Family recipe Monday: small and light

It's really not the right time of year to think about heat in the kitchen. Or anywhere else. The stellar pioneer girls among us are sterilizing the canning equipment and getting ready to put up the fresh fruit and vegetables that are finally starting to show up after a cold, wet spring. The less-than-stellar pioneer girls among us are thinking that fresh peaches beat peach cobbler any old day right now, and can be improved only if they are in ice cream. Yeah, July is heating up and we are staring down the barrel of August, and trying to make enough iced tea to survive to September. We'll think about canning tomorrow, once we get off our fainting couch.   

Here are a few older cookie recipes, good for baking quickly and cooling thoroughly before eating. 

Melt in the mouth cookies 

Sift

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

Cut in 

1 stick butter or margarine

Add

2 cups light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 cup chopped walnuts

2 teaspoons vanilla

Drop by scant teaspoons (onto baking sheet). Bake at 400* F. Then hide.

--The Hess Family, who presumably hid the cookies, not themselves

Molasses cookies

1 cup molasses
1 teaspoon (baking) soda in 1/4 cup hot water
3/4 cup melted Spry (or oil)
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon ginger
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon (baking) soda
Approximately 2 1/2 cups flour or until enough.

Cook in 375* F oven for 7-8 minutes.
--Louise Hastings

Note: you are not going to find Spry any more, except in Cyprus, apparently. Too bad: it was a classic advertising campaign. Use the shortening of your choice. Mix everything in the order given. These can be either rolled and cut or dropped, depending on your preference.

Oatmeal cookies

Mix together
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 cups oats

Cut in 1 cup shortening or butter until well blended.

Stir in
1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1/3 cup milk (sweet or sour)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar

Chill. Roll 1/8" thick. Cut out. Place (on) unreleased sheet. Bake 375* F 10-12 minutes. When cool, put together with jelly or jam.
--Dolly Hess

Those would go well with a nice sorbet, right? Happy Monday.

Aunt Jenny needs something stronger than milk, I think. 

Family recipe Monday: Girl Scouts and brownies

Cranes in a frost-covered field, Kearney, Nebraska

It's been a long, long couple of weeks, and consequently a low-productivity time on Threads and Traces. My plans to keep up with the daily genealogy challenge for National Women’s History Month have been blown out of the water by both the expected and the unexpected. I expected to be delayed by the annual crane migration pilgrimage. I did not expect to be derailed by loss. It’s been a difficult time for so many of us as we suffered the loss of a dear friend.

Genealogy tells us so little about a person. It can only trace descent and familial relationships. The vibrant story of dear friends, pursued dreams, networks of love….all that is so much harder to capture. Occasionally we get a glimpse of the complex person behind the dry facts, but more often we have no way to trace the friendships that shaped her.

Last week we lost a true leader, a kind and hysterically funny friend, a dedicated and loyal Girl Scout, a scrappy lawyer and a feisty golfer. Sherry Peel was all of that and more. It’s just about impossible to imagine the world without her in it. Rarely, all too rarely, you find a friend who never wavers, stays the course, and picks up the conversation where you left off months or years ago. That was Sherry.

We worked together at a Girl Scout camp in our college days, a time I can't look back on without joy and laughter, even now. There is something magic about times like that, aided greatly by the glow of campfires and the sound of singing. Our youth is in each other's eyes.

The weather seems to have picked up the mood, rushing back into a snowy white-out winter blast on Sunday. That's right. April 3. But the grass is nevertheless greening, the hawks and cranes and migrating back in huge numbers, and spring seems to be everywhere, in not-so-subtle ways. We grieve, celebrate, and live.

If the genealogy work has taught me anything, it's the deep appreciation for the force that makes us survive, mourn, laughter, and find new hope. We will have a memorial reunion for Sherry in the fall, and I expect that the laughter will far outweigh the tears. That is what a good life lived well comes to.

I plan to bring a few many dozen brownies to this. It's so appropriate for this crew in so many ways, not just in the name. I hope that, during this, we will capture many of the stories and pictures that are lost in bare-bones genealogy. Our family is far greater than any family tree can ever show.

