Weekend Project: Canning Cookie Mix

If you're like me, passionate about homemade cookies, not choosing to partake in store-bought, hard, crumbly concoctions, then this tip will set your cookie-baking lifestyle free!!! My cookie-of-choice is the Chocolate Chip. I won't touch a Chips-A-Hoooie...not if it was the last cookie on earth. When the desire hits, very often I am just too tired and too overwhelmed to make a mess of the kitchen...until now. While the idea is not new, the method to my madness IS: Canning cookies from scratch and stocking the pantry for months to come in just one easy, quick session. By making the mess once, in assembly line fashion, cookie making can be done even if my energy is low or my time is short. I can have delicious, homemade Chocolatey Chip cookies in no time at all, just by getting the work done ahead. As an added benefit, last minute requests for bake-sale goodies are "no-sweat"; thanking a friend's thoughfulness is a sweet treat; and little gifts for the hostess are ready and waiting to go.

Directions: Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix

To can cookie mix, you'll need quart size canning jars and if you use a wide mouth funnel, it makes it a bit easier to pour your ingredients. Set up your canning jars like an assembly line and add one ingredient at a time to each jar before you move on to the next jar. Your kids will love doing it--less labor for you!

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups flour
  
• 1 tsp. baking soda


• 1 tsp. salt


• 3/4 cup sugar


• 3/4 cup brown sugar

We chose not to add the chocolate chips because it's soo easy to rip open a bag (and there wasn't room). After all of the dry ingredients are added to your jars, cover tightly with canning lids. To make it even easier, we have provided printable directions and the remaining ingredients needed to bake your canned cookies. Just print, cut out, punch a hole, add a ribbon, and you have a sweet treat ready to make or give the next time you need/crave it.

Making It In America Is Green

We at the Dennis Port General Store are excited to share our recently unveiled American Made featured category on our website. Showcasing products made in the U.S.A, our American Made section is full of unique and useful kitchen gadgets, cutlery, candles, bath & body products, puzzles, and handcrafted items. Some of our featured companies still producing goods in America include Dexter Russell Cutlery, Lodge Cast Iron, and NordicWare cookware and bakeware. Being retailers for the last 20 years, we have watched with dismay as our favorite companies disappear, move manufacturing overseas, or become crushed from competition against cheaper, inferior products. One of our favorite linen companies, Stevens Linens out of Dudley, Mass, couldn't even get their raw materials within the U.S. anymore. Can you imagine, an American company having to import cotton? The American consumer's passionate, eternal quest for the "cheapest" is often ignorant to the "best" and has certainly been blind to the vitality of American manufacturing jobs. In today's "buy it local / green jobs" environment, it's our opinion that the real "green jobs" are the jobs in which Americans are doing the manufacturing. So here at Dennis Port General Store, we will continue to choose to sell the American made Clam Knife instead of the one made in China, as long as it's possible.