Aunt Lizzie’s Sugar Cookies

Brad plowed the garden last week. Should have been done last fall, I know, but we never got around to it. He used his grandpa’s old John Deere H which he and his brother fixed up. It’s a beauty of a thing! Did a good job with its little one bottom plow. I love it.

I also made some sugar cookies last week. The most delicious, old fashioned sugar cookies. Not something I’m allowed to eat at the moment but I made some to sell. It was difficult not to taste one. Had there not been other people around when I made them, I probably would have snitched!

By the time I remembered to take a picture, there was only one lonely cookie left. And it had been on the bottom of the stack so it was all crumby. I’m sorry I don’t have a better photo to document these tasty things with.

This recipe came from my great Aunt Lizzie (or was it great great?). I suppose she knew her way around a kitchen because these cookies are good. Did I say that already? I apologize. They really are that delicious.

Aunt Lizzie’s Sugar Cookies

1 cup (7.5 oz) lard (don’t substitute with more butter!)

1/2 cup (4 oz) salted butter

2 cups (14 oz) white sugar

4 large eggs

2 1/2 t vanilla extract

1 cup (8 oz) thick buttermilk

1 t baking soda

4 1/2 cups (22.5 oz) all-purpose flour

1 t baking powder

coarse sugar (colored is optional)

raisins

Put the lard, butter, sugar, and eggs in a large bowl. Beat good together. That’s what Aunt Lizzie says to do.

In a measuring cup, mix the vanilla, buttermilk, and baking soda. In a small bowl, stir together the flour and baking powder. Add the liquid alternately with the flour to the creamed mixture. Drop by spoonfuls onto well FLOURED (or parchment lined) cookie sheets. Sprinkle with coarse sugar and poke a raisin in the middle of each one. Bake at 400 for 10 to 12 minutes or until just starting to brown on the bottom.

Yield: 6 – 7 dozen 2 1/2 to 3-inch cookies

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Ultra Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

My boys

I must groan. These cookies are so good. This is one of the batches of cookies I mixed up while on my sugar fast. Worst idea ever. Or maybe the best seeing as how I couldn’t eat any. Probably saved me 2000 calories that day. Don’t make these if you don’t want to be tempted. Oh, and don’t let your daughter stuff a whole one in her mouth and then dribble chocolate juice on your living room carpet. Bad idea.

*Take note of my measurement for cocoa powder. On my food measurement chart, I had recorded 1 cup of cocoa weighing 4.5 ounces. That is too heavy. I reweighed cocoa while making these cookies and decided one cup should only weigh 3 ounces. No wonder all my chocolate creations have been over kill on the chocolate flavor. I have also weighed a lot more ingredients since posting that chart. I’ll do an updated version one of these days.

Ultra Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies

Recipe adapted from Circle Feast, lovingly submitted by my sister-in-law

1 cup (8 oz) butter, softened

1 cup (7 oz) brown sugar

1 cup (7 oz) white sugar

2 large eggs

1 T vanilla

1 1/4 cups (5 3/8 oz) sprouted whole wheat pastry flour

1 cup (5 oz) all-purpose flour

1/2 cup (1 1/2 oz) cocoa powder

1 T ground flax

pinch salt

1 t baking soda

2 cups (13 oz) chocolate chips

Cream the butter and sugars until fluffy, 5 to 10 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla and beat well. Combine the flours, cocoa, flax, salt, and baking soda. Mix into creamed mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips. Drop by level tablespoonfuls onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake at 375 for 9 – 10 minutes. Remove from cookie sheets and cool on a wire rack.

Yield: about 6 dozen 2 1/2 inch cookies

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Oatmeal Carrot Cookies

Funny kid story: Upon seeing a picture of a deer in one of her books, Jada informed me, “When I get big, I gonna shoot deers with Daddy! Yeah, I gonna say por (to) da deers, ‘Hey! Come here! I shoot you!’ Yeah, with the deer guns up in da safe. I get yittle guns and shoot da deers when I get big! Yeah.”

I stood there during this little speech just nodding my head. Teehee! It made me smile

So in my sugar-free week, I had to come up with some sort of dessert for myself because I just love to nibble on that sort of thing. These fit the bill perfectly. Not very sweet but they still hit the sweet tooth quite nicely. And they are 100% whole grain. Woohoo!

You could easily substitute other fats for the coconut oil. Melted butter would be delicious, olive oil might add a nice depth, or peanut oil, too. You just won’t get the coconut flavor with anything else.

(I also have a confession to make: I consumed a little bit of sugar yesterday. Brad got a sub at Subway and there was a little bag of BBQ chips with it. I ate about half the bag and then realized I should have checked the ingredients. Sure enough. Sugar. Bummer.)

