Molasses Sugar Cookies

Recently we went to visit two of our grandchildren, ages four and six. Even before we left for our seven hour trip I got a text message from my granddaughter:

Grandma, how about baking cookies?

Cutie Pie

To which I replied:

How about making Molasses Sugar Cookies?

Grandma

Her answer was a happy face!

I smiled as I put my suitcase in the car. While Grandpa drove, I looked at pictures of our grandchildren on my old cell phone— trips we had taken, playing in the park, visiting their favorite museum, playing with friends at birthday parties, and my favorite pictures—food and cooking with my grand kids.

I could hardly wait to get to their house. When we arrived we got hugs and kisses, then Mom had dinner ready and I got to read books and tell stories until bedtime.

At last it was time to make the Molasses cookies. We searched for ingredients and found most of them, but the main ingredient, molasses, was no where to be found. I did however find a box of gingerbread mix and everybody knows it contains molasses. On the side of the box was a cookie recipe that we made into sugar coated molasses cookies.

In no time at all the kids and I had the cookies in the oven. Before we left that afternoon most of the cookies were devoured. We did manage to sneak a few to bring back home.

Our son and his wife ate the cookies and kept asking for more. So a few days ago I found my original Molasses Sugar Cookie recipe that I found on a bottle of molasses, when I was a teenager. I made a big batch—chewy and delicious and already gone. I did make a few changes. The original recipe called for ¾ cup of shortening. I haven’t used that stuff in years. I substituted ½ cup butter and ¼ cup organic coconut oil—much healthier but just as tasty. Try this updated recipe and tell me what you think.

                                             Molasses Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

½ cup butter (1 stick)

¼ cup coconut oil

¼ cup molasses

1 cup sugar, ½ cup extra sugar for coating cookies

1 egg

2 cups flour 

2 teaspoon baking powder

½ tsp. ground cloves

½ tsp. ginger

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. salt

Directions:

1. Melt butter and coconut oil in medium sized saucepan. Remove from heat and add molasses.

2. In medium size mixing bowl put flour, baking powder, cloves, ginger, cinnamon, and salt then combine.

3. To contents of pot add 1 cup sugar and egg, stir.

4. Then add flour mixture to pot one cup at a time. When thoroughly combined, set in the refrigerator to cool until the consistency of clay (about 20 minutes). Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

5. Role walnut sized balls of dough in sugar and coat evenly. Place about twelve cookies on an  ungreased cookie sheet and bake about 8-9 minutes. When done remove and cool on dish towel covered with wax paper. Repeat process until all cookies are baked. This recipe makes about 2 ½ dozen.

These cookies smell fabulous while they bake. If you want to sell your home, have an open house while you are baking these. Home, sweet home! Sold!

Pumpkin Cookies

Recently, my six-year-old granddaughter called me with a special request:

“Grandma, could you give me your recipe for pumpkin cookies? I want to make them for Thanksgiving.”

“I’d love to, Sweetheart.” And so the search for pumpkin cookies began.

Then I looked in the memoir cookbook that I’m writing. In the chapter about Halloween—there it was—pumpkin cookies. Pumpkin is a popular vegetable October through December so you have time to bake with pumpkin before the year is over.  

I emailed the recipe to my daughter and granddaughter so they could make pumpkin cookies and decided to make some myself. I smiled all the way through the process thinking they were making pumpkin cookies just like me.  If you are lucky enough to have grandchildren or children to bake with, thank your lucky stars and have fun with these yummy cookies. We did.

                                                   Pumpkin Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup of oil

2 cups sugar

2 cups cooked pumpkin

1 teaspoon vanilla

½ teaspoon each:

ground ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, and salt

1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon

2 teaspoon baking soda

4 cups flour

½ cup chopped pecans (optional)

Directions:

1. Combine first four ingredients and mix in a large bowl.

2. Then sift together and add: ground ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, salt, cinnamon, soda, flour.

3. Add pecans if you choose.

3. Drop by heaping teaspoons onto greased baking sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes until light brown. Remove when done and allow to cool 10 minutes before removing to towel covered with wax paper. Cool completely then frost with cream cheese icing. This recipe makes about 31/2 dozen cookies. Let the children decorate with colored sugar—in December try red and green. Top with orange sprinkles in October and November. Enjoy!

Letter Pancake Saga

Occasionally I make pancakes for breakfast for my grandchildren.  It’s a quick meal that they really enjoy and in which I can hide nutrients—a little applesauce anyone?  Today though was a little different.

My granddaughter sat in the middle of the kitchen floor when I asked, “What do you want for breakfast, Sweetie Pie?  How about some pancakes?”

“How about some Baby Bear pancakes with honey?” she replied.

“Yes, but how about Baby Bear’s letter pancakes, two letters, B.B.—for Baby Bear,” I said.

“Great idea, Grandma, but wait, how about L.P. instead?”

“Wow, you know your initials! Right you are—L.P."

And so it began, the letter pancake saga. Every time I made pancakes, no matter what flavor they were, we turned them into letters and used them to write words.  When Little Bear, her brother, joins in the game we have even more letters.

They are learning to read and write and don’t even know it.  How about taking a bite off the right side of a capital ‘H’ and turning it into a lower case ‘h’?  How could they turn an ‘I’ into an ‘i’?  What letters should we use tomorrow?  I bet they could think of many more ideas—especially with a little help.  Oh, the joys of having a teacher grandma—Granny Nanny, that is!  Can you think of other ways to turn a meal into a learning experience?

Aunt Lucy's 3-2-1 Cupcakes

I have only one problem with baking a cake—I don’t stop eating until it’s all gone. My solution has always been to only make cakes for special occasions when we will have company to consume it or we give it away.

