It's Not Christmas Without Burned Cookies

Every year our Christmas tradition is baking cookies and decorating them with icing and sprinkles.  It started with my Grandma and now that she's passed, we started it this year with my daughter, who is three and a half.  She was so excited you would have thought she won the lottery.  Things were going well at first. 


After a few batches, my daughter started to lose interest so we moved on to peanut butter balls and let her get down and play with her dolls.  We started to melt chocolate on the stove.  I turned to my Mom and said, "I feel like this chocolate is burning."

She replied and I quote, "Nah, I'm sure it's just that a little water got spilled on the burner."

Well, and hour or so passed, the peanut butter balls were almost done and suddenly...smoke started POURING from the oven. 

"Oh, I guess I know what we've been smelling now," my Mom says and starts laughing hysterically.  "I forgot to set the timer for the last batch." 

This is what she pulls from the oven:






These are NOT chocolate cookies.  They were supposed to be your standard sugar cookie, with a light tan color.  Now they are cooling outside after my daughter said, "Mommy, it smells kind of funny in here."

But the truth is, I was delighted by these events.  When I was growing up, we almost never got through a Christmas without burned cookies.  It's just the way my Mom is and it works for us.  In fact, I texted my brothers and they were so mad they missed the yearly burned cookie event!  They were hoping it wouldn't happen until we were all together.  Truthfully I thought my Mom had finally grown out of this burning cookie phase in her life, but I'm glad she hasn't!  It's a fun tradition to pass on.  The other batches are always delicious!