In All Their Monstrosity.

I decided to bake Monster Cookies with two boys, during a stay-at-home morning.

(Have you ever made Monster Cookies? They are so aptly named not for their size, but for their sheer magnitude. This is the most monstrous recipe in the history of ovens, and it could easily feed all of Santa's elves and a multitude of heavenly hosts. A friend of mine found that this recipe fed 75 people at a family reunion... it's a doozy. Delicious, and so well worth it, but my goodness. Settle in.)

Before we go any further with this story, I have to give you the recipe. Since you just might like to give them a try, and since you just have to read this recipe to enjoy the spirit of the experience.

Monster Cookies

12 eggs (Yes, 12.)

4 cups sugar

4 cups brown sugar

1 lb butter

3 lb peanut butter

8 tsp soda

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp vanilla

1 tbsp corn syrup

18 cups oatmeal

1 lb M & M's

1 lb chocolate chips

Mix all together in a huge bowl or container. Bake at 350 for 9 minutes, with more or less time if you like them chewier or crispier.

When you're measuring ingredients by the pound or in double digits, you know you're in for some big money. Perhaps I should have halved the recipe. Or, you know, maybe I should have gone with the Pillsbury pull-aparts. But, that's beside the point. I did it. We did it.

I started with the biggest bowl I have, certainly large enough to have bathed my children when they were newborn. We cracked egg after egg after egg...

And we took turns stirring.

Except this is what happened every time it was Tucker's turn to stir.

We're working on that.

Although the recipe is in itself very simple (you can't get easier than 'dump it all together'), it does get tricky in the counting. 18 cups of oatmeal? We went with multiples of three, and then we stirred and stirred. And it's no easy task to see that 8 teaspoons of baking soda are dispersed evenly and equally into three pounds of peanut butter. No lumps. And make sure everyone gets a turn. And don't lose count.

It's quite a job for the most patient multitasker. And it is indeed a workout for the baker with crazy upper body strength. (I am not she.)

Tuck lost interest a bit, and he decided to practice his rendition of Little Drummer boy, one of my personal favorites, for so many reasons. (Please don't miss the sarcasm in that sentence.)

As I added more and more ingredients, he had more and more 'drums.' Soon, I had a one-man band. That's quite a serenade.

It was a really beautiful mess, once we added those red and green bits of heaven.

There was a moment of spilled M & M's, and my children scrambled so fast to scoop them up and stuff them into their mouths. I could read their thoughts: Mom will put the kybosh on this when she realizes we have unlimited amounts of chocolate. We better get it while the gettin's good. Moments later: kybosh. They know me well.

Two hours later, we were still mixing ingredients and stirring, stirring, stirring. Not a single cookie sheet in the oven, nothing to show for our efforts. (But we were having fun. And they were taking turns. They were learning, and nobody was angry. They didn't even mind that they couldn't eat that which I had promised them. It was so very succesful, except in the edible round of the judging.)

Our stay-at-home morning was not designed to be a stay-at-home day, and we had a lunch date to run off to. So, I heaved that mammoth bowl of cookie dough (which takes up an entire shelf) into the fridge. And we checked it off our list. Sort of. We made cookies... but not quite. Almost. We did a lot toward their existence. I mean, a lot.

I baked many batches during naptime, and they each enjoyed a cookie and cold milk later in the day. And I got two sweet, sticky kisses, some chocolate fingerprints to track around the house, and some happy, thankful snackers.

Meanwhile, I have been baking more batches at every slow moment when the oven is not otherwise occupied, and still, more than half of the cookie dough remains. I am running out of Tupperware in which to store these baked wonders, and I'm going to start freezing them soon.

I think we're set with cookies for a good while. Perhaps Tucker can share them with his kindergarten class on his birthday. (In two years.)

Anybody want a cookie? I have some. And for the record, they're delicious.