Cookie Day At Sarah's

Every year there is an event in our family called "Cookie Day", it is a day full of baking cookies at my sister Sarah's house. Sarah has a nice big house and I think three ovens. I could be wrong as there might be four, a double upstairs and a double down stairs. This attribute makes her house the perfect place for "Cookie Day". The day is just that, those in attendance come over with their cookie baking gear in hand, I.E. mixers, bowls, cookie sheets, cook books and ingredients. It is a festive day of baking our favorite cookies and chatting with family. I have yet to be able to attend this event as my job as an over the road truck driver has kept me from it. It usually is on a Sunday but this year it is on a Saturday so I will be in attendance. I am not sure of my cookie selection yet, I have two boxes in the dinning room floor full of cookie books and I brought four with me this week in the truck.

I have the Mrs. fields cookie book from 1992, the Farm Journal Choice Chocolate Recipes book, a Time Life cookie book from 1982, and a Better Homes and Gardens "Homemade Cookies" from 1989. I like the older books because the recipes are not convoluted with a bunch of useless extra steps. As I have been reading through these this week some items stand out in my mind. Number one is the Pecan Pie Bars in the Mrs Fields cookie book. This is a basic cookie bar recipe but with a pecan pie filling. Being married to a southern gal has me loving pecan pie more than most pies so I am debating making this for cookie day. Let me explain one of the greatest things about cookie day. When all the cookies are baked and laid out on the various counter tops at my sisters house, they get divided up by the number of participants there that day! Yea baby! You got it! It is a bountiful blessing of cookie greatness to be had by all! I have to say though that not every one's cookies come out as the greatest but we just keep our mouths shut and deal with those when we get home LOL.

So with this being my first time to Cookie Day I want to make a good impression yet I don't want to be an oven hog either. There is also the fact that I need to bake enough to make the split fair as well. I'm going to have to get with Sarah and see how the RSV P's are coming so I know what to do. As far as the Pecan Pie Bars go the most expensive ingredient is going to be the chopped and halved pecans. the rest is basic.

Here is how it looks, I haven't made this yet so I don't have pictures yet.


Pastry Ingredients

1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup salted butter, chilled
5-6 Tbsp ice water

Filling
5 Tbsp salted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar firmly packed
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs beaten
1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) chopped pecans
16 pecan halves


oven to 350 degrees F.
In a medium bowl combine flour and chilled butter with a pastry cutter until dough resembles a course meal. Add water gradually and mix until dough holds together and can be shaped into a ball. You can also do this in a food processor and add the water gradually until a dough ball forms. Wrap this dough ball in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour or until firm. On a floured board using a floured rolling pin, roll out dough into a 10 x 10 square. Fold dough in half and then into quarters. Place it in a 8 x 8 baking pan and unfold and press into the corners and up along the sides of the pan. Refrigerate for 15 minutes. They didn't say a word about greasing the pan so I'm not sure what to do about that. Maybe a non stick pan like most people use today is the answer there. Myself I like an 8x8 glass pan with a touch of real butter. Just enough to keep it from sticking.

OK now the filling
Melt 5 Tbsp of butter in a medium sauce pan over medium heat. Remove from heat and stir in the the sugar and the corn syrup. Mix until smooth. If you have to double or triple the batch like I do for cookie day, you might want to use the stand mixer if you have one. Add the vanilla and the eggs and beat until thoroughly combined. Add the pecan pieces and fold in. Now pour the pecan filing into the pastry lined pan that you had in the refrigerator. Smooth out the filling and trim the dough down to just above the filling mixture if need be. Bake in the center of the oven for 50-60 minutes or until filling is set. Cool on a wire rack then cut into 2x2 inch pieces. Top each piece with a pecan half and serve at room temperature or chilled.

It is supposed to yield 16 pieces

I may make this before hand and bake a simpler cookie recipe on the day. It really depends on how many people are coming. Try this one out and let me know what you think. I will be taking pictures of the grand event and the bounty to share here afterwards.

Piece
Tim

I didn't get to cook anything this past weekend, Kim was at a birthday party with my camera and at home it was a dreary, rainy weekend. I didn't move much from my recliner. I am however going to translate at least one pie recipe to modern English so I have something in hand when I go to my sisters on Thanksgiving. Am debating a chess pie or one called Ozark pie. I may make both since I am going to use ready made pie crusts. I am at least going to attempt to make my own crusts but with my job being a truck driver, I may not get home in time to get that done. Heck Pillsbury makes a better crust than me anyway, like I have time to bake pie crusts while driving a truck?

