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December 22 is National Cookie Exchange Day

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Today is National Cookie Exchange Day. Take a break from last-minute decorating, shopping, wrapping, and planning for the coming holiday. Happy? Humbug? Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, it’s difficult to avoid the stress leading up to the biggest holiday of the year.

National Cookie Exchange Day

Sit back and eat a cookie or three. Swap your favorites with friends and family, try one of the following recipes:

Snickerdoodles
Molasses Drops
Classic Sugar Cookies
Soft Christmas Cookies
Pumpkin Cookies with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Or visit a bakery and take the whole day off. We’ll never tell! The point of this holiday is to relax and enjoy yourself.

Happy National Cookie Exchange Day!

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays

National Oatmeal Muffin Day

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National Oatmeal Muffin DayToday is National Oatmeal Muffin Day. We don’t know who created it, but we do know how to celebrate it.

The following recipe comes from Anna Newell Jones. Her site, And Then We Saved, is an incredible resource of practical advice about how to reduce debt and enjoy daily life. She says it’s the only oatmeal muffin recipe you’ll ever need because it’s so adaptable.

Super Oatmeal Muffins

Ingredients

  • 1 cup milk (almond, soy or rice milk works great too)
  • 1 cup quick-cooking oats or 1 cup old-fashioned oats (off-brand works perfectly and they are no different from the name-brand)
  • 1 egg (or 1/4 cup of mashed banana or 1 tablespoon flax seed mixed with 2-3 tablespoons of water)
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil or 1/4 cup canola oil
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour (or wheat flour)
  • 1/4 cup white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
Directions
  1. Preheat oven to 425°f (220°c). Grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper muffin liners.
  2. In a small bowl, combine milk and oats. Soak for 15 minutes.
  3. In a separate bowl, beat together egg and oil; stir in oatmeal mixture. In a third bowl, sift together flour, cinnamon, sugar, baking soda and salt. Stir flour mixture into wet ingredients, just until combined. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups until cups are 2/3 full.
  4. Bake in preheated oven for 15-25 minutes or until a tooth pick inserted in center of muffin comes out clean.

Add raisins, nuts, berries, chocolate chips, or anything in your cupboard that sounds tasty and inspires you. Anna likes to add chopped walnuts covered in brown sugar and cinnamon to the center or as a topping. What are your favorite add-ins?

Have a delicious and fun National Oatmeal Muffin Day!

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays

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Bake Cookies Day

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Best Chocolate Chip CookiesToday is Bake Cookies Day. So, you know, preheat the oven. Here’s a tried-and-true formula from Allrecipes.com:

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe by Dora
“Crisp edges, chewy middles.”

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter, softened
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup packed brown sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 3 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 2 teaspoons hot water
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
  • 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
  2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
  3. Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

Happy Bake Cookies Day!

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays

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December 7 is National Cotton Candy Day

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Today is National Cotton Candy Day. The confection dates back to the 1400s, when it was called “spun sugar.” Producing it by hand was a costly and laborious task, making it unavailable to the general public. Four men—two of them dentists—helped usher in the modern process that would make it a summertime favorite at carnivals, fairs and the circus.  So why isn’t National Cotton Candy Day celebrated in July or August? We have no idea.

Here’s what we do know. cotton candy dayDentist William Morrison and confectioner John C. Wharton invented the first electric spinning machine in 1897 and were granted a patent two years later.

They introduced “fairy floss” at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Missouri. Curious visitors bought more than 68,000 boxes at 25 cents apiece, spending a total of over $17,000.

In 1900, Thomas Patton patented a gas-fired rotating plate that allowed him to form threads of caramelizing sugar on a fork. It debuted at the Ringling Bros. Circus and was an instant hit with children, if not their mothers, who had to clean up the sticky mess left behind on hands, hair and clothes.

Although he never received a patent, dentist Josef Delarose Lascaux built his own machine and sold it to patients at his Louisiana office, where he could cater to sweet tooths and the inevitable cavities that followed. He is widely credited with changing the name to “cotton candy” in 1921.

cotton-candy dayIn 1949, Gold Medal Products launched a version with a spring base. It improved upon its predecessors by being more reliable, less likely to break down or overheat. Variations of this device are used to this day.

The next time you buy cotton candy, which starts out three times the size of your head but condenses seemingly instantaneously to a gritty coating on the roof of your mouth and a pastel crust in your hair, you can thank these four men for making us crave this diabolically delicious treat.

Copyright 2016 Worldwide Weird Holidays