies lasts me quite a long time so I tend to make and freeze them so that I don't eat the whole batch too fast. I like snickerdoodles but haven't made any in quite a while. I was going to make oatmeal cookies later this afternoon, maybe I need to make snickerdoodles instead.

This holiday season I made some Florentine cookies (they were kind of interesting as holiday fancy) but don't think I will do that any time soon. They are a great way to make almond caramel without standing over the stove with a candy thermometer, however.

Usually around the holidays

[(Anonymous)]

Because I need to avoid eating cookies (and if I bake them, I eat them), I try only to bake at the holidays. This year it was Peppermint Meringues, made problematical by a change in the Egg White powder. The new stuff just doesn't work as well so I had to tweak it. I grind up candy canes and fold them into the batter before baking. Light and yummy.

I dunno how many - they get given away as gifts with me trying only one per batch as quality control.

Past cookies have been rasberry brownies, toll house bars made with oatmeal and nuts (need to add moisture or they're really dry), ANZAC biscuits, pecan-bar-cookies-that-are-like-pecan-pie-but-with-less-goo. Hmn. It's been awhile.

I also bake cakes, especially for birthdays. Handing over a cake for a birthday present is seldom turned down. :)
Lauretta@Constellation Books

Darnit

[(Anonymous)]

Now I want to bake.
Grrrr.
Can I mail you the proceeds so I won't eat them myself?
Lauretta

Re: Darnit

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

As long as I can share them with the local artistic community, sure ...

Too many cookies!

[redpimpernel.livejournal.com]

My family has pretty plain tastes. During the year the most common cookies at our house are toll house, Oreos and rice crispy bars. When I make cookies I make oatmeal, or pecan lace. I've had a craving for months for Grandma's sugar cookies, but I have to locate her recipe, I do have her cookie cutter though. At the holidays my sister makes lots of spritz and walnut jewel cookies. Many generous people give us cookies over the holidays, in fact, too many! I have a friend who bakes 12 varieties (10 standards and 2 new ones each year), then shares them with about 30 people. We get 6 of each kind, so that's 6 dozen just from her. We are given so many cookies (and don't eat very many) that by this point on January we still have bags and containers of stale cookies that end up getting pitched.

Re: Too many cookies!

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

I *knew* I forgot somehting .. .we usually had two five gallon tins of oatmeal cookies to start the season.

[baggette.livejournal.com]

I used to bake several dozen every week. Each of the boys had a favorite and their friends were likely to be indulged as well. If they gave voice to a preference, I would make them.
Franks favorite were oatmeal raisin; Fred loved jelly thumb-prints. George loved Oatmeal Scotchies (butterscotch bits in them) and Henry was most partial to chocolate chip.
Miss Miriam loved my walnut brownies and my Da most loved my Molasses. He once told me that they were as good as his Aunt Gussie's. That was high praise indeed.

Thanks for baking up the memories for me!

[magda-vogelsang.livejournal.com]

My most frequently made cookie is an applesauce raisin cookie containing brown sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Makes a nice cake-like cookie, and a lot of them. Mom's recipe card is for a double recipe, since otherwise they were gone too fast. They sometimes also got iced with a powdered sugar glaze. Yum!

Mind you, whenever I give out the recipe I warn folks that when you mix the applesauce into the creamed butter, sugar and eggs, it looks truly revolting until the dry ingredients get added.

I generally only bake cookies when I have somewhere to take them, since I live alone and would eat the whole batch over the course of a few days if they sat in the house.

Other favorites that mom used to make included chocolate chip meringue bars, butterscotch oatmeal, chocolate with peanut butter chips, and classic chocolate chip.

At Xmas mom used to cut out sugar cookies, and my brother and I decorated them with shaker bottles of colored sugar, dragees, etc. before baking. The decorating got neater and more complex as we got older.