I live in a community of seniors and I love to cook. Whenever I bring my sweet tooth granddaughter home to bake, we make cupcakes or muffins and pass them out like Santa or the Easter Bunny. This teaches my granddaughter the joys of cooking and sharing, and to be moderate in her consumption of sweets.

But if you are not into baking and occasionally want a quick cupcake, try this recipe that my sister Lucy posted on Facebook.

It is called “3-2-1 Cake” and is ready in one minute.

 

1. Begin by combining one box of Angel Food Cake mix and one box of any other flavor cake mix you choose in a large zip lock bag.
2. In a custard cup combine 3 tablespoons of the dry mix and add two tablespoons of water. Stir. Place in microwave and bake 1 minute on high.
3. Remove cupcake and cool for one minute.
4. Add a dollop of whipping cream and enjoy. If you have a grandchild to share with then make two, but put the mix away until another day—out of sight out of mind.
5. You can have your own little tea party with a sugar cube in the tea and a giggling sweetie pie beside you. Now don’t you feel like royalty?

Happy New Year Sleepover

My four and a half year old granddaughter and my two and a half year old grandson came to spend the night with Grandma and Grandpa on New Years Eve. They were jumping for joy, tossing coats, dumping toys, and investigating every inch of our small space. Since they hadn’t eaten we made plates and tried to calm them down so they could sit and eat, but it seemed to be a lost cause. We finally decided to divide and conquer.

Grandpa tried to assemble Bam-Bam’s tool bench with him, but soon discovered that a first time sleepover was far too exciting to concentrate on nuts and bolts. Large pieces of the new toy kept disappearing or being transformed into trampolines, or rocket ships. The job was finally scuttled in favor of a large floor puzzle.

The princess and I finished making Challah. We kneaded the dough and separated it into three parts, two we put in loaf pans and the rest the princess shaped into fluffy buns with happy faces—Grandma’s braided bread was far too boring for a New Year’s Eve Party.

The princess gently placed the fluffy bundles on a greased cookie sheet, patted them, and then finally covered the little faces with a towel like sleeping babies under a blanket.

Next we ate popcorn and toasted the New Year with “champagne”. Don’t tell the princess it was just fizzy grape juice, or that it is not really midnight. The Prince can’t get into pretend; he is a boy who just likes grape juice. Then we settled down to a movie that dad brought over entitled, Despicable Me. It had a villain, abused as a child, who was transformed into a good father by three little orphaned girls.

By 10:30 we had warm happy-face buns and chocolate milk with marshmallows. The children were happy they have kind parents and grandparents who love them—not like the orphans in the movie. We settled down for a story and last a long winter’s nap with Grandma sandwiched in between and Grandpa sleeping on the couch.

I lay there thinking how lucky we are to be able to nurture our grandchildren—to be here when they need us. There are so many children who don’t have grandparents or who don’t get to be near them. I believe grandchildren are the reason God put us on earth. We are truly lucky. Happy New Year, may you be so lucky!

Aunt Lucy's Pumpkin Bread

Lucy gave this recipe to me so long ago that she lost her copy and I had to give her another one. Though I have sampled many pumpkin breads in my life, I have never had a more moist and tasty one. It's so easy to make that you can bake this with your children or grandchildren. It's also a good way to get vegetables in your child’s diet without them knowing it. A little here, a little there—sometimes you just have to be sneaky.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease 4-small round metal coffee cans or 3 loaf pans.

3 ½ cups flour
2 teaspoons soda
1 ½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ teaspoon nutmeg
1 ½ teaspoon cinnamon
3 cups sugar
1 cup cooking oil
2/3 cup water
4 beaten eggs
2 cups pureed pumpkin




Mix the first 6 dry ingredients together. In another large bowl blend the eggs, add the oil and water. Then blend in pumpkin. Add the dry ingredients gradually and blend until completely mixed in. Distribute evenly between cans or pans. Bake in preheated oven for one hour or until toothpick comes out clean when tested in center. Remove to rack and cool for about ten minutes. Next run a table knife around the sides of the bread and carefully remove to rack. Completely cool your tasty bread before storing it in plastic zip-lock bags. Great served with cream cheese or lemon curd.

Peanut Butter Edible Play Dough

Last week the sky cried most of the time, so my grandchildren and I had to take some of our adventures inside. Princess granddaughter gets cabin fever when she can’t go out, so we had to figure out something else to do besides jump off the back of the couch. I checked out the pantry and decided to do a cooking activity that I used to do with my second-grade class when I taught—that was before they outlawed peanut butter in school. We used our detective skills to find the three needed items: peanut butter, powdered milk, and honey.

We took out the three-step stool, put on our aprons, washed our hands with soap and water and then started. In a medium sized metal bowl we dumped one cup of powdered milk, ½ cup of peanut butter, and ¼ cup of honey. We took turns mixing until it got hard to stir, then came the fun part. We put our hands in and squished it until it was smooth and pliable, we needed a smidgen more honey and a little more squishing—ahh perfect! We only nibbled a little bit, honest!

(This dough is no bake so don’t preheat the oven.) Next we rolled it out on wax paper and made snakes, then, since it was Halloween season, we decided to make pumpkins. Too bad we didn’t have corn candy for jack-o-lantern eyes and such, but raisins did nicely. Then we used a rolling pin and rolled out the rest of the dough until it was flat. Finally we cut out bats and black (pretend!) peanut-butter cats. We really tried to save some for Mommy and Daddy but we just couldn’t help ourselves. We started eating the dough. I ate a pumpkin and the princess kept picking at the cats and bats until you couldn’t tell what they were. We shared some with her eighteen month old prince brother. According to our critique from the prince, it earned a “Yum”. We thought so too. Don’t tell the princess I hid some in the cabinet behind the glasses!