baking | pull up a chair

the new year calls for sweetness. the Jewish new year, i mean. it’s encoded, in fact, in the Talmud, the nearly-as-old-as-time, all-you-need-to-know guide to living Jewishly, a sacred compendia of rabbinic discourse, debate, and back-and-forth covering ancient teachings, law, and theology, and it gets down to the nitty gritty of what to eat when, and certainly on Rosh Hashanah, one of the highest of the high holy days. it’s spelled out, right there in tractate Keritot 6a (truth be told, i am not quite sure what a tractate is, but i’m surmising it’s something like a bullet point), where a certain sage named Abaye in the second century suggests that eating certain foods might bring on good things in the new year (this might explain the thinking behind the famous sheet cake scene with tina fey from saturday night live*). these sacred foods for the new year are called simanim, and while the Talmud explicitly names fenugreek, dates, leeks, and beets, it merely points broadly to sweetness. honey wended its way into the Rosh Hashanah traditions way back in the seventh century. which means the jews have kept the bees in business for a long, long time. and the dipping of apples in honey is a tradition that waited till the 16th century, which means we’ve been dipping now for 500 years.

and i realize i am steering well off course here, but i find myself in a rabbinic hole of infinite delight and must let you know that jews, known as lovers of wordplay, have prayers to accompany each of those prescribed foods (derived from the shared linguistics in the hebrew root), and the way it worked was that the particular prayer was prayed, followed by the eating of said foods, and this whole shebang was known as the simanim seder. here are a few of the foods and the prayers they inspired:

personally, i think we should all be loading up on dates and beets. but now i am really off in the ditch, and shall return myself to more linear thinking. . .

we were musing about honey, or at least i was. and since this is ultimately going to be a story about honey cake, i’m in the midst of explaining how we got there. how i wound up shoving a bundt pan of sumptuous honey-doused batter into my unreliable but deeply lovable ancient commercial-grade oven.

i tend to be someone who gloms onto traditions. and, given that these days, i spend a lot of time musing about time and the passing of years, i was suddenly struck—even though i am the farthest thing from a baker—with the question of whether there was some heirloom recipe for the holiday that i might have been missing. so i struck out to the best family baker, my brilliant and beloved sister-in-law brooke of the upper east side, and before the text with the query could possibly have registered in her wee little phone, she shot back the recipe she’s been baking for years. she noted that it was a super hit, and she noted that it was a family heirloom not in the traditional since, as her mother/my mother-in-law staked her claim to feminism by not knowing her way about the kitchen, and thus might not have baked in her life, dear brooke had made it a family tradition, one that secured its position the very first year she baked it when all that was left was a plate full of crumbs.

that’s all the convincing i needed, so i (practically as inept a baker as my late, great, mother-in-law) leapt aboard. i wheeled my grocery cart wildly through the store, plucking spices off shelves, fresh-squeezed OJ from the cooler, stocking up on fresh bags of flour, baking soda, baking powder (for the ones currently on my shelves had likely turned to clay, the subjects of years of idle waiting), and i set myself to baking. words being more my thing, i immediately gave it a name, this honey cake of famed repute. since dear brooke had clued me in its familial origins with this trademark hilarious note —”Considering that Mom’s recipe for the New Year was attending someone else’s party, this is our (1 generation = me) tradition.”—i immediately dubbed it Gen One Honeycake, and so it’ll stick. i also informed my boys they’d best follow along, for it was now incumbent upon them and their children’s children to crank the ovens every Rosh Hashanah, and pull out the whiskey and OJ.

excuse me, you say? where does the whiskey come in, and why are we talking cocktails so early in the morning? well, this famed honey cake, so dense it shall bulk your biceps as you ferry it to the table, is loaded: whiskey (or rye), OJ, a cup of coffee, a cup of honey, and a shuk‘s worth of spices. (a shuk is the israeli name for an open-air spice market)

aunt brooke continued, holding my hand (long-distance) the very whole way:

