Holiday Cookies!

I’m a huge proponent of baked gifts! They are personal and tasty while still being thoughtful. I also like the idea of spending time to create something you know your friends will use (or eat) especially when you have a good number of gifts to make. I wanted to create something for a bunch of the people who work with my lab in really important roles that often go unnoticed- the secretaries, technicians, etc.

I decided to make a few tins of holiday cookies and some cookies in a jar to gift. For those of you who don’t know what cookies in a jar are, you basically layer all the dry ingredients of a cookie into a mason jar and gift it to someone so all they need to so is add a few wet ingredients and bake! It’s a creative and fun way to give someone something personal and can be done with both sweet and savory recipes. Thanks Devi for all your baking help!

Ingredients:

• 1 1/3 C flour
• 1/2 C white sugar
• 1/2 brown sugar
• 1 C quick cook oats
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 t. baking powder
• 1/4 t. salt
• 3/4 C red and green m&ms
• 3/4 C choc chips
• 2 t. vanilla extract
• 1/2 C butter
• 1 egg

Recipe (for the cookies):

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F

2. Combine flour, sugar, oats, baking soda, baking powder, and salt

3. Add in vanilla extract, eggs, and butter

4. Add in m&ms and chocolate chips

5. Bake for 15 minutes and allow to cool on a wire rack

For the mason jars:

I tried a few variations which is why each jar is not identical. I recommend using a funnel and layering in this order: Flour, oats, half brown sugar, white sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, m&ms, chocolate chips, other half of brown sugar. Make sure each layer is flat and packed down as tightly as possible into the jar. I recommend using about a 30 oz jar. Also, make sure to create a label with the wet ingredients and baking instructions!

(filled jars)

(little notes on top!)

(ribbon & finishing touches)