Sweet Potatoes, Where Have You Been All My Life???

21. November 2009 · Comments Off on Sweet Potatoes, Where Have You Been All My Life??? · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

With Thanksgiving on our horizons — despite the retail industry jumping straight into Christmas shopping — I thought I’d share a Thanksgiving anecdote with you.

Like many other things in my culinary world, it’s Alton Brown’s fault. For those who don’t know, or hadn’t noticed from many of the other recipes I’ve shared, I’m a HUGE fan of Alton Brown and Good Eats on The Food Network.

I always had difficulty enjoying sweet potatoes. The only way I seemed to like them was in “pie” form, and only when it tasted JUST LIKE a pumpkin pie.

In 2003, during a time I put watching new “Good Eats” episodes on par with watching new episodes of “Friends” or “NYPD Blue”, I happened across an episode about Sweet Potatoes, entitled “Potato, My Sweet”. Usually, in November AB airs episodes relevant to Thanksgiving and other holiday cooking, such as green bean casseroles, frying turkeys, etc. I was mesmerized by how he set up this episode, emphasizing how sweet potatoes are underrated, not enough people like them in any form except as pie form, and demonstrated some outside-the-box ways to prepare them, such as with waffles and mashed with a chipotle seasoning. He also showed how steaming them instead of boiling helped preserve nutrients and flavor.

Am I really such a geek that I remembered all that? (No, I looked at the Food Network episode summary first). BUT, the steaming-of-the-sweet-potatoes definitely stuck in my mind and I decided to give sweet potato casserole a chance when we got to North Carolina.

I was the only one who ate any of it, but it was VERY good. Yum yum! I won’t give up, though, I’ll probably make a small casserole this year and see if my boys will give it a go again. Jacob’s been exploring all sorts of new flavors this past year and perhaps he’ll end up liking it.

We’re keeping it small this year. Our parents avoid flying here from the east coast in the cold weather months (and I don’t blame them — flying at Thanksgiving is nuts enough, if the weather causes delays or cancellations, forget it!) so we’ll stay here, and my cousin who lives in the area will join us. Last year Dave’s cousin joined us and it was equally cozy. I know many people who seem flabbergasted by such a small Thanksgiving gathering, but for me, it keeps it VERY low-stress and relaxing. When we spend Thanksgiving at home, we also use the day to bring out the Christmas tree and start on Christmas decorations.

That being said, I now reserve my big-classic-sweet potato cooking for pot lucks, when able. Sometimes I’m assigned another dish based on my last name, or what office I work in, but I enjoy making it at least once every holiday season. Today I’m making it for Timmy’s preschool Thanksgiving feast and I’m exploring variations on the traditional mashed-with-nutmeg-and-cinnamon-and-topped-with-marshmallows casserole. But with no nuts, of course 🙂

I think this is the recipe that’s going to win this year, and although it seems rather bland, I have to remember that this is for a preschool and if I want the kids to enjoy it at all, I’d better stick to a classic.

And for leftovers, this sounds like a good way to quickly use up leftover mashed sweet potatoes: Alton Brown’s Sweet Potato Waffles.

Happy Thanksgiving Friends!

Huli Huli Chicken, Part 2 — The cooking challenge!

01. June 2009 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

So on Thursday night we cooked up the marinated Huli Huli Chicken. Part 1 of this post was pretty simple, make up the marinade, dump in the chicken parts and let ‘er soak.

The cooking is the tough part. Because of the sugar content of the marinade, you have to be VERY careful how to cook up the parts. Low low low, probably for 20+ minutes, then you can turn up the heat at the end to give a nice crispness to the skin. I guess I could invest in one of those rotisserie cooker thingies, but we’re lazy and just want to throw the gas grill.

So that’s what we did, threw the parts on the grill.

What we SHOULD have done was roast the chicken first for a bit, or microwave it first, then throw the parts on the grill.

We foul this up (no pun intended) EVERY TIME! We cook the parts, then serve it up, then frantically attempt to keep the rest of dinner warm while we nuke up the chicken so the near-bone areas finish cooking, all the while drying out the exterior.

