The Shopper Kitchen: ’Tis the Season to Make Cookies
By ANGELA McRAE, Special to The Coweta Shopper
Imagine, if you will, a platter brimming with homemade Christmas cookies. Your choices include a classic chocolate chip cookie, a sugar-dusted peanut butter cookie with a Hershey’s Kiss in the middle, a gorgeous Christmas-tree-shaped sugar cookie with green frosting and colorful sprinkles, a gingerbread man cookie outlined in white icing, and perhaps a chunky fruitcake cookie with that jewel-toned candied fruit that people either love or hate. Which one will you choose?
I’m reaching for the sugar cookie, but I do love the variety of a nice cookie platter at the holidays. I’ve already got some homemade cookies in my freezer, waiting to adorn the thrifted china plates I collect all year long, and the more cookies, the merrier, I say. It’s fun to deliver a variety of treats and hear the recipients report on which ones are their favorites.
New cookie recipes aren’t hard to come by, but I sure do love trying vintage recipes. Earlier this fall, I was down in Statesboro for a visit with my friend Kathy when she took me to the local humane society’s thrift store, a bonanza of a shop with a great selection of dishes and other items at fabulous prices. My prize that day was Our Favorite Recipes, a twenty-five-cent booklet that was “compiled by members of the Bleckley County Home Demonstration Council.”
So how did the Bleckley County booklet make it to Statesboro, which is 107 miles away? Did someone clean out Grandma’s house and toss her old recipes? I can’t conceive of doing such a thing, but then I’m a sentimentalist.
The book is undated, but it has a graphic of an atom on the cover, so I’m guessing it’s from the fifties or sixties. Mrs. Roy Zeagler contributed a no-bake recipe that caught my eye, and I’m so glad she did. These tasty little gems take just minutes to whip up, so if you need a few dozen cookies fast this Christmas, here you go. Mrs. Zeagler thoughtfully noted, “A cherry, pecan half or seasonal cream candy may be put on top of each cookie immediately after dropping cookie on paper.” I love the look of the pecan halves on top, and these will be fine additions to this year’s cookie plates. I hope the recipients love them as much as I do!
No-Bake Chocolate Cookies
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup milk
2 tablespoons cocoa
3/4 stick butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
1-1/2 cups quick-cook rolled oats
1/2 cup nuts (I used pecans)
1/2 cup coconut
In a heavy saucepan, combine sugar, milk, and cocoa and bring to a rolling boil, stirring constantly, then turn off heat. Add butter, vanilla, salt, oats, nuts, and coconut, mix thoroughly, and let set 2 or 3 minutes in the hot saucepan. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto waxed paper, gently but firmly mounding the mixture together a bit to help the cookies keep their shape. Add pecan half or other embellishment. Yields 40 cookies.