“It’s Marcy Goodman’s honey cake and it’s a fan favorite. Use the whiskey and use the sliced almonds in the recipe. And if you have whole wheat flour, sub in 1/2 c wheat flour for 1/2 c white flour. Make it in a tube pan. It’s a big dense cake.”

much to my amazement i found it pure delight to stand at the counter dumping in this and that, and stirring as directed. as the smell rose from the bowl, i began to understand the soothing powers of baking. and now wonder if it’s seductive enough—and sufficiently sedative—to carry me through the next 1212 days (inauguration 2029).

because my oven is, as i’ve mentioned, a recalcitrant behemoth, i’ve no idea whether it rose to the necessary 350-degrees Fahrenheit, and suspect it was probably my fault that the cake, despite its extra five minutes in the oven, decided to collapse round the middle (a flub fixed first by dumping extra almond slivers into the hole, and then duly disguised by brooke’s suggestion of stuffing the hole with rosemary sprigs, which i happened to have growing out back).

by the time i carried it to the table, where eager forks awaited, i felt my chest puffing out just a bit, swelled with pride at picking up the family slack. we now have ourselves a tradition. and my boys, by edict of their mother, shall carry it on, far into the next and the next and the next generation. may it always be so.

with no further ado, for i’ve tarried long enough here, i offer you the famed aunt brooke gen one honey cake, courtesy of one marcy goldman, reigning queen of the honey cake whoever she is. the version here was posted on deb perelman’s smitten kitchen site, and comes along with notes at the end, worth reading for their spicy humor.

Gen One Honeycake, from famed family baker BJKR, courtesy deb perelman’s Smitten Kitchen, courtesy marcy goldman (a cake with lineage!)

SERVINGS: 16
TIME: 20 MINUTES TO ASSEMBLE; 1 HOUR TO BAKE
SOURCE: MARCY GOLDMAN’S TREASURE OF JEWISH HOLIDAY BAKING
See Notes about recipe changes at the end of the recipe.

3 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons (445 grams) all-purpose flour (see Note)
1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder (see Note)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon kosher salt (see Note)
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup (200 grams) vegetable or another neutral oil
1 cup (320 grams) honey
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (110 grams) light or dark brown sugar
3 large eggs
teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup (235 grams) warm coffee or strong tea (I use decaf)
1/2 cup (120 grams) fresh orange juice, apple cider, or apple juice
1/4 cup (60 grams) rye or whiskey, or additional juice
1/2 cup (50 grams) slivered or sliced almonds (optional)

Pan size options: This cake fits in two (shown here) or three loaf pans; two 8-inch square or two 9-inch round cake pans; one 9- or10-inch tube or bundt cake pan; or one 9 by 13 inch sheet cake.
Prepare pans: Generously grease pan(s) with non-stick cooking spray. Additionally, I like to line the bottom and sides of loaf pans with parchment paper for easier removal. For tube or angel food pans, line the bottom with parchment paper, cut to fit.
Heat oven: To 350°F.
Make the batter: In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Make a well in the center, and add oil, honey, granulated sugar, brown sugars, eggs, vanilla, coffee, juice, and rye. [If you measure your oil before the honey, it will be easier to get all of the honey out.]
Using a strong wire whisk or in an electric mixer on slow speed, stir together well to make a well-blended batter, making sure that no pockets of ingredients are stuck to the bottom.
Spoon batter into prepared pan(s). Sprinkle top of cake(s) evenly with almonds, if using. Place cake pan(s) on two baking sheets, stacked together (which helps the cakes bake evenly and makes it easier to rotate them on the oven rack).
Bake the cake(s): Until a tester inserted into a few parts of the cake comes out batter-free, about 40 to 45 minutes for a round, square, or rectangle cake pan; about 45 to 55 minutes for 3 loaf pans; 55 to 65 minutes for 2 loaf pans (as shown), and 60 to 75 minutes for tube pans.
Cool cake: On a rack for 15 minutes before removing it from the pan. However, I usually leave the loaves in the pan until needed, as they’re unlikely to get stuck.
Do ahead: This cake is fantastic on day one but phenomenal on days two through four. I keep the cake at room temperature covered tightly with foil or plastic wrap. If I want to bake the cakes more than 4 days out, I’ll keep them in the fridge after the first 2 days. If you’d like to bake them more than a week in advance, I recommend that you freeze them, tightly wrapped, until needed. Defrost at room temperature for a few hours before serving.

