Category: Americana Cookies

The western hemisphere, including the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Central America, South American, and the Caribbean

BERGER COOKIES, Baltimore’s Worthy Passion

The great cookie of Baltimore

Certain cities around the U.S. have regional cookies that send expats into ecstasies of nostalgia when they come across it again. New York has Black & Whites; our native Pittsburgh has Kauffman Thumbprints; the deep south has Southern Tea Cookies; and Baltimore has this cookie, which was created in 1835 by the immigrant owners of Berger’s Cakes & Cookies.

Regional loyalty commands us to at least make a show of disdaining all things Baltimore, so we need to say this quietly. [*Hushed voice* It’s a darned good cookie.]

NOTE FROM KATE: When I feel like yanking Scott’s chain, I root for the Ravens. He knows that I’m not a hardcore football fan, but he falls for it like Charlie Brown regardless. The Baltimore Ravens are, in fact, a really good team. And these are, against my expectations, really good cookies!

Overview

Berger Cookies are easy to describe. Coat a dense, relatively plain, somewhat chewy shortbread with dense, fudgy frosting as deep as the cookie is thick. There you have it! A four-bite treat that sends children of all ages into rapturous sugar highs. Simple, right? It ended up being tougher than it seemed.

Scott compiled an initial test recipe based on a more than a dozen online versions, made it, and… Both of us immediately knew that something wasn’t right. The cookies were good, yes; but only that. They lacked that mysterious extra that could create a 200 year old cult following. We tinkered with a second batch, then a third, and then… Then we called for help from a Baltimore friend. “Could we bother you for a box of the real thing when we meet at next month’s foray?”The whole sorry tale appears down below, but that was the literal aha! moment. “So that’s what these are all about!”

We couldn’t have done it without you Sam!

This Recipe Is Nailed

Every almost-final test you’ll read about below got compared to actual, from-the-store Berger Cookies before we moved on. Where possible they also got tested by Baltimore natives for reality checks beyond our own palates. And then we went to the extra effort of nailing down two versions of the frosting, because online sources split evenly between those approaches.

You won’t find a better version because there isn’t one. This recipe is r.i.g.h.t.

ASIDE FROM SCOTT: The most recent test-by-native happened a few weeks ago at a meeting of our local mushroom club. A request went out for Baltimore natives to please see Scott, because he needed them for an experiment. A hand went hesitantly up, and I hurried over to grab her. A certain amount of caution filled her eyes. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”

I had to laugh. “Exactly the opposite. I just need you to confirm we’ve got this right.” I circled behind the ID table, reached down, and popped the lid on my test-cookie tin. Her eyes grew wide. “BERGER COOKIES!!”

She went from trepidation to glee in a nanosecond, and one of my samples appeared in her hand like a magic trick. Then she took a bite and the expression turned to rapture. “Hello?” I called. No answer. She just stood there, smiling gently like a child in a dream. ‘That’s a good sign,’ I thought. “Hello? Can I call these certified by a local expert?” Her eyes opened at last.

“Oh my god, yes. They’re perfect! I haven’t had a Berger Cookie since…” Two friends looked over her shoulder to ask what was going on. Three more cookies vanished from the tin as they walked away. “When we were kids these were the thing we all…”

She did share them, in case you were wondering. [Laughs] I’m telling you folks. Cookies have a magic like nothing else.

The Cookie Part

The base came together quicker than the frosting, which makes sense because it’s the velvet dais that puts the jewel on display. There were only a few notable features that required attention. First, the cookie base is quite plain, with a surprising amount of browning on the bottom. It also has some vanilla to accent that browning and it’s quite chewy, which distinguishes it from other 4-bite cookies like NYC Black & Whites.

The online recipes provided an admirable jumping-off point that only required a couple of fidgets. We eventually cut the baking powder in half, from 1 tsp. down to ½ tsp. (for more chew); and we increased the oven from 350 F (175 C) to 375 F (190 C), which increased the browning. All the real work went into that all-important layer of fudge on top.

NOTE FROM KATE: This dough handles best with slightly wet hands. Measure out your ball, roll gently, and then squish it onto the parchment. Start from around 1⅓ tablespoon per ball, and aim for around 1½” (4 cm) in diameter). It’s okay to have imperfect and lumpy-looking balls. To me that is a feature, not a bug! You’d almost think the cookies were made by a human and not generated by AI. Besides, those same lumps magically even out as the cookies bake in the oven.

Frosting, Frosting, Who’s Got The Frosting?

Iced on top, versus iced on the bottoms, because that’s what you do with NYC Black & Whites. Tops are correct. And yes, the icing is this thick!

NOTE FROM SCOTT: Apologies for the length, but we endured something of a saga filled with not-quite-there moments. I try to touch on each in case you find thm useful. Feel free to skim.

Berger Cookies feature a dense, sweet, and fudgy layer that matches perfectly the almost-chewy cookie base. Online research showed two very separate approaches to getting there. Half the bakers built off a dark, butter-based frosting, and half made a ganache built from chocolate chips melted in cream. The only one exception came from Serious Eats, a source for which we have great respect. They called for evaporated milk. We tried that too, but ended up thinking the more traditional approaches both worked fine.

The Butter-Based Frosting. Translating to bakerese, this approach can be summed up as follows: “Make a dark chocolate cake frosting with a few tweaks, and then…” Simple, right? Not so much.

Around half the online recipes called for maple syrup in the mix. That may sound odd, but our research on old fashioned sweeteners offered a perfect explanation. The original Mr. Berger would have been working with Piloncillo (a/k/a jaggery) in 1835, not modern white or brown sugar. The standard substitute for Piloncillo? You guessed it! A good hit of maple. We tried it, and it worked; especially when enhanced by some espresso powder to make chocolate taste bigger. NOTE FROM SCOTT: Old time bakers didn’t use the coffee trick. That’s why it’s only “recommended” in our final recipe. But trust us: you won’t regret it.

The only problem with frosting #1 came from the butter itself, which muddled the pure chocolate flavor we wanted. That led to experiments with shortening instead of butter (a bit artificial), and then a 50/50 mix of the two. Man oh man, was it delicious! But was it right? It didn’t quite match the cookie photos, and…

Oops. Insert drop-of-penny noise. Four versions in, and only now we realized that we had no real target to aim for? Aaargh! What a rookie blunder.

Insert that cry for help in the form of a box from the actual bakery. NOTE: Thanks again Sam.

Cue The Jeopardy Music, And… Two weeks later we got home from our trip with Sam’s box of genuine, store-bought Berger Cookies. Time to compare.

The good news? Our 50/50 frosting tasted exactly like the original. Yay! But the texture wasn’t close. We had a cake frosting, not the extra-thick icing on top of the real deal. But that texture did tell us where to go next. This was the kind of coating an industrial operation will heat to a precise temperature, and then pipe onto production line cookies as thick, oozy lava. Let it cool, et voilà! A dense, somewhat chewy layer of almost-fudge. Our frosting had to be more like a ganache.

Kate, the family chocolatier, suddenly began to see benefits to the idea of that alternate, chocolate chips in cream approach. She’s usually a stickler for quality chopped chocolate rather than commercial chips formulated to have a sturdier melting point. That flaw now turned into an asset. “The right proportion of cream to chocolate chips should harden to just the texture we want, with a lot less fuss.”

Chocolate Chips = Simple? Not So Much. We checked the online recipes for proportions, only to discover the chocolate-to-cream ratio wasn’t the only issue. The recipes were maddeningly far apart! Some had cocoa powder, others didn’t. Some called for maple syrup, others used corn syrup, and some called for both. The specified chips varied from semisweet, down to milk, and then back up to dark. It was so bad that Scott had to compile a table to normalize a full dozen recipes just so we could compare them on an even footing.

Which, thank heaven, yielded some patterns. Darker chips = less cocoa powder, and milk chocolate chips = lots of cocoa powder. Okay, that made sense. Target: dark & fudgy.

As for the syrup, lesson #1 was the fact that every recipe called for some kind of syrup in the first place. Crystallization and graininess must be a real problem! Warning taken. But which one should we choose? The maple recipes described it as an attempt to capture that old-fashioned flavor; perfectly sensible in light of our experience creating the frosting version. Corn syrup recipes all emphasized the need for shine; which was just as sensible because it’s better at reducing crystallization. You might think that leads to an obvious and less expensive compromise, but [insert cosmic buzzer!] Both groups fervently warned against using commercial pancake syrup. [Sigh] So much for the cheap and easy solution.

Our pantry had semisweet chips ready and waiting, so we put together a version using that as a midpoint approach. To this we added a moderate amount of cocoa powder for extra flavor, that ¼ tsp. of espresso powder to round it out, and a mix of both syrups. This yielded an almost-smooth icing that would have a perfect texture if we merely increased the corn syrup a bit. Kate did a second batch, and presto; texture nailed. She declared it done, but Scott demurred.

Yes, she had the right texture. But the butter-based frosting tasted noticeably better. And he had an idea for how to convert cake frosting into cookie-topping fudge. We could simply melt it down!

Melted Frosting? We still had a ton of the airy, butter- or shortening-based frosting. Three batches worth! It was far too tasty to toss, which creates a real problem in our house. We both suffer from a dire medical issue known as, “Just A Taste As I Go By Syndrome.” Heck, our daughters have complained the disease is so contagious they sometimes need to avoid the house! So we detoured back for Scott’s experiment.

He baked another batch of cookies, put some of the 50/50 frosting in a bowl, and popped it into the microwave for a single minute. The result? Effort #1 had bubbled and burned by the time our machine went ding. Doh. Effort #2: try the same thing with 15-second zaps. Still too rough. On to Effort #3: 15-second zaps at 30% power. This product sent Scott running in to the living room to share the good news. “This is pretty close to right. Just a little grainy. I’ll try a new batch from scratch, with melted butter and that corn syrup you added. What do you think about using coconut oil instead? Or maybe some of your carefully hoarded cocoa butter? The ingredients list on the package mentions palm oil…”

Delicious but grainy on the left; Melted and smooth on the right.

She Who Must Be Obeyed had reached the end of her rope. Kate erupted, “I am sick to death of this cookie! There will be one more batch, and only one more batch. Lives may be jeopardized if I have to sample any more than that! I’m on it. You, dear husband, shall get your sorry butt out of my way. And then you will say nice things when I’m done. Get it? Got it? Good.”

An innocent reply began to form, but up went the infamous Warning Finger of Doom; a digit already shaking with life threatening rage. “Take your new samples to the mushroom club meeting along with all those others polluting my waistline [ahem] countertops. Shoo. Out. What are you, deaf?”

NOTE FROM AN ANONYMOUS EDITOR: Scott did write a full and fair description of the scene, but those observations have been deleted wholesale in the name of marital harmony. Plus that gentle, kind hearted, generosity of soul for which he is so well known.

NOTE FROM KATE: I remind y’all that Scott is not only a superb cookie developer, but also an inspired writer of fiction. I shall forgive him for putting a more adventurous spin on my notoriously conflict-averse way of speaking. At least for now. These are good cookies and I have nothing against them.

Scott went off to the mushroom club, enjoyed that scene with the young lady from Baltimore, and came home to find a new, fully completed batch of Kate-made cookies. And a wife holding up a finger (index!) like a 10-year old with a boo boo. “I singed my finger dipping the cookies into the hot chocolate lava. Even worse, I broke off a few edges when it began to cool and thicken up. But I am calling this one done. There’s leftover frosting if you want it.”

Scott duly kissed the finger, and then re-melted the leftover topping. He applied it to the cookies with a spoon instead of dipping, which turned out to be a very good thing because Kate’s dipped-in layer had been thinner than she thought.

NOTE FROM KATE: I made frosting for my final batch by combining all the leftovers in a double-boiler with a scant quarter cup of chocolate chips, a drizzle of corn syrup, and a splash of cream to make up some missing volume. Then I stirred until it all came together. It worked just fine, proving the recipes are mutually compatible.

Kate’s cookies were so close to the store-bought version that everyone was happy. Almost.

Kate’s final batch, with remelted frosting spooned on top by Scott. Stare close and you can see a little of the graininess we fixed for the final recipe.

Obsessive Bakers Anonymous Should Open A Local Chapter.

Two weeks later the Warning Finger Of Doom had descended, and a pair of questions started to circle their way into family conversations. From Scott, needless to say. First, “I wonder what the temperature should be to get that topping exactly right?” And, “If we’re going to work with a hot coating anyway, why not do a test with that wonderful butter frosting I worked on so hard?”

Kate gave in a week or so later. “Fine. Go ahead and give it a try if you must. But the cookies are going to the dojo, and they *are not* going to stall in this house on their way out the door.”

Not an exclamation point in sight.

So a last and truly final batch went up, with every revision incorporated, additional research performed, and an instant read thermometer on hand. From that we learned the magic temperature for butter-based icing: 175° F (77-80° C). It’s too thick below that, and too thin above. The magic temperature for cream-and-chips ganache is lower, more like 105° F (40° C).

Best. Version. Yet.

Ultra chocolate icing; lots of it; with no graininess at all thanks to the combination of maple and corn syrup.

The Frosting Takeaways (By Kate)

Use a fat that hardens at room temperature. Either don’t add extra air or moisture, or heat the frosting afterward to remove them. As long as you don’t burn the chocolate, the process is quite forgiving.

Whether cake frosting or ganache based recipe, that dark stuff must be liquid, but thick. I once dipped the cookies while the frosting was still a bit hot, which resulted in that too-thin layer. However, once the frosting set, I reheated what was in the pot, and double-dipped them. That works just fine too. Scott reheated the leftovers later, and applied some extra to the rest of the single-dipped cookies with a spoon, occasionally shaping it with a spatula. I compared them to our last commercial cookie, and you cannot tell the two apart except for the spatula marks.

Taste-wise, I was surprised to prefer the chips-and-cream ganache. It’s so simple, and works at a safer temperature. Someday I’d like to experiment with darker chips and a little less cocoa powder. Most frostings are too sweet for my taste. The ones we developed are, however, true to the sweetness level of the commercial product. It is what it is.

And From Scott…

Both of the frosting approaches will work. I prefer the flavor of the butter-based version. It really is a coin toss call that comes down to taste. Which is why we’ve included instructions for both kinds of frosting in the recipe down below. Take your pick.

The biggest concern comes down to temperature control, and there’s no getting around it. Both versions must be applied when the icing is at that delicate stage between being so thin that you don’t get a proper layer, but not thick enough to require a spatula. The magic moment occurs when the icing looks like an extra-thick caramel sauce; at around 175° F (77° C) for butter-based icing, and 105° F (40° C) for cream-and-chips ganache. We recommend you work with the right temperature from the start, and then gently reheat as needed. Think ahead too. Since you will need to reheat, ice the cookies on a screen placed over parchment paper. Then you can recycle any drippings back into the pot right away.

Dipping works but you will get some broken edges because the cookie part is delicate and the icing is thick. Spooning works better. That’s what we put in the recipe. There’s also the ideal answer: invest a few million dollars in an industrial production line to maintain exactly the right temperature, which will also let you pick the exactly right kind of piping nozzle. Tempting… but I think we can leave that to the pros down in Baltimore.

Conclusion

This recipe will give you a cookie as close to the original as anything you’ll find. Tasters literally couldn’t tell which was which when comparing our version side by side to the last originals in the box. And tasters from Baltimore were so enchanted they really didn’t want to be distracted by such things.

The city’s football team may not hold a candle to our proud Pittsburgh standard. [Go Steelers!] But Baltimore’s city cookie? It’s right up there with our own Kauffman Thumbprints, and that’s high praise indeed.

Enjoy!

Kate’s Final Note

I am not responsible for the Terrible Towel / Baltimore Berger Cookie pairing down below. Scott showed up with the towel in hand, thinking he would help with the props. My eyebrows rose so high, I still have a wrinkle in my forehead! But I tried it, and it worked. Competition on a level playing field brings out the best in both sides.

How to season Baltimore’s city cookie; with a proper backdrop!
What the heck. Let’s add some extra cookies for halftime.

SOFT & CAKEY PUMPKIN COOKIES

Iced and spiced, soft and caky pumpkin cookies

Look up “pumpkin cookie recipe” and two versions will pop right up: chewy and cakey. Our recipe for Chewy Pumpkin Cookies already went up. Both of us are on Team Chewy, so that one got priority in the testing process. But you know what? Scott asked our ever-eager cookie testers about both, and the vote ran very close to 50/50. Team Cakey voted as long, loud, and often for their favorite as the loyal adherents to our favored party. Chewy-biased as we are, we have to agree our neighbors have a valid point. These Cakey Pumpkin Cookies are very, very good indeed. We will definitely make them again when the right opportunity appears.

NOTE FROM KATE: This cookie tastes less sweet than the chewy one – until you ice it. Whether you single-dip or double-dip your cookie in the icing will determine the sweetness level of every bite. If you wish to freeze these, and they will go stale faster than the chewy ones, there’s a definite way to get the best results. First, let the icing dry completely and/or freeze them individually on a baking sheet (recommended if you’ve done anything decorative). Then nestle the dried-icing cookies in a container with a tight-fitting lid, placing baking parchment between each layer. And remember: icing-destructive sticking will definitely occur if you put the cookie into their container while sticky, but it can occur as they thaw. Best to separate the frozen cookies earlier than later.

Get The Moisture Out!

Pumpkin keeps your cookies moist. That’s all to the good. Wet pumpkin? That creates unpleasant, pumpkin flavored snails. Moral of the story?

Get the extra moisture out!

Chewy Pumpkin Cookies do this by cooking the pumpkin in browned butter until the water is gone. That isn’t an option for this recipe, which starts with creamed butter (i.e., softened butter beaten until white, light, and fluffy). That means you need to dry the pumpkin out by hand.

We tested a few methods and ended with a clear favorite. First, it really helps to start with canned pumpkin because that’s already much drier than what you’d serve as a side dish. In fact, you’re going to find it in the baking aisle rather than with the other vegetables because the companies assume it will be used for some kind of pie, and don’t want customers to wrongly assume it’s ready to eat as-is. But pie recipes call for barely-damp pumpkin. That’s what is in the cans. Cookies want all-but-dry pumpkin.

We get there by putting the pumpkin in a fine mesh sieve and then blotting both the top and the bottom with some paper towel. Then we stir it with a spatula, squeeze out the paper towel, and repeat until it’s no longer absorbing a matieral amount of water.

This process taxes several mix-and-blot episodes, but it works and is definitely worth the time. Pro Tip: wring out the wet paper towel and keep reusing it until most of the water is gone. Then switch to a clean towel in order to see the moisture better for your final blottings.

NOTE FROM SCOTT: Blottings? Is that even a word? Some baker’s equivalent to etchings? “Hey Babe, how about stopping up to look over my blottings…” Something tells me that particular pick up line might not work as well as the other.

NOTE FROM KATE: See what I have to put up with?

The Recipe Could Not Be Simpler Once You Remove The Excess Moisture

Have you got your pumpkin basically dry? If so, you’ve got this nailed. The rest is easy.

Beat the softened butter with the sugars (white and brown) until light, white, and fluffy. I.e., “cream the butter” if you speak bakerese. Then beat in an egg until smooth. Follow by folding in the pumpkin along with some vanilla (or better yet, some vanilla spiked with maple). Now stir in the dry ingredients, taking care to avoid an eruption, and then refrigerate until the flavors meld and the texture sets into a consistent dough.

Done.

Baking that dough is even simpler. Portion onto baking sheets and let her rip.

To be fair, we inevitably add a third step, but that’s not exactly a challenge! Depending on the mood of the moment, we’ll either (a) roll the pre-baked cookie balls in spiced sugar like we do for Chewy Pumpkin Cookies, or (b) giving them a quick maple icing when they’re hot out of the oven.

Then comes the hard part. Cool completely before you dive in.

NOTE FROM KATE: This cookie contains two intensely hygroscopic (i.e. water-attracting) ingredients: pumpkin, and sugar. The pumpkin water gets stabilized as Scott described above, and baked, so that part is handled. The sugar in the icing, however, is a bit different. If your weather is humid, AND if you leave the cookies sitting out, the skin on the outside of your lovely icing will pucker up like a bulldog’s face. It’s still good and it still tastes the same, but it can change your expectations a bit.

I found that these cookies refrigerate well, which prevents the icing puckers. But don’t stop there. I also found that smooth icings make this cookie ideal for extra decoration. A colored drizzle line over the off-white icing would look great! Or you could decide that the puckers are a feature rather than a bug, and give the puckered icing a wash of thin, colorful icing for a stone-like effect. (See what I learned in pottery class?) In any case, I doubt the puckered icing will be an issue during the colder months, when our Pittsburgh humidity drops like a rock.

The Golden Rule Of Pumpkin Cookies: Water comes OUT before you make the dough. If you want water, have a glass AFTER they’re baked. Tea is pretty good too, of course.

NOTE FROM SCOTT: So much for my effort to make a pretty swirl in the icing. [Shakes head]

Conclusion

Be they chewy or cakey, pumpkin cookies are a simple, homey, and satisfying project. Half the world will prefer the one, and the other half the other. Make the one that sings to you.

Enjoy!

WORLD’S BEST CHEWY PUMPKIN COOKIES

Browned butter, pumpkin, and the child of their love

Pumpkins aren’t just for Halloween!

Pumpkin cookies have become an American classic. European readers who wonder why need do so no longer. The pumpkin flesh inside the dough ensures the cookies hold their texture for a very long time, and also adds a surprisingly elegant flavor with character and depth that play against a gentle spice mix. They are just plain good.

Pumpkin cookies come in two kinds: there is a cakey product similar to many Italian cookies. That recipe will follow in a week or two. We like to add some maple icing to make it extra unique. And then there’s this version: a soft, somewhat chewy drop cookie with a deeper flavor that stands on its own. Both cookies are wonderful for eating out of hand, as well as for coffee and tea. This one you can also dunk!

NOTE FROM KATE: This might be my favorite casual cookie, especially in the fall! But I do have something to add about my new hobby horse: different kinds of flour. A high-gluten bread flour would yield a very different cookie in this case. For comparison, I tried our recipe with a lower-and-weaker-gluten Einkorn flour. They came out flatter, which is not a surprise, but they also had a maltier, more complex taste that complemented the flavor profile. You might not think it, but this is a case where the flour’s actual flavor can make a big difference.

I have now set out to test several of our favorite holiday cookies with Einkorn, sometimes with the addition of rice flour, for those of us who do better on a more low-key gluten approach. Stay tuned.

Hats Off To King Arthur Flour.

King Arthur Flour is one of the oldest continuing millers in the U.S. Some sources say it’s the oldest. But the company really came into prominence for us in the 1980s when it led the nation toward new, higher quality flours and production methods. The company website includes some very good recipes too; including the inspiration for our approach to Chewy Pumpkin Cookies. We’ve tweaked their recipe a bit, but credit should go where credit is due. Here’s a tip of the hat and a courtly bow to Ms. Sarah Jampel. Well done.

The Big Trick To Pumpkin Cookies.

Pumpkin in the dough will keep a cookies moist, but it can also make them downright wet. Even unpleasant. Thus every good recipe for pumpkin cookies starts with an all-important first step: drive off as much water as you can. Wet pumpkin in your dough is B.A.D.

Honor thy father and thy mother. Love thy country. And get the [ahem]ed water out of thy pumpkin before turning it into a dough! Thou hast been warned.

Cakey Pumpkin Cookies start with creamed (beaten until white and fluffy) butter. So that recipe starts by putting a can of pumpkin in a fine sieve and then blotting it with paper towels top and bottom. Stir and repeat until basically dry.

Ms. Jampel found a way to skip that for Chewy Pumpkin Cookies. Dense, chewy cookies often start from melted butter anyway. That was going to be our initial plan. She went one step further and asked, “If water’s the problem, why not brown the butter instead of just melting it?”

Full pause. Execute face palm maneuver. “Doh!”

So we tested it, and here’s your answer: “Brown the butter and your cookies will improve in every way.” Hence recipe instruction #1: Cook enough butter to give you ¾ cup (6 oz = 17t ml) of liquid ambrosia, and then cook the pumpkin in that heavenly substance to drive off all the extra water. Simple.

NOTE FROM KATE: Oh, I totally agree. Especially with Einkorn flour! This approach gives you a nice browned edge and a cookie that’s fabulously rich and yet kind of wholesome at the same time.

NOTE FROM SCOTT: “Kind of wholesome?!” It’s a cookie! Virtue points and cookies are not a good match… [Ow!]… Of course dear. Yes dear. Never yuck the yum.

A Note On Substituting For The Pumpkin

We happened to make both acorn squash and butternut squash over the weeks when this cookie was on the development schedule. Scott claimed all leftovers to test as supplements/substitutes for canned pumpkin.

  • Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson #1: What you make for dinner has FAR too much moisture to ever blot dry like you’d need to do for the Cakey Pumpkin Cookies. But it will dry out if you toss the leftover squash into browned butter and cook it until the extra water is gone. Leftovers work in the chewy version.
  • Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson #2: The flavor was exquisite. Better than canned pumpkin by far, at least in my opinion. But the texture was a bit problematic, and required a quick blitz in the food processor or blender. Problem solved. Yes, that creates an extra thing to clean, but c’est la vie.

SNARK FROM SCOTT: Kate thinks the extra flavor wasn’t worth the effort, but she did no complaining about the cookies. You know: the “kind of wholesome” cookies now made extra virtuous by recycling food from an older meal.

NOTE FROM KATE: Make that “very wholesome, and practically a health food.”

  • Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson 3: It’s a little hard to calculate the volume of pureed squash you’ll end up with, and this is a recipe where volume matters more than weight. It’s smart to have a can of pumpkin ready on the side in case you need to add some in.
  • Cookies From Leftovers, Lesson 4: I worried about whether the butter in our initial dinner squash would throw off the ingredient ratios for the cookie. It wasn’t a problem.

Add The Spices In Two Parts

The first part of the spice mix goes into the dough during either the cook-the-pumpkin-down stage. If you forget, the mix it all together stage works almost as well. The difference between the two was extremely subtle.

The rest of the spice mix works best as a spiced sugar coating on top of the dough, though again: adding it before baking did not change the result in a really noticeable way. Take your pick of method.

Just Dump And Stir; But Avoid That Egg You’re Thinking About

Step 1: Cook the squash/pumpkin in browned butter. Step 2: Cool enough so your baking soda won’t trigger, and then mix everything together. Simple drop cookie 101.

The only question came with whether to add some egg into that dough. A clear majority of online recipes include at least one and often two egg yolks. We tested both so you won’t have to. The conclusion? Don’t bother.

Whole eggs turn out to be essential for cakey cookies because they help to create the right texture. General baking principles say that egg yolks fit well in denser baked goods. So the idea of using egg yolks for this recipe makes sense. But tests proved that the pumpkin itself adds all the structure you needs. If anything, the egg yolks got in the way.

Working On The Spice Mix

Obsessively compulsive bakers, like a certain husband in a certain house that produces an excessive number of cookies, will insist on making every spice mix from scratch. And long suffering wives in such households learn quickly that rolling ones eyes does nothing to make the process smoother. [The foregoing speaks in generalities only. We, of course, have no direct experience in this regard.]

NOTE FROM KATE: Just go with it, friends. When dealings with husbands who describe commercial spice mixes with words like ‘heresy’, one quickly learns that helpful efforts to streamline a process will only prolong it. If the cookie will be the same anyway, why wait longer than you have to? 🙂

Ahem. But it is only fair to note that this particular mix is a standard pumpkin pie formula downsized to preserve the buttery, caramely, pumpkin notes at the heart of the flavor profile. The actual spices you choose matter less than using the right amount to achieve that balance.

Einkhorn flour (half-spiced) on the lower left.
All purpose flour (unspiced) on the upper right

Conclusion

Every person in our household, and our extended group of tasters, had the same reaction to this cookie. It’s homey; it’s comfortable; it couldn’t go better with a cup of coffee; and the presence of an actual, real life vegetable means you can enjoy them for breakfast without any guilt. Or at least maintain a straight face when you say that to a third party. It’s a cookie everyone will like, no one will dislike, and lovers of the genre will view as a masterpiece.

The only drawback comes down to faint praise. Make these for your kids. Make these for the cookie raffle. Make these to share with all and sundry. And make these to keep in the freezer for times when you’ve earned that limited-guilt treat to go along with your coffee. There isn’t a cookie out there that defrosts better.

The only place they might not fit? An elegant holiday tray. Chewy Pumpkin Cookies are folk music played on a fiddle. December Extravaganzas involve fancy violins and string quartets. At least in our house.

Enjoy!

SOUTHERN TEA CAKES, The Most Genteel Of Cookies

The great cookie of the antebellum south

Kate and I recently put out a call to food writers and bloggers around the country for information about any cookie tied to the soul of their city or region. This was the first cookie we heard about, courtesy of Mr. Stacey Little of Southernbite.com. And a worthy cookie it proved to be!

Click Here For The Recipe without the discussion.

The Tea Cakes tradition goes back to the antebellum south, entrenched so deeply that even today it can be hard to find a church social, teatime, or other gathering that lacks some plates for guests to enjoy. The flavor matches up to that history. Kate and I agreed on “genteel” as the right adjective to describe how these feel when you eat them. They’re at the heart of that tradition called genteel Southern hospitality.

I am a northerner and Kate an immigrant, so neither of us had ever heard of or experienced this cookie. That sent me to Dr. Internet for second-hand experience to start the process.

Recipes abound, with virtually every one describing their version as “just like Grandma’s.” As in 90-95%. Anyone who hasn’t done such research may not appreciate how amazing that consistency is. I found 20 recipes to start with, all of them written independently by people striving to be different while caring enough to honor their heritage as well as they could. What does it take for 20 different people to end up focused on that single image of Grandma proudly presenting the treat she’d learned from her own? It shows how deep the cultural roots really are.

Me being me, I compiled a table of ingredients normalized to two sticks of butter. Then I stepped back to look for an underlying formula.

Choices to Make: Drop or Roll-and-Cut?

A few patterns leapt right off the page. First, the writers split more or less evenly on whether to do a drop cookie or a cut out. We chose the roll-and-cut method for our initial version, driven by two reasons. First, most of the recipes call for extra large cookies, as do the array of photos that popped up in my search. Cookies of that size either spread uncontrollably – which conflicted with the possibility of cutting the dough out – or else need some help to stay under control. Second, the idea of large, buttery dough in the American South immediately sent my imagination spinning toward the famous tradition of southern biscuits. How much more “heritage” could you get? And wouldn’t a cookie version of biscuits make sense?

I couldn’t say yes or no either way, but it was a good place to start.

Then I went back to fill in details. Did you know that typical drinking glasses have a diameter of 3″, which not coincidentally pairs exactly to a standard biscuit cutter? Many of the roll-and-cut writers said to use “a round cutter or drinking glass” for the job. The same instruction appears in biscuit recipes. Fair enough. That would be our starting point.

NOTE: Testing proved that I agonized far too much over this choice. Tea Cake dough will ball-and-squish just as well as it rolls-and-cuts. That’s what I did with the leftover scraps, and we found it hard to distinguish the two outside of size and regularity.

Choices to Make: Buttermilk?

Second question: Many writers add in buttermilk. It’s a readily available ingredient, if one we don’t keep in the house as a staple. Was it worth a trip to the market? You bet it was! Remember that analogy to southern biscuits? Southern buttermilk biscuits? This was a gimme. Besides, some buttermilk tang would help to distinguish this recipe from all the other butter cookies we’ve researched over the years.

It proved to be the right choice. That flavor really does matter.

Catching the Vibe: Variations That Really Aren’t

Everyone agrees that Southern Tea Cakes are, first and foremost, all about the texture. They’re supposed to straddle the line between cake and cookie. The universal instruction to bake until the edges start to brown supports that. It shows there’s also a required contrast between the cookie rim and center. So that was a mandatory target. But what about the flavor?

How many variations are there? Buttermilk, which I’d already decided to try. Then there’s lemon; brown sugar instead of white; nutmeg (but no other spices); and… Wait a second! Those aren’t true variations!

You can make faux buttermilk by mixing lemon into whole milk or half-and-half, often with a fleeting hint of nutmeg. (Nutmeg and dairy love each other, as shown by classic examples such as béchamel sauce). For that matter, many dairy-centric baking recipes also use brown sugar, because a very gentle molasses flavor helps to enhance the base flavor. These recipes weren’t showing different targets. They were just different methods to home in on the same target: a cookie with a profound taste of old fashioned, intensely flavored, aged or mildly fermented butter.

Suddenly it all made perfect sense. And the simple fact that everything aims to the same goal shows yet again how much the culture cares about getting this particular cookie right. We tested all of those tricks and came to the following conclusions:

  • Buttermilk: Oh my, yes. It helps in endless ways, and makes the cookie different. We settled on ⅓ cup, right in between the ¼ cup of many examples, and the ½ cup of many more. Modify at will, making up for the extra (or missing) liquid by adjusting the amount of flour.
  • Brown Sugar: An extremely subtle difference in flavor. Someone who cared could argue us into liking it better. Someone who cared the other way could argue us back.
  • Lemon Zest: Disappointing if you use enough to taste it, because it comes across as a failure from both directions. You could convert this to a proper lemon cookie by using 2-3 lemons worth of zest with a sharp glaze made from the juice. Anything short of that left us feeling cheated, until the level drops down low enough to satisfy the anchovy rule: anchovies make food taste better until you can taste them. Then they work in reverse.
  • Nutmeg: See the anchovy rule yet again. A barely discernible hint – no more than ⅛ teaspoon – kicks the whole thing up. Any more than that yields a nutmeg cookie. Really good nutmeg cookies, yes; but a different product when all is said and done. We’ve included the larger amount as a true variation worth trying on its own merits.
  • Other Extract: Do as you like. We prefer to stay true to the original target and intent.
Lemon Molasses
Nutmeg Plain

Vanilla Is Mandatory

Go back and look at that table. Every recipe – 100 % – includes an extremely generous amount of vanilla. We settled on three teaspoons of extract (a/k/a one tablespoon), but this is a case where your taste matters more. Try the recipe as written, take notes, and then adapt it as you wish. Or not.

Roll With Flour, Which Can Be Plain All Purpose

Liquid buttermilk makes this a sticky dough. Like biscuits yet again! Rolling the cookies out on a floured board solved the problem. Just don’t work it over and over, because that could make the cookies tough. Remember: good Tea Cakes have that on-the-line texture, and bad Tea Cakes got too tough.

DIGRESSION: We worried needlessly about whether the texture challenge would require a different flour. It’s a big deal for buttermilk biscuits. Would it matter for Tea Cakes too? I hit the e-books again and found that some people actually tested this. The answer is “No, the flour doesn’t make a difference.” We can also tell you that our cookies came out with the perfect texture using King Arthur all-purpose flour; a brand notorious for its high protein content.

Testing The Cookie: We Have a Winner!

So… I baked the cookies in four batches to cover all the variations. They had a nice flavor. They weren’t just another butter cookie. The texture fit all those descriptions. So they were capital-g Good. But were they capital-r Right?

I took a tin of samples and headed for a soul food restaurant on the North Side. Those owners would know for sure!

Closed. And not just for the day. Grr.

But I wasn’t going to give up! I stopped a pair of local street people on my way back to the car, and asked if they could direct me to some other local spot where I could find someone who grew up in the south. “Somewhere like Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, or the like.”

Instant suspicion! “Why do you want to know?”

After all these years I’ve got that answer down to an art form. You wouldn’t believe how many people think I’m peddling hash brownies or the like. Free cookies = ulterior motives. So I come prepared with both evidence and explanations. Show book; explain that I’m the author; explain about research; explain about the cookie; show the recipe; and then explain that “I can tell if it’s good. That’s easy. But I need native testers to tell me if I’ve got it Right.”

They reacted the same as everyone else, with that head cocked, ‘I guess that makes sense’ look. The one in heavy dreadlocks mumbled something. His friend translated. “He wants you to know that he’s from Alabama.”

I looked at the man and asked, “Do you know Tea Cakes? The cookie? That’s what I’m working on.”

His eyes lit up before he turned to look at the street. He mumbled something to acknowledge a small experience or two.

“Would you mind tasting one of these, and telling me if I’ve got it Right?”

He took the cookie, gave it a good nibble, and got a bit misty eyed. Then he turned his back. Nibble. Grab with both hands instead of one. Nibble more. Munch. Followed by munch, munch, and more munch, grabbing up crumbs until the cookie was gone. Then he gave me a thumbs-up, still turned away.

“That means you got it right,” his friend said.

“Do you want one? Take your pick. There’s another for him too if he’d like.” Another turned-away thumbs up. Then they vanished up an alley to who knows where or what, heads together and talking.

But I still had some cookies to dispose of. Kate would not approve if I returned to the house with dietary sin still in hand. Besides, one tester – however enthusiastic – is still just one.

We’d been standing outside the local public library, so why not? I made my way in, found the young man at the desk, and went through the story again. “Did anyone here grow up in the south? Somewhere like Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I grew up in North Carolina, and that’s as close as you’re going to get.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s too bad. But… would you happen to know a cookie called Tea Cakes?” His face lit up.

“Of course I do!”

“Care to test one for me?” Book up; recipe shown; explanation made; etc.

“Sure, I’d love to.” One bite and he came close to misting up too. “Y’know, it’s weird how tasting something from your childhood can bring up so many emotions. I didn’t expect that.”

What could I say except to agree? Cookies have a magic, and that’s a big part.

The last cookie went to his fellow librarian at the end of the counter. She was from somewhere just outside the city. “These are really good! I never heard of them before.”

I left as he began to enthuse about growing up in Tea Cake Land. That’s another part of the magic.

Conclusion

Southern Tea Cakes fit every category of “heritage” you could ever imagine. Right down to embodying a proud part of the culture itself. They really are genteel Southern hospitality incarnate. Homey and a little sweet, with nothing strange except an oddly familiar tang to the dairy flavor, and a remarkable texture right on the line between cake and cookie.

We wholeheartedly approve.

And now I’m off to confirm those findings. Again. I am a loyal husband, after all, and protecting my wife from regret comes with the job. If that means I must throw myself on the fork, so be it.

Enjoy!

NOTE FROM KATE: I agree that Southern Tea Cakes came as a happy surprise. They are pleasantly soft on the day of baking, but harden a bit on the second day. I expressed my mild disappointment with the lemon zest ones, so we talked it over. Yes, it’s there for butter support. No, this is not meant to be a lemon cookie. We have plenty of lemon cookie recipes, and this one isn’t one of them. Scott pretty much said what needed to be said. As for his valiant defense of my waistline, all I can say is, there are risks that come with being around cookies – especially when photographing them. Even though I enjoy some as part of the creative process, it really helps to get them out of the house!

JOE FROGGERS, Americana From The Age Of Sail

A revolutionary war cookie from coastal Massachusetts.

Imagine an arm around your shoulders and friendly voice saying, “Hi. I’m a cookie.” Then add in this quote from one of our tasters: “That’s the biggest, softest, easiest going ginger snap I ever tasted! Or is it gingerbread?” And then triangulate with sailors on a clipper ship singing in the sunlight, “Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum!” Somewhere in that intersection you’ll find Joe Froggers, a cookie created right after the Revolutionary War at a Marblehead Island inn outside of Boston, Massachusetts.

Click Here To Go Directly To The Recipe

The Cookie On Its Own

Joe Froggers are a soft, gently spiced molasses cookie with a nice finish from a tot of dark rum in the dough. The cookies were designed and intended for grownups, but they’re also as kid friendly as a cookie can be. The texture is plush and easy; the flavor simple, familiar, and a bit raisiny from the molasses; and they’re about the width of a small child’s face (4″-6″ across), which guarantees the ‘eyes light up with delight‘ reaction.

The earliest versions were made with lard. Most modern recipes call for shortening. Butter tastes best of all, of course, but you give up a bit in the way of texture. We make them with a 50/50 mix of butter unless there’s a special reason to be historically accurate.

NOTE FROM KATE: I felt a need to be historically accurate, so Scott made the first batch with lard. This beautiful cookie is friendly and cheerful, but I felt like I had to work against the unfamiliar flavor of lard after the third bite. This particular fat’s texture sticks to the mouth a bit more than butter or shortening. Not a familiar sensation. Next time I’d go with half lard and half butter. Despite its undeniable culinary advantages, I don’t particularly like shortening, as it’s an ultra-processed food, but YMMV. I can see this one becoming a family favorite!

That’s about all you need to know. It’s a big old, friendly, arm around your shoulders cookie.

“Joe Froggers?” A Taste Of History

The general outline of the story is well known and documented, with its own page at the Marblehead Museum website. The story goes like this.

Once upon a time there was a Revolutionary War veteran named Joseph Brown, son of an enslaved, African-American mother and a Wampanoag father. He and his wife Lucretia opened an inn on Marblehead Island after the war, right next to a local frog pond.

Photo, credited to the Smithsonian Institution, found at MarbleheadMuseum.org.

Lucretia invented the cookie, and it became something of a sensation. They’re not only delicious, but they also have enough molasses to keep for a very long time. The revolutionary era Massachusetts economy centered on fishing, trade, and other maritime activities. Marblehead was a major seaport and shipbuilding center, so much so that it’s also known to history as “the birthplace of the American navy.” That fame would only grow as the young nation built its vast fleet of clipper ships.

Joe Froggers (and Hermits) quickly became the treats of choice to send off on long voyages around the Atlantic, and later around the world. Small, tasty, long lasting, and relatively inexpensive because much of the nation’s molasses and rum trade came through Massachusetts ports.

The name itself is more debatable, with every source we’ve found claiming to have the one true answer. It’s certainly related in some way to the pond out back. And the “Joe” part certainly comes from Joe Brown. Others note that Lucretia Brown (“Aunt Creese”) originally made these on a skillet, like extra chewy pancakes, and everyone who’s done such things will know how often the neat, round shapes you’re after come out looking vaguely like a frog. Others argue for the lily pad idea.

Decide as you like. This is me hoppity hop hopping away from all such debates. It’s probably some combination of them all, plus the fact that the name itself is so fun.

Moving on, Brown’s Inn grew into an immensely popular community center for celebrations of all kinds. Joe became the town fiddler, with his own set of local legends. And Lucretia’s breads, buns, cookies, and cakes were the best one could find. The couple eventually grew into local legends in their later years, and then expanded into lore and myth after their deaths, with the details ebbing and flowing with whoever told the tale.

For our purposes the bottom line is this: “Black Joe” and “Aunt Creese” were real people, who owned a real inn, and really were well known and loved across the island of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Lucretia Brown really did invent and popularize the cookie now known as Joe Froggers. Joe Froggers really did become a “thing” both during and after their lives, traveling around the world on the Bay State and American Navy fleets. And they remain a “thing” across eastern Massachusetts even now, in the 2020s.

Many cities around the country have “their” cookie. This is the one belonging to Boston – complete with the inevitable carping about how Boston undeservingly managed to absorb all of maritime New England under its umbrella. You’ll make a friend if you acknowledge that injustice to a native of Marblehood, Lynn, Gloucester, or the other seafaring centers of the era. Just acknowledging their claim will make a difference. And Bostonians won’t care in the slightest. It’s all Greater Boston from their point of view. They’re city folk.

An Aside (Sort Of) – The Great Molasses Flood Of 1919

I spent a few hours walking Pittsburgh’s Strip District in search of enough testers to keep us from devouring dozens of these huge cookies on our own. It was a real danger! We each accounted for at least half a dozen when the other wasn’t looking because they are heartbreakingly moreish. The molasses flood must have come up in conversation close to ten times.

It has no direct connection to Joe Froggers beyond “Massachusetts” and “Molasses,” but it’s one of those fascinating events that everyone’s heard about but never remembers until prompted. And then they remember how much they love the story in a guilty kind of way. 20 people drowned in molasses?! The smell lingering on summer days for decades?! Massive and enduring changes to building codes across the nation? Baking ingredients shutting down a city?! Wow.

This goes to a link from the city website Boston.gov if you want to refresh your memory. Here is a fun Wikipedia link that tells the story better, albeit with less authority.

Notes For Fellow Bakers

  • The rum adds an interesting note you don’t really taste unless you know it’s there. But it does matter. First, because it’s a part of the history, and that’s part of what makes this cookie so fun. But also because the rum rounds out the spices to create a whole that isn’t quite gingerbread, and isn’t quite ginger snap, but something unique within the family.
  • Rum extract should work just fine, though we haven’t tried it. We used Gosling’s Black Seal Bermuda Dark Rum because we also keep around the house just for drinking. Good stuff!
  • The fat makes a difference because you can taste it in the final product. Lard and shortening add something to the texture, however, which is why we recommend a 50/50 mix of butter to other. But it’s truly up to you.
  • Purely by chance, I happened to use up my old jar of molasses while making a test recipe. That jar became the perfect vehicle for combining the (topped off) cup of molasses with the hot water and rum. Put it all in the jar, screw down the lid, and shake until it’s all smooth and liquid.
  • This is a really, really sticky dough that’s just over the line from being a batter AFTER it cools and sets in the fridge. Account for that as you get the dough mixed. You want just enough flour to reach that point. Any more will start to toughen the cookies. Remember: you can always mix in more, but cannot take any out.
  • Some recipes will merely sprinkle the pre-baked balls with sugar, but we ended up rolling them simply to make the sticky dough balls easier to handle. This is why we removed 1-2 tablespoons of sugar (⅓ oz = 10 g) from full 1 cup usually listed for the dough.
  • You want to press the balls down to keep them from rolling, but there’s no need to really squish them. The dough will spread all on its own.
  • Speaking of which, a golf ball sized sphere is really big compared to what you probably make with other recipes. That is the minimum size for true Joe Froggers. They’re supposed to be big enough that children will gape in awe at the wealth. Skimp if you must, but please do it on purpose because regular sized cookies don’t leave the same emotions in their wake. We fit only four cookies per standard baking tray, with six slightly smaller ones on the final tray because that’s what was left in the bowl.
  • Adding the flour and liquid in stages works best. Everything gets smoothly and evenly incorporated. But it isn’t essential unless you’re working by hand.
  • This is a no-eggs recipe. That isn’t a typo. It’s a feature, not a flaw.

Enjoy!

CENTRAL AMERICAN CORN DONUT COOKIES (“Rosquillas de Maiz”)

A staple cookie from Nicaragua and Honduras that acts like a Central American equivalent to Italian Biscotti.

Some countries use more corn than wheat flour as their staff of life, and in those lands you have to expect corn based desserts. Enter Rosquillas de Maiz, a crunchy, mildly sweet cookie meant to accompany a cup of coffee, tea, a drink, or even a fruity dessert soup.

A word to the wise: the word “rosquillas” describes the shape, not the dish, and can include a variety of recipes that can range from our common fried donuts, through ring-shaped breads, tender shortbreads, and in this case, barely-sweet cookies. A native speaker is bound to complain if you use that word alone, just as Norteamericanos would complain if you handed over a bowl of ring shaped breads and called them donuts. Use the adjective, though, and you’re fine. Rosquillas de Maiz means “corn donuts,” and Rosquillas de Nicaragua/Honduras means “donuts from this country.”

NOTE FROM KATE: If this pattern continues, we will never be done testing cookies! What a terrible fate, right? Every time we think our short list got trimmed down to “just a few more,” this happens. Every. Single. Time. However, I have no regrets. This little cookie is easy to make, fun to shape, and expands the repertoire in an entirely unexpected direction! One note of caution: If you toast your corn flour, make sure the flour is cold before you add your leavening agents, especially if you are using hartshorn. (I poured my toasted corn flour into a steel bowl and let it cool in the freezer, for patient I am not.)

Click here if you only want the recipe without its context

An Origin Story For Cookie Sleuths Everywhere

We often get asked “Where do you find all these?!” My best answer is, “They are there waiting to be found if you just take the time to look, and to ask.” This cookie is a case in point.

Kate and I are in the final month of intensive recipe testing before attention turns to getting Volume 2 ready for publication. Sweet Wine Cookies, a ring-shaped treat common from Portugal, Spain, and Italy has been high on our list for some time now. I mean, come on: everybody cooks with wine in their soups and sauces, so it makes total sense that wine growing regions would use their excess wine in baking too. Wine based desserts aren’t exactly rare. Nor are wine based flavors in cakes. Haven’t you come across some version of Champagne Buttercream Frosting for cakes, cupcakes, Macarons, or eclairs? If you haven’t, you’re welcome; that’s good stuff!

I looked around and, sure enough, the wine growing regions in Southern Europe have just such a treat. So I worked up a test recipe, got to where we liked it, and then went searching for native Spaniards to tell me what I needed to tweak. But there I ran into a problem. Our fallback testers include several native Italians (who gave it a big thumbs up), but Spaniards are thin on the ground in Pittsburgh and our Portuguese friend has retired. Thus I wandered into Reyna Foods, a Latin-products grocery store in the Strip District that we have patronized loyally for decades. There’s a lady there who also likes to supply her friends and neighbors with holiday cookies; Latin America was part of the Spanish Empire; and so I hoped that Rosquillas de Vino might have found a sideways path into her repertoire.

No such luck. But there was a lady from Nicaragua in the back who’s reputed to be a fine baker, and her ears perked right up at the word Rosquillas. She doesn’t speak much English, but a coworker agreed to translate my request for feedback.

Her eyes crinkled up in suspicion when I opened the tin of powdered rings. She picked one up with obvious hesitation, gave it a little nibble, and made a face so universal it needs no translation. “No, no, no. No bueno.” It wasn’t quite a blecch! because she didn’t mind the flavor per se, but she was quite firm that these were not the Rosquillas she grew up with. Not even close. Mine were sweet, tender, and had a uniquely wine-tinged aroma. No bueno. Nicaraguan Rosquillas were supposed to barely sweet, very crunchy, and [ahem] untainted.

Then she pulled out her phone, did a quick search, and showed me a photo. Plain, golden rings. “Estas. Estas son Rosquillas.” I scrolled up and saw the title: Rosquillas de Maiz. Wait a second. Maiz? As in “maize?” I.e., corn?

[Pause for translation]. “Of course it is. Rosquillas are made with masa a/k/a corn flour.”

And thus the penny dropped. The basic idea of ring-shaped cookies had indeed traveled the length and breadth of Spain’s former dominion, but not the Spanish recipe. People in the Americas had taken the idea and made it their own.

I looked things up as soon as I got home, and found quite a few examples from Nicaragua and Honduras in particular. It’s a pretty straightforward recipe with a few twists.

Twist #1 – The Basic Formula and Target Result

Research for this cookie quickly ran into a problem: the details were all over the place. Some called for lard (pig fat), some called for tallow (beef fat), some called for butter. Some were leavened, others unleavened. Some had sugar added, some didn’t. Etc. Fortunately, it’s a problem we’ve faced before and we knew what it meant.

This is a peasant recipe enjoyed by the whole society, not a well defined restaurant dish. That means the overarching instruction goes like this: “Use what you have on hand, so long as you keep the basics in place, and achieve the right result.”

Here are those basics, as measured by weight:

  • 3 parts finely ground cornmeal (masa harina),
  • 3 parts hard, grated farmer’s cheese (queso seco),
  • 1 part fat,
  • an egg to bind it together, and
  • baking time at 350° F (175° C) to get them browned, followed by more baking at 200° F (93° C) to get them completely dry and crunchy.

And here is the target:

  • Nicaraguan Corn Donut Cookies serve the same function as Italian Biscotti: they’re a not-quite-a-cookie intended to accompany coffee, tea, an alcoholic beverage, or a fruity dessert soup. Make that, and you’ve made Rosquillas de Maiz.

Everything after that comes down to refining and perfecting each point.

Baking With Corn Flour And Meal – You May Want To Toast It In A Pan

Central Americans have fresh masa harina on hand, every day and everywhere, waiting to be used. If you’re like us, you probably have a bag of masa tucked away in the back of your pantry, sealed as well as possible to keep out the moths. “Fresh” it is not.

There is an easy solution. Put your somewhat stale corn product into a dry pan over medium heat, and cook it until you can smell the corn flavor rising up. Presto. Ready to go.

That trick may work for fresh masa harina too, but it isn’t in the original recipes. On the other hand, it isn’t all that outside of the recipes either. Spain and its cultural heirs make a series of cookies like Polvorones that are built on a combination of toasted wheat flour and a healthy amount of butter and/or lard. This fits right into that tradition.

The Cheese

Most cultures with a European heritage make a variety of fresh cheeses known by different names around the globe. Quark, tvorog, topfen, etc. They typically come in two basic varieties, wet and hard, and have a mild, creamy flavor. The closest American equivalents would be something like cottage cheese mixed with ricotta, and then drained in cheesecloth until you get the desired texture.

For this recipe you want the driest version of that cheese you can find, grated down to as fine as you can get it. We used tvorog from a local Polish store, drained in a sieve before weighing it out. It’s probably not ideal, but remember that basic instruction up above. It’s peasant food. Use what you have on hand, so long as you keep the basics in place, and achieve the right result.

NOTE: If you only have access to something as wet as cottage cheese, wring it out well before weighing, and then you’ll be fine. The darned cookies get dried at the end of the recipe anyway, and there’s no gluten to develop because they’re made with corn rather than wheat.

The Fat

As noted above, the authentic recipes vary from all butter through all lard, to a mix of butter, lard, and tallow. That isn’t odd for Spanish-heritage cookies. Again, see Polvorones and their U.S. relative Biscochitos. Use what you have on hand. Our favorite was a mix of butter and lard, but it doesn’t really matter from a “heritage” point of view.

This can be a dry dough. Drizzle in water (or extra fat) a teaspoon at a time as needed to make it just hold together as a dough. Remember that it will tend to moisten throughout as it rests, and the dry corn grains moisten up.

The Sugar Content

Authentic recipes varied from no added sugar at all to a small amount (from the perspective of a U.S. sweet tooth). The target is something that will taste like corn in your personal opinion. Season to taste, as they say.

Some recipes also call for obscure (to us) products like loaf sugar. Nicaragua and Honduras are major production centers for sugar cane, and such niceties probably matter to those who live there every bit as much as green peppers versus red peppers do for us, or Apple A versus Apple B. With all due respect, and subject to one exception, it doesn’t matter to you and me. U.S. brown sugar comes from sugar cane, with some of the byproducts (a/k/a molasses) mixed back in. The result should be identical once it dissolves into a cookie dough.

The exception? There is a Rosquillas variation that uses no sugar at all in the dough, but decorates the top of the cookie with sugar shavings from the aforementioned loaf. Consider that an Internet Bonus, because it isn’t in our written recipe. That’s a case where only true loaf sugar will do, because the texture simply can’t be duplicated.

To Salt Or Not To Salt?

That’s simple. Salt. No, it isn’t in the most authentic recipes. But we’ve found that every single baked good we’ve ever tried will taste a little better if you use an invisible pinch or two of salt.

The Leavening Agent

We call for baker’s ammonia if you have it, and there was one recipe I found that incorporated this antique leavening agent. Others use baking powder, with a healthy percentage calling for nothing.

So why did we specify the more obscure one? It comes down to the target. All biscotti are crunchy and dry, but we’ve eaten a lot of them over the years and have come to appreciate the distinction between (i) hard, which is unpleasant until you’re initiated into the cult, (ii) crunchy, which amounts to the introductory level for people not yet beaten into submission; and (iii) crispy, a rarely achieved state of perfection that catches the essence of hard without the dental ramifications of crunchy.

Unleavened Nicaraguan Rosquillas are hard. They’re still okay because we have molars for a reason, and you’re supposed to dip the darned things anyway, but in our opinion one ought to do better. Nicaraguan Rosquillas made with baking powder are crunchy. That’s what a native of the region will expect.

Nicaraguan Rosquillas made with hartshorn a/k/a baker’s ammonia are light and crispy, which made our native tester down at Reyna’s raise an eyebrow with delight. For what it’s worth, I also brought a version made with baking powder only, and that was considered good, but not as good as the lighter and crispier variety.

NOTE: Here’s an Internet-only tip. Hartshorn is a little stronger than baking powder. You may want to increase the amount to a full 1 teaspoon if you use the more common leavening agent.

CONCLUSION

Nicaraguan Corn Donut Cookes (Rosquillas de Maiz) fell into our life by total surprise, and have quickly earned an enduring spot in our hearts. The aren’t a “favorite” per se, because we associate cookies with sweet, tender, dessert-like baked goods such as shortbreads and nut cookies. But that’s taste, not judgment, and these would definitely be in the running if we were making recipes along the lines of Biscotti, Mandelbrot, or even our recent forays into Greek Ladokouloura and Lebanese Yansoon Cookies.

The first two are crunchy, crispy, and nutty-sweet. The next two are crispy and spiced-sweet. Rosquillas de Maiz are crunchy, crispy, and corn-sweet. They fit right in as a peer to the others, and illustrate a special heritage that most of us could stand to know a lot more about.

NOTE FROM KATE: I really enjoy these, and the cheese adds an extra tang. Also, look at the proportions: doesn’t the recipe resemble “Real Food?” The guilt factor is cut by two-thirds at least when you nosh on a barely-sweet, high-protein Rosquillas de Maiz. They are absolutely lovely. Now as you all know, I struggle with fitting into my jeans in this cookie-rich environment. This round little cookie has me all excited, though. Some online recipes cut out all sugar and add a bit of parmesan to the farmer’s cheese. Interesting… I wonder how these would go over as an almost-savory, balanced treat with my afternoon cup of coffee? Try them and decide for yourself!

Enjoy!

CHINESE RESTAURANT ALMOND COOKIES, Now More Than A Century Old

Chinese immigrants in America, from a cookie’s point of view

You may have noticed that many Chinese restaurants in the U.S. have an out of place dessert tucked away on the menu: a peculiarly tender almond cookie. Research (a/k/a the 2020 Nom Wah Cookbook) shows an interesting history.

Click Here For The Recipe Without The Discussion

The oldest Chinese restaurant in New York, Nom Wah Tea Parlor, began in 1920 as a bakery focused on standard American fare like cakes, tarts, and of course cookies. These Almond Cookies were a popular creation of the Chinese immigrant owners. Matters changed because that little bakery had a sideline operation selling tea and various traditional savory snacks from Hong Kong; small plates that sparked the NYC love affair with Dim Sum. The sideline restaurant business swallowed up the bakery, and the rest is history. But this particular cookie was too popular to die! It may have stood out like an American sore thumb against all that traditional fare, but the customers insisted. They wanted all those little dumplings, noodle dishes, skewers, soups, and meats most of all… but they wanted Almond Cookies too. It survived every challenge.

Your customers insist!

Other restaurants ran into the same issue when they began to copy the Nom Wah success story. ‘In the know’ customers simply wouldn’t go if a Dim Sum restaurant wasn’t [ahem] authentic enough to include Chinese Almond Cookies on the menu. Never mind that the recipe had no Asian roots.

The cookie itself is a simple shortbread that uses lard instead of butter, a lot of almond extract, and an exceptional number of egg yolks. The proportions are pretty standard beyond that. It’s the history, texture, and flavor that make this cookie such a different, delightful, and (to certain Pavelle family females) indispensable treat.

“Melted” Means Melted

Kate, a long time aficionado of almond cookies, handled the testing on this one. It’s a very old and very well established recipe, so she only ran into two challenges.

First, a certain husband of hers who shall remain nameless, blameless, and in all ways sacrosanct, wrote “lard at room temperature” in the first version instead “melted lard cooled to room temperature.” This made the dough extremely stiff and hard to work with.

Consider yourself warned.

NOTE FROM KATE: Now that I have tried the melted method, the dough seems less “short” and easier to handle. Before, I had to add a teaspoon of water, thinking that our flour became extra dry over the winter. Surprisingly, the end product has the same, identical texture! The only catch: I found it best to let the lard melt ¾ of the way, and then take it off the heat as I prepared the other ingredients. It finished melting in the residual heat, and then cooled just enough to start solidifying again when I was ready to use it. The food processor will handle the solid bits – just make sure you don’t inadvertently cook the egg yolks that are already waiting! (Barely melted lard is warm to touch, but not hot.)

The cookie forming goes like this:

  1. Divide dough in half.
  2. Divide each half into 18 portions (I like to square up the dough using my bench scraper, then I eyeball the sections.)
  3. Roll each portion into a ball in your hands, press the almond into the center, and then squish lightly. Don’t worry about fixing small cracks, it will bake up nicely and the texture, highlighted by the yellow egg wash, is part of cookie’s appeal.

To Soda Or Not To Soda, That Is The Question

We decided to write this up as a doubled version of the recipe in the Nom Wah Cookbook. Those authors called for 1 tsp. each of baking soda and powder; i.e. 2 tsp. each for our version.

Kate tasted distinct baking soda notes in that formula, though Scott (who is much less sensitive to bitter flavors) was willing to give it a pass. So we tried a second version, with two teaspoons of cream of tartar to react with the baking soda byproduct. Those cookies still tasted a bit soapy to her extra sensitive palate, and were a bit too puffy for Scott – a fact which proved she was correct in tasting unreacted baking soda still in the dough.

Do you know that story about the recipe testers who met up with Goldilocks?

Four teaspoons of baking powder with no soda would have eliminated the soapiness for sure, but now we had to deal with the unwanted extra rise. And so we settled 3 tsp. of baking powder. Except… A certain angelic, blameless, and nameless husband pointed out that almond extract originally came from purifying bitter almonds to remove the cyanide. So maybe that baking soda flavor was actually a feature instead of a flaw? Was it possible that a certain recipe tester was being too sensitive? [NOTE TO SELF: Married men should know better than to use the words “too” and “[you-know-what]” in close proximity. Thank goodness the nameless and blameless husband at issue would never, ever make such a rookie mistake.]

NOTE FROM KATE: Scott may be onto something with that touch of bitter almonds. The batch below (3 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda) leavened about the same (the cookies puff up and deflate a bit with cooling.) A side-by-side taste test revealed that the “soapier” cookie is more authentic! It has that certain something. I like it toned down a bit, but not all the way. But now you have options and see how “soapy” a cookie you prefer.

Suffice it to say that we leave things up to you. It’s a matter of taste. Do you want the bitter edge? Or do you find it revolting enough to point fingers at your entirely innocent spouse, who only wrote down what the original authors required? Almond, or bitter almond? Tradition, or improved?

There’s really no way to lose.

Enjoy!

HARTSHORN CRACKERS, A Beautiful and Tasty Illusion Cookie

Appeance? Cracker. Texture? Cracker. Taste? Sugar cookie. Gotcha!

We often discover something new and exciting as we experiment when odd or exotic recipes appear on the radar. We expected no less with this one. “Crackers?” It had to be a European version of those crispy, crunchy Mediterranean tea cookies. Right?

Nope. These taste like a standard sugar cookie, and earned their name by mirroring the appearance and texture of a classic saltine a/k/a soda cracker. They are eminently snackable too. Dangerously so. Each piece is so small that you will find yourself innocently popping five or ten at a sitting, which actually adds up to more than that regular sized sugar cookie you would have been able to resist.

Unique, fascinating, and familiar all at once. How cool is that?

Click here if you only want the recipe without the discussion

Saltines, right? Gotcha!

The Things You Learn When You Do The Math…

The past few months have uncovered several new recipes that rely on baker’s ammonia, including a few that feature a crisp, crackery texture achieved through the use of an antique leavening agent called baker’s ammonia a/k/a hartshorn. See, e.g., Norwegian Pretzel Cookies (Kringla), Greek Olive Oil Cookies (Ladokouloura), and Lebanese Anise (Yansoon) Cookies. So we were kind of excited to try this one, which promised to be a more classic European version.

The Mediterranean recipes both start with oil. The older versions of this recipe start with lard or shortening. Seems like an obvious connection, right? The only unusual thing was the math. All the classic Ammonia a/k/a Hartshorn Cookie recipes ended up with a really odd amount of fat when normalized to a reasonable amount of flour. A bit more than three tablespoons. At the same time, the flour measurements got weird if we tried to normalize things from the fat or sugar point of view.

Version 1.0

I decided to plan out my first test recipe by weight since the numbers weren’t that far off. 100 grams of lard, 100 grams of sugar, and 250 grams of flour. 1 to 1 to 2½, spread over two baking sheets. The result? Extraordinarily thin crackers that tasted like a cookie, but with a very distinct flavor from the fat. They were also a little greasy.

NOTE FROM KATE: They were a fun kind of greasy! Sometimes, using an animal fat you already have saved from a roast can give this kind of a cookie a very interesting character. Flaky tenderness and a hint of other flavors add to the gustatory experience. I like knowing that you’re eating a natural product and not a highly processed shortening. Scott will disparage that from time to time as “virtue points,” but they matter to me.

Fair enough. 250 grams of flour equals 1¾ cups of flour. The next batch would increase the flour to an even two cups. That would take care of the greasiness. The sugar level was about right. But what about that very lard-heavy flavor? What could I do for people who prefer something less distinctive and more common? Shortening, yes… but the flavor wasn’t loud enough to do with a totally neutral fat. So why not clarified butter?

How much butter would I need? Butter is about 16-18% water… Assume that’s been cooked that off, and account for a little more weight from the milk solids… And you end up with…

Son. Of. A. [cough]! You end up with exactly 4 ounces, dead on the nose. And what is 4 ounces? Exactly one standard stick of butter, or and even ½ cup.

And was I wasting effort and cleaning time by assuming the recipe called for two baking sheets? I had carefully rotated the pans midway through because thin dough and high heat are a bad combination. But even so we ended up with one tray browned more on the top, and the other tray more on the bottom. Annoying. And there was an awful lot of room around the dough on each tray, so…

Version 2.0

(A) Clarified butter instead of lard. (B) A little more flour. (C) Roll it all out to fit on a single sheet pan, and see if it’s still thin enough to be a “cracker.” (D) Adjust the cooking time to account for the extra thickness, and having only one pan in the oven.

This is how they come out of the oven. See the uneven break by the bottom right? That’s what happens if you merely cut the lines without giving the wheel/blade a little wiggle to add an extra hint of separation.

This experiment told us (almost) everything we needed to know.

  1. I had the proportions nailed. The dough was easy to make, easy to handle, and just plain worked.
  2. This amount of dough rolls out thin – something on the order of ⅛” when all is said and done – but that’s still a big difference from “roll until you can roll no more.” The final result ended up being just under 3/16“, which definitely gave more of a cookie vibe than a cracker.
  3. The flavor changed radically. Lard notes versus butter notes were extremely clear when we tasted them side by side.
  4. The butter version does indeed taste standard. Just like a sugar cookie. But is there anything easier to vary than a sugar cookie? Tea, chai, cinnamon, other spices, herbs… This is clearly a cookie that bakers can play with to an all but infinite extent.
  5. Those darned lines aren’t always clean enough when the cookie comes out of the oven.
    Thick indeed! These come off as more “cookie” than “cracker.” Note how the lack of docking adds to that.

This cookie was, quite honestly, good enough to publish. But we weren’t done just yet! Could we customize this into a true illusion cookie with a taste that would complement a cookie tray instead of just fitting right in with so many other tastealikes?

Digression: Revisiting The Ratio Of Ingredients

Remember how odd the ingredient list seemed at the start of this project? And how the fat didn’t work out evenly until we figured out that it equaled a 4 oz. stick of butter that’s been clarified? But the overall ratios still didn’t work out to even numbers by weight, as experience taught they should in such an old recipe?

But now, with some extra flour and a more limited amount of fat… Aha! These changes created something very close to a 1:1:3 ratio of fat:sugar:flour. Gotcha!

Version 3.0 (see below) established our preference for a little less in the way of both fat and sugar, and that is what the recipe now says, but we have no doubt how Grandma taught the recipe by that ratio back in the day.

Version 3.0

  • Use the 1:1:3 ratio of ingredients;
  • Add some bacon fat in place of butter (we ended up with 2 tablespoons after I rendered four slices in a pan);
  • Roll out two trays as thin as possible, and only bake one at a time;
  • Dock the dough to make the final product look more like a saltine; and
  • Move some of the sugar from the inside to a sprinkling on top that would mimic the salt on an actual cracker.

The result? Have a look!

[Shakes head]. I don’t know how I missed it, but this is a marvelous illusion cookie. It actually fooled our real life daughter when she stopped in to visit! That docking made a much bigger difference than I ever imagined.

We could taste the bacon, but only because we knew it was there. The bacon also added a healthy hit of extra salt that we both enjoyed – enough to bump the basic salt level in the recipe up from ¼ to ½ teaspoon (though we might revert to the reduced amount if we work with salty bacon fat again). I even enjoyed sprinkling the tops with a little bit of extra salt to enhance the effect. It now appears as an option in the recipe. Here, among friends, I will admit to recommending that option because it makes the cookie taste more distinctive. But that’s taste, not tradition.

IMPORTANT NOTE: We also learned, to our chagrin, that simply marking the lines with a fluted wheel isn’t enough. We lost several “crackers” because they baked together too firmly, and wouldn’t snap along the lines. Even more than we did with the thick cookie (see photo above).

LESSON LEARNED: Don’t just mark those lines; mark them clearly and emphatically, with a little wiggle of the wheel or blade to be on the safe side. You need the pieces to bake together in order to have that crackerish center show, but you also need the separations clean enough to be sure they will break evenly.

The only other adjustments came down to fine tuning the ratio. Hark! Can you hear your great-great Grandma speaking from the beyond? “It’s a simple ratio dear. Three parts flour, to one part sugar, and one part lard. But here’s the secret… They taste even better if you take back a spoonful of the sugar and fat.”

Grandma is great. Grandma is wise. Listen to your great-great Grandma.

Conclusion

This is one of those cookies where we started out thinking “A,” only to discover it was really a “B.” This is not one of those cracker-crisp Mediterranean tea cookies. It’s more like a good, cracker-crisp sugar cookie designed to create a convincing, extremely snackable illusion.

NOTE FROM KATE: Be careful with these – they are quite more-ish! The texture is a lot of fun. You will easily snack on five cookies when you would’ve said a “no, thank you” to a similar cookie in its one-piece form.

Here’s a summary of the lessons learned:

  1. The dough follows a 1:1:3 ratio of fat to sugar to flour, with a spoonful taken back from the first two.
  2. The cookie changes in wonderful ways if you mix and match different fats in place of the clarified butter. We tried them with lard alone, butter alone, and butter mixed with bacon fat. The last was the best, partly because we liked the extra salt.
  3. The illusion part matters, so roll the dough out super thin, take the time to dock them with a fork, and sprinkle on a bit of sugar to fully recreate the saltine look. Sprinkling on some kosher salt will also help the illusion, and has the side effect of making the cookie taste more distinctive.
  4. Maintain an even thickness. Smeared edges cook faster than rolled centers.
  5. Mark the dividing lines emphatically, with a little wiggle of the wheel/blade to add some room. The helps the “crackers” to separate cleanly.
  6. Just don’t separate them too much, because those broken-open sides show off the crackerish interior, which is both pretty and useful for the illusion.
  7. Bake only one tray at a time, and spin the tray just after the estimated halfway point. Two trays won’t cook evenly, and oven hot spots really show.
  8. The bake is done when the top turns cracker-tan brown. Go by that, not the designated baking time.
  9. Hartshorn is mandatory. Baking soda/powder yield a standard cookie texture.

All in all? A very successful experiment, and a cookie we will gladly add to the repertoire. Especially if we want something more on the snackable side than a proper dessert, or there’s someone coming over who’d be fun to fool…

Enjoy!

LEMON & EXTRA-LEMON CRINKLE COOKIES, Two Pretty Ways To Do Citrus

Crunchy and soft, with either a white crinkle crust or a tart and lemony crust. Options!

Do you like citrus cookies? If so, read on because we spent a massive amount of time trying a few tricks designed to enhance the lemon intensity. So much so that we ended up with four different recipes! Two for texture, each of which can be tailored for beauty or taste.

Click here if you only want the recipe without the lessons

“Citrus Flavor” Usually Requires An Icing

Here’s an unpleasant fact about baking lemon, lime, and orange cookies: you can fill the dough with the gentle, round notes by stuffing it full of grated zest, and then fill them out by adding in some oil or extract. But you can’t get those lovely, sharp high notes without some kind of icing or other coating that’s full of fresh juice (or a trick as described below). Bright citrus flavors come from the acid in that juice, and that acid dims to nothing on the inside of a dough. Omit the coating and your cookie won’t – can’t – taste “lemony,” “limey,” or “orangey” any more than an yellow, green, or orange gummy bear really tastes like fruit.