So enjoy some pictures of Dave cooking up the chicken, we’re smelling it, hearing it sizzle, looking at it cook up golden brown and delicious…

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I
From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I
From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Looks WONDERUL, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, at the time it was brought inside, it was still raw up against the bones. Darn it! We had to microwave it for 2-3 minutes after grilling to finish it up.

So word to the wise: if you want to try my recipe, bake the chicken, or microwave it for a few minutes before grilling, at least long enough to cook the meat up against the breastbone and thigh bones.

Huli Huli Chicken, Part 2 — The cooking challenge!

31. May 2009 · Comments Off on Huli Huli Chicken, Part 2 — The cooking challenge! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

So on Thursday night we cooked up the marinated Huli Huli Chicken. Part 1 of this post was pretty simple, make up the marinade, dump in the chicken parts and let ‘er soak.

The cooking is the tough part. Because of the sugar content of the marinade, you have to be VERY careful how to cook up the parts. Low low low, probably for 20+ minutes, then you can turn up the heat at the end to give a nice crispness to the skin. I guess I could invest in one of those rotisserie cooker thingies, but we’re lazy and just want to throw the gas grill.

So that’s what we did, threw the parts on the grill.

What we SHOULD have done was roast the chicken first for a bit, or microwave it first, then throw the parts on the grill.

We foul this up (no pun intended) EVERY TIME! We cook the parts, then serve it up, then frantically attempt to keep the rest of dinner warm while we nuke up the chicken so the near-bone areas finish cooking, all the while drying out the exterior.

So enjoy some pictures of Dave cooking up the chicken, we’re smelling it, hearing it sizzle, looking at it cook up golden brown and delicious…

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

 

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

 

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Looks WONDERUL, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, at the time it was brought inside, it was still raw up against the bones. Darn it! We had to microwave it for 2-3 minutes after grilling to finish it up.

So word to the wise: if you want to try my recipe, bake the chicken, or microwave it for a few minutes before grilling, at least long enough to cook the meat up against the breastbone and thigh bones.

Huli Huli Chicken Part 1 — a childhood memory comes alive!

27. May 2009 · Comments Off on Huli Huli Chicken Part 1 — a childhood memory comes alive! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

It’s time for another recipe blog!

I don’t remember all that much in my life before about age 4.  I don’t know why, I just don’t.  Just the intermittent here-and-there memory.

My family was living in Hawaii when I was 4-years-old.  My Dad, who was in the Navy, was stationed at this small base northwest of Honolulu.  My first solid memories were from Hawaii.

And here’s one of them: Huli Huli chicken fundraisers.  Click here for a history of Huli Huli chicken (thanks to the obituary of the inventor from 2002).  I vaguely remember driving up to a large dirt/gravel parking lot, perhaps at a church or a high school.  And you’d see row-after-row of rotisserie-like skewers, all covered with chickens.  I also have vague memories of large metal trash cans to hold the marinade (this was in the 70s, well before plastic trash cans, apparently), and folks using cotton mops to slop on the marinade on the skewers.

My Dad mentioned to me once that the chickens would be sold whole for just a few dollars (I think he said $5, but I could be wrong), and they’d be wrapped for you in newspaper!

I found this nifty blog entry here about a modern-day operation on Oahu.

As for this blog entry, what I’m going to present you is a recipe that seems to bring back the memories I had, but I’m sure someone will tell you that it’s wrong.  I’ve had chicken made with commercially purchased “Huli Huli Chicken Sauce” and that just seemed WRONG WRONG WRONG.  Too syrupy, from what I remember.  If you do a web search for “huli huli chicken recipe” you’ll come up with a very wide variety of recipes.  I see ginger, sugar and garlic as a common thread throughout, but from there you’ll see varied other ingredients: limes, chiles, honey, ketchup, white wine, etc.

Here’s the recipe:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

That’s my sister’s handwriting. She’s now quite the vegetarian, but she wrote out the recipe card for me and I still have it today. I didn’t photograph the back of the card, but suffice it to say that the back merely says to cook the chicken :-).