Cinnamon brownies

5 eggs (keep 1 white separated)
2 cups white sugar
2 cups brown sugar
5 tsp. cinnamon
1 ¼ cups melted butter
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups flour, sifted
1 tsp. baking powder
2 cups walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 cups chocolate chips
1 T water
2 tsp. cinnamon sugar (1 tsp. each)

Preheat oven to 350* F. Beat 4 egg whites, 5 egg yolks, sugars, cinnamon, butter and vanilla thoroughly. Sift flour and baking powder and add to egg mixture. Beat well. Stir in walnuts and chocolate chips. Grease and flour an 11”x18” sheet cake pan. Spread batter evenly in pans. Beat reserved egg white and 1 T water together, and spread over batter. Sprinkle generously with cinnamon sugar. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Cool and cut into 1 ½” squares. Will freeze. Store in airtight can or bag. Yield 6 dozen.

I may bring these along, too, mainly because they are so lovely and decadent. And they're easier to get down there in Texas. "Brer Rabbit molasses" is a single word in our family--no other brand need apply.

Praline cookies

2/3 cup margarine or butter
1 cup sugar
½ cup Brer Rabbit molasses
2 eggs
½ tsp. vanilla
1 ¾ cup flour
½ tsp. baking soda
¼ tsp. mace
¼ tsp. salt
1 ½ to 2 cups pecans

Slowly melt margarine. Cool. Add sugar and molasses. Mix well. Add eggs and vanilla. Beat well. Sift together flour, soda, mace and salt, then add to first mix. Drop by scant teaspoons on greased and floured baking sheet 2” apart. Bake in moderate oven (375* F) for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from pan immediately. Yield 8 dozen.

Happy Monday. Go hug a friend. Spring is here.

Family recipe Monday: bar cookies

Badlands in a February thaw

Still life with snowmelt, Badlands

I have no idea what happened to the weather out here in the hinterlands, but we are in a strange and wonderful February thaw. On Friday, it was positively balmy, and a few of us desperately cabin-fevered museum staff jumped into the Suburban and headed out for a day trip to Badlands National Park. We were delivering a few non-critical things, such as collections records, and one desperately critical item: a whole case of Girl Scout cookies for the Badlands museum staff. Apparently the Girl Scouts didn't get out to Interior, South Dakota, yet, and our colleagues were pining away for Thin Mints. I felt like a rider for the Pony Express, urging the steed on to get there in time before our gallant colleagues collapsed. Mission accomplished.

It was a gloriously pretty day. We took a little time to walk around the Fossil Trail to take in the sunlight and scenery under a blazingly blue sky. It could have been spring. The rabbits and deer had clearly been out in the melting snow, as had someone else, possibly a coyote. We are six weeks away from the return of the cranes, and there could be lots of winter weather left to come, but Friday was a preview of spring and we were glad to be out for it.

Warmer weather is a good time for dragging out the lighter recipes. Bar cookies are good weekend baking projects. You don't have to have any particular skill for rolling and cutting or for dropping cookies--just bake them in a shallow pan and worry about the cutting after they cool. These are older recipes, so make substitutions in the ingredients as necessary. Bar cookies are good for potlucks and other gatherings.

Apricot bars

¾ cup oleo
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 ½ tsp. vanilla
½ tsp. salt (optional)
2 cups flour
1 can Angel Flake flaked coconut
1 cup nuts

Cream oleo, sugar, egg and vanilla. Combine flour, coconut, nuts and salt. Reserve 1 cup of flour mixture and add remaining part to egg mixture. Spread this mixture in 9x12” floured and greased pan. Flour on your fingers makes the spreading easier. Then spread 8 oz apricot preserves over mix--don’t get it on edges of pan. Then crumble the 1 cup of reserved flour mixture over top. Bake about 30 minutes. Cool before cutting.

Quilting bee special lemon bars

2 cups flour
1 cup butter
½ cup powdered sugar
6 T lemon juice
4 T flour
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking powder

Cream together the 2 cups of flour, butter and powdered sugar. Pat evenly into a 10”x15” pan and bake 15-20 minutes at 350*. Beat the eggs until thick and lemon-colored. Add lemon juice and sugar. Continue beating. Add 4 T flour and baking powder. Pour over baked crust. Bake 25 minutes or longer at 350*. When cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Happy Monday, happy Valentine's Day. Spring is on the horizon. Honest.

Ice crystal impressions in mud, Badlands National Park

Family recipe Monday: holiday sweets

Downtown Rapid City lights

The holiday season is definitely upon us, ready or not. Mostly not, here, because it is also the end of the semester. Yesterday was the college's annual choir concert. We have attended this since we arrived here, because it seems that I have always had students singing in the performance and felt the need to be there. The productions are always excellent. Our attendance has not always been so.

