C is for cookie!

I wonder how many other people participating in the A to Z blogging challenge will choose cookie? It's certainly an obvious choice...yet I like the idea of writing about baked goods while getting a solid Sesame Street song stuck in my readers' heads.

A run down of my favorite cookies of all time.

Jumbos: often called chocolate jumbos, or Grandma's jumbos, these rolled out chocolate molasses cookies were my Grandma Beulah's trademark. She cut them with the doughnut cutter, and made a boiled frosting (called, surprisingly, Grandma's Frosting) with cream, and sugar to spread on top. My cousins and I would seriously eat these until we were sick: they epitomize Johnson family Christmas in so many ways.  My mom and sister and I try to make these at least once a year, but they are sooo labor intensive, and sooo addicting, that it's getting to be harder and harder. It's so much easier to make a simple powdered sugar and milk frosting for white cookies. But I swear the work it takes to make them is a huge part of why the jumbos taste so awesome.

Chocolate chip: Yeah, that's right. In a cliche post topic I pick the cliched American Cookie. We go all out here at Languishing. I like the recipe on the back of the Toll House package (remember that episode of Friends where Phoebe and Monica are trying to recreate Phoebe's grandmother's chocolate chip cookies? And Phoebe keeps saying "It's French. Some fancy French name!" And finally they figure out she's been pronouncing "toll house" with a French accent? Good times).  My junior year of college, I lived in a house called the Dollhouse (which doesn't really rhyme with Toll house, strangely), just across the street from campus, and my sister would come visit from the dorms and we would make batches and batches of cookies. She taught me to take them out of the oven early to make sure they were soft, and we watched TV while we waiting for those 9-11 minutes to pass. One of my fondest memories of that house.

Sugar: Oh, sugar. Like jumbos, these have to be rolled out to be really awesome, and I rarely have the counter space. But when I do, I love to make big old sugar cookies, usually in the shape of hearts, get them just browned the edges, and then frost them 'til I'm dizzy. I used to have this great old recipe for sugar cookie frosting that used alum and raw eggs, but I haven't made it since I used older (still edible! I swear!) eggs one time and the frosting ended up tasting like earthworms. Such a waste of a good batch of cookies. Jess and Mom and I like to frost sugar cookies with our kids at Christmas time, and let the kids run the sprinkle application. Everyone goes home happy.

I hope you've enjoyed my stroll through Cookie Memory Lane. What's your favorite cookie recipe?