"C" is for Cookie

Last weekend I was invited to a Christmas cookie exchange party. I was instructed to bring twelve dozen cookies. Yes, that is 144 cookies. Which, for the mathematically declined, is a LOT of cookies. Since I am such a do-gooder, I decided to document my baking, semi-a la the Pioneer Woman (minus the excellent photography, among other things), to help all of you out there in case you are ever invited to a cookie exchange party.

Because I’m not much of a “baker” and don’t really know anything about “cooking” or “preparing food” or “turning the oven on,” I needed a super simple recipe. A super simple recipe that could be quadrupled (oh, okay fine—doubled). After hours (oh, okay fine—minutes) of searching, I found the perfect (easy) Christmasy cookie: gingersnaps. Everyone on allrecipes.com just seemed to drool over it.

Here are the ingredients. I tried to be a little healthnutty with the garbanzo bean flour and millet flour. And the rapadura. But what you don’t see in this photo are the three other sticks of butter I used. Now that we know what’s in these cookies, let’s get to it.


Soften the butter. This will involve either turning up the damn thermostat already or a quick pop in the microwave.


Add the sugar. See that brown stuff in the bowl? This is not, in fact brown sugar. It’s the rapadura. Tastes like refined, overly processed white sugar, but much better for your body. Or that’s what my mother-in-law will tell you. Except she is much more eloquent about it.


Cream the butter and sugar. And admire one of the lovely bowls my sister-in-law gave us last year.


Add the eggs. Except, add them one at a time and beat after each one. I may have forgotten to add them separately. But who could say for sure? I don’t see any proof. Ahem.


Time for the gooey molasses to go in. Continue with the beating. NOTE: this is the part where the dough will look like real cookie dough, so you may be tempted to stick your finger in and taste a little bit. I don’t recommend attempting this. So not worth it.


Now, in a different bowl, combine your dry ingredients. It looks so pretty before all that fluffy flour goes in there, doesn’t it?

Of course, I forgot to photograph the bowl with the flour in it. But you can take my word for it, it wasn’t nearly as pretty.


Next, slowly add the flour mixture to the sugar/butter/egg/molasses mixture and beat. The photo for this step is kind of hard to see. But keep looking. It’s like those 3D pictures where you sort of have to cross your eyes to see them. For real. And just try to add all the flour without spilling any on the counter. Go on. I dare you.


Now, put the whole thing into the fridge and let it chill for an hour. Or five.


When the dough is done chillin’ like a villain, it’s time to get busy rolling it into little balls. Place them on the cookie sheets—but seriously, place them farther apart than shown here. For the love of god, people, give them some room.

Then, if you are as lucky as me, your cookies will all go flat on the baking sheets, then they’ll get stuck together when you spatula them off. And you’ll end up with one big mass of tasty-yet-unpresentable cookie product. And you may cry a little bit because OMG the cookie exchange party is TOMORROW and you DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS.


Place the mass of cookies on the cooling racks, though why even bother you certainly cannot ever never no way take THESE cookies to the party and you’re going to have the WORST cookies there and why do you always FAIL at these kinds of things and why is your eye twitching like that?


And thirty minutes later, you may be hiding the evidence in the garbage. Trust me, no one at the party will ever know the difference.