Holiday Bakefest Spectacular and Snowpocalypse 2009 has come and gone, and we have a new "batch" of memories to hold us over until next December! The day just happen to fall on the biggest blizzard to hit Washinton D.C. in years. The snow had started the night before, and was going pretty good by Saturday morning. It really felt like the holidays as we baked cookies while watching the snow outside. The recipe that I brought for cookie bakefest is below. I think it is my new favorite cookie recipe:

Cookie baking:

Maple-Walnut Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

Makes 12

1 1/2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal

3/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup packed light-brown sugar

1/4 punds (1 stick) plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

3 tablespoons pure maple syrup

2 tablespoons golden syrup

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tbalespoons boiling water

1 teaspoon pure maple extract

2 3/4 ounces (1 cup) walnuts, coarsely chopped

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Have ready 2 baking sheets lined with parchment. In a medium bowl, whisk the oatmeal, coconut, flour, salt, and sugar. Set aside.
In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine the butter, maple syrup, and golden syrup. Heat until the butter is melted. Remove from heat, and set aside. In a small bowl, combine the baking soda with the boiling water. Immediately stir this mixture into the melted butter until combined. Add the maple extract; stir into the oat mixture. Fold in walnuts.
Form balls, using 3 tablespoons of dough, and place about 3 inches apart on prepared cookie sheets, 6 to a sheet. Flatten each of the balls slightly.
Bake until golden brown and set, about 20 minutes, rotating halfway through. Transfer to wire rack to cool. Store in an airtight container up to 1 week.

In the end, we had hundreds of cookies, but I could not take many home with me because I had a ton of stuff to drag through the snow and to the metro.

A portion of the cookies we made. Many more were being decorated!

In the snow:

We took two cookie baking breaks to go play in the snow!!! We were the first out to play in the snow that day, and we packed down the snow to create a trail down a hill so we could sled. Our make-shift sled of choice were plastic storage bin container tops. We attracted about 10 other people who came out and joined us. We saw a variety of items that people brought to use.

Among the items that were used (or attempts to use) were the following:

a frisbee (unsuccessful)

plastic storage bin container tops (successful)

Plastic storage bins (unsuccessful)

Cardboard (semi-successful)

Large trash can cut in half (successful)

Trash can lid (unsuccessful)

A couple of legitimate sleds (clearly successful)

Cookie pans (successful if you could fit your butt on them, but bend if you stood on them)

Sliding down our sled path on a plastic storage bin container top

Slam Book:

During the day, Bailey showed Crystal and me something she found while she was back him in FL for Thanksgiving. It was our "journal" from 6th or 7th grade. It was a journal that our group of friends wrote notes to each other in, we would pass it back and forth in between different classes, and write to each other and about each other. It was fun to look through and see our handwriting, the things we wrote about, and remember our friends and all of the drama. It was amazing to look through and see all the mean things we wrote to and about each other. We were mean 7th graders! It was funny we would write something so mean about someone who we knew would see it. We actually had 2 more journals, 1 which was taken away by a teacher when they discovered it and called it a "Slam book". We got in trouble for that, but it was not a true slam book, because we only wrote about each other to each other. Never about those not involved! The other book I actually had in my possession until a couple of years ago and now I think Katie Roberts-Cullen has it. It was our "Diddle book" because it had a picture of a German cartoon character named Diddle on it. I wish I had that back!

Mookies:

Since the first part of the day is an all girl thing, the guys are off doing their own thing. The guys finally returned for the evening to help decorate "mookies" (man-cookies). The decorating would have never been accomplished without their dedicated work!

White Elephant:

We then had our "white elephant" Christmas gift exchange. I first got a gift that had awesome warm socks to wear at home and an assortment of cute animal key cover/toppers for your different house keys. That gift was too good, and I ended up loosing it when someone exchanged a finger shocking game for it. It is a game where 2 or more people put their finger in different slots. You then push a button and one person is shocked randomly (kind of like the hot potato game).

By the time I went home, I was tired and cold and full (from eating so much cookie dough and cookies during the day). I went minus cookie ingredients, plus cookies and a finger shocking game. It was a great day.