My young friend, Meria was about 3 years old when I recorded her instructions for baking cookies. That was a couple of years ago.
She had just finished helping her mom make chocolate chip cookies and I asked her to tell me the recipe so I could record it. She was exuburant in the telling, to say the least. I love listening to her on this recording (translated below.) The other voices on the recording are mine and my friends voices, Brenda’s and Tiffany’s (Meria’s mom.)
If you have trouble getting the recording to play, try clicking the volume button on the right a couple of times. Also wait a second after clicking the start arrow — it takes a sec to load.
Ready set go! First you roll roll roll. And you smash smash smash. The cookies are circles. And we make little pieces squish apart.
Fat cookies for big kids and fat cookies for big people. You don’t put m&ms, you put chocolate chips on them.
(Meria kept getting distracted by the needle on the recording device …)
After you make the cookies into circles, you make make make make, then put them in the oven. After they are in the oven you eat them!
(Bit of a discussion about sharing …) Let’s just share. Once I cook them, then I’ll share. I don’t share to boys. I share to girls. I’ll share with Mr. T (one of her favorite adult guys) I’m going to share with Mr. T! I’ll share with Gretchen, and you (Brenda) and you (Maureen) and mom and the new baby.
That’s how you make my cookies! — Meria
I made the cookies pictured above last week and offered them to gallery visitors over the weekend. They disappeared pretty quickly. My recipe is a slight variation on the traditional Toll House chocolate chip cookies. I add twice as many nuts (pecans) as called for in the recipe, decrease the sugar by 1/2 cup, triple the vanilla, add organic coconut flavoring and I use chunks of Extra Dark Shaman Organic Chocolate instead of chocolate chips. These are so scrummy.