Let me go through the preparation steps I took today, so we can have huli huli chicken on Thursday night.  First, let me introduce the ingredients:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

There’s “Sugar in the Raw” in the orange sugar dish. Maybe because it’s really-truly from Hawaii, I am using it instead of plain white sugar. I feel more authentic that way…

Note the whole chicken…let me warn you, I’m about to show pictures of a chicken dismemberment, so if you’re adverse to such images, click away now!

Let’s first disassemble the chicken.  When I’m motivated enough, I choose to break up a whole chicken rather than buy the parts separately…it’s cheaper and I can take advantage of ALL of the chicken for broth, soup, etc. The first thing I did was take my kitchen shears and CUT down both sides of the spine.

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Now I can take the spine/back part and toss it into my freezer bag that already contains two other chicken backs…I’ll probably make up some broth this week for recipes later.

Moving right along…I got sick of cutting a little bit of the chicken, then washing my hands, taking a couple pictures, then going back to cutting, I decided not to photograph the rest of the disassembly.  I cut the remaining chicken into 2 breasts, 2 leg quarters and 2 wings.

Now I chop the garlic and grate the ginger.  I freeze my ginger, so grating it on the Microplane (BEST KITCHEN TOOL EVAH!!!) is easy:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I
From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I
From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Now we start to mix everything together: this is the ginger, garlic and sugar.

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

To pour 3/4 c. of soy sauce, I have to pry off the slow-pour spout thingy on my Kikkoman:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

That’s better:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Now that we have everything — garlic, ginger, sugar, white wine and soy sauce (I omit the MSG), it’s time to stir stir stir. I try to dissolve as much of the sugar as I can.

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Now I take a 9 x 13 baking dish and line it with a gallon-sized zip-top bag:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Add the chicken:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Pour in the marinade:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

And here’s what you get:

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

Since the chicken is taking up so much space in the bag, a little marinade will go a long way in the zip-top baggie. I will allow this to sit in my fridge for TWO DAYS, flipping the bag about every 12 hours.

From 2009 05 26 Huli Huli Chicken I

You’ll just have to come back Thursday night for the rest of this — I haven’t decided whether we’re going to grill or roast/broil this, it’ll depend on the weather. As much as I love how this tastes grilled, grilling bone-in chicken breasts is tricky. Balancing cooking the chicken through with keeping the marinated exterior from burning is always a challenge in the Vollmer house!

Orange Juice and Other Things We Take for Granted in the Food World…

16. March 2009 · Comments Off on Orange Juice and Other Things We Take for Granted in the Food World… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,

As promised, more about the funny OJ picture I posted.

There are assorted DFACs (Dining FACilities) scattered among the base. Different foods, different hours, different dining atmospheres. Most of the time I’m eating from the dining hall near my workplace 1-2 times per day…and it was never eating in the chow hall. I’d eat during my duty shift and I can’t be away from the desk for too long…so I get the food to go and eat in the darkness of my workstation.

I eat my largest meal at about 1:30am, a dinner-like meal (called “Midnight Meal”) and then I pick up some breakfast not long after sunrise. Sometimes I grab the breakfast foods during my midnight meal and just have some cereal and milk at my desk. I turn in in the mid-afternoon for a “night’s” sleep and if I felt hungry, I’d have a snack of some sort, like an apple, some yogurt, or if I was really hungry, a 6″ Subway Club sandwich on Parmasean Oregano bread.

Did I mention that my dorm is right behind a Subway? I treated myself once a week the first few weeks, but I haven’t been at all in the month of March.

In the DFAC there are a lot of choices…imagine what you see in a college dining hall. There’s a main course that’s usually pretty “comfort foody”, like roast beef and mashed potatoes, or chicken parmasean, or perhaps fried catfish with hush puppies. Then you have other options, such as a full salad bar, fresh fruit bar, deli bar and breakfast bar. And it’s a serious breakfast bar, comprable to a Shoney’s or full service hotel breakfast bar.

