Making Cookies with the Girls

Hannah and Haley were here this weekend. They like to cook, and they love to bake. We decided that such a rainy cold day called for one thing: cookies.

The girls donned their cooking uniforms--aprons. My granddaughters all seem to like to wear aprons and I think they're smarter than a lot of us who abandoned aprons long ago because they weren't cool. I've been looking for aprons for the past few years and now have a little selection to choose from. My clothes are the better for it.

It wasn't hard to decide which cookies to make. Hannah quickly opted for Snickerdoodles, and Haley chose chocolate chip. But...no chocolate chips! What I thought was a bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard turned out to be white chocolate chips instead. A quick trip to the computer yielded a good recipe on Cooks.com. Hannah hunted through my recipe box and found the Snickerdoodle recipe. We were in business.

Snickerdoodles

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (we actually baked them at 350 and they came out beautifully)

1 cup soft butter or shortening

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup wheat germ

2 1/2 cups flour (I used whole wheat flour for these in the past and it's very good)

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Cream together butter or shortening and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

Add and blend in vanilla and eggs.

Sift together the flour , wheat germ, baking powder and salt.

Stir the dry ingredients into the creamed mixture until well blended.

Form the dough into balls (about 1" diameter).

Mix together the sugar and cinnamon.

Roll the doughballs in the cinnamon.

Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 8-10 minutes, or until the bottoms are lightly browned.

Remove from cookie sheet and place on wire cooling racks.

Makes 6 dozen, or so the recipe says. I don't think I've ever got that much from the recipe, but then a lot of them seem to disappear from the cooling rack!

A few lessons were learned, but none, fortunately, the hard way:

1. tsp means teaspoon, not tablespoon (as in "How do you get half a tablespoon of salt?")

2. There is a difference between baking soda and baking powder ( a family story about a cake I made when I was 12 testifies to the truth of this!).

3. If you accidentally put a tablespoon of baking soda in the mix instead of a teaspoon, you can scoop enough of it out that it won't ruin your cookies--if you catch the mistake before you mix the dried stuff together ("This is a teaspoon right, Granny? Because I like just dumped it in and it looks like a lot.")

4. Measuring butter or shortening is messy, really messy. You don't want to put your hands in your hair after you get this part done.

5. It's a bad idea to lift the mixer out of the mixing bowl while the mixer is still turned on. ("Oops! It's in your hair, Granny!")

6. Taking cookies off the sheet too soon will make them crumble. But they still taste good.

7. Men are tough on fresh, hot cookies. So are girls. And boys. And grown women. And dogs.

8. Baking makes a lot of dirty dishes.

9. If you blow on flour it will spread a long, long way. And makes you sneeze.

10. If you want to take your cookies home with you, it's a good idea to take them with you when you leave. Unless you have a Poppa Larry, who will deliver them to you the next day.