As usual, it’s about cookies. Delicious chocolaty cookies. The very cookies that are, in fact, more American than apple pie. What cookies are those?

Chocolate Chip cookies, of course. These cookies originated in Whitman, Massachusetts, but even more than the location of origin, the manner in which they were created smacks of the Yankee ingenuity for which we’re famous.

It seems that one day, Ruthe Graves Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn, was in the midst of making chocolate cookies when she realized she was out of baking chocolate.  Quick thinking and a search of her larder yielded the idea of using semi sweet chocolate pieces from Nestle assuming that they’d melt into the batter and make it chocolaty during baking.

As we all know, the result was not necessarily the in intended chocolate diffusion, but what a happy accident!

During WWII, local GIs received welcome care packages from their loved ones and shared the chocolate chip cookies with their brothers in arms from other parts of the country. Before long, demand for the cookies was spread throughout the country.

Eventually, Ruth Wakefield sold the recipe for the cookie to Nestle in exchange for a lifetime of free chocolate chips.  To this day, every package of chocolate chips contains a variation of the original recipe on its packaging.

Nestle’s Toll House recipe is still the most widely known way to make chocolate chip cookies, but there are many, many derivations of this tasty treat. Many people add macadamia nuts and use white chocolate chips. Some people substitute M&Ms or add pecans. Personally, I am partial to adding a third cup more chocolate chips than the recipe asks for.

What’s your favorite way to make chocolate chip cookies?

Now for our inaugural Stars’ Smile Smiley Cookie Competition! It couldn’t be easier to play. Here’s how:
Every Thursday at 12 PM EST, we will tweet a link to a picture of a famous smile. We’ll take the first 5 correct Tweets of the famous smile @smileycookie (http://www.twitter.com/smileycookie) in the order in which they appear and, using randomizer.org, we’ll pick one lucky winner. The lucky winner will receive a dozen amazing Smiley Cookies delivered right to your home! (or work. or whatever delivery address you give us when we contact you.)

Remember you have to follow us on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/smileycookie) to play.

Each person is eligible to win one “Stars’ Smile Competition” every 30 days. Participants are allowed to tweet multiple times. Winners’ @replies will be counted according to the order that they appear on Smiley Cookies’ Twitter screen

So let’s get started:
1. Take a gander at the handsome smile below. It belongs to a very famous man.
2. Can’t tell who it is? Don’t worry. We’ll be releasing 3 hints on Twitter over the next 3 hours.
3. As soon as you think you know who it is, Tweet @Smileycookie using the #starsmile

We’ll take the first 5 correct Tweets in the order in which they appear and, using randomizer.org, we’ll pick one lucky winner.

So what do you get? Just a dozen amazing Smiley Cookies delivered right to your home! (or work. or whatever delivery address you give us when we contact you.)

Good luck and happy tweeting!

All Purpose Cookie Dough

When it comes to making homemade gifts that come from the heart, all purpose cookie dough is a great ingredient to use in order to cut down on the amount of prep time that you need to set aside for your crafts.

If you’re too busy to make your own, all purpose cookie dough can be picked up in any grocery store for a very affordable price and tastes almost as good as cookie dough that has been made from scratch. But you know – nothing beats homemade, and this dough takes about 5 minutes to make so what the heck right?

Cookie Gift Ideas

With a little bit of imagination and brainstorming, you will find that there are a limitless number of different cookie gifts that you can come up with that are suitable for just about every occasion. In order to get you started, let’s take a look at a few of the more innovative cookie gift ideas that imaginative bakers have come up with in recent years.

Of course, some of the most popular cookie gift ideas are designed to be prepared as gifts for Valentine’s Day. With a little bit of pink frosting and tiny red hearts, you can easily make a big batch of Valentine’s cookies for everyone in your office or to bring to a holiday party. (Or, you can cheat and create your own heart cookie here. We wont’ tell.)

Some of the more imaginative cookie gift ideas that can be made out of cookie dough are regular cookies that have been dipped in luxurious chocolate. Some romantic bakers like to make heart shaped cookies that have been dusted in sugar to resemble those famous conversation heart candies that have been given out as gifts for generations with messages like “Be Mine” and “Let’s Kiss.”