That is one of the worst things about driving a Semi for a living. All your time is spent on the road thinking about the things you want to do when you get home. Then when you get home you are beat down from the road and don't want to do a quarter of the things that you thought about. My wife used to not understand how I felt when I got home. Her mentality about it pretty much followed everyone's thoughts on it. " all you've done is sit in that drivers seat all week, how can you be worn out?" Then she rode in the truck with me for two weeks and experienced the road first hand. The idiot drivers, the rough roads, weather, long hours of all the above and so much more. Plus there is the motion factor. have you ever been out on a boat all day and when you got off the lake you were worn out? That feeling is from you body constantly having to adjust your equilibrium all day long to compensate for the motion of the vessel you in. It is the same in a truck and last week was a rough week so I didn't bake anything. I did however buy a pumpkin pie from wally world. It was decent but I can make better.

 At any rate look for a post on pies from the past near or just after thanksgiving.

 TW

     I am on the road with my dog Pepper in tow and brought a couple of the old cook books with me. I have been looking at one called "Just Like Mother Made". It is a small soft back book from the Ozarks. This one is the Twelfth printing and I can not find a date on it. It looks really old though as the pages are starting to yellow a bit.  Like I said, it is not a big book, more like pamphlet size and when it was new it cost $1.25. It has 72 pages and I can not wait to try some of he things in it. I am not sure when we in this country started using measures abbreviations like Tbsp or Tsp, we all know what those are of course. In this book that I got at auction they use a capitol "T" for tablespoon and a lower case "t" for the teaspoon measure. I have seen other cook books like this before and I think I remember them being from the late forties.

      There are recipes in it like "Paper Sack Apple Pie" (I have no clue, haven't read anything of it but the title yet),Tomato Rolls, Mother's Gems, Ozark Pudding, and Butter Crust Chicken With Rye Dressing Balls. That is just a sample of what is in this 72 page booklet. I want to try something from it this weekend but I have not had enough time to really look it over. No rush, I'll get to it. All we have is time right. I hope this adventure of going through my cook books turns out to be a great one. I had to come up with a reason to justify my habit or addiction to buying them somehow. Why not share. I am not that versed at setting up this blog so bear with me. I will try to put tags on all the recipes so they are searchable by genre and such. I hope this blossoms into something fun. I will be using pictures as well while I try these recipes so this blog may become picturesque as well LOL.

stay tuned

Tim 

Tried a new recipe from the collection of cook books that I own, an old twist on french toast. This one needs some tweaking before I post it on here. It was more like a batter dipped french toast than what we grew up eating. I think it is missing something. like a bit more sugar, Cinnamon and maybe a fruit salsa or whipped cream and berries. I might try to New Orleans it up a bit. Like some pecan praline sauce or something. Look for this in the near future. I have to head out on the road this evening and I will be taking some old cook books with me. I am going to eventually build this site up so recipe's that I like can be managed from here. Maybe there will be a cook book in my future. I do have some home made recipe's that my family loves but they are in my head or in pieces on paper somewhere. Some like my spaghetti sauce and my rib rub. My mother bought me a digital scale for my birthday so now I can record these recipe's as I make them. I hope this site turns out to finally to be something useful. Wish me luck.

Peace
Tim

Silky Potato Soup

This is a favorite comfort food in our house.

Ingredients: One or two medium to large onions
               
                  5 or 6 medium to  large potato's
           
                  One stick of butter

                  Nearly 3/4 gallon whole milk

                  3/4 to a cup of all purpose flour

                  Salt and pepper to taste

                   Cheddar cheese (optional)

Prep: Dice one large onion or two medium ones, peal and cube 5 or 6 medium to large potato's.

This is going to be a large pot of soup that should feed a family of five with a little left over for momma's lunch the next day.

In a large soup pot (6 to 8 quarts) melt one stick of butter on medium heat. Once the butter has melted add the diced onions. Saute the onions in butter until they are nearly translucent. Slowly blend in the flour until you have a nice thick roue. Stir in the a half gallon of milk. Add the potato's and adjust the milk level until you have used about 3/4 of a gallon. At this point I add about a tablespoon of salt and the same of the pepper. If you have a pepper mill, fresh ground cannot be beat. Stir the soup well and cover. Cook until the potato's are tender and the flour has thickened the soup. turn down on low and simmer covered until thickened to your liking. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve in hot bowls. Add Sharp Cheddar Cheese and you will have a bowl of baked potato soup.

Note: this soup will stick to the bottom of the pot if you don't stay on top of it. I don't bother worrying about it so I just don't scrape the bottom. I just keep the potato's from sticking.

I hope you enjoy this comfort classic.