Hostess/Thank You Gifts

To thank many of the friends who did so much for us while we were recovering from H's birth, I made these Cowgirl Cookies in a jar, as featured on Bakerella's blog.

I made them the weekend before I was induced, basically it's a yummy oatmeal, chocolate chip, M&M cookie with the mix all in the jar.  All you add is vanilla, butter, and an egg.  This year I've been really big on hostess and/or thank you gifts because I think it's important to show gratitude to those who have gone out of the way for you. I think it's really classy to share a little something with someone who has taken the time to do you a kindness, so I've started to stock up my house with all sorts of little homemade or relatively inexpensive gifts to have on hand in a pinch, if I've been invited to someone's home for dinner or if someone's agreed to babysit the munchkin for us while we go live it up.

For this recipe, I took advantage of the pastel M&Ms that were on the shelves for Easter.  I even found white chocolate M&Ms for some of the jars, which were AMAZING and paired with the chocolate chips, having two types of chocolate in the cookies really kicked them up a notch.  D has already deemed them the best cookies I've ever made. 

When I made them, I couldn't fit the nuts in most of the jars, I guess I didn't pack them down enough, but I figured better to give them without the nuts in case people have allergies.  I made these as I mentioned, before I gave birth, so I was diabetic and couldn't even taste them.  They make two dozen and since I couldn't have sweets, I formed all the cookies into balls and froze the dough so I could pull a couple cookies out of the freezer and let the dough balls defrost on the counter while I cooked dinner.  Then after dinner I baked them in the toaster oven and served them to D with a glass of milk for dessert.  I did notice (and my mom had the same problem with this recipe) that the balls didn't really spread properly in the oven, so I made sure to squish the cookies down a bit with the back of a wooden spoon before I put them in the oven.

And I calculated that each of these cookies comes out to 4 WW points.  Totally worth it when I have extra points lying around!