Notes:
Size: These days, I bake this cake in two filled-out loaves, as shown, instead of 3 more squat ones. My loaf pans hold 6 liquid cups; they’re 8×4 inches on the bottom and 9×5 inches on the top; if yours are smaller, it might be best to bake some batter off as muffins, or simply use the 3-loaf option.
Flour: After mis-measuring the flour many years ago and baking the cake with 2 tablespoons less flour and finding it even more plush and moist, I’ve never gone back. The recipe now reflects the lower amount.
Baking powder: The original recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of baking powder, but I found that this large amount caused the cake to sink. From 2011 through 2023, I recommended using 1 teaspoon instead. But, after extensive testing this year, I’ve found that a higher amount — 1 3/4 teaspoons — keeps this cake perfectly domed every time, and even more reliably than the 1-teaspoon level.
Salt: The original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoon but I prefer 1 teaspoon.
Liquids: This is address the question that comes up in at least 30% of the 1115 comments to date: “What can I use instead of whiskey?” and/or “What can I use instead of coffee?” The original trifecta of liquids in this cake [coffee, orange juice, and whiskey] is unusual and wonderful together, and I still think the perfect flavor for this cake. But if you want to omit the whiskey, simply use more orange juice or coffee. If you want to omit the coffee, simply use tea. If you don’t want to use tea, use more juice. If you don’t want to use orange juice, my second choice liquid here would be apple cider (the fresh, not the fermented, kind), followed by apple juice.
Apples and honey: It’s a whole thing!
Sweetness: The recipe looks like it would taste assaulting sweet but you must trust me when I say it doesn’t. But, if you reduce the sugar, any one of them, you will have a cake that’s more dry. You can still dial it back, but do understand what the adjustment can do to the recipe.
Flavor: Finally, this is every bit as much of a spice cake as it is a honey cake. Honey isn’t the most dominant flavor, but it’s one of many here that are harmonious and wonderful together. It smells of fall in a way that a simmer pot of $60 candle could never. I hope you get obsessed with it too.

that’s it, sweet friends. certain we could all use a little sweetness at this turn in the year, where did you find sweetness this week?

*as promised, the tina fey sheet cake scene. (nod to faithful chair reader sharon of twin cities!)

15 Comments

July 10, 2020

riding the COVID-coaster*

U.S. Hits Another Record for New Coronavirus Cases: *New York Times* graphic

we are all — all of us, red states, blue states, striped states, star-dappled states — strapped into this unplotted, unprecedented, unpredictable pandemic roller-coaster ride (*aka “COVIDcoaster,” a term introduced to me by my brilliant friend amy). the season of COVID, long past its toleration date, is gearing up for a wallop. or so it seems as summer cranks up the heat, and what’s ahead grows hazier.

we seem to be lurching upward and off-the-charts at breakneck speed, as if some giant-sized foot is pressing the proverbial pedal to the floorboard.

at this old house, the summer feels a bit like a COVID chess game. us v. the invisible virus that takes our smell and taste away. i need to put on speed dial a beloved ER doc friend of mine, the one who answers every inane puzzle and quandary i conjure. (and, believe me, i conjure.)

just this week, boy No. 2 found out his best friend’s sister — and another dear friend’s cousin — had tested positive — fever + sore throat, the sweet girl’s symptoms. of course, boy 2 had been out hitting golf balls the two previous nights in a row with her brother. and, to double the trouble, one of those nights he’d taken a long sidewalk-straddling walk (without masks), with the COVID girl’s cousin, who’d just gotten back from a week of sharing a summer cottage — and a bedroom — with the newly diagnosed one.

