Milk & Cookies

Dry ingredients

For the past few years, my friends Sarah and Harley have had completely opposing winter schedules from Jason and I. They live on the east coast and this year flew to the west coast for Christmas. Meanwhile, we’re living on the west coast and flew to the east coast for Christmas. Various combinations of travel schedules have foiled Christmas hanging-out for the past few years. Fortunately this year we overlapped for a full day, which we spent making rum balls and gingerbread cookies, eating thai food, listening to Christmas music, and playing Apples to Apples. Fun!

Gosling's

There’s a special place in my heart for my own family’s Christmas traditions of course, but having spent a large part of my teenage years at Sarah’s house, there is a special place in my heart for her family’s traditions too. In particular, I have Christmasey memories of caroling parties and rum balls, my first experience with delicious yet alcoholic desserts.

This recipe comes from Sarah’s father, who recommends not driving after consuming a few of these.

All mixed together. It looks delicious in person but the camera is not too flattering.

Recipe:

• 2 cups of Vanilla wafers – crumbed real fine.
• 1 cup of walnuts if you like ‘em (we did!)
• 1 cup confectionary sugar (1.5 cups if you leave out the nuts – we didn’t)
• 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder (4 if you leave out the nuts or if you want a real chocolate flavor – okay… you know I want a real chocolate flavor)
• 2 tablespoons of corn syrup
• 1/2 cup of dark rum or brandy (we used Gosling’s dark rum)

Zoe and Sarah making batter into balls

The best thing about these cookies, according to Sarah, is that they are made out of other cookies! Here’s how you make them: In a food processor, process the Nilla wafers into fine crumbles. Then process the nuts. Add the confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder. Add the corn syrup and rum and stir together until homogeneous. Finally, form the batter into balls and roll in confectioner’s sugar. Refrigerate overnight, then enjoy! We didn’t have time to refrigerate them overnight, but a couple hours seemed to be enough.

Then, don’t drive! Ride a reindeer instead!

Completed rum balls, and one of Santa's reindeer

Last night we went to a fabulous cookie party. Everyone brought 3 dozen cookies, there was tasting, voting, and trading, and we all left with a nice variety of cookies. Mmmm. It’s pretty much like a regular party but with rules and voting which makes it more fun plus adds an extra incentive to make the cookies really good.

We brought Chocolate Mint Chip cookies. Well, all of our training/blogging over the past 9 months paid off because our cookies won the “Best Looking” category and tied for “Best Tasting”!

This was truly a team effort; I pioneered the Chocolate Mint Chip recipe a few weeks ago but yesterday Jason improved them with a new strategy. Instead of putting lumps of dough on the cookie sheet, roll the dough into balls (we call this the “Smooth Ball Strategy”). When they come out of the oven they look beautifully smooth with cracks instead of kind of lumpy like the original cookies did. We couldn’t have won “Best Looking” without this strategy! We’d also like to thank our oven, Reynold’s for selling parchment paper, and our coworkers for being our guinea pigs.

Compare the two strategies below:

without the "Smooth Ball Strategy"

with the "Smooth Ball Strategy"

with a professional photographer

Yes, the results are clear. Besides looking at these cookies through the lens of a professional photographer, the best thing you can do to make these cookies look great is to use the “Smooth Ball Strategy”.

Here’s some more pictures from the cookie party:

The spread, complete with pencils and paper for voting!

Lacey oatmeal cookies, which were a contender in all three categories! ("Most Creative", "Best Tasting", and "Best Looking")

Stained Glass cookies - the colored parts are melted Jolly Ranchers and you can see right through them! These got my vote for "Best Looking"

Cranberry White Chocolate Macadamia Oatmeal cookies - came close in "Best Tasting"

Sandies, winner in the "Best Tasting" category

Peanut butter kisses (aka "Nipples") and Snickerdoodles. The Nipples were a favorite and were almost gone by the time we went to divvy them up and take them home.

Careful consideration before voting

Anthony wins "Most Creative" with his Peanut Butter and Jelly cookies

I humbly accept the award for "Best Looking", followed by a 10 minute acceptance speech.

Veronica wins "Best Tasting" with her Sandies

In the end everyone won because we all took home a pile of cookies like this.

This recipe comes to us from Heide (Jason’s mom) who got it from Wilma, a family friend. I’ve never made fudge before so of course I did a quick literature search first and found that a very similar recipe is also attributed to Paula Deen here. (And of course we all trust Paula Deen after we’ve seen what she can do with macaroni and cheese wrapped in bacon, breaded, and fried… well, use your own judgement here.)

I love getting rid of leftovers so I was very happy to include the marshmallows which we had left over from the Icebox Smores rather than leaving them in the pantry to turn into one giant stale marshmallow. Of course, later I remembered that I don’t love the flavor of marshmallows that much. I think some people love the flavor, some people don’t, and some people don’t notice it. For me, I like marshmallows in small doses or cooked over a fire, but I’ve never liked them mixed into things like my ice cream or granola bars. Some people (like my husband) LOVE marshmallows in things. He would probably put them in his macaroni and cheese if he weren’t already in a very committed relationship with his current secret mac ‘n cheese recipe. Well, even with my non-favorite marshmallow flavor, I think these turned out very good.

The recipe and instructions are very easy!

• 2/3 cup evaporated milk (or 5 oz. can)
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 2/3 cups sugar
• 1/2 teasp salt
• 2 cups mini marshmallows
• 12 oz semi sweet chocolate chips
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup walnuts optional – I didn’t include this

Directions:

Mix and heat on the stove: sugar, salt, evaporated milk, and butter. Bring to a gentle boil and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add chocolate chips and stir until melted. Finally, add the vanilla and marshmallows and stir some more until you have a consistent texture.

I had a hard time stirring in the marshmallows because it looked so beautiful and swirly while they were only halfway mixed! Maybe next time I’ll leave them swirly but for my first attempt I wanted to follow the recipe.