Today, I was a Christmas champion. Christmas magic? Perhaps. Amazing skills of spatial analysis? More likely. Allow me to explain.
Our office does a great job with the whole work holiday season celebration thing. Lots of food, lots of games, lots of gifts, and all optional. Well, the other day I found myself aimlessly wandering around the workroom, as I waited for my copies to finish printing. There on the counter was an intriguing game, “Guess how many holiday treats are in the jar?” One entry per person. As the copy machine chugged away, I counted the M&Ms along one side of the jar, then I estimated the depth, and subtracted a certain percentage for the larger Rolo and Reese’s treats housed in the candy jar. 400. Presto. Seemed like a reasonable guess. Then came the odd part, I made a grand story to accompany my guess. Yes, as the heat from the copier began to impair my judgment, I spun a tale to my co-workers waiting to make copies. Yes, I had gained after-hours access to the building through a coordinated breach in security, counted the contents of the jar, and determined the correct amount. A fine tale worthy of office folklore. 400. Bank on it.
Imagine this jar full (i.e. prior to a significant amount of snacking).
Today, I wandered into my cubicle and what did I find? The jar of candy! I was the big winner! That however is not the most amazing part. It was my accuracy that astounded. 407. I had missed the correct answer by 7. Less than 2% off. The office analyst had proven his worth. In addition, I also now had people suspecting that I had pulled some grand after-hours feat, evaded the security cameras, counted the contents, returned the candies to their original positions, and intentionally missed the correct number by a reasonable seven candies, in an attempt to avoid suspicion. This is how time is spent by the copier. This is how legends are made. This is how 407 count jars of candy are won.
I am Dave Paulsen. I am a Christmas champion.
CHRISTMAS COLLAGE COOKIES
“Inspired by today’s victory, I made a new holiday creation, the ‘Christmas Collage Cookie.’ Taking a base M&M cookie recipe, which contains a large dose of healthy wheat flour as a nod to my healthy colleagues, I substituted the normal 2 cups of M&Ms and Chocolate Chips with the contents of my newly won candy jar, which after my snacking came out to about 2 cups. There were some successful features and some wanting aspects to my experiment (see ‘Lessons Learned’ at the end of the recipe), but it is all good, because it was baked in the spirit of the holidays. May your days leading up to Christmas be epic and bright.”
½ cup Butter
¾ cup Brown Sugar
½ cup Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
2 Eggs
1 cup Flour
1 cup Whole Wheat Flour
½ teaspoon Baking Soda
¼ teaspoon Salt
2 cups of Christmas Sweets (mostly M&Ms with some chopped up Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and chopped up Rolo candies tossed in)
Plenty of extra M&Ms for topping
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cream the butter, brown sugar, and sugar.
Mix in the vanilla extract and eggs.
Mix in the flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, and salt.
Stir in the Christmas sweets.
Drop by rounded tablespoons of dough onto parchment paper lined baking sheets. Make sure to use the parchment paper, because when a random Rolo melts on the side of a cookie it will help a lot with cleanup.
Pack as many extra M&Ms onto the top of the cookies as possible.
Bake for 12 minutes.
That’s it! Cram as many M&Ms as possible into the top of the dough.
Makes about 44 cookies.
Revised Source: my wonderful, awesome, beautiful, and talented wife, Charlene.
Lessons Learned… If I had the cookies to do over again, I would have kept the Rolo candies whole and added one to the top of each cookie with a minute left in baking. As they turned out, mixing in chopped up Rolo candies tended to make the finished products have blotches of melted Rolo caramel (not a good thing). The Reese’s however added a nice subtle peanut butter flavor to the finished product.
Ah, see the wild variation from cookie to cookie. The cookie on the right suffered from a Rolo leak on the top and bottom. The cookie on the left turned out perfect, due to no side dwelling Rolos. The luck of the draw or in this instance, dough.