This past weekend was cookie weekend at my house. This consists of copious amounts of flour, sugar, fat, and drinks at the end of the day because you deserve them for all your “hard” work. And, as we might remember, I wear an apron. It is serious business.
This year, just as last year, I was baking in preparation for a friend’s cookie exchange. Again, the idea of an exchange is quite girlie (or worse, boring) but it’s actually everything opposite of that women-in-the-kitchen stereotype that springs to mind. Instead, when we walk in the door, the hostess meets us with a glass of wine and then starts massaging our tired-from-baking shoulders. Okay, not that last part, but it’s going to be funny should her husband read this because in his mind, when he leaves the house, at any minute he could walk back in to fifteen drunk women giggling and baking in the kitchen. Naked.
For some reason, this year, I felt some need for cookie balance. The first cookie, my all-time favorite cookie, had to be the Snickerdoodle. Not only has it taken me twenty-eight years to admit that if this cookie were a god I’d worship at it’s altar, in spite of the ridiculous name. But it is good, it is simple, it is awesome. And adding entire sticks of butter to food just makes me feel good.
Easily amused, though, I’m still in awe that the whole thing starts with just ingredients.
Or maybe it’s the part about it being my ingredients, and that I’m the one turning it into food. I’m the contradictory cook/baker: always claiming that cooking is easy for the most part, and in the same breath in awe that anything turns out edible at all. The Snickerdoodles, though, are easy, and perfect. You roll them in sugar and cinnamon, need I say more? I think you could roll just about anything in sugar and cinnamon and I’d eat it. With a tall glass of milk for dunking.
I also tell myself quite often that I want a Kitchen Aid mixer, and as soon as I break my addiction to new running shoes or new camera lenses or beaches, I’ll get one. But that never happens, which is more shocking to me than it is to you, I’m sure. Instead I suffer through and call hand mixing eight batches of cookie dough Project: Holiday Stress Relief. Now you’re starting to see why drinks come at the end of the day.
And along with my “tradition” of having to burn one sheet of cookies every year, I also have the more purposeful tradition of baking one batch of cookies on an old Bake King cookie sheet I found—still in it’s box— when I moved into this house. The cookie sheet is easily older than I am, and I tell myself that I must use it because the woman that lived here before me never got around to it. So on special occasions, and once a year for Christmas, I break out the Bake King for it’s chance to shine. I also tell myself that it’s got to be good karma, to take one person’s baking intentions and create your own.
My Snickerdoodle recipe can be found back over here.
The second part of my 2007 Cookie Event, and the part where the whole balance thing comes in, was Pumpkin Oatmeal Cookies. These cookies, in spite of sounding very festive to me, are the opposite of many of the things that adds up to equal a good holiday cookie. There is very little flour and sugar, even less fat and, oh my heck, no butter! Not even a little bit. But as a woman, a woman without the metabolism of a bumble bee, a woman who’s already running thirty miles a week, when a recipe says “1.5 grams of fat,” I’m listening.
Much of the flavor in this “cookie” (yes, it’s time to start using the quotation marks) is from the pumpkin, as it well should be.
In a double batch, you’ll use two cans of pumpkin (about three cups). That, along with the nutmeg and cinnamon and cloves, is going to make you feel like you’re eating a holiday treat. There’s no way you can combine those ingredients and not feel like you are smack in the middle of Festivus. Or something like it.
And then you add the oatmeal, which is where, if you’re me, you start freaking out because you don’t have a mixing bowl large enough for a double batch of this stuff. Then you start questioning why, at twenty-eight, when you are consistently baking every year and many times throughout the year, don’t you have a bigger mixing bowl? What is wrong with you? You are a baking failure, with the ingredients spilling over the side, and still having not yet added the pumpkin. Dang it.
After more stress-relief hand mixing, though, it all worked out. Sure, we might be finding rolled oats all over the kitchen for years to come, but what a nice memory it’ll bring back.
The “cookies” themselves, though, were just good. They were not anywhere near my idea of a perfect Christmas cookie; they were more like breakfast. In fact, they have been my breakfast for the past two days. With 1.5 grams of fat, 4 grams of protein and about 120 calories, I at least feel like I’m not going to overdose on all the other holiday food that’s around. So maybe they’re not my idea of perfect, but they are some semblance of it. Any food that doesn’t bring guilt along with it is is it’s own kind of perfect.
You can find the low-fat Pumpkin Oatmeal cookie recipe here. It is not the recipe I had initially but it’s nearly a replica save for the raisins because, ew, so not my idea of fun. Like I needed those flying around the kitchen.