from the minute boy 2 got the news — at the end of a hot sauna of a day mowing grass and chopping trees for the park district — he had his KN95 mask strapped on so tight it musta made it hard to breathe. he insisted on eating his dinner on the far side of the kitchen, a good 12 feet from the rest of us. and he holed up in his room as if protecting me from nuclear fallout. just now, as he loped out the door for another day of tree-chopping, he triumphantly announced his test (taken yesterday afternoon at one of those one-day testing sites) just came back negative, as did his best friend’s and the cousin’s. halle-holy-lujah! i’m thinking it was a close-enough call to maybe add an extra 20 seconds of hand washing to the regime from here on in, though the perceived invincibility of teens prompts me to hedge that bet.

then there’s boy 1: the one who is here, asleep under this very roof, spending his days studying for the bar exam and waiting to move to portland, oregon, where a federal clerkship awaits. you might think — with five scheduled cross-country flights and two separate moving crews, a new job, new apartment, and that bar exam — that we set out to plot the most complicated itinerary imaginable in the age of COVID (though we assure you we did not). as it stands now he is due to fly back to new haven on monday, where the first of the two moving crews will crate every last fork, spoon, and tome in his law school apartment, and ship it all oregon way. the plan had been to come back here for the duration, till it was time to meet the movers in portland, but with the COVID charts skyrocketing in the exact wrong direction, we ditched plan B. and have moved on to plan C in which the poor kid will wait it out for 10 days in a stark empty apartment (save for the old lumpy mattress he is not moving), fly new york to portland, meet the movers, and then — drum roll here for the most mind-bending part of the plot — fly four-and-a-half hours back to chicago to take the bar exam, which in itself is a legal petri dish of COVID waiting to engulf the entire law school class of 2020. the geniuses who plot bar exams are currently planning to stuff 2,000 illinois test takers into a ballroom for two long days at the start of september. some of those test takers, like our very own, will be fresh off airplanes, having flown into chicago for the exam. others, waiting to take the exam before they can start drawing a paycheck, might well be inclined to go ahead and take the test even if, say, they can’t smell a thing, feel a wee bit hotter than usual, and might have started sniffling or coughing. how this is allowed to happen is beyond me, but then it’s the COVIDcoaster, and we are all whipping around the course, bracing ourselves through all its undulations.

so i do what i do best: i worry the night away. i pony up for the higher-cost health insurance, haunted by visions of the kid sick as a dog and turned away from the best hospitals in town if he doesn’t flash the right insurance card. we canceled the plane ticket on the airline that no longer keeps the promise to not fill every seat on the plane, and grabbed a new one for an even-longer ride on a plane that promises a few inches more breathing room. and we are leaving the kid to sleep in an empty apartment for 10 days — all because we’re haunted by the very real fears that COVID is a fire-breathing, smell-stealing dragon that’ll come up and nab you from behind.

meanwhile, we watch germany and south korea mostly trot back to work, no longer so encumbered by this awful terrible invisible virus.

by the hour, awful terrible numbers are flashing before our eyes — cases climbing, death rates certain to follow.

and those of us who swear allegiance to masks and 75-percent isopropyl alcohol hand sanitizer, we begin to wonder when, oh when, will it end? and who of the ones we love will be caught in its vice — snuffed out, or left with lingering scarring for who knows how long?

it’s enough to wear you down, and wring you like a soggy rag. we’re weary of all the lysol-wiping of every last milk carton. and navigating the variations of rule-following among those we love is no summer picnic. (i’m among the self-avowed scaredy cats who takes tony fauci at his every last word; if he tells me to mask up and not share even a fruit bowl among friends, i’m wearing two masks and lysol bleaching like nobody’s business.)

it all makes for strange times. surreal times, really. but, thank God, we are — so far — living to tell about it.

and in the meantime, i’m baking.

here’s the latest summer joy from the cookie jar, and they couldn’t be easier. four ingredients, stir, scoop, press flat, await the slightest gilding of the coconut edges. then watch ’em fly.

almond joy cookies

these wicked little coconut cushions, studded with semi-sweet chocolate and bits of sliced almond, are what happens when your favorite grocery store peddles a similar confection at $5.99 for five of ’em. because those pricey little mounds are practically inhaled in this old house, i was determined to make ’em myself. a bit of prowling around the internet, my cookbook without end, led me to these, courtesy of some lovely someone named trish on momontimeout.com

she writes: “These easy Almond Joy Cookies take just four ingredients and don’t even require a mixer! No beating, no chilling, just mix ’em up and throw ’em in the oven EASY! You’re going to love these ooey gooey fabulous cookies!”