Two years ago, we plowed through 2-foot snow drifts to get to the cathedral, and that caused snow and ice to work deep into the mechanism of Gene's power chair. That was the year that the choirs performed the Messiah. The whole thing. Sometime after the Hallelujah Chorus, in one of the achingly beautiful and very quiet solos, the chair started audibly sparking and smoking. It caused a great perturbation in the rows behind us. We were seated in the front row, so about the only good thing anyone could say was that it did not interrupt the performance.

Observations:
1. Every retired engineer in the audience (and in Rapid City there are tons and heaps of retired engineers) mobbed us after the performance to offer help with the chair problems.
2. My respect for the music director soared to the ceiling and has stayed there ever since.
3. There are still a few people, including my mother, who call Gene "Sparky" to this day.
4. Great music cannot be impaired by awkward moments.
5. Astonishingly, we are still allowed to attend the concerts.

Ah, December. This is a time of year for inclusion, empathy, affection, and large quantities of sweet treats that you would not touch the rest of the year. Here are a few from the Simple Gifts files.

Divinity is a great example of a super-sweet holiday treat that is never made, seen or heard of the rest of the year. For those of you worried about the raw egg whites: they are thoroughly cooked by the addition of the boiling sugar solution. You can either drop it by spoonfuls onto wax paper, or pour it into a wax-paper-lined pan and leave it to cool before cutting. It does not work nearly as well in a humid atmosphere. Be careful--boiling sugar solutions cause nasty burns.

 Divinity

4 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 cup Karo syrup
3 egg whites
2 tsp vanilla

Cook sugar, water and Karo to hard-boil stage. Pour into beaten egg whites, slowly at first. When candy begins to harden, beat with spoon until ready to pour out.
--Bonnie Hall

Not everyone cares for candied fruit, but you can substitute good-quality dried fruit of your choice in the following recipe. I am particularly partial to dried cherries, papayas, mangoes and pineapples in combination, diced to about the same size.

 Holiday fruit drops

1 cup shortening
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
½ cup buttermilk
3 ½ cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ cups pecans
2 cups candied fruit
2 cups cut-up dates

Mix shortening, sugar and eggs well. Stir in buttermilk. Measure flour by dipping method by sifting. Blend dry ingredients and stir in. Stir in pecans, fruit and dates. Chill at least 1 hour. Heat oven to 400o F. Drop rounded tsp. of dough 2” apart on lightly greased baking sheet. Place pecan half on each cookie. Bake 8 to 10 minutes, until almost no imprint remains when touched lightly. Yield 8 dozen.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Everyone seems to have a recipe for the world's best fudge. This one is ours. I would use butter instead of margarine, honestly.

Million dollar fudge

4 ½ cups sugar
1 tall can milk
2 sticks oleo
18 oz chocolate chips
1 tsp vanilla

Bring sugar and milk to a boil and boil 10 minutes. Put 2 sticks oleo and chocolate chips into large bowl. Pour milk mixture over and beat with mixer until thick and creamy. Add vanilla and nuts and pout in buttered pan.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Happy Monday. Please keep the sparkles in your eyes.

Family recipe Monday: more cookies

Cooler weather and increasing holiday parties mean that cookie baking is back in force. I'm pulling out all the recipes for good, sturdy, spicy cookies that go with drinks such as cocoa and cider. This one for oatmeal cookies, for example, is a winner. You can vary the spices to your taste--ginger and nutmeg work well--and the preparation is very simple. Just don't forget that you need to start this the day before so that the dough can chill and set up. Oh, and when they say "quick oats," they mean it. Steel cut oats do not work without some serious soaking. Don't ask me how I know this.

Oatmeal cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) melted butter or margarine
2 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups sugar
1 ½ tsp. baking soda
2 eggs
2 cups quick oats
1 T molasses
2/3 cups raisins
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts
2 cups flour
½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Mix dry ingredients together and mix into wet ingredients. Let set overnight in refrigerator. Pinch off by tsp. Put on slightly greased pan and bake at 350* F for 12 minutes. Makes 6 dozen.
--Mary Johnson Jenkins, Big Spring

Here is a recipe for very festive cookies, especially daring for West Texas. Yes, you have to share them.

