Christmas Baking (A Blog A Day #5)

For the last few years, my dad's side of the family has split up the Christmas dinner, instead of putting all that burden on my grandmother.  I have volunteered for pies and cookies every time, since I prefer baking over cooking, and I can make them ahead of time and take them up to Detroit with me.  My grandma has always made several pies: chocolate with chocolate crust, chocolate with graham cracker crust, pumpkin, and coconut cream.  One of my cousins wanted to make the coconut cream this year, so I made the other three.  These were pretty basic - I followed the pudding pie recipes from the Jell-o boxes and used store bought crusts for the chocolate pies, and I followed the Libby pumpkin pie recipe from the can of pumpkin puree.

The cookies took a lot more time, but were so worth it!  Grandma uses the Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe, so I just used mini chips and made them smaller so there were more to go around.  I've made Grandma's fruitbasket cookie recipe before, but for some reason they cooked really flat this year, and weren't really "baskets" at all.

For the first time ever, I pulled Grandma's Peanut Butter Cookie recipe out of her recipe box and used that, instead of the one I had pulled up online a couple years ago.  The online recipe was good, but they weren't quite Grandma's.  I got ready to make the cookie dough, and read through the recipe, and I got really concerned.  This recipe has no egg anywhere in it.  I re-read the recipe several times over, thinking I had overlooked it - then I started thinking that Grandma wrote it down wrong - but I decided to go with it and see what happened.  These cookies were awesome!  I had no faith in this recipe, but they turned out soft and chewy, and exactly as Grandma's used to be!  Trust me, make these, you'll never need another peanut butter cookie recipe.

Peanut Butter Cookies (origin unknown)

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups shortening
2 cups white sugar
2 cups peanut butter
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons baking soda
6 tablespoons hot water
6 cups flour

Cream the shortening and sugars.  Add the next 5 ingredients, then gradually mix in the flour.  Cook at 350 for 9-10 minutes or until just starting to brown on the edges.