Prep Time: 5 mins

Cook Time: 12 mins

Ingredients

1 14-oz bag sweetened coconut flakes
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
2/3 cup chopped lightly salted almonds (trish used Blue Diamond Low Sodium Lightly Salted – light blue bag, but i couldn’t find, so i used sliced almonds and added 1 teaspoon salt)
1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk regular or fat-free works

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 325F.
Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
In a large bowl combine coconut, chocolate chips, almonds, and sweetened condensed milk.
Stir until combined.
Scoop out dough with a cookie scoop onto prepared baking sheet.
Moisten the tips of your fingers with water and shape into discs. Pat the tops flat.
Bake cookies for 12 to 14 minutes or until tips of coconut are just starting to turn golden brown.
Let cool on baking sheet.
Store cookies in an airtight container.

Notes

Parchment paper is critical for these cookies to turn out right. Silicone mats, waxed paper, etc. will yield a slightly different result.

chime in and spill your COVID-coaster stories. do tell. misery loves company. and by now we are all worn thin from the red-ringed worries.

(p.s. i am not making light of one drop of this, merely recounting with a journalist’s eye the absurdities of what the summer’s bringing….)

16 Comments

January 11, 2019

taking up the challah challenge

years and years ago, when my kitchen confidence was far wobblier than it is now, i tried my hand at friday challah baking. i wound up with paddles of braided bread that appeared amphibian and reptilian. there were a couple weeks of challah masquerading as crocodile. challah as lobster, with vengeful claws reaching across the table. my challahs looked anything but edible. my challahs begged for names. and cages.

so i surrendered, bought my weekly challah at the grocery store. but, because it comes only in sizes fit for half a synagogue, we almost always have leftover loaves hardening in the corner. i have a slew of ways to use it: i’ve frozen so many picked-over loaves a peek in our freezer might make you think we eat one and only one foodstuff — challah in varying stages of ice age; i’ve mastered bread pudding and french toast (can do both with my eyes closed); we’ve sliced it for a million saturday PB&Js; and of course our squirrels get a steady diet (i wouldn’t be surprised if our squirrels know the hamotzi, the challah blessing, by now).

and every friday night i’ve sat across the table from that oversized soul-less loaf, and dared myself to take up the challah challenge: “take a deep breath, and a humble packet of baker’s yeast, and see if you can once again find it in yourself to pull two golden braids from the oven, adorn your friday night shabbat table with bread you’ve kneaded and blessed with silent incantations all on your own, start to finish.”

yesterday, in full trial mode, i dove in. i am here to tell you that instant yeast is nothing to be afraid of. (this declaration is nothing short of revolutionary for a girl who grew up in a house where yeast was spoken of in hushed tones, as if a living-breathing creature that might wreak uncharted havoc if not treated kindly and gently enough. and, yes, my mother baked bread often in those radical suburban ’70s, so the misappropriation of fear and loathing is all my own. she is hereby declared innocent of that particular quirk of mine. now pie crust, that’s another story….)

i turned once again to the step-by-step instructions of my challah-baking friend and long-ago ally, henry, who with his family had escaped nazi germany, and who regaled me with tales of his mama’s friday baking and her magnificent golden braided loaves back in the old country, before all was shattered. though the pages now have yellowed, i found henry’s instruction clear and encouraging as ever, as i pulled his three stapled sheets from my cookery file, and followed along, triumphant at each and every stage. because i was baking challah on a thursday, there was something of an experimental air to the whole shebang. didn’t matter if i flubbed it. didn’t matter if it never rose (though i would have felt my heart deflate right along with the lack of yeasty rise).

