So I always finish what I start, but the idea of cooking and blogging 51 different cookies is a bit daunting at times. Sure I’m not recreating every recipe from Julia Childs’ Joy of Cooking (think Julia & Julia…which when you think about it, would cost you thousands of dollars!), but 51 recipes is still a tall order for a blog virgin. With that said, I am super stoked to reach the double digits – cookie number ten. Progress!
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| Like my cookie shirt?? : ) |
I’m sure you’ll notice something very different about the way this recipe is presented. In my 1962 Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, this recipe takes up less than a 2 inch by 2.4 inch corner on the lower righthand page. Because its written like a short story instead of in the usual recipe format, I have to play what feels like an ingredient word search to figure out what I’ll need. BH&G could’ve cut the readers a break and highlighted or italicized the ingredients, but this layout is actually more typical of older recipes. I have an even older “cookbook” that was my great aunt Martha’s from 1916, and almost all of the recipes in that book are written in paragraph format. Several other cookies in this BH&G cookbook are written this way as well. I have to be extremely careful not to accidentally skip over an ingredient or misread the table vs teaspoon measurements.
One strange ingredient I notice is the call for sour milk. Ewww. When I think of sour milk I think of milk that’s been sitting in the fridge past its ‘use before’ date. But I learn that sour milk is not the same thing as spoiled milk. Sour milk is regular, good milk that has an acid added to it so that it curdles and becomes sour/tart. Drinking sour milk will not make you sick, though the taste may make you gag. While drinking spoiled milk can make you truly ill. You can make sour milk by using 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice plus enough milk to make one cup, then allowing it to sit for 5-10 minutes. 
Buttermilk is a type of sour milk and both can generally be used interchangeably. I happen to have some buttermilk on hand from the cornbread I made last night, so I am going to take my chances and use that. I can’t stand the way regular milk smells, so I can’t imagine trying to purposely make it worse. Souring my own milk just doesn’t seem like something I want to try. I cross my fingers that the buttermilk works just as well.
Now these Orange Drop Cookies sound iffy. I’m worried that they won’t be very sweet. Every single recipe I see online for similar cookies have an icing or glaze that go on top of them, which would be divine, but not these cookies. And I decide to add a cup of hazelnuts vs dates because the flavors sound more appealing. (There are a surprising amount of cookies that call for dates in this book. Geez, pick another fruit already!) The batter smells like sweet citrus and tastes okay. The final product is a soft textured cookie with just a hint of orange and sugar. They aren’t bad cookies, but I imagine them with a confectioner sugar glaze and my tongue salivates. I decide to only bake two dozen of the cookies as is, and freeze the remainder dough so that I can make them with the glaze later on. I have 4 different types of sugar in my house (white, raw, light brown, & dark brown), but I don’t have any confectioner sugar, so my little experiment will have to wait. Luckily, most cookie doughs freeze well for 4-6 weeks. I’ll let ya know how the glaze turns out next time! Only 41 more cookies to go! 
Cookie Grade: D+, but possible higher grade with an icing of sorts, so there could be a curve coming… |
| Jacki, Me, & two members from Lit. Met them at Warp Tour 1999. I was 16. |
What I was jammin’ to: Lit - A Place in the Sun album, circa 1999
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