Baking was my gateway to cooking. Growing up, my grandmother would bake up a storm before we visited to be sure at least one of our favorites was on her kitchen island when we arrived. She enticed us into the kitchen with treats and encouraged us to stay by not being too particular about holidays belonging in certain seasons. I remember decorating Christmas cookies on the hottest day of June! Like my grandmother, I love making everyone’s favorites. I also like to challenge myself with new recipes. Over the years some of my experiments have turned out beautifully on the first try, and others were completely inedible. (Note: I do not recommend broiling brownies).
The past few Decembers I tried at least one of the recipes featured in The New York Times “Cookie Week.” This year we made Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies and Mortadella Cookies in December. Life got busy over the holidays, so we finally tried the Popcorn Bucket Cookies in January. I started calling them “Anti-Resolution Cookies” because they contain so many popular items to give up for new year resolutions.
Anti-Resolution Cookies are ugly, yet delicious. They have a little something for everyone. We used Reese’s Pieces, M&M’s, toffee bits and Albanese gummy bears as our candy mix. I popped fresh popcorn for the outside, but it did not stick to the dough well (next time I will try to make the popcorn a bit drier and break it into smaller pieces). Despite following the advice to put gummy candy on the cookies after they came out of the oven, the bears still melted into blobs. I will experiment with harder bears, cooler cookies, or sticking them on with a bit of melted chocolate. The full recipe made more than I wanted, so I froze some of the dough (minus the popcorn and bears), which baked up nicely.
https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1027501-popcorn-bucket-cookies
