New Year, New YUM: Gram's Cookies Cookie Recipe

What better way to start off the new year than with a little cookie goodness? 

Gram, of Gram's Cookies shares one of her favorite cookie recipes with us, so YOU can start your new year off right: with a YUM!

For those of us who can't find the time to bake, I'm glad we can find Gram's Cookies every Saturday at the Midtown Bazaar. She'll be sure to have loads of deliriously delicious fresh baked treats, including classic chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, white-chocolate macadamia, to her almost-famous specialty cookies, like MY favorite: Toffee Crunch. Be sure to stop by this Saturday, and pick up your favorites for YOUR favorites!

Got Gram? Gram's Cookies are made with quality ingredients and made with love.

 

Recipe:

 

Shortbread cookies were my grandmother's favorite. I particularly like the macadamia nuts but you can also substitute your favorite nut(s).  There is a rich but delicate flavor to this cookie.  Hope you enjoy it!

Macadamia Shortbread Cookies:

 

2 cups butter (softened at room temperature)

1 cup + 3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 cups all purpose flour

1 cup cake flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups finely chopped macadamia nuts

1/3 cup raw sugar

 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

 

In a large mixer bowl, cream butter, sugar, vanilla and salt until light and fluffy (2 to 3 minutes).  Add the flour and cake flour (a little at a time-since it will incorporate better) and beat until smooth.  Add chopped macadamia nuts and raw sugar in a small bowl.  Make one inch dough balls and roll in macadamia nut/sugar mixture.  Place 2 inches apart on a baking sheet, and slightly flatten each dough ball.  Bake for about 15 minutes.  Cool on rack. Makes about 48 cookies.   

 

Baking Tip: 

 

When are butter and sugar creamed together properly? 

 

These two ingredients change right before your eyes if you watch the 2 to 3 minute process.  The sugar-butter mixture will be chunky at first. Then it turns sandy or gritty.  The two will look like the mixer is flattening them against the sides of the bowl.  But, after 2 to 3 minutes you can observe that the butter will have lightened from pale yellow to an off white. With the aid of the sugar crystals and the air that you have beaten in, the butter and sugar are properly creamed.

 

Gram's Cookies with be at the Midtown Bazaar this Saturday, January 8th, from 10 am-4 pm when the Bazaar is back and open for business. See you there! 

Got Gram?

For the handful of you that follow my blog, the Citizen Rosebud, and regular tweets, you probably know how smitten I am with Gram's Cookies. Last Saturday, I carried 5 tasty souvenirs home from the Bazaar, and sort of, uh, "accidentally" ate all of them in a 24-hour period. Gram's Cookies are, to use a scientific term: "freakin' tasty!!" 

Gram's Cookies at the Midtown Bazaar (photo credit: Sharon Marques)

Trust me: Gram's Toffee cookies should be on your bucket list. 

So it shouldn't surprise me to see Gram and her cookies featured in the latest Midtown Bazaar's newsletter as Vendor of the Week. Joan Graves, along with her husband, Patrick, sell Gram's Cookies every Saturday at the Bazaar. While she's been making cookies for a lifetime, this is a brand-new business for her, and I wish her all the best! 

Years ago, Gram tells me, she would bake cookies with her young grand-daughter, who LOVED to spend time with her "Gram" and eat the cookies. It was a wonderful time spent together and the memory of it inspired Joan to name her fledgling cookie company, Gram's Cookies. I definitely can taste the love in these cookies; just like grandma used to make, only tastier. Well, her grand-daughter is all grown up, and I'm sure she is very proud of her Gram'ma and her cookie business. 

Joan Graves IS Gram. These are her cookies.

Gram has more than mere memories under her belt. She took classes at ARC and specialized in Fine Baking and Pastries. She uses only the finest ingredients: butter, baker's sugars and high quality chocolate, and with no preservatives. While baking for her neighbors, co-workers and the mailman has been gratifying, Gram recently decided to take it to the next level, and launched her business. Her first "gig" was the Marysville Peach Festival where she created a special fresh peach cookie in its honor.

Not only will you find the cookie classics at Grams booth, but an assortment of innovative cookie flavors as well. So just try to resist those chewy oatmeal raisins, the chocolate chips, the white-chocolate macadamias, and the crunchy peanut butters, and grab a chocolate coconut, a oatmeal cranberry and of course, the stellar Toffee cookies. I'm not sure your waist-line will thank me, but the rest of you will. 

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