Oatmeal Carrot Cookies

Recipe slightly adapted from 101Cookbooks

1 cup (4.25 oz) sprouted whole wheat pastry flour

1 cup (3.5 oz) rolled oats

1 t baking powder

1/4 to 1/2 t powdered ginger

1/4 t salt

3/4 cup (3 oz) chopped toasted walnuts

1 cup (3.5 oz) grated carrot

1/2 cup (5.75 oz) real maple syrup, room temperature

1/2 cup (3.75 oz) coconut oil, warmed just enough to melt

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour, oats, baking powder, ginger, and salt. Stir in the walnuts and carrots. Combine the syrup and oil and mix into the dry ingredients. Chill dough for at least an hour.

Preheat the oven to 375. Drop dough by level tablespoons onto parchment lined cookie sheets. Bake 11 – 12 minutes or until golden on the bottom. Remove from cookie sheets and cool on wire rack. Store in an airtight container. I’m sure these would freeze just fine but I haven’t tried it.

Yield: 3 dozen 2-inch cookies

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Peppermint Pinwheels

My head has not been in the game this week.

The other evening I decided I wanted to make these peppermint pinwheels. I set some butter near the wood stove to soften. Forgot about it. An hour later, it was completely melted. Oops. I got out more butter. This time I softened it in the microwave. Worked like a charm. Mixed up the dough, rolled out the layers, and rolled them up together. Forgot to read the directions and I rolled them up starting with a short side instead of a long one. Not a big deal, just a bid maddening. Stuck the stick of dough in the fridge. Pulled out my gingerbread house dough and began rolling it out. I started cutting out pieces, baking them, and soon realized I was cutting doors in the roof and I must not have been rolling the dough thin enough because I quickly saw I wasn’t going to have enough dough. The end of one of the houses had to be paper thin. Oops again. I also tried a different method of making trees…baked a slab of dough and then cut out the shapes with the cookie cutter. Big mistake. I got one tree to work successfully. Argh.

The next morning I began to peel the aluminum foil from the backs of the house pieces. Two of  the main pieces broke. WHY?!? Oh my goodness. And then I got my stick of peppermint pinwheel dough out of the fridge to bake them up. I cut into them and saw a large hole down the center of the log. I didn’t roll it tight enough. So now 3/4 of my pinwheels have holes in the middle of them. Then I baked them. Then I bit into one. Then I decided broken gingerbread houses and hole-y pinwheels were okay. And I did a little jig. Tage thought I was funny.

I saved the good ones for you guys

Peppermint Pinwheels

Recipe adapted from Taste of Home

• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sprouted whole wheat pastry flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 4 drops peppermint oil (1/4 t maybe?)
• 1/4 teaspoon red liquid food coloring

• In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla. Combine the flours, baking powder and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Divide dough in half; add extract and red food coloring to one portion.
• Roll out each portion of dough between waxed paper into a 16-in. x 10-in. rectangle. Remove waxed paper. Place red rectangle over plain rectangle; roll up tightly jelly-roll style, starting with a long side. Wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight or until firm.
• Unwrap the dough and cut into 1/4-in. slices. Place 2 in. apart on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes or until set. Cool for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
  
• Yield: about 4 dozen (if you remember to roll it up on a LONG side)

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Chocolate Drops

I’ll end cookie week with a photo of me and some of my pals at our annual cookie exchange and a recipe for a chock full o’ chocolate cookie.

These cuties are little chocolate bombs. They are dense and chewy, but not in the typical chocolate-chip-cookie-chewy sort of way. I love that they are butter- and flour-free. I made these once when I was young and wrote the recipe down on a card but failed to document where I found the original one. So, I can’t give proper credit where it is due.

Chocolate Drops

2 large egg whites

1 cup sugar

6 T Garnet Dutch cocoa

1 1/2 cups medium-fine ground almonds (6 1/4 ounces)

1/2 t shortening

4 oz chocolate (your choice of sweetness)

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Beat egg whites in a clean bowl with an electric mixer until stiff. Continue beating while slowly pouring in the sugar. Beat until good and thick, a few minutes. Beat in cocoa and then stir in the almonds and mix until well blended. The batter will be very sticky.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Spoon small mounds of the batter (3/4 inch) onto the parchment. Bake them for about 14 minutes. Let cool on sheet for a few minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack. Cool completely.

Combine shortening and chocolate in a double boiler or microwavable bowl. Melt together. Spoon a bit of chocolate on the flat side of a cookie. Top with another cookie. Press together gently and return to the cooling rack to harden. Store in an airtight container. I have not tried freezing these but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

Yield: about 30 tiny sandwich cookies

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