Grey or Bald

Despite how very hard my kids have worked on giving me this particular gift, I’ve been pulling them out (don’t tell), but I am sadly approaching a crossroads:  grey…or bald?

Life is full of choices (how cliche) but I’m so overwhelmed right now I don’t seem to be able to make any.  Big or small, meaningful or meaningless, necessary or frivolous, grey or bald, sometimes I just don’t want to make any choices.

 I think it’s in this spirit that I came up with my frozen cookie doughs.  Over the past few years I’ve made and tweaked a number of different recipes to come up with ones I could freeze then bake for the same amount of time and at the same temperature.  I have a good selection now and always have three to five of them in my freezer.  That way if I want to make cookies but can’t decide which kind, I can semi-defrost the doughs (just enough to scoop them), then make a number of different kinds of cookies on one baking sheet.  Then I refreeze the remaining dough.   Easy, peasy.  Choice avoided.

My cookie doughs are usually good for when I just don’t want to make a choice.  But if all else fails, I get out the pizza pan, make a mega cookie… and put EVERYTHING in it.

Giant Everything Cookie

 

I was talking to my son saying that I wanted a picture of my giant cookie for this particular blog.  I’ve made it many times but never took a picture.  “Oh snap, you’re just going to have to make a giant cookie.”  He didn’t sound terrible sympathetic and he sure wasn’t gonna help me.  My sons are eaters not bakers, and I have no daughters.  Mostly I'm OK with that, but in the instance where I’m baking something just for the picture (although, believe me that giant cookie will get scarfed up), I wouldn’t mind having a baking partner. 

I was traumatized years ago when I was pregnant with my second son.  I wanted a girl.  I was sure I was having a girl.  I had about 50 girl names picked out.  I went in for an ultrasound (when you go through IVF you have them frequently in the first trimester) and the room went silent.  I was the only one to speak “my daughter appears to have a penis.”  The Doctor, knowing I wanted a girl, had quickly moved on.  “Go back, I want to look again” I said.  The Doctor was firm “Karen, it is NOT going to go away.”  After all the times I almost lost him (and there were some really close calls Lightning Strikes) let me say that in the end (with just one little hiccup delivered by my sister) I was and remain thrilled to have my second son. 

The hiccup:  Five weeks after my first son was born, my sister had her first son.  A little over a year later I had my second son.  Then about a year and a half later, my sister went and had a daughter.  Ouch.  My sister is an amazing cook but she doesn’t bake, like at all.  But eventually I got over it because I realized that having a daughter instead of a son was luck.  It’s not like she had been able to make a choice.

 


Giant Everything Cookie
                                        ©www.BakingInATornado.com

Printable Recipe

Ingredients:
1 stick butter, softened                                
1 stick margarine, softened                          
1/2cup sugar                                              

1 cup brown sugar                                        

2 eggs                                                           

1 tsp vanilla                                                  

2 1/4 cups flour 
1 tsp baking soda 
1/2tsp salt
1/2cup mini chocolate chips
1/2cup baking mini M&Ms
1/2cup white chocolate chips
1/2cup butterscotch chips                                                                                      

Directions:
*Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Grease a pizza pan.

*Cream butter, margarine and sugars.  Beat in eggs and vanilla

*Mix in flour, baking soda and salt.  Stir in mix-ins.
*Pat out onto the pizza pan until the consistency is fairly even.  Best to just put onto the pan and flatten out and move around with your hands.
*Bake approx. 18 minutes, till it’s puffed and lightly browned.