Cookie Monster

The opening day of the Wisconsin gun-deer season is the perfect day to stay inside. That and the fact the temperatures were in the single digits. God bless the hunters, but I prefer to gather my food in the warmth of my home!

I had one simple mission today: Make the last of my cookies for the upcoming family Cookie Bake / Exchange and get the plates of treats in order.

Mission accomplished.

While I did not reveal the other treats I made for the participants, I have to share this one. I made Monster Cookies for the first time.

Now Monster Cookies get their name for several reasons: One, people often make them monster-sized (which I chose not to do since they would have to bake longer and I'd be concerned they'd burn on the edges and be raw in the middle). Two, the amount of ingredients for the allegedly "standard' batch is monstrous. And three, there's a monster amount of tasty flavor in them!

You know I love to bake, but this recipe created quite a challenge. I found the two biggest mixing bowls I had and used one for dry ingredients and the other for the soft stuff -- like, for example, the pound of butter, 3 pounds of peanut butter and dozen eggs this recipe called for. When I mixed the dry ingredients -- which included 4 cups white sugar, 2 pounds brown sugar and 18 cups of oatmeal -- it didn't take long to fill up one of the mixing bowls. And I hadn't even added the pound of chocolate chips and Christmas-colored M&M's.

If both monstrous bowls were full, how was I to marry the two?

I called my girlfriend who gave me the recipe and she suggested a pot like our big soup stock pot. Not big enough. I ended up taking out the Nesco roaster pan and mixing it all up in that. That worked smoothly. And 17 1/2 dozen cookies later, I had more than enough for the Cookie Bake, a handful of neighbors and any holiday-related potluck in the foreseeable future.

Needless to say, nothing else got done today. I didn't even squeeze in a Hallmark Christmas movie! Thought I did DVR about 5 of them.

Guess I'll have to enjoy one of them tomorrow with milk and Monster Cookies -- to recover from a certain football game that is bound to get ugly. I don't think our Purple People Eaters are big enough monsters.

But I hope I'm wrong.