I thought twice about bringing them to the party—if they weren’t stacking up to my standards, how were they going to fare with fourteen other women, some of whom live to bake? When it came down to it, though, I remembered that these women are all a lot like me. Sure, some of them are self-proclaimed Martha Stewart protégés, but that doesn’t mean they’re not thinking about holiday weight gain just like the rest of us (read: me). And I was right, even if it just means we’re all in a little bit of denial, there’s nothing wrong with a few healthy “cookies” to balance out those entire sticks of butter.
These last two photos were taken with my snobby friend’s snobby iPhone. Not so perfect on the close-ups, but you get the idea.
P.S. I love my snobby friends.
IPhone » Cookie Balancing says:
[...] Here’s another interesting post I read today by JustRunJustLiveJustBe [...]
December 18th, 2007 at 6:15 am
anne says:
mmmm cookies for breakfast. i adore that basket that they are all wrapped up in.
December 18th, 2007 at 7:18 am
girlgoyle says:
snobby friends with snobby iphones take pictures of snobbily looking good cookies! And no worries on the spillage…that’s what the dog’s for.
December 18th, 2007 at 7:59 am
sizzle says:
i just love pictures of baking.
sounds like a fun time and very, very yummy.
December 18th, 2007 at 8:23 am
Danielle says:
I saw a recipe for the pumpkin vs the fat and wondered how they would be…if you taste the pumpkin and all that cause it’s supposed to be a replacement like applesauce and not taste from what I heard…
I baked this weekend too!! All day Saturday in the tradition a friend and I have been doing for the past couple of years.
December 18th, 2007 at 9:13 am
backofpack says:
Okay, I decided long ago, when I was about 15, that hand mixed cookies were the best, and I have hand mixed them ever since. I still think so - I think it somehow affects the texture. Like maybe too much air in them when you use a mixer? I don’t know, I just believe it. A few years ago my sister got me a wooden cookie paddle for mixing (from Southern Living) very nice. Also, my Dad made me cookie sheets when I left for college. I only use those - they never need to be greased and are the best ever. He also made a set for my Mom when they got married, so I’ve baked all my life on one or the other. They make perfect cookies.
I’m going to try the pumpkin cookies - we love all things pumpkin and oatmeal around here!
December 18th, 2007 at 9:19 am
JACC says:
I love all of the smells from cookie time! Yum.
Sadly, for whatever reason my work filtering software now blocks most of the images on your site. Grrrr.
December 18th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Joe says:
> fifteen drunk women giggling
> and baking in the kitchen.
> Naked.
NOW THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! How do I get invited to this shindig?
December 18th, 2007 at 1:53 pm
egan says:
You don’t need the iPhone disclaimer, we think the photos at the bottom look spectacular. Thanks for playing.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
brookem says:
Those look realllly yummy. I think the pictures at the bottom look just swell. Iphone or not. But I mean, I’m the last person to know the difference between that stuff.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
egan says:
WE
December 18th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
brookem says:
iphone
December 18th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
brookem says:
i mean, iPhone. shoot!
December 18th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
egan says:
iPod, iMac, iPhone, iBrookem, iRun
Let’s chat about snickerdoodles, damn they are the bomb.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
egan says:
iStalk yOur bLog
December 18th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
brookem says:
wiiStalk.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
egan says:
Wii stalk your blog because those cookies look so tasty. I’m salivating yo!
December 18th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
justrun says:
Oh my gosh, I don’t know whether to feel special or amused. Hopefully both.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Exception says:
I LOVE cookies I can eat for breakfast (as does my darling dancer)
December 18th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Nicole says:
YUM! I love cookies (my grandpa was a baker) and yours look great.
PS Tom & I brew beer as well so if you ever want free beer let us know.
December 18th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Appletini says:
YUMMY! What a perfect Christmas present…perfect for mailing…wink*wink*
December 18th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Airam says:
I went to a cookie exchange too!! This was the second one I went to … I went to one last year. I loved it! All your cookies are done for the season! And I so need to get that camera you emailed me about. Those photos are amazing!!
December 18th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Dawn says:
OMG!! You just saved me. I’m supposed to bring sugar cookies to work tomorrow and almost forgot. Sheesh!
And they’re sugar so they need to be refrigerated.
Without your post, I would’ve gone to bed sugar cookie-less.
December 18th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Cat Chaser says:
Hey, am ready to trade my christmas for presents for cookies!:)
December 18th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Maggie says:
Toss some chocolate chips into those pumpkin cookies and I think you might have some.
(I whined and whined until I got a Kitchenaid. It’s the only way.)
December 19th, 2007 at 11:49 am
barbara bruederlin says:
Pumpkin cookies for breakfast and the entire stick of butter ones for later - everybody wins!
December 19th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
egan says:
You should be honoured. Do you get excited about running shoe catalogues?
December 19th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
Database Diva says:
So that’s where cookies come from. I just thought they came from the store
December 20th, 2007 at 12:20 am