Making Cookies

Azure brought home a note from school last week explaining to the parents that the school will be celebrating Halloween with a party. The children are requested to bring a dozen homemade cookies with them to the party.

I read this note with glee excited for Azure since we weren’t sure if the kids here in Costa Rica went trick-or-treating or not. But at the same time I thought, homemade cookies? Very cool and against everything we have learned about the American school policies. I remember when Azure first brought home a note from school back in the States explaining that kids would be allowed to bring treats to school to share for holidays and birthdays but NOT homemade items. I had felt a sigh of relief since I hate baking but at the same time I felt sad for all those children who would never enjoy homemade chocolate chip cookies at school.

So, being Azure (those of you who know her know what I mean), we endured several days of her looking at every recipe she could find for baking cookies. Finally, we decided on a recipe of my Great Grandma C.‘s rich sugar cookies. I remember these cookies from my childhood as being thick and soft and melt in your mouth delicious. MMMM! I could only hope ours would taste as good.

After some trouble finding the correct ingredients, we were set start. We began mixing the ingredients and the mixer decided to overheat since the margarine wouldn’t soften enough. I ended up mixing everything with my fingers (which didn’t work too well). I worried that the cookies would be a disaster but figured it couldn’t hurt to bake them and find out.

Sunday we baked the cookies after allowing them to chill overnight per the recipe. Here was another dilemma since the card said to bake 10-20 minutes. That’s a huge timeframe! I set the timer for 12 minutes figuring that would be safe. The cookies appeared to be done at 10 minutes. We started singing “making cookies, making cookies” which was a twist on the song from Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas movie.

Luckily the cookies didn’t taste too bad but they definitely were not my Great Grandma’s cookies. Plus, singing that song reminded us that the movie would compliment the occasion so we watched it during dinner.

Azure enjoyed baking the cookies so much (and Patrick enjoyed eating them) that we have decided to buy a new mixer and make cookies more often. There goes my diet!