Also, you have a short-order grill, making awesome omelettes for breakfast, and serving up burgers and grilled chicken sandwiches at lunch/dinner/midnight.

Sidebar about the omelettes. They’re outstanding. The military dining halls seem to have this special way to make their omelettes…paper-thin egg layer filled with the goodies, then wrapped in the egg like a burrito. Or a crepe. I haven’t had an omelette lately (cholesterol concerns), so I’m going to show you pictures of the ones I’ve made for my family on our flat griddle as an example of what we get here. So yummy!

From 2008 01 23 Assorted Cooking

From 2008 01 23 Assorted Cooking

Did I mention the desserts? Lots of great options, Breyer’s ice cream, European-style gelato, baked goods galore. Seasonal fare:

From 2009 02 14 AUAB V-Day Cake

A lot of food. It’s tempting to eat full meals for 3 meals a day. Like the college dining hall experience, having everything prepared for me might make it easy to gain weight, like I did in college!

The food quality is decent, I guess. I’m again comparing it to a college dining hall experience, and in my case, Penn State’s dining hall is my frame of reference. Not a 5-star Zagat’s experience, but definitely not bad either.

Since we have it quite well here in so many other ways, such as this wireless connection with which I’m blogging to you, I’m going to avoid complaining too much about our food quality. Oftentimes, they’re serving foods I simply don’t like: stroganoff, baked fish, well-done steaks, etc.

Note: You might have heard on the news about “Kellogg, Brown and Root” food and construction services, and some of the contracting scandals in the past several years related to how they’re owned by Halliburton/Richard Cheney. We do not have KBR food service here, it’s offered in Iraq and Afghanistan and from what the Airmen tell me, it’s very outstanding.

Anyhow, there are also some basic staples that are in such high demand, food services had challenges keeping it in stock for us. Orange juice is the first example. I saw assorted fruit juice boxes for us my first day here. Some stray mango and strawberry juices. Someone mentioned that the orange juice boxes are good, too. I didn’t help myself to any on the first day, not realizing that I wouldn’t see those juices again in the dining hall for 60 days!

There’s a machine that dispenses juices from concentrate, but the output wasn’t very good. At my first attempt at orange juice from that machine, I heard the glop, glop glop of the concentrate chunks plopping into my glass, and I was morified! On occasion we’d have apple juice or cranberry juice from concentrate and I would just mix the too-concentrated output from the machine with some water. That was good enough and fulfilled my fruit juice craving.

I’d mentioned a couple weeks ago my excitement at getting some orange juice when I went to the Carefour store off base. Starting on March 10th, these cute little baby cartons appeared in the beverage cases in our dining halls here. YAY! And it’s my favorite kind, super-pulpy!

From 2009 03 18 OJ

We get milk here in the form of little 8 oz. bottles (actually, I think it’s 225 ml). Whole, 2%, skim, chocolate and strawberry. It’s all very good, but my stomach has a hard time with other-than-skim milk, so I stick with skim in my cereal. Or a bottle with my dinner.

Apparently I’m not the only one who prefers skim milk, we run out about 1-2 days per month. That’s a little frustrating because it’s very important to me to keep up with my calcium. But of course I survive!
I’ve started getting pretty creative in my meals lately — they’ve fully cycled through the menus here several times. Tonight I made a BLT sandwich: lettuce, tomato, wheat bread from the deli bar, some bacon from the breakfast bar. That was quite tasty.
Earlier this week I had a breakfast burrito. I asked the short-order grillmaster to scramble me an egg with a sausage patty chopped up into it, with some tomato and green pepper. Served it up in a tortilla wrap with some salsa. That’s a also very good.
I think I’ve grown weary of not knowing exactly what’s in my food. Call me a control freak: when I’m cooking at home, I make a point to know the ingredients of everything I make, but when faced with a dining hall serving up comfort foods like chicken-fried steak with pepper gravy, you don’t know any more about what’s going into you than at a diner. The food might be super-yummy at times, but I simply can’t make a habit of it.
I work a desk job, I sit on my butt for 75-90% of my time on shift. I make a point to work out 5-6 times per week, so I’m not gaining weight, but I’m definitely not losing weight either.
Like the laundry — having the food cooked for me, while it’s great for the Lazy Lady side of Major Mom, leaves me with a loss of control. I cannot wait to be home again to cook for the family and myself!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

27. November 2008 · Comments Off on Happy Thanksgiving!!! · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Jacob has been inspired to help this year, which is great! He’s making stuffing for us here.

