Bake a Legend

Here we are with our second Christmas cookie post of the season. I don’t know what makes these a Christmas staple – I think we should eat them year-round!

The story of these iconic cookies begins when Ohio resident Freda Smith was making peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and too late realized she had no chocolate chips. She did have a bag of Hershey’s Kisses though and stuck them on top of the peanut butter cookies. 

In 1958, she entered her recipe in the ninth annual Pillsbury Bake-off competition. Her cookies didn’t even place. Instead the winner was something called accordion treats, something nobody in this day and age has heard of, I bet.

Moral of the story – winning is not that big a deal and you don’t have to be a winner to become a legend. (I like that. I hope that saying takes off.)

So here’s how I bake up Mrs. Smith’s cookies

1 cup softened margarine

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup white sugar

1 cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup milk

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs 

Blend these first ingredients together. I usually blend together the margarine and peanut butter first, with the margarine warmish so they meld together well. I also use this great Pampered Chef Measure-all cup to measure the peanut butter. Anybody else have a better idea for measuring it and then getting it all out of the measuring cup?

Next add the rest of the items and blend well.

Add: 

3 ½ cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

Stir in the last three ingredients and mix well.

Shape dough into balls. I scoop out the dough with the medium scoop from Pampered Chef – no I’m not a secret consultant.  These are the only Pampered Chef products I regularly use, besides, of course, my stoneware.

Roll the dough balls in sugar. I, along with the rest of world, generally roll them in white sugar, but I thought I’d try green and red sugar this year to make them more festive.

Bake at 375 for 10 minutes. As soon as they come out of the oven, press a chocolate star into each one. Some recipes call for Hershey’s kisses, but do people really unwrap them all, or can you buy them unwrapped. Also, I kind of like the taste of the stars better.

Slide them off the pans before they cool completely.  

Freeze them as soon as they are completely cool and bury them in the bottom of the freezer or they won’t make it to Christmas!

How's your Spritzgeback.

As we swing into the Christmas season, I have got blog ideas lined up for the entire month. Thursdays are going to be Christmas cookie day. What’s your favorite Christmas cookie and do you think that I’m going to write about it here? You’ll have to check in every week and see. 

The Spritz cookie has its origins the same place as I do - Germany. I don’t know how long the Loehmer family was in Germany, but the Spritz cookie has been there since the 1500’s. These cookies get their name from the German word Spritzgeback.  Geback is baked and spritz? Well, that means to squirt.

Now before you swear that you will never eat a Spritz cookie again, think about it? Have you ever made Spritz cookies or seen someone do it? If the dough isn’t just right, it can squirt out of the cookie press. I know mine does sometimes.

A lot of people don’t like making them because, as just mentioned, that dough has to be just the right consistency or it doesn’t come out of the press right and you end up with a mess.

I’m no genius at this, but I have found that the key is temperature. And not just the dough. The press and the pans and everything else that comes in contact with that dough needs to be slightly on the cool side. The more you handle those things, the warmer they get and then the squirting starts.

For better or worse, here’s the recipe I use:

1 cup butter or margarine

¾ cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 ¼ cups flour

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp baking powder

Cream the first four ingredients, then gradually add the flour, salt and baking powder. Recipes always say to sift the flour and other dry ingredients together before adding them to the moist stuff. I never do that, I hate to dirty another bowl. I just dump the salt, soda or whatever else on top of the first bunch of flour I add and kind of work it in. Alton Brown, I am not. 

Anyway, oh, yea, preheat oven to 375 degrees. I never do that either. It’s a wonder anything I bake ever turns out. That first batch just has to bake a little longer while the oven heats up.

Ok, maybe this sharing cookie recipes once a week was a mistake. Yea, definitely, coz I’m not going to be able to tell you how long I bake these things. I just keep checking them until they’re done.

Yikes. I’ll have to try to be better next week.