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