The joys of baking cookies

            While rushing through the grocery store, I tossed a bag of Oreo cookies in my shopping basket. For so many years, I've been stocking our pantry with store-bought cookies that I'd almost forgotten it was possible to actually bake cookies.

            But then last weekend, my granddaughter asked if we could make cookies with pink sugar on top. I knew what she was talking about and hoped I could remember how to actually make sugar cookies from scratch.

            When my sons were young, we always made sugar cookies for the holidays. But when they grew older, the well-worn cookie cutters were put in a bag and tossed into the back of the cabinet, forgotten until my granddaughter spotted them.

            Next to the cookie cutters was my old cookbook. It's been years since I've used that book; but when I opened it to the baked goods section, I saw dozens of hand-written recipes for cookies, cakes, pies and desserts.

            I came across a yellow hand-written card with a recipe for butter cookies. One of my Cub Scout mom friends shared her recipe with me when my now-grown sons were young. I still remember how much we all loved her cookies, and the memory convinced me this was the way to go.

            I scrounged around in the pantry for the necessary ingredients – flour, baking powder, salt and sugar and breathed a sigh of relief when I spotted a necessary cookie component in the back.  

            One year, the Fort Bend Herald's family editor, Betty Humphrey, brought me a bottle of vanilla from Mexico. She said there was nothing like real vanilla, so I placed the bottle next to the eggs and milk on the counter.

            My granddaughter knew how to fill the measuring cups and how to rake her hand across the top to make sure the cups were precisely filled. She'd learned how to make cookies from her mother and her maternal grandmother, and I remembered cookie making sessions with my mom.

            With seven children, there were constant battles as to who would get to lick the beaters. This practice was before the scare of eating raw eggs; but despite licking the bowl with our fingers and getting every drop of cookie dough batter off the metal beaters, we never got sick.

            I creamed the butter and then she cracked the egg into the bowl. Slowly but surely, my grandchildren added the dry ingredients, dipping their fingers in the bowl for a taste when they thought I wasn't looking.

            As the oven heated up, I showed them how to spread a light coat of flour on the wooden pin before we rolled out the cookies. Then we used metal cookie cutter tins to cut out stars and rocking horses.

            My granddaughter carefully put the raw dough on the cookie sheet and, 30 minutes later, we had a stack of hot, delicious sugar cookies just begging for a topping. I'd come this far with from-scratch ingredients, so I hauled out the butter and 10X sugar and we made our own frosting.

            While we were munching on our creations, I thought about my niece's upcoming wedding shower. Instead of fancy dishes or silverware, I think I'll buy her a sturdy cookie sheet, some flour, salt, sugar and real vanilla.

            Her mom is the best baker in our family and making sure my niece has everything to keep Janet's tradition going beats anything I could purchase from a wedding registry.

            It might take time and effort to bake cookies at home but the benefits, ah the delicious benefits, far outweigh the trouble.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.