and i was all but jubilant when, at quarter to three, i pulled from my wobbly old oven (it gets as hot or warm as it’s inclined on any given day, paying no mind to the faded numbers on the oven dial), two sturdy loaves. two loaves studded with sesame and poppy, onion bits and garlic, too (i had bagel topping in the pantry and figured it wouldn’t hurt to sprinkle with abandon — i was later informed to ditch the bagel topping, “this isn’t a bagel, mom,” and go the purist route: sesame or poppy, not both, not ever again).

i’m hardly exaggerating to declare my two loaves adorable. (see photo above!) after admiring abundantly, the taste-testers dove in. besides the plea to ditch the bagel-y topping, there came a request to please make it “eggier.” i’ve already consulted “the bread baker’s apprentice,” written by the master of bread, peter reinhart, aka brother juniper. he’s got a roadmap riddled with eggs — two whole + two yolks, and a host of other instructions besides.

so next week it’s challah 2.0, and i’ll keep at it till i’ve mastered these doughy batons. not long ago i met a woman who bakes like a fiend and, come friday afternoons, she piles her back seat with challahs galore, and drives and delivers to a circle of loved ones numbering into the 20s. i’d like that. imagine myself, pewter hair flapping out the driver’s side window, as i steer my station wagon — aka the challah mobile — hither and yon, flinging loaves as i go.

it’s all part of a scheme to infuse more intentionality into my days. to conquer those wee quirky fears, the ones that stand in the way of the bigger more daunting ones. slay a little dragon, and perhaps you muster the muscle to take on the giants. and in the meantime it quiets my fridays, ushers in the holiness of shabbat in the hours when i’m alone. i know enough of the meditative calm that comes with kneading and waiting, waiting and punching down dough, waiting some more. to bring to the table a loaf, blessedly braided, a loaf into which i’ve infused my prayers, a loaf just the right size for the two of us who, henceforth, will be the two main players at our shabbat table, once the youngin shoves off for college. it’s holy, all right. and triumphant besides.

and it sates a hunger of the most soulful kind.

a few fun challah facts from my friend brother juniper: garnishing the loaves with seeds, either sesame or poppy, symbolizes the falling of manna from heaven, and the covering of the challah with a cloth as it’s served on shabbat represents the heavenly dew that protects the manna. how lovely is that? so lovely.

what little dragon might you already have slain, or determined to slay, in this blessed new year, a chance to rise again?

15 Comments

November 30, 2018

when the writing tide rises around you…(so of course you think of cookies)

gulp. that’s the sound of me deep against a deadline. i’m a wee bit underwater here, with a 2,500-word story in the works. and a clock ticking loudly, telling me to crank it up, crank it up.

whatever leisurely tale i might have told you here this morning, it’s being scuttled by the overdrive that writing brings. when sleep becomes a playground for sentences that romp around your head, and you rise to gurgle coffee and down it by the mugful.

tis advent time, the season of quietest anticipation, a season i love and will enter deeply, once the clacking on the keyboard quells.

because i wouldn’t want to leave you high and dry, while i pull verbs and nouns and nifty transitions out of a hat, i thought i’d leave you something rather earth-shattering: we’ve a new cutout cookie recipe over here, and after decades making my grandma lucille’s rolled cutout cookies, the ones she blanketed in wax paper sheets, tucked inside her cookie tins, her cutouts swapped for seasonal appropriateness, she’s been one-upped. there’s a new cookie in town, and my cookie-scarfing 17-year-old (a kid who knows) has deemed them better than the best.

this fine road to buttery perfection came to me — why, of course — at a hanukkah baking workshop on a recent rainy saturday afternoon at our synagogue. i was enticed to sign up because i’d thought i might learn the secrets to old jewish cookie treasures, some hanukkah morsel to bring to the table when we light the menorah on the first night of the festival of ever-burning light. instead, i got an ultra-upgraded butter cookie, one whose magic might rest in the milk (or cream) or vanilla my grandma never used, or perhaps it’s the baking powder, one of those cooking alchemies whose magic i don’t quite grasp. because i’m a girl who likes to get to the bottom of things, and maybe you do too, i’ll leave both recipes here on the table for you to peek at, pore over, and perhaps dive into.

