Entertainment
Let’s Warm Up With Oat Lace Cookies


New York is freezing this week, and according to my weather app, the entire northern hemisphere is one chilly blue blob. If there were ever a time for a baking project, it’s now. And we have just the thing…
Melina Hammer’s oat lace cookies.
I’ve always loved oatmeal lace cookies but assumed they were too tricky to make myself. Anything that delicate and caramel-y had to be complicated, right? Wrong.
“They’re super easy!” swears Melina Hammer, cookbook author and writer of the newsletter Stories from Catbird Cottage. “Whatever your schedule, there’s room in it to make this cookie.” I can personally confirm the recipe’s doability, having made a batch this past Monday — aka, 72 hours into a long weekend, along with my six-year-old who’d been cooped up with two boring, working parents all day. A more involved recipe could’ve ended in tears and flour all over my keyboard, but these were so quick and delicious that I almost made a second batch right then and there.
Melina’s recipe calls for a few grinds of cracked pepper — to add a little complexity and zing to the straightforward sweetness — but she notes that there are many ways to riff. “You could use your favorite chili powder, or you could try a teaspoon of finely grated orange zest, minced candied ginger, or toasted sesame seeds.” I’m looking forward to playing around with these additions, but for now, I’m enamored with the original recipe. Here it is:
Oat Lace Cookies
by Melina Hammer
Makes 24
3 tbsp salted butter
1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tbsp plus 1 1/2 tsp slivered almonds
1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper
1 small egg
1/4 cup cane sugar
1/2 tsp honey
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch kosher salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tbsp all-purpose flour
Preheat the oven to 350F. Add the butter, oats, and almonds to a small saucepan set over medium-low heat. Melt the butter, agitating the pan to incorporate it into the mixture. Add the freshly ground pepper and stir all together.
As the butter melts, whisk the egg and sugar in a medium bowl until pale. Add the honey and vanilla, and whisk to incorporate. Add the butter-oat mixture to the beaten sugar and egg, then the kosher salt, baking powder, and flour. Stir together until uniform.
Place teaspoon-sized portions onto parchment-lined sheet pans, keeping 2 inches between each mound to account for spreading as they bake. You can get up to 12 cookies on a sheet at one time. Bake for 8 minutes or until pale golden at the center and caramelized golden around the edge.
Pro tip from Melina: “As the batter spreads while baking, cookie shapes can go a little wonky. I like to pull them out around the 6-minute mark — when they’ve spread, but not fully caramelized — and nudge them back into round shapes, using a silicone spatula (be mindful not to touch the hot pan). Return them to the oven to bake for the last couple minutes to get them caramelized, and voilà, you have gorgeous cookies!”
Allow them to cool on the sheet pan for 5-7 minutes, until they free easily with a spatula. Store cookies in a parchment-lined sealed container on the counter, up to 5 days.

