Cooking With Jackson is Back!

Now that most of the chaos of moving halfway across the country is behind us, I decided that it was high time to bring on another round of “Cooking With Jackson”!

Speaking of Seth, he’s still out in ND and every other time that I’ve talked to him they’ve been rained out so he’s gone duck hunting instead. When he called this morning he had limited out every time and only had 4 boxes of shells left. To put that into perspective, we had a small room in our old house that was filled with boxes of shells, a couple boxes in each vehicle, a box or two above the cabinets in the kitchen in case a squirrel happened by, and a couple of boxes in our bedroom closet. A very conservative estimate would put our average inventory at 672 boxes of shells at any given time.

Now that I’ve gone completely off the subject, I’ll get back to the recipe that Jackson and I decided to make. My nieces live in the apartment building next to us and between the two of them, they are allergic to nuts, dairy, and eggs. In other words, my home and all of my baked goods are an allergic reaction waiting to happen.

I was reading my friend, Amy’s blog and words cannot describe my excitement when I saw that she had posted the recipe for her Great Grandma Emily’s Pumpkin Cookies! Here it is:

Great Grandma Emily’s Pumpkin Cookies

1 C. brown sugar

1 C. cooked or canned pumpkin

1/2 C. oil

2 C. flour

1 t soda

1 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1/2 t cinnamon

1/2 t nutmeg

1/4 t ginger

1 c raisins (optional)

1/2 c chopped nuts (optional)

Combine all ingredients and drop by teaspoonful onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 for 12-15 minutes. Cool slightly before moving to cooling rack.

Easy Recipe? Check. No dairy or eggs? Check. Tucker napping? Check. I decided it would be the perfect activity for Jackson and I to do together, so I made a pile of ingredients (note: when moving you will always be missing one or more crucial ingredients) and preheated the oven.

Brown sugar…

Pumpkin…Is it weird that the only thing I could think about while I was digging in the can of pumpkin was dirty diapers?

Olive oil…

You should have seen the look on Jackson’s face when I brought out his cooking apron. I have a matching pink one and we always wear them when we cook together. Apparently that apron means a lot to him!

Flour…

Pretend there is a picture of Jackson dumping baking soda in here. I had a picture, but it didn’t turn out so well and my weird hand was in there messing it up anyway.

How cute are those little hands dumping the baking powder into the flour?

Another cute little hand dumping the salt. He waited so patiently to dump each ingredient until I had the camera ready!

Cinnamon…

Nutmeg…

Ginger…

The recipe doesn’t say to sift the dry ingredients, but I have a tongue that is very sensitive to the taste of baking powder. My intense love of hot baking powder biscuits slathered in melty butter has been tempered by the many small chunks of baking powder that I will invariably find in said biscuits.
Besides, it was so funny to watch Jackson struggle to hold the sifter over the bowl while he was turning the handle!

Next, our little baker stirred the brown sugar, pumpkin, and oil together.

Then, he dumped the dry ingredients in…

And with his uncombed curls in disarray, proceeded to mix everything together.

All of the commotion in the kitchen woke Tucker up from his nap, so he sauntered out of his room just in time for a fresh cookie.

Conveniently.

He doesn’t know that I’m on to him.

(Notice Jackson sneaking some dough in the background.)

When the cookies were done, I could not get them into those little hands fast enough. The boys always like cookies, but I have never seen Jackson react the way he did with these. He literally started running around the living room screaming, “I love these cookies! I love these cookies!”

Coincidentally, I had a message from the apartment management on my phone today saying that someone had complained about children being too loud and banging on the walls.

By the time we were done sampling, this was all that we had left. I know that my photography skills are sorely lacking and these are on a paper plate and they are not nearly as pretty as the cookies that Amy made, but give poor Jackson a break. He’s only three!

We used white flour instead of wheat and powdered suger and water for frosting. I didn’t have any cream cheese and this way Cambria and Bella could enjoy them also. The girls loved them and the boys cried when we got home and they discovered that we had no more cookies.

I guess I’ll be making them again!

Thanks for the recipe Amy!