For Mother’s Day Poppy and I baked Emily’s favorite cookies: Cowboy Cookies. (The other name for them is Simple Oatmeal Cookies; but that doesn’t sound nearly as nice as Cowboy Cookies.) These cookies combine the best of other cookie recipes into one delicious bite-sized bandit. Start with an oatmeal cookie. Add raisins, ground almonds, and chocolate chips. Are they still healthy? Well, at least they’ve still got oatmeal. I originally found the recipe on our beloved Food.com (then called Recipezaar, a much cooler name.) I’ve been making these for years and they’re always a hit with Emily, thus a perfect fit for Mother’s Day.

Now, we’ll go ahead and let you in on our secret ingredient which we acquired from our local farmer’s market: sorghum. A farmer just down the road from us is in the process of bringing back this once well-used crop. When our Cowboy Cookies call for molasses, we substitute half molasses and half sorghum for a little added taste of North Carolina.

With all our ingredients ready to rock, we got to baking. Poppy was an excellent stirrista, complete with apron.

She was content simply stirring until she realized that the recipe called for chocolate chips. The temptation of measuring these tiny chocolately gems proved too much and she succumbed. Mummy will be glad to know that Daddy replaced the kidnapped chips so that neither Poppy nor the recipe suffered.

Finally getting everything mixed up and ready to bake, Poppy proved weak in the flesh…again. She went to town on the completed cookie dough this time. I’m not even sure the mind was willing to resist.

Finally, we loaded up our well-worn baking sheets and popped these babies in the oven.

Twelve minutes later we had the first batch ready to…wait for Mother’s Day? Nope, ready for a taste test. We did, however, make three different sizes so we would know whose are whose. You’ll notice that Mummy’s cookies cast the longest shadow!