Cookies and cookie balls...

It was another windy day on the prairie.  On the Beaufort Wind Scale, I'd say we had a force of  8 -- Gale.  On land, whole trees are in motion, resistance is felt walking against wind.  Yup, a gale.  I really don't enjoy outdoor work on gale force wind days, so this little housewife stayed inside next to the oven.  I didn't do a Big Bake like the other day, but I did a small bake of chocolate chip cookies.  The men were out vaccinating the steers and so I thought they'd really love it if I made them cookies for their afternoon snack, and was I ever right on that!

They radio'd me, "Mom, do you have any cookies for us?"

"10-4, you bet I do.  Fresh from the oven!"

Here's a little trick that I do when I've had enough of baking a double batch of cookies.  I bake off all I want and then I roll the rest of the cookie dough into cookie balls.  I put them individually on the cookie sheet and then freeze them until they are hard and sack them up in a ziplock for another day.  The nice thing is that I can bake up a dozen cookies or just a few or eat the cookie dough right from the bag.  When it's time to bake the cookie balls, you can either defrost them and bake as usual or you can leave them frozen and add just another minute or two more to the bake time.  These cookie balls have come in handy when pop-in company arrives  or when the urge for a fresh chocolate chip cookie hits.