Cookie Party Prep

I made Oatmeal Jam-ups from my 365 Cookie Recipes book.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup Crisco Butter Shortening
• 1 1/2 cups firmly packed brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons almond extract
• 2 cup All Purpose Flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 1/2 cups quick rolled oats
• 1 cup finely chopped pecans
1 (12 oz.) jar Smucker's Seedless Jelly

I couldn't get finely chopped pecans so I spend the morning chopping. I was instructed to make a "rocking horse motion" to chop more effieciently.

COMBINE shortening and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer. Beat at medium speed until well blended. Beat in eggs and almond extract. The Crisco butter flavor shortening come in these little plastic tubs. One stick per tub. I made this recipe twice to get four dozen cookies for the party so I saved the plastic tubs for crafting. Also, God Bless Mike's dad for upgrading his standing electric mixer and passing his old one one. Standing mixers are amazing. It was my first time using it since we got it (Mike uses it all the time).

COMBINE flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a medium bowl. Gradually add to creamed mixture at low speed just until blended. Just a note here, I do not recommend doubling your recipe. I made two separate batches of dough to get my 4 dozen cookies. There's a alot of dividing and rolling out dough later. Yay, mixer (it bears repeating)!

STIR in oats and chopped nuts. Divide dough in half. Wrap in plastic wrap; refrigerate 1 hour.This where your toned upper from weeks of physical therapy and walker use comes in handy. I refrigerated overnight while I waited for Mike to do some dishes. Cookies were a good motivator my kitchen was spotless in the morning (for a few hours).

HEAT oven to 350ºF. Grease baking sheet. I just used a non stick baking sheet. They're pretty hardy cookies. More like tiny pies than cookies. We didn't have any issues popping them off.

ROLL one half of dough on a lightly floured surface to 1/4-inch thickness. A WELL FLOURED surface. Do not mess around, flour the heck out of your counter and rolling pin. This dough is stick-yyyyyy!

Cut out with 2 1/2-inch round cookie cutter.I used a cup to cut circles. We got 12-14 each half of dough.

Place 1 teaspoonful of jelly in the center of half the rounds. Top with remaining rounds. Press edges to seal. Prick center. Place 1 inch apart on prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining half of dough. We used Strawberry for half and blackberry for half.

BAKE 12 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool 2 minutes on baking sheet. Remove to cooling rack to cool completely They were to heavy and copious for my meager cooling racks so we put them on foil on the cool counter.

Once they cooled it was time to package them up. I used regular ziploc bags. I punches two hole above the zipper with my crop-a-dile. Then I threaded curling ribbon through. I used glittered red and green star buttons I had left over from Riley's Halloween Rainbow Brtie hair bow. I used a large embroidery needle to thread the curling ribbon through the button holes. Then I added a small tag: Love, Katie Oatmeal Jam-ups. I tied a bow and curled the ends. I glued the small buttons to tags when I ran out of large ones. Alternating green ribbon with red button and the reverse.

Cookies all packed up and ready to go.

All done baking. Riley took this one. Don't worry I shook the flour off my pants before I left.