Eat Cookie!

I have never been a big cookie baker. I know there are people who actually have cookie dough stashed in their freezers and bake cookies every other day, but I am not one of those people. I don't know what it is about cookies but I find that the taste is usually not worth all the effort. And if they are really good, they are eaten in a matter of minutes and are not as satisfying as biting into a big thick slice of chocolate cake.

However children seem to love cookies and not only do they want to eat them, but they want to bake them too. This gave me an idea for return gifts for N's sixth birthday party. This return gift tied in with the theme of her birthday party. She had a cupcake decorating and baking party. We made fondant decorations ahead of time, baked cupcakes and made buttercream in every colour of the rainbow. The children (even the boisterous ones) had a wonderful time decorating their cupcakes and then eating them. 

Anyway, back to the return gifts. I had seen several ideas online for home-made gifts in jars and in those days I was going through a phase of "DIY or Don't" so I decided to make 20 'Bake it Yourself' cookie mix jars for the guests to take home and bake.  After a lot of research I decided to use Bakerella's tutorial. She is one of my favourite bloggers and you can find her tutorial here. Of course mason jars are so very expensive here in India, as are pecans  and m&ms, so I adapted the recipe to make it cheaper. Each child got a jar of cookie mix. All they had to do at home was add an egg, one stick of butter and some milk, make the dough into balls and bake. I am dying to say Ta-da! but I won't.

A few days before you want to give away your jar of mix you can decorate the jar lid. Pearl pet jars have ugly white lids. So I used some patterned paper to cover each lid, making sure there was no glue on the inside of the lid. Here is a tutorial on how to cover jar lids with patterned paper. 

The beauty of the jar however lies in the view from the side. That photograph is coming up shortly but first here is what you need, to make one jar of "bake it yourself" cookie mix. keep the ingredients in separate bowls DO NOT MIX THEM TOGETHER.

165 g all purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

90 g cooking oats (I used Quaker oats)

60g Gems or m&ms (Gems fade, especially the darker colours. m&ms don't)

125 g chocolate chips

100 g brown sugar

100 g white caster sugar

70 g salted peanuts ( I used Haldirams)

one empty, washed pearl pet jar that holds 1 litre or if you are fancy shmancy and only need to make one then a glass mason jar.

What you don't put in the jar and don't need if you are giving the cookie mix away:

1 egg

113 g melted amul butter

a couple of tbsp milk

Now we need to layer the ingredients. Put the ingredients into the jar in the following order and after each layer push down to really pack it in tight. you can use a washed meat mallet to do this. I found it easy to use a piece of paper folder into a funnel shape to get everything into the jar without being covered in flour.

layer 1: flour/baking powder/baking soda sifted together. 

Press down with mallet

layer 2: oats

press down

layer 3: gems

don't press down but make sure they are up against the sides of the jar so they can be seen from outside.

layer 4: chocolate chips

don't press down

layer 5: brown sugar

press down

layer 6: white caster sugar

press down

Peanuts (fill right to the top so that it sits flush with the top. )

The jar needs to be packed tightly so that the ingredients stay separate.

Now screw the lid shut, tie a ribbon around the neck and you are done! This is what the jar should look like from the side

I made labels and instruction tags on photoshop to decorate the jars with and I want to share those with you. You can make some yourself too but if you like you can just download mine. This is the first of the many printable freebies you'll find on my blog.

This is the label for the front of the jar. Print it on regular computer paper and cut along the red lines and around the chef's hat and stick to the jar with Fevicol. You can customise it with your name or your child's name as I did on the jar but I have left it blank for you.

You can attach an instructions tag to the jar neck with a piece of thread or ribbon and your child (or the child in you) can colour the lids in with pencil colours. Punch a hole on top.

I have created a template for you to just download and print on A4 sized card stock. 

and you can add this to the top of the lid if you like. Customise it with your own text

This has been by far the most appreciated return gift I have given in the last 6 years. The parents and kids spent a nice Sunday afternoon at home baking cookies without the fuss of measuring ingredients and they all sent me the most lovely photos too. All in all, a very fun activity that you ought to try at least once. Did I mention that the cookies are out of this world?

If you scrolled all the way down here, go see this funny scene from Mickey Blue Eyes to know the origin behind the title of this post Eat Cookie!