Melina Hammer is a chef, food stylist, recipe developer, and the award-winning author of A Year at Catbird Cottage. Her recipes have appeared on Bon Appétit, Food52, Cooking Light, and Edible. You can follow her newsletter, Stories from Catbird Cottage, if you’d like.
Thank you so much, Melina! Anyone else in a baking mood this week? What are we making?
P.S. Three-ingredient butter cookies, monster cookies, and morning cookies for the backpack. Plus, Toby’s cookies that blew us all away.
(Photos courtesy of Melina Hammer.)
Entertainment
Microsoft Office 2024 for Mac and PC gets smarter with AI, now 60% off
TL;DR: Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business for Mac or PC is on sale for $99.97 through March 1 at 11:59 p.m. PT, offering 60% off Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.
$99.97
$249.99
Save $150.02
If your work revolves around documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and email, Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business brings those core tools together with updated features designed to keep everyday tasks moving efficiently. The lifetime license for Mac or PC is priced at $99.97, representing a 60% discount off the regular price, and ends on March 1 at 11:59 p.m. PT.
Included are Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook — the familiar lineup, installed directly on your device for both online and offline use. Office 2024 brings performance improvements across the whole software. In Excel, for example, working with large datasets or handling multiple workbooks is quicker and more reliable. For anyone who routinely works with numbers or builds reports, this added speed can make daily tasks less tedious.
Mashable Deals
Content creation tools have also been refreshed. PowerPoint now supports recording presentations with voice narration, video, and closed captions, which is a plus for remote meetings, online classes, or sharing presentations after the fact. Word adds Focus Mode to help reduce distractions as you write, alongside AI-powered suggestions to sharpen up your prose. Built-in research features keep citations and references at your fingertips, so you can stay in the zone without switching tabs.
Microsoft’s Fluent Design system brings Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook a cohesive look and feel. Touch and pen support is now smoother on tablets and convertibles, and customizable templates and themes make it easy to create polished work without a designer’s eye.
Collaboration tools are built in as well. Real-time co-authoring allows multiple people to work on the same file simultaneously, with chat, comments, and version history helping track changes and feedback. Deeper integration with Microsoft Teams centralizes file sharing and communication within the Office environment.
Mashable Deals
Microsoft Office 2024 Home & Business is designed for users who already rely on Microsoft’s core apps and want updated features without changing how they work. For $99.97 through March 1 at 11:59 p.m. PT, the current deal makes it easier to step into the latest version at a lower cost, especially if those tools are already part of your daily routine.
StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entertainment
Super Bowl LX performers: Who is singing the anthems
The Super Bowl LX halftime show featuring Bad Bunny and the Super Bowl pre-show featuring Green Day may be taking up all the attention when it comes to Super Bowl performances — and rightfully so! Everyone is looking forward to what the internationally known artists will do or say regarding President Trump and ICE.
However, other musical artists are performing at this year’s Super Bowl as well.
Charlie Puth to sing national anthem
Kicking the show off with the U.S. national anthem “The Star-Spangled Banner” is the Grammy-nominated singer Charlie Puth. Puth’s debut single, “Marvin Gaye,” featuring Meghan Trainor, was a Billboard chart hit upon its 2015 release. Puth has since had other hits, including “We Don’t Talk Anymore (feat. Selena Gomez),” “Attention,” and “Nothing But Trouble.”
Mashable Top Stories
Brandi Carlile to perform patriotic song
Next up, singing “America the Beautiful” is singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile. Carlile has a whopping 11 Grammys and two Emmy awards. Her biggest hit was 2007’s “The Story,” but she is also known for songs like “Broken Horses” and “The Joke.”
Coco Jones to sing Black national anthem
Grammy Award-winning R&B artist Coco Jones will sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” also known as the Black national anthem. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” has become a Super Bowl staple since 2021, when Alicia Keys performed it at the event. Singer and actress Ledisi performed the song at last year’s game.
Entertainment
How A Star Wars Set Malfunction Caused A Cast Member To Meet Jesus
By Chris Snellgrove
| Updated

Would you believe that arguably the most recognizable figure in the entire Star Wars franchise once ran into Jesus? This was no Jedi, although it’s admittedly fun to imagine what the Son of God might have had to say to someone else who could come back from the dead as a powerful ghost. No, the Star Wars character in question was R2-D2, and he had an accidental meeting with the divine when a remote control malfunction sent him to the set of Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth tv movie!
A long time ago (1977, to be precise), in a desert far, far away (Tunisia), two very different filmmakers were working on two very different projects. Franco Zeffirelli (best known for his Oscar-nominated Romeo and Juliet) was working on Jesus of Nazareth, which blended the four Gospels of the biblical New Testament into a single TV movie. Meanwhile, fresh off the success of American Graffiti, rebel filmmaker George Lucas was working on Star Wars, a movie that would effectively define his life while reshaping pop culture history as we know it.
Meeting The Maker

Aside from the involvement of James Earl Jones, these projects didn’t have much in common, and Lucas and Zeffirelli generally stayed out of each other’s way despite their sets neighboring one another. That all changed thanks to a scene requiring R2-D2 to be piloted using a remote control. While actor Kenny Baker was often inside the droid for scenes where R2 had to stay relatively still, there were some scenes in which George Lucas simply needed to move the little astromech from Point A to Point B.
In this case, Lucas intended for R2-D2 to exit a scene by rolling out from behind a sand dune. To do this, they intended to use a remote control, but the unit malfunctioned. Therefore, instead of stopping where the filmmakers intended, R2 just kept going until (as if guided by a higher power) he ended up on the set of Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth.
Fortunately, the runaway astromech didn’t cause any damage to the set of the Jesus TV movie, something that we can only assume would be some kind of sin. These days, the whole incident has become a bit of amusing trivia for Star Wars fans to share among themselves. At the time, though, R2 encountering a savior from heaven was just one more reason that filming this sci-fi blockbuster had become a living hell.
When Droids Move In Mysterious Ways

Reportedly, this is one of many incidents in which the droids weren’t doing exactly what the filmmakers needed them to do. On top of that, the droids were powered by exotic batteries that were hard to replace, and those batteries were soon drained in the hot Tunisian sun. Making matters worse, the truck storing R2-D2 and other droids once caught fire, damaging valuable props and costing George Lucas money he couldn’t really afford to spend.
Fortunately, it all worked out: after all these onset issues, Star Wars became one of the most successful films ever made. There are many reasons for this, including its perfect cast, killer effects, and charming story. However, we can’t discount the possibility that the movie’s success is a product of divine intervention; after all, his excursion to meet Jesus proves R2-D2 is a droid with friends in very high places!
