The tradition of hanging out in the kitchen and baking with the kids went out the window with the invention of the pre-made Toll House variety of cookies. Pre-made cookies are often made with a list of frightening ingredients including processed sugar, bleached flour, and cheap chocolate chips that are neither organic nor fair trade. The end product is laden with pesticides that aren't good for you or the planet. And even worse, there was an ecoli scare in the pre-made chocolate chip cookies last year. That just doesn’t make me all warm and fuzzy inside. And what's more, it takes all the fun out of baking. Some of my fondest memories are of baking with my grandmother and mother growing up.

But for those of us too busy to deal, you can still have make ahead cookies that aren't a processed mess. I got this recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Cookbook. It's a simple recipe that you can vary as much or as little as you like. I've made them using dried coconut and lemon zest (1 tbsp of each in the batter) before. It just depends on your mood.

INGREDIENTS