Melba’s rum cookies

3 cups flour, divided
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup butter or margarine
1 tsp. cloves
4 eggs, one at a time; mix well
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 T sweet milk
½ cup rum
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt

Blend 1 ½ cups of flour with remaining ingredients. Blend well together. Sift remaining 1 ½ cups flour over 1 ½ lb. pecans, ½ lb. chopped candied cherries, ½ lb. chopped candied pineapple, and ½ lb. white raisins. Mix well until fruit and nuts are well floured and add to first mix. Drop by tsp. onto greased cookie sheet and bake at 325* F or less for 20-30 minutes. Moisten cloth with rum and spread over top of cookies when they are stored.
--Melba Campbell Johnson

I love the name of these cookies, but I'm not sure where it arose. This is a very different recipe from the more widely known stone jar molasses cookies, relying instead on brown sugar. A lot of brown sugar. It's another crypto-classic in the instructions department.

One explanation I found is that a stoneware jar is supposed to be used to press small balls of cookie dough flat before baking. I've also heard that cooks used a sugared drinking glass bottom for flattening these. In any case, the directions are simple: cream together the butter and sugar, add eggs and mix in one at a time, add the milk and vanilla, then add the mixed dry ingredients. Let this rest for 10 minutes and then roll out small balls of the dough. Place on the greased cookie sheet and flatten gently. Baking time is about 10 minutes.

Stone jar cookies

1 cup butter
1 box brown sugar
3 eggs
3 ¼ cups flour
¼ cup milk
1 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. baking soda
2 cups pecans
1 tsp. vanilla

Grease and flour cookie pan the first time. Bake at 375* F.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Finally, this is a real holiday classic. Gene prefers his mincemeat in pie form, but it makes great cookies, too. I would use a half-jar of mincemeat for this. For nutmeats, being Texan, I use fresh pecans, chopped. Roll the dough into small balls and press with a fork twice, crosswise, then bake for ~10 minutes.

Mincemeat cookies

½ cup butter
1 ½ cups sugar
3 eggs
3 ¼ cups flour
½ tsp. salt
1 cup nut meats
1 pkg. mincemeat
1 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ T hot water

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, etc. Dissolve soda in hot water. Flour mincemeat with a fourth-cup flour. Press out with a fork on a sheet and bake at 350* F.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Happy Monday, happy fall.

Family recipe Monday: citrus delights

It's been a long, exhausting week of moving large heavy things in boxes, or on pallets, or by the truckload. The new building is filling up quickly. You'd think that we could plan better so that we are not moving large heavy things in the heat of July, but you'd think wrong, because here we are. Next time around, say, in another lifetime, I am going to focus on tiny fossil pollen grains rather than large fossil bones. I'm not giving up the book collecting, however. Some things are worth their weight in, well, weight.

Field season has started and people are coming into the Badlands and Black Hills from all corners--friends from Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Colorado have come through in the last week alone--surveying, working in caves, and collecting yet more large heavy things for the new building. All too soon, it will be time for the 70th Harley-Davidson rally in Sturgis. Hundreds of thousands of bikers--literally--will be roaring through the area for a couple of weeks. The tourists are driving through in high numbers; a large number of them are heading toward Mt. Rushmore and environs. Mt. Rushmore, or MORU in govspeak, is one of the most frequently visited units in the National Park Service. Summer is frenetically busy like this up here every year.

Add to that a stray kitten who is showing no signs of leaving our deck...note to self: schedule that brisk talk with St. Francis soon. We need a kitten like we need a Harley, which is to say not.at.all. She purrs loudly enough to have her own slot in the rally, that's for sure. Stray animals find us at the oddest and most inconvenient times. We still have not found a home for the last kitten we took in temporarily....nine years ago. (Okay, so we never even tried...)

Our last stray: Mel Blanc in Delaware, age six months. Check those feet. He is twice this size now in all dimensions.

But the farmers' market is booming and the produce is wonderful. Last night was a locavores' feast: roast Hutterite chicken, roasted new potatoes with rosemary, and the first young corn of the season, followed by a raspberry cobbler, all locally grown or raised, nothing except the chicken ever refrigerated. The cats are apparently Hutterites themselves, because they thoroughly approved of the chicken. So did the kitten. Maybe I'm using the wrong methods to get her to leave? ...naaahhh...

Summer baking tends to focus on light dishes, desserts that can be served cool, and lots of fruit. Citrus-based treats are particularly appealing right now. Here are a few citrus-based desserts from the Simple Gifts files.The first two are variations on the same theme: orange cake with dried fruit (dates or raisins) included. The first is a sheet cake, the second a tube-pan cake. Notice that both use either juice or peel from citrus fruit, not extract-based flavorings. It's summer. Use the real thing.