Another popular occasion for making interesting cookie gifts is high school and college graduation. While there are a number of different types of cookie gifts that you can make to give your friends and family members when they graduate from school, one of the best designs that people make consists of a yellow smiley face that is wearing a black graduation hat.

In order to decorate this type cookie, you can easily use a hard shelled sugar frosting, but you can make a really tasty gift by using lemon flavored frosting for the yellow face and dark chocolate for the graduation cap and facial features.

However, the all round classic cookies to make for friends and family out of all purpose cookie dough are made to celebrate the Christmas season. You can use ingredients like M&M’s, mint green icing and cherry flavored speckles to decorate cookies in the shape of Christmas trees, Santa and snowmen.

All Purpose Cookie Dough

Regardless of how you decide to decorate or create your cookie, here’s a recipe that is quick (five minutes prep) and super easy: The magical, amazing, All Purpose Cookie Dough!

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups butter, softened
2 cups white sugar
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

Technique:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).

That’s it. That’s really it. Including clean-up time, that dough shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to make. And it’s like a black, roll-out-able canvas for your imagination. So go crazy and decorate! By the time you’re done, you’ll have the best home made cookie gifts ever!

GERMANY!

Among the things that probably popped into your head were Beer, Bratwurst, Sauerkraut. I won’t say that the stereotyping is wrong here. Germans love their beer, bratwurst (actually all different kinds of delicious wursts) and sauerkraut, but there is just SO MUCH MORE to German food than this trinity of deliciousness.

There’s also dessert.

German Cookies and Desserts

My walk to school every day carried me directly by a bakery. Actually, it brought me by three bakeries. Walking by the first one awoke hunger. Walking by the second made my mouth water, and by the time I got to the third, a mere block away from the schoolhouse, my self control had been completely broken and I blame
Bäckerei Burkhard Jess and their delicious confections for the 20 lb. that I gained in one year. That’s right. 20 lb. Don’t judge me.

German Gingerbread

Hanging in the window of this bakery was one of the most typical, well-known and recognizable German cookies of all time: The Lebuchenhertz.

Lebkuchenhertz

The Germans are famous for concatenation, and this word is no exception. It’s actually two words squished together: Lebkuchen and Hertz. Lebkuchen is a type of Gingerbread and Hertz is heart. The word Lebkuchen is a concatenation in and of itself. Kuchen definitely means cake. The “Leb” part of the word has been the subject of nerdy discussion for centuries. Some think it comes form the latin “Libum” or flat bread or possibly from the term Laib which means loaf. Yet another theory stems from the term leb-honig, which is the crystallized honey harvested from beehives which isn’t good for much else other than baking.

As with many ancient types of baked goods, the ingredients for lebkuchen differ slightly by region. Honey is always present, and cinnamon, cardamom, anisseed, allspice, cloves, and ginger are the most common flavorings.

Lebkuchen has a long history. The modern iteration of the cake/bread/cookie has its roots in a monestary in the German town of Franconia in the early 13th century, but it’s origin can be traced back to the honeycakes of Egypt.

The Egyptians baked honey-sweetened and heavily spiced cakes similar to today’s lebkuchen and buried them in the graves of their Pharaohs as gifts to the gods. The Romans adopted the recipe and called it Panus Mellitus, or Sweet Bread. It traveled with them westwards and as the more exotic spices of the Orient and Middle East became more available in Europe, so did this sweet bread. But anyway, back to the Germany!

Though Lebkuchen was found in Franconia and then in Ulm at the in around 1296, the city of Nuremburg is the most famous exporter of the sweet in modern times. In fact, as of 1996, Nuremburger Lebkuchen is a protected product, and must be made in the city to be so called.

The Lebkuchen can be found in many forms. The harder type is typically made into the cookies pictured above and decorated decadently with icing. They are as synonymous with Oktoberfest as giant pretzels and can be found at any major or minor festival in Germany, all year round.

So, the next time you think of Gingerbread, don’t automatically think of gingerbread men. Think about the big hearted German Gingerbread!

History of the Sugar Cookie

The modern incarnation of the sugar cookie can be traced back to the mid 1700s in Nazareth Pennsylvania. There, German Protestant settlers created the round, crumbly, buttery cookie that came to be known as the Nazareth Cookie.

