I have been naughty. I haven't posted at all during the month of December!
I guess I've been taking a little break from writing . . . but not entirely.
I thought I'd share with you my kid's column for Two-Lane Livin' for the month of December.
Celebrate With Cookies
What does a gingerbread man
put on his bed? A cookie sheet!
Cookies have been with us
for many centuries. But, the first cookies were created by accident. Sometimes
accidents are a good thing. Early ovens never had thermostats, so cooks dropped
small amounts of cake batter on baking pans to test the oven temperature.
Cookies came to America in
the 1600s. And, most cookies in early America were baked as special treats. In
a 1796 cookbook titled, American Cookery,
there were only two recipes for cookies. In some early American cookbooks, cookies were given no space of their
own but were listed at the end of the cake chapter. They were called by such
names as "Jumbles," "Plunkets," and "Cry Babies."
Now we have cookbooks filled
only with cookie recipes. We have bar cookies, drop cookies, molded cookies, no
bake cookies, pressed cookies, refrigerator cookies, rolled and sandwich
cookies! No matter what kind of cookies they are – soft, chewy or crisp, large
or small, fancy or plain – cookies are a treat most of us want to munch, nibble
and snack on with a tall glass of milk.
In 1937, a very special
cookie was invented: the chocolate chip cookie. The recipe is on the package of
Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips. Your cookies can be special, too. Use the
recipe on their package, but add a special or secret ingredient to the cookie dough.
Some ideas are: M & M’s, peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, mint
chips, your favorite nuts, sprinkles or crushed candy canes.
For chocolate chip cookie
lovers with a big appetite, a 102-foot-wide cookie was baked that weighed
40,000 pounds in Flat Rock, NC in 2003! The ingredients in this world’s largest
cookie included 6000 pounds of chocolate chips.
Here is an easy recipe to make cinnamon
dough ornaments to hang on your Christmas tree:
Mix in a bowl one cup of cinnamon, ¾ cup
applesauce and 2 T. white glue.
Work the ingredients together with your
hands into a ball, cover with plastic and let set for ½ hour. Put out onto wax paper; lay a piece of wax
paper on top of the mixture and roll with a rolling pin until 1/8 or ¼ inch
thickness. Cut into shapes with cookie
cutters. I use star, heart and snowflake shapes. Insert a straw near the top of
the cookies to punch a hole for hanging. Carefully lift the cookies and place
them on a cookie sheet and bake at 200 degrees for ½ hour, and then reduce the
temperature to 175 degrees. I bake them for a total of 2 1/2 hours and turn
them every ½ hour. Let dry naturally for
2-3 days and turn them a couple of times each day.
Do not eat! Insert a thin
ribbon and hang the spicy smelling ornaments on your tree. After Christmas,
store them in a plastic bag and bring them out every year to decorate your
tree.
You can go here to see more instructions and pictures on how I make my cinnamon dough ornaments.
I hope all of you have a very Merry Christmas!
I am eager for the start of the coming year.
I have stories to write and stories to submit!
Posted byJanet Smart on Creative Writing in the Blackberry Patch.