Coy’s orange cake

Cream 1/3 cup butter, 1 cup sugar, 1 egg. Add 2 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 cup raisins, ½ grated lemon rind, 1 grated orange rind, 1 cup buttermilk. Add 1 tsp cinnamon and nuts as desired. Pour into 9”x13” cake pan. Bake in moderate oven until done. For topping, pour ¼ cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup orange juice over 1 cup sugar. Let stand while cake is baking. Blend and pour over cake as soon as removed from oven. Let stand several hours or overnight. Serve with whipped cream.
—Coy McLean Brooks

Orange cake

Cream together 2 cups sugar and 1 cup shortening. Then add 4 eggs, one at a time. Then add 3 T grated orange peel and 1 tsp grated lemon peel. Sift together 4 cups flour, and 1 tsp baking soda. Add this to the mix alternately with 1 ½ cups buttermilk. Then add 1 cup dates, 1 cup nuts (chopped) and 1 cup coconut (a heaping T of flour sprinkled on these will keep them from settling). Bake in tube pan for about 1 hour at 325* to 375* F. Cake should be well browned.

For a change of pace, try these light cookies, which will keep for a week or two. These make thin, crisp cookies (as the name suggests). If you are not a margarine fan, you can experiment with butter to get the texture right. Remember that this recipe was being typed up by my mother in the 1940s, from older recipes, and rationing was on. Margarine was the main option then.

Orange crispies

1 cup margarine
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
3 to 4 tsp. orange rind
2 ½ cups flour
Pinch salt
½ tsp. baking powder

Grease pan for first cooking. Pinch off tiny bits and mash with fork crosswise. Bake in slow to moderate oven.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Happy Monday. Need a kitten?

Family recipe Monday: cookies

Cookies were almost as important a test of one's kitchen skills as pies and cakes for my grandmother's generation. They were always kept on hand for visitors, hungry children and social events. During the Depression and WWII, cookies stretched a rationed pantry's contents farther than more elaborate desserts could do. They were also a handy way to send a little sweetness back out to the field after dinner, which was of course at noon, the main meal of the day. Here are a few older classics from the files.

Lacy cookies

½ cup oleo
1 cup quick oats
½ tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
4 T flour
1 egg

Melt oleo. Add other ingredients and stir well. Use 1/2 tsp. for each cookie. Bake on foil for 7 to 8 minutes. Let cool and they will peel off.
--Opal Winstead, Vada Brooks Johnson

Forgotten Cookies are essentially little meringues that are allowed to set slowly in a cooling oven. The result is a very crisp, light cookie. The egg whites need to be beaten to the stiff-peak stage for this to work.

Forgotten cookies

To 3 beaten egg whites, add 1 cup sugar gradually. Add 1 cup each chocolate chips and nuts, folding into egg mixture. Drop by teaspoons on cookie sheet that has been lined with brown paper {or cooking parchment}. Heat oven to 350* F and turn off. Put cookies in oven and leave overnight.
--Gladys Brooks Strickland

Francis cookies are bar cookies, good for taking to socials and quilting bees. "Francis" was Mrs. D. M. Davis, a friend of our grandmother's. One of us, no names mentioned, but a major hater of coconut, loved and ate these for years without realizing that there was coconut in it, according to Shirley. These are best baked in a 9x13" baking pan.

Francis cookies

½ cup shortening
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
½ cup white Karo syrup
½ cup sour milk
1 tsp. baking soda
2 ½ cups flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. salt
¼ tsp. allspice
¼ tsp. ground cloves
½ cup raisins
1 cup nuts
¼ cup coconut

Grease and flour pan. Bake 20 minutes at 340* F. Glaze while hot with 1/2 box powdered sugar and canned milk.
 --Vada Brooks Johnson

No one in my grandmother's generation ever referred to a refrigerator as anything but an ice box, long after the iceman had gone the way of the Edison wax cylinder and the horse-drawn carriage. What's strange is that I occasionally hear myself calling it an ice box, too. I have no explanation for this. Chilling this dough before baking allows the cookies to keep their shape in spite of their high butter-shortening content. This does go back to actual ice box days.

  Ice box cookies

4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. soda
½ cup shortening other than butter
½ cup butter
2 cups dark brown sugar
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
1 cup nuts

Sift flour, measure and sift with baking powder and soda. Cream shortening and butter, add sugar gradually, blend well. Add eggs, mix well. Stir in flour and nut meats.

Work into 2 rolls, wrap in waxed paper, and place in refrigerator for several hours or overnight. Slice about ¼” thick and bake on ungreased cookie sheet about 8 minutes at 400*F. Makes 9 dozen.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Don't let them burn and be sure to share them. Happy Monday.