Photo NY Times
I don’t know if you have noticed, but I am writing this post a mere three days after my last ridiculously late post about back-to-school. For somebody who has been known to let a full FIVE MONTHS go by between some of her posts, you will admit that this is quite a remarkable feat, and I do hope that you will appreciate it as it should be. Granted, this will be a shorter post - for which you might be grateful considering my blabbering tendencies. But it will still be a post and I am not sure I’ll be able to get over how productive I am being today. I might even reward myself with a cookie after this.
But let’s get back to business, if I want to keep this post as efficient as I claimed it would be. If you have young children, it hasn’t escaped you that Halloween is this Sunday and that you’d better start preparing, including (or mostly?) mentally. To me, Halloween evokes a chaotically joyous but also exhausting (did I say chaotic?) afternoon spent dressing and comforting a bunch of screaming children who are dying to go out on the streets but do not want to do any of the work that is required for it. They want their costume now and they want it fast, but they do NOT want to wear their coat over it in 30-degree weather and they will NOT wear these ugly sneakers that just ruin the whole thing. And the tights are scratchy and the Zombie headband (yes, there is such a thing ) is broken the Velcro on the stormtrooper belt has come unsewn and HOW CAN ONE PROPERLY WEAR ONE’S STORMTROOPER COSTUME and the Darth Vador helmet is “bent” (yes mom, see, it’s BENT!) and the toddler will NOT wear his dinosaur’s head, without which it is impossible to tell that he was meant to be a dinosaur. And then, in a non-Covid year, you end up in a townhouse-lined “closed street” that is beautiful to look at and makes you marvel at the creativity and generosity of the families who put so much effort into decorating their homes just for the pleasure of passersby and your very own progeny. But come 5 pm on Halloween night, this charming tree-lined block ALSO turns into a real madhouse worse than your worse rush-hour nightmare in Grand Central Station, and makes you fear that you will never find your children again because they have most likely been abducted by a sinister Joker and his Grim Reaper acolyte under the cover of darkness. My point is, by the time you get home and have put your sugar-high hysterical progeny to bed, you are just about ready to collapse on your couch with a good cocktail (I recommend a good Negroni).
But, let’s face it, you also love it and, if you are not a native American like me, secretly wish you had had the chance to experience the joy of Halloween when you were growing up, instead of its often forgotten sibling of the Day of the Dead (known as “Fête de la Toussaint” in France) on November 1st, when you had to accompany your grandmother to the cemetery and help her water flowers on your great-grand-parents’ tombstone in a deserted and rainy seaside town a few miles from the Spanish border. Which is why, every year and despite the exhaustion that comes with the double-duty of preparing your first-born birthday party (he was born on October 30), you keep religiously making these Monster Cookies by Nigella Lawson, which you often mess up because you are stressed and tired and swearing you will never celebrate Halloween again, but which you still love because even on the worst day they just look and taste like your idea of childhood.
The recipe is straight from the New York Times – my favorite source for anything cooking-related as I already mentioned – and I will not bother to alter it. Enjoy!
Nigella Lawson’s Monster Cookies INGREDIENTS
1 cup/ 120 grams flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup / 80 grams rolled oats
9 tablespoons / 130 grams butter, at room temperature
½ cup/ 100 grams light brown sugar
½ cup/100 grams granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup chopped pecans
1 cup Halloween-colored M&M's or other sugar-coated candies like Reese's pieces
PREPARATION
Heat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder, salt and rolled oats. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer combine butter, light brown sugar and granulated sugar. Beat until creamy. Add egg and vanilla, and beat again until smooth.
Add flour mixture to butter mixture, and beat until smooth. By hand, fold in chopped pecans and M&M's.
Roll quarter-cup measures of dough into balls and flatten them into fat disks (about 1/2 inch thick). Place on a parchment-lined or greased baking sheet, about 6 at a time, so they have room to spread.
Bake until cookies are risen, dry on surface and very lightly browned, 15 to 20 minutes. They will be too soft to lift from baking sheet. Set aside to harden for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
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