Freezer Cookies

Chocolate-chip cookies fresh from the oven.

Grandma Mary Jean always had cookies in the house. And not the store-bought kind either. Homemade cookies: oatmeal raisin, chocolate-chip, and ginger snap are the ones I remember best. No matter the type or flavor, the cookies lived in a square, brown tupperware box on top of the fridge and would be regularly replenished with back-ups from the freezer. 

It was the custom at Grandma's house that one or two cookies would be enjoyed after lunch and a few more would be eaten in the evening with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and homemade chocolate sauce. Having been both frozen and co-mingled with various other cookie flavors, Grandma's cookies weren't always the freshest treats you'd ever tasted, but they were still pretty darn good. Slightly gingery from the snaps and extra moist from the oatmeal-raisin, each cookie tasted a bit like the others and yet still kept their own unique cookie identify intact.

At my house, I usually try not to have too many sweets around (mostly because I tend to eat them and my husband tends to not) so I couldn't even remember the last time I actually baked my own cookies. However, I recently had the occasion to bake 14 batches at once--oatmeal-raisin, chocolate chip, and peanut butter--so I think I succeeded in making up for that. Most of the cookies were given away (thank God!) but we do have a few ziplock bags full of yummy goodness in the freezer. Every time I pull out a few to munch, I am reminded of my Grandma Mary Jean's freezer cookies and am tempted to install my own brown tupperware box on top of the fridge. But for the sake of my waistline at least, I think I'll wait until there are some little people around who can help me eat them. ;-)

What cookie memories do you have? Do you ever bake your own cookies?