With less than a week until Christmas, you’re probably simultaneously craving a sweet treat and looking for something that’s dead easy and fast. How about a no-bake, single-bowl cookie recipe?
These are great to make with kids, and if your kids are a little older and capable of using a mixer, they can make them without supervision.
Chocolate Snowball Cookies (this isn’t the name I grew up calling these cookies, but their original name, a catch-all term for native people such as the Inuits living in icy climates considered acceptable as recently as 20 years ago, is a term that’s gone out of vogue and is now considered racist)
In a bowl, combine:
- 1.5 sticks (12 Tbs) of softened butter (malleable but not drippy)
- 3/4 c sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 3 Tbs cocoa powder
- 2 cups oats (I prefer regular, because those oats are hardiest, but quick-cook also do fine; instant gives you a much mushier cookie, but will do in a pinch)
(If you’re crunched for time, you can put the dough in the fridge and make the cookies later.)
Take a spoonful of the dough and roll it in your hands to make a roughly spherical shape.
Roll the cookie in powdered sugar.
Voila! Pop it in your mouth or put aside for later.
Repeat.
Makes three dozen or so if you refrain from snacking while baking.
I find these so addictive that I recommend making a double batch so they don’t disappear before you realize it.
While you’re baking, here are a couple songs from Darlene Love, whom we were lucky enough to see last night. The first, “All Alone at Christmas,” is from Home Alone 2, written for her by Steven Van Zandt:
And the second is her signature Christmas song, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” first recorded for the 1963 Phil Spector-produced A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records and popularized for younger generations by being the final song of the annual Christmas episode of The Late Show with David Letterman (this is from 2005):