Plain Sugar Cookie

This blogger sides with the Nazareth Sugar Cookie for historical reasons despite her own personal preference for chocolate chip cookies.

Ancient History or How the Cookie Jumbles.

That’s right. Jumbles. Arguably, the precursor to the Nazareth Sugar Cookie is the Jumble, a biscuit that gained popularity in the 17th and 18th century in Europe chiefly because of the fact that, as a non-leavened food, it could be dried and stored for many months.

Jumble Cookies

These cookies were introduced to Europe by the Moors of Spain and probably had their origins in the middle east where sugar figured heavily into the daily diet. These very early middle eastern cookies probably also included nuts and fruits such as dates.

Early Jumbles probably looked more like these middle eastern cookies than the mixture of ingredients that we see today.

Middle Easter Jumbals

Modern Sugar Cookie Traditions

The modern Nazareth-style sugar cookie has gained enormous popularity in America. Sometime in the 1930s it became traditional for children to leave sugar cookies and milk out for Santa Clause on Christmas Eve. Because of how easy it is to cut and shape the sugar cookie dough, customized sugar cookies like ours have become wildly popular.

It’s interesting to see how far the sugar cookie has come from its origins as hard tack for travelers. What was a necessity for survival has become a sweet treat for kids of all ages. What’s your favorite way to eat sugar cookies?

I had always wanted to be a mom, but my dreams were set aside after suffering a complicated miscarriage at 14 weeks of pregnancy in 2004. The next year, my husband and I decided to get divorced after four years of marriage. It was a very painful and trying couple of years until I met my now husband, Michael. We got engaged in early 2008 and shortly thereafter found out we were pregnant! We had a wonderful summer wedding and our attendants were his three children from his first marriage. On Halloween, our baby boy, Preston (aka Boo), was born, adding to our family. For my first Mother’s Day, my husband gave me a very special and beautiful sterling silver bead bracelet that spelled out “Preston.” I wear it every single day and think how lucky I am to have a wonderful husband, precious son and three bonus children who we see every other weekend. Life sure has some twists and turns, but if you go with it, your dreams will eventually come true!

We got so many great entries for our Mother’s Day cookie competition! You can vote for your favorite here.

It was really hard to pick finalists for this competition. All the entries were so heartwarming and sweet. Being a mother certainly has it’s rewards. Here are the ten entries we picked as finalists here at Smiley Cookie. Thanks so much for telling us your stories.

Elizabeth Fulton:
I’ve only had one Mother’s Day so far, but it was a lovely one. My husband and my daughter took me out for ice cream. I had a big banana split, and my daughter had her first bite of ice cream. A little shiver, but a great big smile. It was a nice afternoon. I look forward to my second Mother’s Day.

Hollie Geitner:
I had always wanted to be a mom, but my dreams were set aside after suffering a complicated miscarriage at 14 weeks of pregnancy in 2004. The next year, my husband and I decided to get divorced after four years of marriage. It was a very painful and trying couple of years until I met my now husband, Michael. We got engaged in early 2008 and shortly thereafter found out we were pregnant! We had a wonderful summer wedding and our attendants were his three children from his first marriage. On Halloween, our baby boy, Preston (aka Boo), was born, adding to our family. For my first Mother’s Day, my husband gave me a very special and beautiful sterling silver bead bracelet that spelled out “Preston.” I wear it every single day and think how lucky I am to have a wonderful husband, precious son and three bonus children who we see every other weekend. Life sure has some twists and turns, but if you go with it, your dreams will eventually come true!

Deb Morgan:
My son did at school, an entire book that he illustrated and wrote in third grade all about me! Why does he love me? “because she helps me with my homework, because she cooks good dinners, because she cares about me, she washes my clothes, she buys me rollerblades, etc,,,” He is now 18 and I cherish that book! I love all the gifts I receive from my children from the seedling that never grows but stays on the windowsill for a year, to tea bags in a paper teapot! Every gift is precious!

Monica Galore:
The best gifts I ever received were individual hand-made ceramic hand prints of my three sons.  My son’s made them in school.  Upon waking up on Mother’s Day, they presented them to me.  I can still see their faces beaming with pride and great big smiles. What a precious and sweet sight to behold!  These are such precious memories of Mother’s Day.  No wonder I love Smiley Face Cookies. They remind me of my three sons with their sweet smiles.

