Grandma Ma

My great grandma was always called Grandma Ma. She was a cute little lady. She was tallish and reallllly skinny (why couldn't those genes have been passed down?!) My best memories of her were in the kitchen with her black wired chairs with red seats. She always made homemade jams and other goodies. Whenever we visited, she always had a plethora of sweets and she'd take me to meet the ice cream truck and we'd share some ice cream treat, usually it was one of those Mickey Mouse things with the piece of blue bubble gum. She always gave me the gum. She used to send me fun letters all the time and tape money and/or pieces of gum and tell me to buy something from an ice cream truck. I never argued, I always listened to my elders ;). Her letters were written in small block print and she'd change pen colors randomly through the letters, I still have several of them.

Well one of our families favorite treats were these chocolate marshmallow cookies. More specifically they were my dads favorite. Since he turned 50 yesterday I decided to do some surprises for him. The first was the surprise dinner we had with just two close families on Monday night, he would not have liked if we made it big which was temping :). The 2nd surprise was collecting LOTS of memories from his childhood friends and family. The goal was to collect 50 and I think I collected almost 100, booooya.

Then Tuesday I got gallon sized ziplock bags and stuffed them with '50' of his favorite items, and some random items. He got those randomly throughout the day while he was at work. He really 'loved' the attention apparently.....anyways when he got home we offered to take him out to dinner but he wanted dutch oven leftovers.  After dinner I gave him his birthday treat (the night before I made an angel food cake/strawberry/fresh whipped cream trifle). I called my grandma, who called my aunt who gave me the recipe for his favorite chocolate cookies. He said they tasted just like he remembered, success!!

Here's a terrible picture:

I had to refrigerate them because I made the top 'frosting' with heavy cream and I didn't want them to spoil so they were stacked and not very pretty.

Anyways here's the recipe for those who are interested. It is only healthy, promise, just pretend like you're eating broccoli....(mostly this post is so I can always have the recipe since we tend to lose recipes around here)

Grandma Ma's Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies (or Cocoacake Cookies)
1 3/4 C all purpose flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 C shortening
1 C white sugar
1/2 C unsweetened cocoa
1 egg
1/2-1 C milk until stiff dough forms
1 t vanilla
36 lg marshmallows cut in half (actually this recipe made exactly 36 cookies for me so I'd only cut 18)

Cream shortening and sugar together until fluffy
Add egg and mix
Sift or whisk dry ingredients together in separate bowl
Alternate adding the dry ingredients and the milk/vanilla into the shortening/sugar mixture until it's all combined. I suggest only adding 1/2 C of milk to begin with because you can always add more but you can't take it out. I stopped at 1/2 C and it was stiff so I just left it like that.

Using a cookie baller drop dough onto well greased or parchment lined cookie sheets.
Bake at 375 degrees for 8 minutes take cookies out of oven, place 1 marshmallow, cut side down on to the top of each cookie, I squished them down a bit. Place back in oven for aprox. 2 minutes.

Let the cookies cool a little bit before transferring them to a cooling rack.

Once you get all the cookies out, make the frosting

I didn't measure this part at all because I'm allergic to measuring cups
A  medium bowl full of powdered sugar
1/4-1/2 cup-ish of cocoa powder- the more the merrier
1tsp vanilla (I used the kind grandma ma always used, Watkins, clear vanilla, in a glass bottle it tastes and smells delicious.)
Heavy Cream (can use milk but it won't be as thick or yummy)

Mix the ingredients together, I kept having to add cream until the frosting became pourable. Then I used a spoon and spooned the frosting on top of each cookie (while it was on the cooling rack with waxed paper underneath)

Then eat!!

I didn't eat any of them but I did try the frosting and it was pretty tasty.

My grandpa called me the day before because he knew I was making his mom's cookies and asked if I would save one for him so he could try them one last time....awwwww cute. Of course I saved him more than 1 despite his protests but once he had one I don't think he minded the extra too much :). He said they were good and my dad said they were good so I think it was a success. The best part was I was REALLY good at keeping all these secrets and got lots of surprises in.