{"id":268,"date":"2008-11-15T04:37:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-15T04:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/11\/holiday-surprise-cookies.html"},"modified":"2016-11-27T18:36:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T01:36:50","slug":"holiday-surprise-cookies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/11\/holiday-surprise-cookies.html","title":{"rendered":"Holiday Surprise Cookies"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

…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…<\/p>\n

…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. \u00a0Two 5lb. bags of Gold Medal from the commissary was fine.<\/p>\n

So, the first batch of cookies: Holiday Surprise Cookies<\/a>, courtesy of the Quaker Oats company. Hit the hyperlink to go to the recipe straight from the horse’s, er, Quaker’s,<\/em> mouth.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>!”. He did a great job, he took almost all the photos…<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If I’d had the foresight to order the Wilbur Buds ahead of time I would have<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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!<\/em><\/p>\n

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Does that look holiday or what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
From 2008 11 14 HolidaySurpriseCookies<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

We tested the cookies, of course, and everyone in the Vollmer clan gave them a thumbs up!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[75,8,54],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-4k","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":690,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/11\/holiday-surprise-cookies-revisit-of-2008-post.html","url_meta":{"origin":268,"position":0},"title":"Holiday Surprise Cookies: Revisit of 2008 Post","date":"30 November 11","format":false,"excerpt":"Instead of recreating a blog post about one of our favorite cookie recipes, I've \"repurposed\" my November 2008 post. \u00a0Many of the commercial links from 2008 had to be changed, so I've updated the links to the recipe, some of the ingredients I like and the cookie-making equipment I recommend.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"baking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2770,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2013\/12\/holiday-cookie-roundup.html","url_meta":{"origin":268,"position":1},"title":"Major Mom’s Favorite Holiday Cookie Roundup","date":"04 December 13","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm a one-trick pony: I make the same cookies every year. I've written pretty elaborate posts about them in 2008 and 2011, so this year I just want to round them up for you. Today is the day I plan to address all of my Christmas cards once and for\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"No matter what cookies we make, there's always some for Santa! What cookies are you making this year?","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/IMG_0501-1024x768.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":71,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/02\/boot-tracks.html","url_meta":{"origin":268,"position":2},"title":"Boot Tracks","date":"13 February 08","format":false,"excerpt":"From 2008 02 12 Bo...Tonight I made \"Boot Track\" cookies for dessert for the family. I saw the recipe in Eating Well magazine a few months ago and told myself, \"I need to make that for the family.\"The recipe called for whole wheat pastry flour, which is an unusual find,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"cooking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2675,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2013\/10\/peanut-butter-cookies.html","url_meta":{"origin":268,"position":3},"title":"The Best Peanut Butter Cookies Ever!","date":"21 October 13","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 This past weekend I made peanut butter cookies. In part because I had a jar of peanut butter that needed to be finished off ASAP. It was \"natural\" peanut butter that had separated during our move to Colorado and didn't look so hot. I figured mixed into the cookie\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"baking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/PeanutButterCookies.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":270,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/11\/cranberry-almond-biscotti.html","url_meta":{"origin":268,"position":4},"title":"Cranberry Almond Biscotti","date":"26 November 08","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"christmas\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":692,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2011\/12\/cranberry-almond-biscotti-from-2008.html","url_meta":{"origin":268,"position":5},"title":"Cranberry Almond Biscotti: From 2008","date":"04 December 11","format":false,"excerpt":"I made these last evening also. \u00a0I didn't have enough almonds, but had plenty of almond extract so these taste SO GOOD this year!******************************Cranberry Almond Biscotti. This is a recipe I've been making for over 10 years. \u00a0This is one sophisticated cookie...cranberries are always so, well, holiday! What's cool is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"baking\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4854,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268\/revisions\/4854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}