Sherri Craig:
My son who at the time was single and 20 yrs old. Bought me this teddy bear with a little jewelry box attached to it. I opened the box there lay a beautiful white gold chain with a pendant of mother and child the pendant was layered in diamonds. I told him it was beautiful that this is something you give the mother of YOUR children and it was much to expensive for me. I would feel better if he took it back and bought me something simple. He said, “you are a mom, your my mom and your the best mom there ever could be.” I felt the tears build up in my eyes. I didn’t have the heart not to accept it. I wear it everyday.
It wasn’t even the necklace I consider the best present it is the words that came from his lips. I must be a pretty good mom for my young son to say them without even thinking about it. That will always be the best present I could have had…EVER!! Money can’t buy words that are priceless!!!

Kimberly Harter:
No sappy story here just the truth. The best Mother’s Day gift that my husband and son got for me was a STEELERS watch and a SIRIUS radio with a year subscription. We were living in Maryland at the time and I was bumming outt because I could not watch all the STEELERS games on cable there. With the SIRIUS radio I could at least listen to them and the watch is the most worn peice of jewelery I own. I even wear it more than my wedding rings!!

Jo Ann Barko:
The best gift that drove stright into my heart was from my daughter Jacqueline.  Jacqueline went out into my garden and pick a few buds and one of the dogwood flowers. She then wrote this little note and put it all into a pretty silver leaft frame.  It read    ” Mommy,   You are the most beautiful person, and the most respected that I could have. When I grow up, I want to be like you! You are my idol and always will be. You have more than any mothers, I just hope I’m as good as you.   Love you forever, Bambino

Kris Rhoades:
My daughter’s school choir had a concert just before Mother’s Day last year and my daughter said that she was going to give me my gift that night. I video taped the concert, as I usually do, and during one of the songs she started signing the song. She and her friend had learned the sign language for the song and got permission from the teacher to do it that night. Of course I was worried that the video wouldn’t come out because I cried through the whole song. I was a proud Momma and it was the best Mother’s Day present I ever received! (I even posted the video on my facebook page so everyone could see it: http://www.facebook.com/krisrhoades?v=app_2392950137&ref=profile#!/video/video.php?v=75117605793)

Ashley Reynolds:
The best Mother’s Day gift I’ve received? Well, I’ve only had one so far! Last year, my son was 5 months old, and that’s all I needed. My husband and I had lost 2 babies by miscarriage the year earlier, so having my son in my arms on Mother’s Day, is as special as it gets to me!

Pamela Gage:
About 5 years ago, my Husband, Larry, asked our three sons if they would join us for dinner for Mothers Day. That Sept before, my middle son, Rob, had been married to our lovely daughter-in-law Liz, and I was having a difficult time with his “leaving” the house….as Mom’s sometimes do! We had a wonderful dinner together…and after dinner my sons each presented me with a card and small gift. My favorite gift that year was just so perfect, it brought tears to my eyes….Rob and Liz had made a certificate for “Time” to be spent with me….a whole day together! It was so thoughtful, and just what I wanted. A few weeks after that dinner, we went to the zoo, had a simple but delicious lunch together, and quality time that I will never forget. The best “gifts” in life don’t have to be expensive to be special, but time with family and those you love are priceless!

Now go vote on your favorite gift!

Click here to enter our Mothers Day Competition and win a dozen smiley cookies a month for a whole year!

I remember celebrating mothers day as a child. Gifts usually took the form of macaroni paintings or plaster hand prints. As the years went by and I began to have some money at my disposal, mothers day gifts started to reflect that: A fancy toaster oven one year, pearl earrings the next. I thought I was doing great until I overheard her talking to a friend in June two years ago. She said that her favorite mother’s day gift of all was the macaroni painting I had made of us walking hand in hand when I was six. Since then she’s gotten nothing but hand made gifts which are apparently much more valuable to her than expensive toaster ovens.

Enter Your Favorite Mother’s Day Gift to Win a Dozen Cookies a Month for a WHOLE YEAR!

