Cookies

How do traditions happen?

Dear Readers & Cookie Makers,

Today I fire up the cookie factory. Yesterday I made the lists of recipients, and tried to decide what to make. I’ve been wondering for a few weeks, paired with a series of questions: what are traditions, what are my family’s traditions, and how did we land on them? Do the same questions nag at you?

Everyone – the family I made and the family I’m from – expects Viennese crescents, a buttery nut cookie shaped like a crescent moon. I started making them 35 years ago, when my boyfriend’s mom invited me to make cookies. That origin story makes me feel guilty, as if I stole that family’s tradition, and it is not truly a part of our family! But one year I didn’t make them and got chewed out in a loving way. Therefore, these cookies are officially ours.

Other staples are gingersnaps and Edith’s sugar cookies – a simple melt-in-your mouth treat that I decorated with red candies when I was a kid. This year, demands for the hermit cookies are competing with gingersnaps, and thanks to corresponding with Jolene from Time Travel Kitchen, I went down a bunny hole trying to find how the sugar cookies became a part of our routine.

Please take a look at Jolene’s advent calendar – my musings on and recipe for gingersnaps appear today! I knew where that recipe came from, but I had to chase down the source of Edith’s sugar cookies. I knew I got it from a cookbook I borrowed from the library, and have hoped over the years that I could find it again.

The Troy Public Library is a grand marble affair, almost intimidating in its beauty. There’s a sweeping staircase, and a Tiffany glass window. Part of the stacks are accessible by cast iron stairs, and the floors are glass bricks. What a reunion it would be if the child and adult me’s held the same book! I imagined it would be something homey, and hoped for a note that showed me how much it meant to some other family, and led me to believe that it would mean what it now does to mine.

I’ve never found it at the library, which is not a surprise, given how many books have been published in the past 45 years. However, through lots of digging on the internet, I found the recipe on a general baking website, thankfully with the author credited. Armed with her name, I finally traced it to The Freezer Cookbook by Charlotte Erickson!

Here’s what the headnote says: “An easy all-purpose sugar cookie. It too can be varied with the addition of chopped nuts or of cocoa for chocolate-flavored cookies. I usually make a double batch, take out half the dough, and then add cocoa to the other half, making two different kinds of cookies at one time.”

There is nothing glamorous about this book. It is just a practical guide for working women that appealed to me because I was intrigued by freezing – thanks to reading women’s magazines. BUT, I found it worth trying as a kid, and loved what the cream of tartar did to the texture, and built it into the gifts my family gave each Christmas. Here’s the recipe, in my mother’s hand. She probably gave it to me in the 1990s.

So, that’s the story of my cookies, a story that expands each year. I’ll be waiting patiently, hopefully for Pyraniki, a spiced rye cookie Ellie made me fall in love with.

What about your baking traditions? How did you come to them? How have they changed? What kind of angst do they cause? What kind of joy?

In case you need to stretch your repertoire/add to your holiday habits, I’ll leave you with the hermit cookie recipe that’s winning so many hearts.

Yours,

Amy

---

Freihofer’s was the factory bakery in Troy for most of the 20th century, bought by a series of other corporations. While Freihofer’s products are still made at a plant nearby, favorite sweets specific to this region disappeared.

People miss Freihofer’s hermit cookies, Louisiana Ring, and hot cross buns! With the help of The Placid Baker, I came up with this near copy. I hope you enjoy it.

Hermit Cookies

• ½ cup butter (1 stick or 113 g)

• 1 cup light brown sugar (213 g)

• 1 egg (50 g)

• ¼ cup molasses (70g)

• 2 ½ cups flour (approx. 300 g) — rye, all-purpose & whole wheat all work well!

• 1 ½ tsp baking soda (7.2 g)

• 2 tsp cinnamon (5.5 g)

• Scant tsp ground cloves (2 g) 1 tsp ground allspice (2 g)

• ½ tsp kosher salt (3 g)

• 1 ½ cup raisins (200 g)

1. Preheat oven to 375° Fahrenheit. Grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

2. Cream butter & sugar thoroughly by hand, or for 2 minutes on medium in a stand mixer. Scrape bowl and add egg & molasses. Mix for another minute on medium, or until thoroughly combined.

3. Whisk together dry ingredients except for raisins.

4. Combine wet & dry mixtures, beat well and then add raisins.

5. Divide dough in two. Roll each half into a log a few inches shorter than the cookie sheet.

6. Press logs slightly onto the pan. They will spread a lot, so leave about 4 inches between them, and keep them from the edge of the pan.

7. Bake 15 minutes. They will be cracked and seem not quite done. But don’t leave them in the oven too long, unless you want a crunchy cookie. Cool on the tray. Transfer to a cutting board and slice into pieces about 2-3 inches wide.