Are We Hungry This Morning?

26. November 2008 · Comments Off on Are We Hungry This Morning? · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

For breakfast this morning, Timmy ate the following:

– 2 scrambled eggs
– 1 slice of French Toast
– 1 cup of milk
– 2 apples, peeled and sliced

This has to be a record for him — and I don’t mean the volumes of food. It’s a record for Timmy to eat such a variety of non-junk food!

I’m guessing he’s in the midst of a growth spurt, he’s been falling down a lot lately. Stumbling on his own two feet, and his legs are covered in bruises. He also has a pretty nasty series of cuts in a vertical line down the center of his face, from tumbling down our 3 steps between the family room and kitchen.

It’ll be interested to see how Thanksgiving dinner goes…

The Neiman Marcus Cookie

26. November 2008 · Comments Off on The Neiman Marcus Cookie · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

This is my last cookie posting for the time being. I’m going to the Florida Panhandle on Monday for some AF Training and will be back the weekend before Christmas. Yes, I could think of better times to be away from the family, and I will do what I can from Florida in terms of Christmas cards and shopping (yay, LL Bean, Land’s End, Omaha Steaks, Swiss Colony and Amazon!). I’ll start on the holiday newsletter once I get to Florida. Last year I started simply posting the newsletter online, and that will make things very easy to do from 1200 miles from home.

I’m not going to waste time going into the legend of the Neiman Marcus cookie. I mentioned it briefly on my initial cookie blog post last month, and simply need to refer you here and you can read all about it. Whether it’s true or not, every time I’ve made these cookies, they’ve been a huge hit and I’m always asked for the recipe. No problem! No big family secrets here!

For the photos here (taken around 11/15), I’m making a 1/2 recipe. I did a full recipe on 11/22, and it filled the bowl to the brim when I added the chocolate chips and nuts to the mixer.

First you cream the butter and white/brown sugar. I’m a Nazi about this — I set the mixer on medium and let ‘er rip for about 3-5 minutes until it’s fluffy.

Then I add the remaining wet ingredients: eggs & vanilla. Beat it to a pulp.

Then start adding the dry ingredients. Alton Brown and folks like that will tell you to sift all the dry ingredients together: all-purpose flour, blended oatmeal, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Then add it slowly as the mixer is running on low. I don’t do that…call me lazy. AB, I love you to death, but I just want my cookies! I add the dry goods directly to the mixer one ingredient at a time.

From 2008 11 25 NeimanMarcusCookies

Once the dough is all together, slowly add the grated Hershey’s bar (I ground up leftover Hershey’s Kisses from my Holiday Surprise cookies – refrigerate the chocolate for about an hour and then run it through the food processor), chocolate chips and nuts. You’ll want the mixer on the slowest setting possible, or you can even hand-mix it. The dough will be VERY thick, and my mixer actually struggles quite a bit on the full recipe once all the ingredients are added.

From 2008 11 25 NeimanMarcusCookies

Now you simply roll the dough into 1 – 1 1/2″ balls and pop them onto your handy-dandy cookie sheet or baking stone.

From 2008 11 25 NeimanMarcusCookies

A closeup of a finished cookie for your enjoyment:

From 2008 11 25 NeimanMarcusCookies

I’ll tell you what, you do this recipe right, and you’ll have mostly chocolate and nuts in each cookie, hopefully you see it in this shot:

From 2008 11 25 NeimanMarcusCookies

Cranberry Almond Biscotti

26. November 2008 · Comments Off on Cranberry Almond Biscotti · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

So as promised, here’s some more cookie closeups from the Vollmer House.