Moms out there, we would love to hear about your favorite gifts. In fact, we’d love to hear about it so much that we’re a competition for you. Here’s how it works:

1. 
   Click on this link to enter the best Mother’s Day gift you’ve ever received.
2. On Wednesday, the 5th of May, we’ll pick the top ten finalists.
3. From Wednesday till Saturday, our viewers will vote for what they think the best gift is.
4. The winner will be announced on Saturday, May 8th.

The prize? Oh, it’s awesome: 1 dozen Smiley Cookies EVERY MONTH for a whole year. Delivered straight to your door, fresh from our bakery. And what’s more, you’ll get a special offer just for participating! Maybe we can’t make macaroni paintings for every mother out there, but we try our best.

Happy Mother’s Day and may the best gift win!

It’s about taxes. (I know … ewwwww)

Tomorrow is Tax Day, and if any of you are like me, we’re frantically looking for that last W2 form and wondering why H&R Block can’t find a way to fit us in right under the wire. It’s hectic, it’s stressful, and it’s silly all at the same time.

I have some advice for you. Calm down. Eat a cookie. (I guess this post really is about cookies…somehow everything comes back to cookies.) But seriously, here are 5 reasons why eating a cookie will help you feel better about taxes.

1. Did you know that sugar and carbs release serotonin which is the chemical in your body that makes you feel better? Comfort food is called comfort food for a reason: because it makes you feel better even when you’re stressed.
2. Taking time out to do something frivolous (like eating cookies) will give you a chance to distance yourself from whatever frantic task you’re dealing with right now. It might even give your mind a chance to relax enough to remember that you stuck that W2 form in an envelope and put it on the mantle so you wouldn’t loose it.
3. Tired? Need a burst of energy? One sugar high, coming up! Everyone always talks about how awful sugar is and how terrible calories are, but there are times when they totally come in handy. For instance, when you’re trying to stay awake after working on the most tedious task imaginable and it’s almost done…
4. Cookies are a great distraction for children who have lost patience with their parent of choice who has no time for them at this very moment. Hide some cookies around the house and let those kids have a nice scavenger hunt. My mother used to do this for us, and though I don’t usually condone using sugary treats to bribe children, there are some times when it’s totally necessary.
5. Reward yourself. You did it. It’s 12:01 AM and you’re just driving away from the post office box after checking 8 times to make sure that the envelopes all had stamps on them. Congratulate yourself on a job well done with a cookie that reflects the smile on your face. Then go to bed.

As a lover of all things cookie, I submit these reasons to you.  And what’s more, SmileyCookie.com is jumping on board. Even though we can’t do your taxes for you, we want to make you feel good anyway!  We’re offering a Tax Day discount of $10.49 for a dozen Smiley Cookies.  Just click here and cash in on your reduced price smiley cookies. Good luck everyone!

The Origin of Mother’s Day

In the United States, Mother’s Day was made an official holiday in 1914. It’s a floating holiday here in the States, always falling on the second Sunday of May. This tradition was adopted in many other countries in Europe including Germany, Greece, Latvia, Denmark and Finland. But the idea of Mother’s Day predates the official holiday by centuries.
The Greeks celebrated Rhea, the mother of the gods and the ancient Romans celebrated Cybele, the celebration of the goddess Cybele. Even today, Mother’s Day in different countries often matches up with more ancient versions of the celebration.

Food on Mother’s Day

No matter where Mother’s day is celebrated, there are several common themes. For that one day, children and fathers take over the jobs the mothers usually do, cooking meals and generally making mom’s life as easy as possible. These meals often have traditional elements.

Simnell Cake

Mothers Day Cake

French Bloom Cake

In France, Mother’s Day is not celebrated on the second Sunday of May, but instead is celebrated on the last Sunday of the month. A huge family dinner in honor of mother and a special cake decorated as a bouquet of flowers is traditional.

American Traditions

Making cookies is a lot easier than baking cakes. It may be for this reason that cookie baking and gifting is catching on in America, though it hasn’t quite overtaken breakfast in bed or the traditional dinner out. I still think that a plate of bumble bee peanut butter cookies from a 6-year-old is one of the best Mother’s Day gifts, but then again, I might be biased.

Happy Mother’s Day everyone!