Cookies

[Belle]

Post cookie recipes here.

[Saul Mine]

The best cookie recipe is on the back of the Quaker Oatmeal box. First, whiz the oats in a blender before you use them. Then substitute anything in the recipe.

* Use all white sugar instead of white and brown. Before baking, sprinkle the cookies with sugar. Presto! Sugar cookies!
* Use peanut butter instead of shortening. Roll the dough into balls and mash with a fork. Peanut butter balls!
* Add ginger, roll the dough, and cut with a gingerbread man cutter.
* Add rum flavoring, roll into balls, and coat the cookies with powdered sugar. Rum balls!
* Add almond flavor, roll the dough, cut with a cookie cutter, and garnish with sliced almonds before baking.

It's quite alright to divide a batch of dough into several parts and flavor each part differently. This works especially well when you need to amuse a bunch of kids for an afternoon. Show the kids how to beat butter with powdered sugar and a drop or two of food coloring to make frosting, then use a sandwich bag with a corner cut off to apply it. Cut a very small bit off the corner, put in a spoonful of frosting, and then twist it to squeeze out the frosting. Use it like a crayon.

[Disastercat]

I just made a spelt version of these for an SCA (Current Middle Ages) Feast tomorrow night. I used spelt flour because one of our members is six years old and allergic to wheat, I don't want to see her cry again because she can't have any sweets. My experience with white Spelt flour is that it is just perfect for cakes and cookies, but not as easy for bread baking. This recipe can be made with regular flour as well, and in "period" I'm sure was often made with whole wheat or wheat shifted to make a "white" flour that would still be darker than modern white flours.

Anyway, I thought this would be a great preparedness recipe because it would last a long time, you could use lard or shortning if you didn't have the butter. The sherry is nice but you could use water or other flavoring insteads, and best of all it has no levening or salt to worry about. The result it a bit crumbly like short bread or a modern Danish butter cookie (which also has no salt) but they taste very good. I used a food processor for my version to chop the golden raisens I used because tomorrow is our "Feast of Grapes" theme.

We were in Wales two weeks ago and bought local "Welsh cakes" that are almost the same as these but with currents and a bit of modern levening. The Welsh cakes were traditionaly cooking on a griddle and I suspect that these cakes were too and I may try that next time. Another goodie you could cook without an oven in a pinch.

One major difference between this and modern cookies is the fruit to flour ratio. One cup flour to one cup fruit, which is more than most modern versions.

There are several versions of this on-line, here is the link and the one I used - it is cut from an article on them that you can download as a PDF if interested.

Enjoy!

Below is the version I used, you can download the entire article as a PDF as well.

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache...ient=firefox-a

[snip from long article]
My redaction of Digby has more liquids than Duke Cariadoc's:

3 c flour
3/4 c sugar
3 c currants or baking raisins
1 3/4 sticks butter
4 T cream
1 egg yolk
1 T nutmeg
2 t sherry

For icing the cakes, I also experimented with Duke Cariadoc's redaction. I changed it from 1/3 c of sugar to use 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and enough water so you can spread it on the cakes as soon as they come out of the oven. Powdered sugar will dissolve faster in warm water. A pastry brush is good for painting each cake with the sugar glaze.

-Tirloch of Tallaght

------
Copyright 2001 by Tom Bilodeau, 13456 Cobra Ct, Oak Hill, VA 20171. <tirloch at cox.rr.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited and receives a copy.

If this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.

<the end>