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I'm missing Cookie Day. Big time. Cookie day is a big party every December with lots of friends and their families. I make sloppy joes, everyone brings their favorite recipes, and we bake, laugh, and bake some more. It's not a cookie exchange; it's about the baking and socializing, and maybe a little wine.
What I love about the day is how it's evolved, literally over almost thirty years. Now, friends bring their kids. Moms are in the kitchen. The kids sneak out to grab a Buckeye, or a chocolate chip, fresh out of the oven. Sometimes they pop into the kitchen, work on a recipe for ten minutes, then are back off to run around outside, or just watch a movie together.
Trying my friend's recipes is also a fun part of cookie day. Some, like my friend Annie's orange thumbprint cookie with raspberry jam or Rachel's lemon blossom cookies have become a staple, and yet, I never make them. They are special for Cookie Day.
The girls are bummed too, on many levels, but they wanted to do their own mini-cookie day at home. We saved the cutouts for closer to Christmas because we enjoy them Christmas morning, but we needed something to tide us over for a few days, and they needed a baking fix.
I decided to seek out a new cookie recipe for my family, but it had to measure up to everyone's requests. No gingerbread, one kid with an aversion to cinnamon. No nuts, because clearly, no one likes nuts until they are 22. Finally, not a cookie we had made before, which included most things with chips or candies.
I happened to come across a seemingly very simple recipe for red velvet crinkle cookies. Ironically, Cora had been begging her sister to make her award-winning Red Velvet Bundt cake recipe from a couple of summers ago. It was kismet.
We immediately started ravaging the pantry to see if we had all the ingredients. We were missing a red velvet cake mix. This was certainly not something I think we have ever baked with, so we needed a quick run out to the store. Just a few more basics, though, eggs, oil, flour, and a splash of vanilla was all we needed.
Cora really got into this since she was the one who had been craving red velvet. Amara prefers chocolate chip, but she was in it for the instant result, tweens.
We mixed our ingredients with a hand mixer, which was tremendously quick, and only a tiny cleanup. The now bright red batter, which looked very sticky and reminiscent of playdoh, would need to be refrigerated for two hours so that it would be able to be rolled into balls. This was helpful to me because it was one of those recipes you can do in parts.
We had the beaters in the sink and mixer put away within seconds, and I made a mental note of the time to watch for the two-hour chill mark. After the chilling, the girls really got involved.
Cookie scoop, check. Bowl of granulated sugar, check. A bowl of confectioners' sugar, check. Oven set to 350 degrees and two cookie sheets at the ready.
Before letting the girls go, I had to demonstrate how to roll the cookies. I tore off a little hunk of the dough, rolled it into a ball, rolled it in a bowl of granulated sugar, and then placed them into a bowl of powdered sugar.
I've made cookies rolled in sugar before, like peanut butter blossoms, and I've made cookies rolled in confectioners' sugar, like Russian tea cakes, but never both. At that point, I was really starting to question the recipe.
Will these turn out? I hate to make a recipe and have it not turn out. Especially after I went to the store for a $1 box of cake mix, kidding.
The girls were scooping, rolling, and putting the red velvet balls on the sheet, all the while pushing me to the side. They obviously had this.
They used their common core math to figure out how many cookies would fit per sheet, and before I knew it, they had one sheet completed, and it quickly went into the preheated oven. Then they quickly filled a second sheet.
After 10 minutes, the timer went off. We reached into the oven and pulled out a beautiful tray of perfectly round, red cookies, with cracks and crevasses on the top covered in white powder.
There were lots of "ooohs" and "ahhhs" when the first batch came out. The kitchen smelled like cocoa. Not like the buttery chocolate chip kind of cookies, but a warm and pure chocolate.
Amara put the tray on the stovetop and put the second prepared tray in the oven.
Pro tip: I learned a long time ago not to put the cold dough on warm trays as the cookies start to melt and spread prematurely, so I use two sheets, so one is cool. True, these don't have butter, which helps them retain their shape, but still, use a cool sheet. It's pretty sweet to me that she knows that now too.
Amara, being the good sister, explained the tip to Cora like a pro.
I rarely make boxed cookies, and honestly, as cookies go, we focus on chocolate chips and the occasional M&M in the appropriate holiday colors. However, this one is now firmly in the rotation; literally, the red velvet cake mix is on the grocery app. The recipe made two and a half dozen exactly. Not too many, and like I said, with the very few ingredients, most would have them on hand most of the time.
Cora said we could leave them out for Santa, but it'll have to be a second batch next week; no way will these make it to Dec. 24. Whatever you're baking this season, take the time and do it with love. Our kitchen isn't full and overflowing, but today my heart is, and hopefully the girls too.
| Date Taken: | 12.17.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 12.28.2020 11:26 |
| Story ID: | 385866 |
| Location: | COLUMBUS, OHIO, US |
| Web Views: | 75 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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