February 22, 2024

A Year of Gratitude – February 22, 2024

My gratitude found me through a chocolate crinkle cookie today. I was baking up a few cookies to fill our cookie jar in the farmhouse kitchen. I had dough put away in the freezer ready for just such an occasion.

I reached into the freezer, rooted around the different bags of cookie dough I had stashed away weeks ago and chose chocolate crinkle cookies. I couldn’t help but smile when I chose them.

As the oven preheated, I got out a baking sheet and lined it with a fresh sheet of parchment paper. I added a bit of powdered sugar to a shallow bowl and started coating the round balls of frozen dough with sugar. One by one, the dark chocolate dough became cloaked in powdered sugar. I placed each one on the baking sheet and waited for the oven to come up to temperature.

While I waited, I couldn’t help but think of my grandmother. I think of her every time I make these cookies. While this recipe is new, a recipe that I created myself, I can’t possibly separate it from the cookies she made every year during the holiday season.

She loved to bake holiday cookies. She made all sorts of them. There were a few staples that she made every year. Chocolate crinkle cookies were one of them. I always looked forward to them.

I started making these malted chocolate chip crinkle cookies years ago when my children were small. I remember fondly when their little hands used to help coat each ball of dough in sugar. More sugar ended up on the floor than on the cookies, but I didn’t care. I was happy to clean up a bit of sugar if they could make the sort of memories with me in the kitchen that would last a lifetime.

Somehow, my childhood memories of my grandmother’s chocolate crinkles and my children’s memories of these malted chocolate crinkle cookies are tied together. They are the best sort of memories.

You might wonder why I don’t just make my grandmother’s recipe for chocolate crinkle cookies. I have her handwritten recipe, a keepsake that I treasure. No matter how I tried, I could never make my cookies taste like my memory of hers. I just couldn’t.

I followed her recipe, didn’t tinker with the ingredients, baked them following the same instructions. The cookies of my memory had her love baked right into them. It was an ingredient I couldn’t possibly find a substitution for.

So, I changed the recipe just a bit. I made it my own yet kept it true to hers. I do bake my love right into them. I hope that some day my children will bake them for someone they love. And, if they want to, I hope that they’ll change the recipe just a bit and bake their love into them, make them their own.

For now, my heart is warm and full when I bake them for my children. When I do, I think of my grandmother and her cookies. That makes me grateful for my past and present. I’m so fortunate to have fond memories from my childhood and to be able to bake the same sort of warm memories for my children.

I hope that your day gave you something warm and comforting to be grateful for and that it treated you with kindness. And, if you could use a malted chocolate crinkle cookie, you’ll find my recipe right here: