COOKIE #22: BROWN-EYED SUSANS

First off, I’d like to apologize for the time delay between my last few blogs.  I’ve taken on 2 odd jobs on top of wrangling my ever curious 8-month old and being a wife, so I’ve become busier.  I may only be able to bring one post a week from here on, but will try to post more often when I can.

The Brown-eyed Susans I grew up with were either bright yellow flowers or sugar cookies with a Kiss pressed into the center.  They were lovely simple cookies, and I believe that this 1962 BH&G recipe will provide just that, with a slight twist.

Apparently there are several ways to make Brown-eyed Susans.  Most recipes online reference a homemade chocolate icing that you dot onto the middle of each cookie.  While a touch of chocolate icing would be nice, there is no way it could be better than adding a chocolate Kiss, like I so fondly remember.  I stand by the no-fail combo of chocolate candy and cookies.  Adding chocolate candy to a cookie equals 100% success.

Why just chocolate candy?  While some non-chocolate candies, like dried fruit, do fine in a cookie, most do not: Skittles? Nerds? Twizzlers? Those gumdrops I tried a couple cookies back? But I’ll go out on a limb and say that almost all chocolate candies do swimmingly in cookies.  M&M’s, Heath, Rolos, Reeses Cups, etc. All taste delicious in a cookie! Chocolate candy definitely trumps chocolate icing as the better brown-eyed option.

This Brown-eyed Susan recipe follows my ideology and wants me to use something called a “chocolate-mint candy wafer.”  I’m not even really sure what that is. And why are we throwing mint into the mix? My first thought jumps to those Andes mints you get at weddings or as a "thank you for spending so much money,  here are two tiny mints to ease the pain" on a bill at a nice restaurant.  They seem kinda wafer-like, ie flat.  But they are rectangular.   These Brown-eyed Susans must represent its name and provide an “eye” in the center of each cookie.  No one wants to look at some robot shaped, non-human rectangle eye on their cookie.  The candy that is chosen for the center of this cookie must be round, as tradition and good sense calls for. My second thought: mini York peppermint patties. But as I inspect them at the grocery store, I realize that they would be much too big.  We don’t want dilated monster eyes either.  I search the shelves for something that is chocolate, mint, round, and small.  Junior Mints! Not quite as “flat” as I’d like, but I can smush them some to make them work.  I don’t know what candy the people 50 years ago used, but this’ll work for me.

                                                                                                                                 



Before

This is a super easy recipe.  Four steps: mix ingredients 1-5, stir in flour, chill one hour, top with candy. Bake.  Ok, five steps. And for those who aren’t fluent in kitchen measurements, ¾ cups of butter is 1½ sticks, so there better be some buttery bliss.  Thinking back on my Sandies recipe, I remember the basic shortbread ingredients: butter, sugar, vanilla extract, and flour.  This cookie recipe looks a lot like a shortbread cookie, with the addition of an egg, so I’m also expecting the flavors to resemble shortbread.  Of course with the Junior Mint on top, I have no idea what to expect.  I pop the first batch in the oven.  Bahtah bing bahtah boom, ding, they’re done.

The cookies look somewhat like the photo provided in the cookbook. Mine are a bit bigger. I will note that on a few cookies, I piled on three Junior Mints, and that wasn’t the best idea.  The inside of the mint becomes so hot that it liquefies and runs outside the chocolate coating.  On the cookies with only one mint, the meltaways were captured by the rim of the cookie.  However, on the cookies with more than one mint, there wasn’t enough of a cookie edge to contain the runaway mint, so it leaked all over the cooky sheet and became a sticky, hard to clean off, burnt mess.

After

The cookies are not as buttery as I had hoped, but still have that homemade flavor.  They are lighter than they look.  And you only get a slight hint of chocolate and mint as you take a bite of the candy in the center.  These are very subtle cookies compared to the Brown-eyed Susans I think of today.  I don’t think the Junior Mints were a great substitute for the “chocolate-mint wafers,” so I’d stick with Kisses in the future.  And I’d go with the Peanut Butter Crisscross recipe from earlier as the base, playing off the magical marriage of peanut butter and chocolate. Regardless, these cookies will get eaten!

Cookie Grade: B = I love the concept, but not loving the chocolate-mint wafer idea.  A few change ups and this would be a great cookie.

What I was jammin’ to: Fuel – found an old photo of me and Jacki posing with them before a concert.  I was 15 y/o with braces. And I broke my nose and got stitches in my forehead shortly after this picture was taken.  Got to watch out for those crazy crowdsurfers.  

Looks like she's rockin' out in
her shades

COOKIE #21: DROP SUGAR COOKIES

Sugar cookies are one of the most recognizable cookies out there. EVERYONE has eaten a sugar cookie or two in their day.  I say "sugar cookie" and there is no doubt in your mind what I am talking about. I guarantee that you don’t think of raisins, nuts, citron (what the heck is that?), or candied cherries.  So what were the editors of this 1962 Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook thinking when they chose this recipe for their drop sugar cookie? Out of all of the sugar cookie entries that I'm sure flooded their inbox, whose brilliant idea was it to choose the one with dried fruit in it? Did sugar cookies change that much in 50 years? I'm guessing not.  For a sugar cookie, I'm not in the least bit excited. But maybe it will still be tasty?

Her blue eyes are gonna be the death
of her Daddy

For those who don’t know me, I grew up in a one stoplight country “town.”  It was a 20 minute drive to school, to rent a movie or buy groceries, and a 35 minute drive to the nearest 24 hour WalMart.  So when my best friend Jacki and I would have midnight sugar cookie dough cravings (we loved to eat the dough raw), we had quite a trek.  And yes, we would make the 1hr 10 min roundtrip at 1am to satisfy our late night cravings.  At 16 years old, it never occurred to us to stay at home and make our own. 

Can I eat the prop Mom?

So you see, sugar cookies are near and dear to my heart.  I still get cravings for them. Their scrumptious simple flavors win me over every time. For me, a sugar cookie should be soft and chewy, with crisp edges and a sugary, slightly vanilla-ny flavor.  Sprinkled sugar or non-pareils on top are a plus.  Anything extra added to the dough would completely negate the entire concept. For instance, if you were to add chocolate chips to a sugar cookie, it would no longer be a sugar cookie.  It would be a chocolate chip cookie. Agree?

So when I go shopping for this cookie, I am surprised to find several fruity ingredients in this recipe. One of which I have never heard of: citron.  What is citron?  Citron is a semitropital fruit with a rough, uneven, yellowish-green rind, that looks like a huge lumpy lemon. The thick white inner rind is what you find candied in the grocery store.  It is difficult to find in the U.S. and is most commonly available around the holiday season. It is generally sold in a small dice, intended for use in fruit cake (NOT sugar cookies). Interesting fact about citron: in medieval times it was used as an antibiotic and citron juice with wine was considered an effective antidote to poison.  I wouldn’t trust those theories today…

It must be close enough to the holiday season, because I find the containers of citron out in the produce section next to the candied cherries (which I also need) and other items necessary to make the ever popular fruitcake.  The candied citron looks like tiny cubes of green and white jello made in a science lab somewhere. I really don’t want to put this in my “sugar cookies,” but I proceed to buy it anyway. 

I flip to page 184 and begin to whip up the base for this recipe, minus the ½ cup of flour as instructed. The added orange zest is something else I’m not used to seeing in sugar cookies, but I’m beginning to realize that this isn’t the average sugar cookie. After I get my base raring to go, I return to recipe #21 and decide on adding the 1 cup of raisins vs the ½ cup of nuts (because its cheaper and I already had a bag of raisins at home).  I add the ½ cup of shiny lime-colored cubes and top each cookie with a candied cherry.  This is the most non-traditional looking sugar cookie I have ever seen! Maybe they just accidentally titled this one wrong???

I get the cookies out of the oven, try to look past my utter disappointment that I wasn’t going to get an actual sugar cookie, and give it a taste.  My first reaction? Bleh. The raisins (sugar), candied citron (sugar), and candied cherries (more sugar) make this cookie very sweet.  And the flavor of the citron does not help this cookie win any brownie points. I do my best to try and eat around all of the added “fruit” and taste just the cookie part, but there is just too much going on in this cookie for me to tell if this could’ve been a decent sugar cookie sans crazy add-ins.  I’ll get another go at the sugar cookie when I finally reach page 184, so I guess I’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I think I may eat off all the candied cherries on top and throw the rest of these cookies in the garbage.

Perhaps they meant to title this one Fruitcake Cookies, but someone lost the memo? Or didn’t file their TPS report?

Cookie Grade: F- = this is the furthest thing from a sugar cookie I could imagine. Why not just throw a bunch of licorice and sardines in a cookie and call them chocolate chip?! such a disservice to a classic. AND it wasn’t very good either.

What I was jammin’ to: after a Spotify fail, I broke out an old Eminem cd to shake my tail feathers to

COOKIE #20: GUMDROP COOKIES

If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, I could make a lot of these cookies. Gumdrops remind me of Willy Wonka’s everything is edible room and Katy Perry’s California Girls music video (even though I just watched it and there are exactly zero gumdrops in it). Gumdrops are a nostalgic candy that no one really likes, but everyone eats around the holidays. Believe it or not, they are essential to the world we live in. Could you imagine Candyland without  Gumdrop Mountains or a gingerbread house minus these sparkly staples?  They are a fundamental old-fashioned candy – flavors of orange, lemon, lime, grape, and cherry.

They are also a pain to chop up.  Because of their overwhelming stickiness, I have to cut each gumdrop individually & pull the pieces off of my knife. The recipe doesn’t specify how small to chop them, so I cut them in 6ths and call’em chopped.  Their wonderful glittery colors all blended together in one cup is about as beautiful as candy can get. But I can’t seem to fathom what they’ll taste like in a cookie. Will they melt? Will their flavors come thru? 

<--- Annalie in her "I am Berry Cute" onesie...too cute! --->
What exactly is a gumdrop anyway? They seem to be made up of a combination that would survive a nuclear explosion. After chopping away at them for what seemed like forever, they seem pretty indestructible. If the world is ever under some crazy alien attack, I bet that gumdrops will survive, right next to the Twinkies. Gumdrops are brightly-colored gelatin- or pectin-based pieces, shaped like a truncated cone and coated in granulated sugar. This makes them very sweet. And the gelatin base makes them stick to your teeth as you chew. So they are basically gelatin/pectin, sugar, artificial flavoring, more sugar, and food coloring. Not exactly healthy, but we are talking about candy here.  

I get my baking on while my husband flips through all the different football games going on today. Now that I’ve gone thru 19 other cookies, these Gumdrop Cookies are a breeze to make.  I LOVE that I finally get to add oatmeal to another cookie. And the coconut sounds yummy too.  Without much ado, my first batch is ready.  My hubby makes a comment that the kitchen smells like corn (???), but I guarantee you these cookies taste nothing like the such. Thank goodness, right? These cookies are a chewy delight with just the right amount of sugar.  They taste like ranger cookies! (a fave from my childhood)  And in every other bite you get a taste of a gumdrop.  To answer my inquiries from earlier, the gumdrops do not melt.  They do not infuse their flavors throughout the cookie.  Instead, they remain intact and you only taste them when you get a bite of one. A few of my cookies don’t even have any gumdrops in them.  And honestly, those are my favorites.

Overall, this is a fantastic cookie…besides the gumdrop part. The base for the cookie is what makes them so delicious. As an adult, I’m not fond of the actual gumdrops, but I bet kids would love them! That’s why I’m taking a few out to my nephew tomorrow.  And if he doesn’t like them, I’ll just eat around the candy. LOL

Cookie Grade: B+ = Would eat the whole batch if there weren’t any gumdrops in them.

 

What I was jammin’ to: MIKA -  if you haven’t heard them, they sound like Queen (awesome!).  YouTube their song Grace Kelly. Happy music J

COOKIE #19: SOUTHERN CREAM COOKIES

I take these cookies on the road to my best friend Cody’s house.  I’m like a traveling circus – I pack up my tricks, treats, and little animal, and head out to perform at another venue.  This big top drives 50 minutes ALL the way to Katy, TX where I get to cook in a nicer kitchen and visit with my girl and her cutie of a son, baby Corbin.



Yes, I packed my shortening
in a Hello Kitty ziploc bag

Since I have an older home, the kitchen is a far cry from “open concept” so I’m often left in there alone.  My daughter Annalie is a good companion, but since she’s learned to crawl, I’m usually left all alone all over again. So being able to bake with others is awesome. I love having people to talk to in the kitchen (and the extra hands for baby girl)! I should do this more often.  Cookie Monster Mama on the Road.  Could be another series?

Playing in the Jumperoo, set up in
the pantry with a mirror.
You can see doggy Memphis in
the background.

Now I’m not quite sure why these cookies are called Southern Cream Cookies.  Doesn’t seem much southern about them. I suppose they could’ve been invented in the south, so let’s run with that idea. And the only thing Cream about them is the sour cream that is added to the recipe. No cream filling, no creamy texture, just some sour cream thrown in. I’ll work on a new name for them as I bake…

I get my word search on and pick out all the necessary ingredients. These are pretty straight forward drop cookies until you get to the part where you dip them in cinnamon and sugar.  The batter isn't very sweet, so I’m guessing that the last minute cinnamon and sugar bath will help sweeten these puppies up.

Pre-sifted my dry ingredients
at home and packed them
up (see ziploc bag)

For fun, Cody has this cute cookie scooper that I use to make perfectly proportional little balls of dough. I roll them in my cinnamon and sugar, then flatten them, per the recipe’s unusual request.  I’ve learned from past recipes that cookies using only shortening do not flatten out on their own, so the extra step makes sense.   I simply use my fingers to smash my round balls out into little discs and pop them in the oven. 

See the cookie scooper? Spray cooking oil in it
beforehand to keep the dough from sticking!

After my taste test, what should these cookies be renamed?  Slightly Sweet Sugar Cookies. Because that is what they taste like. There is a hint of the cinnamon that the cookies were rolled in and only a mild (if that) walnut flavor that comes through.  They are crisp on the outside, soft on the inside.  Really a plain cookie. And I like them as such.  I bet they’d taste really good in a banana pudding, in place of the vanilla wafers. And I have a killer banana pudding recipe…I just may have to try it. I can’t help but wonder what these would taste like with butter instead of shortening.  My guess? Better! Plus the butter would have done the “flattening” for me, so I could’ve skipped a step.

Sweet baby Corbin ! He'll love cookies
too, I'm sure :)

Looking forward in my BH&G cookbook, I have a drop sugar cookie coming up.  And it looks strangely a lot like these southern cream cookies. I LOVE sugar cookies, so I’m hoping not to be disappointed. But since these cookies aren’t a total bust, I don’t feel bad leaving a dozen or so at Cody’s house. J  Thank you Cody B for lending me your kitchen and keeping a smile on my face!  Time to take my circus back home.

Cookie Grade: B- = If this cookie were a chicken, it’d be sitting in the middle of the road. 

What I was jammin’ to: baby babble and excellent company.  Cody was making yummy stir fry while I was mixing up cookies.  SOOO lucky I have friends that like to cook too!

COOKIE 18: MARGUERITES

Another cookie that makes me think of liquor. Or perhaps I just need a drink? Being a stay-at-home mom can have that affect, or “so I’ve heard”... Margaritas anyone?  Nope, just Marguerites.  What the heck is a marguerite, you might ask? Definitely not a cookie I’ve ever eaten or even heard of. And my first impression is not a good one. Only because this recipe refers to another recipe and I hate that. Besides all the page flipping it causes and the extra care I have to take to be sure I have all the correct ingredients, to top it off, I have to half the referred-to-recipe and do math. Oh who am I kidding. That last part doesn’t bother me. I love math.  *ahem, cough, nerd*

 

So I go to my trusty Google and search “Marguerites.” Apparently it’s a common-ish first name because I pull up several business that include “Marguerite” – restaurants, a cake shop, a saloon, a caterer, a night club in Sante Fe, TX. It also pulls up the definition.  A marguerite is a Paris daisy or any of several similar or related plants having daisylike flowers. Well that sounds lovely.  Growing up my mom LOVED planting daisies and she still has a bed of them on the side of her house. I loved picking them as a kid because they were the perfect flower to play “he loves me, he loves me not.”  But what has any of that got to do with this cookie?? Absolutely nothing. I try my search again.

This time I google “marguerite cookies,” and still get nothing.  So I type in “marguerite cookie with crackers” (because that is one VERY odd ingredient in this cookie). I find ONE recipe that relates to what I’m actually talking about, but it doesn’t give a back story, just a recipe.  This is one extremely coy cookie.  No wonder I’ve never heard of them.

So with nothing really to go on, I begin my baking.  This is by far the most difficult cookie I’ve had to make this far…The recipe starts off by calling for ½ of the Boiled Frosting recipe. The boiled frosting looks a tad tricky.  I have to whip my eggs to a stiff peak. I have to make sure the sugar syrup doesn’t go past the soft-ball stage – a very specific 236⁰F. And I have to be doing both almost simultaneously so A) my eggs don’t lose their stiffness, and B) so my syrup doesn’t get any hotter than 236⁰.

My stiff peaks

Ok, to tackle the first challenging task - Whipping the egg whites to a stiff peak.  There are several key elements to perfecting this baking basic:

1.      Make sure your eggs have come to room temperature before you begin. This is essential, so don’t skip this step.  Let them sit out for at least one hour or let them soak in warm (not hot, because you don’t want them to cook) water for a few minutes.

2.      Be sure that there is absolutely NO yolk in the egg whites.

3.      Add a pinch of salt to the egg whites at the start of whipping.

4.      Midway through, if you’re not getting good results, you can add ¼ teaspoon per 2 egg whites of cream of tartar OR lemon juice OR vinegar. This helps to stabilize your egg whites so that they don’t turn back into liquid form. (I didn't do this)

5.      Stop whipping as soon as the egg whites form stiff peaks that don't droop. Don't over-beat or the egg whites will destabilize.

My next delicate task, I have to cook the sugar syrup and make sure it doesn’t go past the soft-ball stage. For this, one would normally use a candy thermometer, something I do not own. I have a very old school meat thermometer that only registers up to 190⁰F and an instant thermometer that I’ve never used on anything that gets any hotter than that. I decide to take my chances and use the instant thermometer. Thankfully, it worked like a charm.  I had to keep cranking up the flame to get it to the soft-ball stage and the sugar syrup to a rolling boil, but I finally hit 236⁰. 

10 minis...Looks like one 
jumbo marshmallow to me!

After I got the syrup up to the right temp, I add the marshmallows (see the actual Marguerites recipe now…don’t lose track!).  BH&G asks us to quarter 6 marshmallows, so I’m assuming they mean the jumbo (vs miniature) kind. Something else I don’t have. I keep miniature marshmallows in my house because I like to add them to fruit salads, ice creams, hot chocolate, etc.  I’ve even tried them in black coffee (tasted pretty good!). I do my research and find out that one regular marshmallow weighs about 1/4 ounce and a miniature marshmallow weighs just about 1/10th of that. Relying once again on my superior kitchen math skills, this means that, according to weight, 1 jumbo marshmallow = 10 mini ones. So I fold 60 mini marshmallows into the hot syrup mix. With a few stirs, they melt down, making the already sticky sauce even thicker and gooier.

Once this is done, I slowly pour the syrup over the egg whites (with the help of my hubby), add the vanilla, and beat it until it resembles icing. Then I fold in the coconut and nuts. FINALLY an easy step! ;) I spoon a bit of the icing mixture onto each of the 24 salted crackers.  I originally wanted to use Ritz crackers, but then I noticed the only online recipe I found called for soda crackers.  Soda crackers are just another name for plain ole saltines, so I go with those instead. Weird, but possibly delicious?  I’m a huge fan of sweet and salty treats, so maybe this is just a play on that?

Before and after

 The cookies come out looking like puffy golden macaroons asleep on a bed of saltines. I understand why the crackers are there because these cookies are rot-your-teeth-sweet. The saltine adds a much needed crunch and saltiness to tone down the sharp sugar overload. The walnuts and coconut add a fun flavor as well, but even with all the different tastes tickling my tongue, these cookies are only so-so.  I kinda understand why they’ve disappeared from modern society.  Maybe a buttery Ritz cracker could’ve helped some? I’ll never know because I don’t have any plans of ever making this cookie again.

Cookie Grade: C+ = not good, but not bad. Love the cracker and coconut, not fond of the overly sweet icing and (ofcourse) walnuts

What I was jammin’ to:  my hubby was studying in the dining room, so besides the clacking of the computer, nothing… boo! But I did have a terrible Nickelodean song stuck in my head.