In fact, gummy candies are a perfect way to make the point. The plain ones are nice enough, but they’re basically just sweet with some kind of flavor. The sour ones taste vastly more like actual fruit because that sour powder on the outside -usually citric acid – adds the missing high notes.

Heritage Cookies of the Old and New World (Volume 1) has a recipe for Lemon/Lime Sugar Cookies which has become all but mandatory in our annual holiday extravaganza. The cookie part is nice enough. It’s packed full of grated zest, and you can tell. But the magic part comes with the extra-tart icing that’s equally packed with fresh juice from the zested fruits.

But… does it really have to be an icing?

A Very Standard Recipe To Start

It took very little to develop a working recipe that would produce a nice crinkle effect. As you probably know already from Chocolate Crinkle Cookies, the magic trick is to (a) roll the balls of dough in granulated sugar, and then (b) roll them again in powdered sugar. The first layer insulates the second layer, which allows the cookie to expand in the oven leaving deep cracks of cookie-color surrounded by powdery white.

I initially wanted to make a lemon cookie that would imitate the ultra-gooey texture of Chocolate Crinkles, but that’s one I couldn’t figure out. The experiments did prove fruitful nevertheless, because we ended up with two variations for people to choose from. The first uses two sticks of butter and produces a fairly standard drop cookie texture with a gentle crunch. The second replaces one of those sticks of butter with an 8-ounce brick of cream cheese. These turn out soft and cakey on the inside. Not quite the ooey-gooey target, but in the same general arena.

The only hard part came from accepting the amount of yellow food dye required to make a sharp contrast between the cracks and the coating. We really wanted these to look startling and photogenic; a deep, lemony yellow that would really contrast against the bright white of the powdered sugar crust. Physics got in the way.

Are the cracks yellow? Yes. But it took a shocking amount of yellow dye to get there.

The dough is very yellow, especially with the added food dye. But it’s an inescapable fact that colors fade when you spread them out, and puffing cookies up to create a crackled exterior means the inside will end up dimmer, especially if you add in a bit of browning. C’est la vie.

Experiments With Powdered Vitamin C

We used to crush a Vitamin C pill or two in our mortar (uncoated, please) to boost the acid bite of some of our glazes. Now have one kilogram of powdered l-ascorbic acid (Vitamin C) in our pantry.

NOTE FROM KATE: My younger brother and I are both children of the Cold War. Back in Czechoslovakia, we learned how to use our personal gas masks in 1st grade, knew not to throw water on napalm by 6th grade, and shot our first AK-47 machine guns by 7th grade. Once our family came to America and the talk of intercontinental cruise missiles heated up the news, my brother made it his business to learn everything he could about nuclear disaster survival.

When the war in Ukraine broke out, he surprised me with a preventive care package which included, among other things, a 1 kilo package of granulated l-ascorbic acid, i.e. Vitamin C. (A lot of us former Easter European types got “triggered” by all this. When I told my Ukrainian friend over lunch, she offered some of her iodine pill stash without blinking an eye.) So: yes, you can buy powdered acids, and they will do wonders for your cookie and candy experiments!

Our experience with the need for an icing to enhance citrus flavors, together with my love of those sour gummy bears, provoked a genius idea: Since we need to roll the balls in sugar anyway, why not mix in some vitamin C at the same time?

[NOTE: We happened to have the powdered vitamin C handy, but it’s simple to make by grinding up some supplement tablets in a mortar and pestle.]

We tried it immediately, and it worked exactly as we’d hoped. The cookies had a brightly flavored crust that transformed them from “sweet and lemony” to “that tastes like good, tart lemonade!” Not a single one of that batch made it out of the house to our normal cadre of taste testers.

But there was a problem. I’d thought it would be easy to create the white-on-yellow crinkle crust, but these cookies showed now sign of it except for a few that had vague evidence of a pattern on top. [Sigh] So my wife was a flavor genius, while I was an incompetent boob. Par for the course.

I tweaked the recipe for batch #2. Same result. Grrr.

So I went back and researched every version I could find on the Internet, only to discover that every one was pretty darned close to my working recipe. The only difference? Others use a profligate amount of yellow food dye to make the crinkles stand out.

Okay, so batch #3 would include some food dye to enhance the contrast. Same result yet again, except the cookie was slightly yellower than the first two batches. Check. “It isn’t ‘some’ food dye, it’s an ‘are you kidding?!’ amount of food dye.”

Batch #4, I added the larger amount in, and added a single drop of red on the theory that it would help with the contrast. I can recommend this if you want a pink lemonade color, but learn from my disappointment if you’re after lemon-yellow. Oh yes… and there was next to no white left after baking even though I was now producing the exact level of surface crackling and fissuring we were aiming for. Aaaaaargh!

Only then did I begin to wonder if Kate’s beautiful flavor trick might be interfering with the whole crinkle creation process. We still had half of the batch #4 dough left, so I did a formal experiment: same baking sheet, but half with vitamin C in the sugar and half without. Behold!

This batch had a single drop of red food coloring along with 8(!) drops of yellow. You can see how big an effect it had.

Kate refused to believe it.

NOTE FROM KATE: Yep, I did. I kicked hard against leaving out our doomsday Vitamin-C ! With my chemistry background, I didn’t think there was enough time for the acid to mess with the leavening agents. The acid didn’t penetrate all the way through, after all. Oh, hubris! Oh, woe! Now I have egg on my face. (And a cookie in my mouth – these are seriously good!)

Scientific method to the rescue! I whipped up a half batch and repeated the experiment two more times. Yep. The plain half came out with deep crinkles every time, while the acidulated half had almost none.

Why? It’s obviously because… because… well, I’m not exactly sure. At this point I’ve done enough research to know that ascorbic acid will decay at oven temperatures, with two big leaps at 140° F (60° C) and at 170° F (77° C), and an even bigger leap as it passes 200° F (95° C). The degradation takes some time, which is why 10 minutes in the oven isn’t enough to destroy it completely. Thus the still-sour tang to the impregnated crust. Perhaps the byproducts are enough to wet the powdered sugar, and destroy it’s snowy whiteness? That’s my working theory, but it’s still no more than that.

The straight recipe (with that drop of red food dye) on top. Cookies with Vitamin C in the sugar crust underneath.

NOTE FROM KATE: I’d like to point out that despite being a lawyer, my beloved husband instinctively baked three test batches, with three comparison samples in each. That’s your standard Quality Control Protocol – any fewer and the result would lack statistical significance. He also varied only one variable at a time, so we’re golden. (Well, he is. He could have been an excellent engineer, too.)

Frustration set in until I changed my point of view. It wasn’t a flaw; it was a variation! Two cookies for the price of one. Or four if you look at it right! The first two, crunchy or cakey, will be targeted by everyone who grabs something pretty off the tray. Then you have the lemon-lover Versions #3 and #4, which will taste better to those who prefer to eat with their tongues rather than their eyes. Not that they’re ugly. Just plain when compared to the more lovely but shallower sister.

Opinions? Me? Never.

Enjoy!

Beautiful from tip to toe.

CANADIAN ARMY MOLASSES COOKIES, A Classic WWII Recipe

The Canadian soldier’s secret trading weapon

Who’da thunk it? Soldiers like to trade amongst themselves, particularly when different groups have different supplies. In World War II the U.S. GI’s were the source for chocolate and smokes. The English always had tea. And the Canadians? They marched into the trading wars armed with cookies that no one else could match – the ones you’ll see below.

Click Here if you only want the recipe without the discussion

The basic recipe comes from the 1946 Canadian Army Cook’s Manual, as published in the Canadian Government website. All we did was test it, which turned out to matter because the volume-to-weight ratios on that page are a little bit off. Following the weights yields a thick drop cookie dough, while the volume measurements (cups) give you a very soft slice-and-bake result. We went with the second one because the instructions specifically mention slicing off pieces before baking. Our version below has corrected weights according to our tried and true conversion tables. Please note, however, that some ingredients (particularly flour) can vary a lot depending on both grind and protein content.

NOTE FROM KATE: When I tested this recipe, I used the scale with an expectation of tidy, slice-and-bake logs. I got a goopy mess of a drop cookie dough, and a discussion ensued along the lines of “You know, this cookie has a HUGE proportion of molasses!” Scott did some recalculating, et voila! The next try yielded slice and bake logs. The cookies bake and taste the same, but I prefer the tidy handling of the logs. It makes for an easier cleanup.

We made only two changes aside from that tweak. (1) The original recipe calls for sour milk, which we successfully replaced with both buttermilk and with fresh milk soured in the kitchen by adding some vinegar/lemon (a standard workaround). Yogurt ought to work too, though we haven’t tested it. And (2) We added raisins and extra spices as optional ingredients. Those might be too expensive for army-level production, but they do yield a tastier result for home cooks making dozens instead of thousands.

So what does it taste like? We found a few dozen tasters for this recipe and got a pretty standard reaction: “Entirely inoffensive with a finger on the scale toward good.” Call it a universal 6 out of 10, with no one going higher than an 8 or lower than a 4. They’d also be a 6 if you had a 1-10 scale from savory to sweet. Add the optional raisins and both scores go up by a notch. Extra spices push it up another.

NOTE FROM KATE: I admit to being spoiled by molasses cookies that bite back. You know, the memorable ones, loaded with spices from the obvious cinnamon to the expensive cardamom, with pepper and ginger for good measure. This is not that kind of a cookie. This is like a mild dish from a famously spicy cuisine. It’s still delicious but it defies your expectations.

People who like spicy cookies will notice a certain lack in this one, while mild food eaters should be thrilled to have a cookie that goes well with both coffee and tea. The restraint on the spice end of things was likely a result of not only preference, but also economy. Spices are expensive, and that matters once you multiply their cost by making enough for the entire Canadian army!

Soft or crunchy?

It’s entirely a matter of baking time and personal taste. Kate prefers these with a bit of residual chew. Scott likes them better when crispy. Choose for yourself. 15-20 minutes gives you one or the other, with all the stages in between.

NOTE FROM KATE: Despite my chew preference, I find that even dry cookies, which sat out for a few days, tasted good! Surprisingly, they didn’t go stale, and they had a nice crisp. Even though the low spice level took me aback at first, this eminently practical cookie grew on me and has now become a part of my “easy and travels well” repertoire!

Enjoy!