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Cookies to warm the heart and the home!

As a sales person for Nordic Ware, I get to meet with people from different parts of the country.  Inevitably, and especially in winter, they have lots of questions about Minnesota. Especially THIS winter. Today its -40 degrees with the wind chill factor. Which brings up questions number 1 – what is the wind chill factor?  (Answer: temperature it really feels like). 

Other questions I get from my customers and partners on the west coast include:

How does -20 and -40 feel different? (Answer: it doesn’t – it’s too cold to feel anything)

You don’t go outside DO you? (Answer: yes, we actually do)

And most interesting: Isn’t -40 the point at which your nose hair freezes? (Answer: not quite sure, that hasn’t happened to me yet)

It is so cold this year that school has been cancelled four days due to cold.  That is right, a “snow day”, as the kids call it, but it’s just cold.  Really, really cold.  A fanciful snow day would be lovely at this point. Which brings me to my afternoon of baking – with my kids and one neighbor pal.  Baking to pass the day, warm the house and put a load of sugar in my kids when they can’t even run it off outside.  Yes, I must be crazy. I live in Minnesota after all.

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I’ve always loved to bake. Teaching my kids the math, science and joy of sharing homemade treats with others have been some of our best mother/child times.

Today’s agenda: simple peanut butter cookies that are jazzed up with Nordic Ware cookie impressions.  I’m not a baking purist, I’ll even use shortening once in awhile to the horror of one of my fellow bloggers – I just love to bake simple things well.  When I graduated from college, my mother gave me “Betty Crocker’s Everything You Need to Know” Cookbook and I find the best classics are right there.  Including Peanut Butter Cookies.   My book is ragged and ripped and loved.

So here goes – after making our dough  – darn, I always forget that this dough needs to chill, so kids got a little movie time today, too.  Now we’re ready!

 

1 – roll ball of dough

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2 – dip cookie stamp in dough to make sugar stick

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3 – dip cookie stamp in sugar

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4 – stamp ball of dough

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5 – continue stamping (3 beautiful designs)

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6 – Fill up the whole pan (kids aren’t super efficient at this, but who cares?!)

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7 – Voila!  Adorable Peanut Butter Cookies – just that little step up from the classic fork cross!