Cranberry Almond Biscotti. This is one sophisticated cookie…cranberries are always so, well, holiday! What’s cool is that the only fat in the cookie is in the eggs (well, the almonds, too, I guess)!!!! So that makes them as healthy as my Holiday Surprise Cookies, right???

So here we go…

The dough mixes up pretty straightforward in the stand mixer:

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti
From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

This dough will be sticky…be prepared to keep your hands floured for the next part:

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Now, divide the dough into portions and pat it into logs of 2-3″ width onto an ungreased cookie sheet, or, in my case, baking stone.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

You’ll bake these in two shifts. The first shift is at 325, so don’t expect the logs to be browned when they’re done, just a little puffier.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Remove these bars to a cooling rack. I use two spatulas, one on each end of the bar, to move them.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

After about 15-20 minutes of cooling, you will then cut the bars into 1/2 – 3/4″ wide slices.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Move the slices back to the baking stone, this is going to bake at a VERY low temperature, so don’t be shy: pack ’em in!

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

These will bake at 300F for another 15-20 minutes, until super crispy-firm-dried-out. The way biscotti’s supposed to be.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Unfortunately, on this batch, there was leftover sugar on the baking stones from the Holiday Surprise cookies, so pardon the green sugar on the bottom.

From 2008 11 25 CranberryAlmondBiscotti

Happy Holiday Baking!

Holiday Surprise Cookies

15. November 2008 · Comments Off on Holiday Surprise Cookies · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

This is Patricia (don’t let the Dr. Dave fool you). Tonight we made our first batch of cookies….

…but not before a shopping extravaganza at Costco on Veteran’s Day. Bulk packs of eggs, butter, sugar, powdered sugar, oatmeal, dried cranberries, vanilla extract…

…but not flour. There was a great deal on a 25 lb. sack of flour, but I couldn’t see myself hauling it home and taking up so much space in my tiny pantry.  Two 5lb. bags of Gold Medal from the commissary was fine.

So, the first batch of cookies: Holiday Surprise Cookies, courtesy of the Quaker Oats company. Hit the hyperlink to go to the recipe straight from the horse’s, er, Quaker’s, mouth.

I gave Dave the camera tonight and asked him to document our experience so I’d have some nice pictures with which to blog. He told me, “Okay, I’m going to be like Maryann!”. He did a great job, he took almost all the photos…

So, to start, we have to come up with a filling…this is the “surprise” in the cookie. In years past, we’d used Wilbur Buds, a Lancaster County, PA staple. In fact, the first time I made this recipe was to keep Dave and me from eating an entire bag of Wilbur Buds we’d gotten for Christmas in one sitting, I think. It was either 1999 or 2000…I can’t remember. The beauty of Wilbur Buds is (a) you can buy a combo pack of milk AND dark chocolate together and (b) the buds aren’t individually wrapped.

If I’d had the foresight to order the Wilbur Buds ahead of time I would have. But it was much easier to pick up some assorted flavored Hershey’s Kisses from my local mega mart. As can be seen in this photo, we had a lot of unwrapping to do.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

As the boys were unwrapping about 100 Kisses, in 3 flavors shown here, I was preparing the dough. It’s essentially a sugar cookie dough replacing about 40% of the flour with oatmeal.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

Look at those oats — your cholesterol is lowering just looking at it, right? Don’t worry…won’t happen: there’s 2 sticks of butter in the basic recipe…and I doubled it tonight!

Once the chocolates were unwrapped and the dough was ready, I set up the assembly line in the dining room. The boys were great — Jake stuffed the chocolate in the dough, and Timmy rolled the little ball of dough in the colored sugar and placed the ready-to-bake cookie on the baking stone. My job was quality control — I pre-measured wads of dough for Jake to stuff so they’d be uniform in side, and I made sure the cookies were properly spaced on the stone.

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

Does that look holiday or what?

From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies

We tested the cookies, of course, and everyone in the Vollmer clan gave them a thumbs up!

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