Cookies (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

My first cupcake?

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with C for Cookies.

When I was growing up, it seemed like cookies were one of the basic food groups, and it wasn’t until later that I discovered most folks don’t have to eat dessert after every lunch and dinner. For my first decade of life though, it felt perfectly normal.

My father had an enormous sweet tooth. He was happy with any dessert, but his go-to sugary treat was cookies. His favorites were from Nabisco: chocolate marshmallow pinwheels, pecan sandies, fudge stripes, sugar wafers, and any kind of chocolate chip. Oreos were good too. He was not a fan of peanut butter, however.

Some weeks, my mother and I would bake cookies or brownies (our brownies were more like cookies than cake because we used only one egg). Cookies were made from scratch, but the box mix from Duncan Hines for brownies was great, so we used that. Nowadays, I think Ghirardelli has taken the brownie box mix crown (especially when you add mini M&Ms). Usually we made the traditional Tollhouse recipe chocolate chip cookies, except around Christmas, when we went nuts with the cookie press. Green trees with sprinkles (and a tooth-cracking silver sugar ball at the top), red bells, green wreaths (with sprinkles), beige reindeer, etc., all graced our table.

My mom also made rum balls, which I thought were from a super secret recipe, but it turns out that everyone makes them. (Smashed and rolled vanilla wafers with powdered sugar and a rum glaze.) I loved rum balls when I was younger and would sneak them out of their tin before Mom declared they were “ready.” Nowadays though, I find them kind of nauseating. 

Mom made her own special fruitcake too. Dad loved it, but I was not a fan.

I still have a gargantuan sweet tooth and prefer sugary snacks to chips and and salty food. While I went through a cupcake phase, I am back to basics once again with cookies. There are so many varieties, and they're easy to transport. In fact, I am taking another cookie decorating class tomorrow with a couple of coworkers. It's a great way to have a couple hours of fun and tune out everything else (similar to doing jigsaw puzzles and painting).