baking with mum

A wierd thing happened the other day. A woman at work approached me and said "I found a cookie recipe on your blog, the one with coconut and banana, and I made it. My family loves the cookies. I made some more with walnuts, would you like to try one?" Of course I did. They were great with walnuts and I'm so happy someone is making one of my favorite cookies for her family and made the recipe their own by adding walnuts. We didn't usually add nuts to cookies as my Dad isn't a big nut in cookies fan. Says that walnuts squeak on his teeth.

So tonight, when faced with a blackish banana left from T's lunchbox, I made a batch of oatmeal macaroons (as they are called officially on the recipe from mum's recipe box). I used a big cookie scoop so the cookies are about triple the size they normally are and only yielded about 18 cookies.

 But as I was mixing them up, I was back with my mum in our old family kitchen, with the brick wall and horrible 70's wallpaper (rust orange and brown) and the avocado appliances. And behind the ghost of my mum was the ghost of my gram, a big baker. So I hope one day, T will bake cookies and remember things we baked together and continue the tradition.

memories in the cookie tin

Yesterday, I decided to bake cookies about 30 minutes before T's friend arrived for a playdate. With my stockpile of frozen bananas still in the freezer I pulled a childhood favorite cookie recipe out of my mum's box.

Oatmeal Macaroons

1/2 c. granulated sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. melted butter
1 egg, beaten
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. coconut
1 tsp. vanilla
1 banana, mashed
1/2 tsp. soda
1 c. flour
2 c. oats

Combine the ingredients in the order listed. Two sugars, melted butter, egg,


salt, coconut, vanilla, banana



soda, flour and oats.


Drop from a teaspoon on to a greased baking sheet.

Bake at 325 deg F for 10-12 minutes.


When I was a kid and made these, I usually only ended up with about 1/2 the cookies the recipe makes (~ 36) mainly because the batter is so yummy I would eat half of it before it even baked. I managed not to eat the batter before baking this time, so the cookie tin is full of cookies (well, half full of cookies - I've been snacking since I got home....).

The boys enjoyed the cookies, although they ate all the oatmeal chocolate chip cookies I'd made the day before.