We're hosting a "stroll-by" party on our lawn next week, and have promised our neighborhood that we'll provide hot chocolate, cider, and cookies. I don't have a lot of baking time -- even our evenings are crammed full this week -- but I would like to have at least some home-baked cookies available.
So if you have a quick cookie recipe, I'd much appreciate your posting it. By "quick" I mean that it doesn't require a lot of preparation or fussy details, and the fewer ingredients the better. My thrify side tends to run away screaming from any recipe that calls for more than half a stick of butter or more than two eggs, so I guess that's a condition as well.
Also, any finger-food desserts would be welcome. It's just that people will be eating from paper plates with gloved hands, so I can't serve anything very crumbly.
-- SJ
5 comments:
Two cookie recipes immediately come to mind: no-bakes and drop butter wafers. Both are simple, quick, easy, and cheap; they're my standby for whenever I need to bring things to Sunday School, potlucks, etc. One thing that does make them cheaper is that I usually use margarine when I bake for other people: butter is so expensive, and most people are not as butter-snobby as I am, so I can get away with it.
No-Bakes
1/2 cup butter
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla
3 1/4 cups oatmeal
Melt butter in saucepan over medium heat. Add sugar, cocoa, milk, and salt. Stir and bring to a boil; boil for four minutes. Remove from heat and add vanilla and oatmeal. Drop by spoonfuls onto greased cookie sheets and let harden. I usually stir it up with a wooden spoon, and then use a regular teaspoon to drop them; it makes about 70 small cookies. The 'batter' will look gooey at first, so don't be discouraged or think you didn't boil it long enough; if you boil it too long (say, more than about six minutes) it can dry out as you're trying to drop them and turn crumbly. If you can leave these out overnight they should harden perfectly; if not, they should sit for at least an hour. Once they harden, they keep very well, so you can even make these a couple of days ahead and put them in plastic bags or tupperware to keep them from drying out. Start to finish, from mixing to dropping on pans, takes about 15-20 minutes; and best of all, you don't have to turn on the oven!
Drop Butter Wafers
Oh, dear, I can't remember this one from memory. Well, I'll need to look it up and post from home. Stay tuned. =)
~Rose
Here's a no-bake recipe that doesn't even involve cooking anything, so I'm thinking it will work really well with small children. I'm going to try it tomorrow with seven small children in the house, so that will be the acid test. They're very yummy.
Moon Rocks (but you could call them snowballs for Christmas)
Stir together in a large bowl:
1 pound crushed vanilla wafers
1 pound powdered sugar
1 cup ground nuts (pecans or walnuts--you can do this in a food processor or blender)
1/2 pound shredded coconut
Mix in:
1 stick butter, melted
6 ounces frozen orange juice concentrate
Mix well (with hands) and then roll in more coconut.
No bakes! That's a great idea! I made the Moon Rocks last night and will make the chocolate ones sometime today.
I put only half the sugar called for in the Moon Rocks. Maybe the consistency suffered, but it seemed plenty sweet enough to me. I was working on them when Darren came in, and I said, "Supper's ready." He looked at the pan in front of me and said, "That probably won't be enough for me." I replied, "If you eat all of these, you will die, and I won't have to do a thing to help you along." It did work well with kids, though. No hot ovens or pans.
Thanks for the suggestions. Just what I needed. -- SJ
I'm glad to hear that halving the sugar works--I'll have to try it. (The small-children cookie bake has been postponed a week.) I usually like things with a lot less sugar than is called for.
I tried the lower sugar and went ahead and dumped most of the sugar back in. But then I realized that I left out one ingredient when I gave you the recipe: 1 tsp. orange peel. I think that makes them seem tarter and need more sugar.
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