Big cookies have always been a part of our family. They have been there to help celebrate our happy times and endure our stressful ones. An Old-Fashioned Iced Molasses Cookie tucked into a lunch box brought a bit of comfort from home on that first day of school. On hectic mornings there were Morning Glory Breakfast Cookies to grab on the way out the door. I have lost count of the boxes of cookies that followed the kids to college. I think baking and sending those cookies soothed my empty-nest blues as much as the children enjoyed getting them. When my husband was teaching our son how to drive, he came home to unwind with his favorite Gingerbread Giants. And when our daughter rented her first apartment, we baked Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies. Now that my cookie-baking mother has retired from baking, I send her and dad Vanilla Butter Rounds and Jumbo Almond Elephant Ears. When our son, Peter, married Kate, every guest left with a bag of Big-Hearted Butter Shortbread. The Happy Birthday Oatmeal Cookie became a baby-welcoming cookie when our grandchildren were born.
Measuring milestones, making us feel better, and spreading happiness take very big cookies.
These cookies cover the cookie jar world—in a big way. A brief “Taming the Cookie Monster” chapter includes basic cookie making, baking, and storing information. Three recipe chapters follow, which arrange the cookies into chewy, crisp, and sandwich groups. Planning-ahead information is given at the bottom of each recipe, so it is easy to choose the cookies that fit into your time schedule. A quick glance shows the number of cookies that the recipe makes, the time it takes to prepare each batch of cookies, and the baking temperature and approximate baking time. Chocolate Chunk Mountains, Super S’more Crisps, Oatmeal Trailblazers, Chocolate Peppermint Crunch Cookie Bark, Lemon Whoopie Pies—they are all here, ready for lunch bags, after-school snacks, sunny picnics, challenging hikes, soothing of bruises, and making life a whole lot sweeter.
When I told people I was writing a book called Big Fat Cookies, every single person had the same reaction. First they smiled, then the smile became a big grin, and then they laughed, quite a bit. If just the thought of a big cookie does that, you can imagine the pure pleasure that baking and eating these cookies brings. I thought that writing this book would be fun. It was. But, somewhere between the Chocolate Chip–Stuffed Cookies and the Super-Fudge Brownie-Drop Ice Cream Sandwiches, I realized that baking the cookies was fun, sharing the cookies was fun, and eating them, of course, was the best part of all. And then, I too smiled, and laughed, and took another bite.