Cookies: An Exhibit of My Once A Week Collection

What do you do every week? Well... there's always those chores that we all love so much (especially that darn laundry!)... but what else do you do? 

I make cookies. Lots and lots of cookies. I need cookies to keep the starvation monsters from eating up my teenage boys. Then there's the munchy-loving husband... a few cookies in some lunch boxes, some fed to friends who stop by and the cookie jar is empty once again.

I am determined to feed my guys foods that are healthier options, generally filled with lots of fiber. I would love for you to believe that make high fiber cookies because they are so healthy, but the real reason is that fiber is one of my secret weapons in my arsenal that I activate in order pay less at the grocery store! Fiber fills up those ravenous stomachs much faster. Instead of my guys eating a dozen cookies each, they tend to stop after 4. If you are attempting to feed teenagers of any gender, you will sympathize with my grocery deficiency problem. The pits are bottomless, and so are their friends'! 

I have no problem sharing what Betty Crocker has shared with me. I wish she were a real woman. I'd love to meet her. I think she must look like Julia Childs. 

My weekly cookie recipe is always the same: The Ultimate Oatmeal Cookie from Betty Crocker's Cookie Book. The book falls open to this page all by itself! Instead of using white flour, I use 100% Whole Wheat Flour. I use 1 package of semi sweet chocolate chips for two batches. I eliminate the cinnamon completely. Once I used Craisins when I ran out of chocolate chips and was pleasantly surprised by their sweetness in these cookies. 

 I mix up two batches at once in my trusty KitchenAid mixer, then I quickly scoop up balls of dough and plop them onto their designated locations on the baking sheets. I like to imagine that I am scooping with the speed of lightning, but I know that I'm certainly not faster than the speed of sound because as soon as my boys hear the mixer, cookie sheets, and oven door, they mysteriously (and silently) manifest themselves into my kitchen, hoping that there are some warm cookies they can stealthily grab in a speedy kitchen pass through. I got to see a helicopter fly by this morning and I had to giggle... it made me think of my boys "flying by" to grab those fresh cookies and evacuate my presence without their mom telling them to wait until supper...

I like order and predictability... can you tell? 

 

Every week, I plop the cookies on the same spots of the cookie sheets.

I have no idea how long I bake the cookies. Sometimes I remember to take the out in time and they are soft and wonderful. Sometimes I forget and they get crunchy and dark. No one complains or comments. They just eat them up! 

I bake these cookies every week. You would think that my guys would beg for a different recipe or brownies. Nope! I seem to be living with some serious Cookie Monsters! The crazy thing is that I do not particularly like to eat these cookies. I absolutely do not like how baking these cookies makes my hair smell like cookies. The smell slams me the next morning in the shower the next morning and I wash it out as fast as I can. While I don't really love these cookies, I have a feeling that I could very well become famous for these cookies! 

Every time one of my boys' friends comes over to visit, he heads straight for the cookie jar. I am rewarded with, "Mrs. Corlett, you make the best cookies EVER!! They are just like candy!" As if I needed any other reasons to make cookies... I can't possibly deny this fun teen 

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies! 

What do you do every week?