but i’ll let you in on a secret that might amount to family treason: the new one, the one from marlene, my best new baking buddy, who all week checked in on me to make sure i’d not run into any lumps, is — shhhhhhh — the one i’ll reach for from now on. i baked these in the middle of the week, shortly after turning in my first draft of that darn story i’m still writing — or rewriting, to be precise. and i tell you, pulling out the cookie-cutter basket, remembering the tale of how each cutter came to me — a double bass for my longtime bass player, a teddy bear for, well, my very own TB — it was sweeter to me than the three and three-quarters cups of sugar i dumped into the mixing bowl. but those are stories for another day.

(a recipe note: i’m particularly charmed by the little asides in marlene’s instructions. you can almost hear her peeking over your shoulder, gently pointing out a better way, a shortcut, a trick she learned from years and years behind the rolling pin. i hope you’re as charmed as i am, and ever will be…)

Sugar Cookies from Marlene Carl (Directions 2018*)

*p.s. i love that marlene dates her directional revisions, as this cookie baking science is not to be taken nonchalantly…

3 and ¾ cups of regular flour a bit more if using egg beaters instead of regular egg

1 and ½ cups of regular sugar

2 teaspoons of real vanilla

1 and ½ teaspoons of baking powder

1 stick of unsalted butter and 1 stick of Can’t Believe It’s Butter margarine. You can use all butter but the batter seems to roll better with the combination of half of each. However, I do use all butter as I love the more delicate taste.

1 large egg or I use ¼ cup of egg beaters (when baking with children who like to taste the raw batter, egg beaters are a safer option than real egg.)

2 and ½ Tablespoons of milk, (there are 3 teaspoons in one tablespoon)

Cream the butter until soft and blended, add the sugar and blend well. Then add the egg or egg beater, followed by the vanilla.

Mix the flour and baking powder together in a bowl, then add some of the flour, then some of the milk blending on low speed, continuing adding and blending until thoroughly blended and mixed. The dough will begin to form a ball and pull away from the sides of the bowl. Add a bit more flour if the dough seems very sticky.

Form three balls with the dough and press flat. Wrap in plastic wrap and put into fridge until ready to use. 36 hours is the longest I have done so and it was perfect. You can also freeze the dough until ready to use. Be sure it is double wrap and use within a month.

Bring the dough to room temp when ready to make the cookies. Flatten one ball of dough between two pieces of wax paper the size of your cookie sheets and roll to about 1/8 to ¼ inch thick.

Using cookie cutters form into shapes, then remove as much of the extra dough around the cookies as possible. When you have done so, place in freezer or fridge (freezer about 10 minutes, fridge maybe a little longer amount of time). When the cookies are cold it will be easy to pick them up and then place the cookies on a different cookie sheet and repeat the process. Smaller cookies can often be removed without chilling them.

Leave about ½ inch between cookies. I usually wait until I have used all the dough and made all the cookie forms before baking two trays at a time in a preheated 400 degree oven. I use convention mode and they bake in about 6 to 7 minutes the edges turn a nice golden brown color. Regular bake mode will take longer maybe 8 to 10 minutes.

Take the cookies off the tray immediately and place on cooling rake. I usually only bake two trays at a time as the cookies are hard to get off the tray if they cool too much. If that occurs, place the tray back in the oven for about 30 seconds and the butter will soften the cookies and they will become easy to remove again.

When you roll the dough between the two pieces of wax paper, (if the dough seems to be sticking to the top piece of paper), you need to add one heaping tablespoon of flour. Then knead the flour into the circle of dough. It should not leave any particles of dough on the wax paper.

and because i promised, here’s my grandma lucille’s. like my grandma, it is clipped and to the point, no frilly asides in this one. my german grandma meant business, and business we got. even in her recipe tin.

Lucille’s Famous Rolled Cut-Out Cookies

1 cup shortening

½C. brown sugar

½C. white sugar

1 egg

2 Tbsp. lemon juice and grated rind

2 C. flour

¼tsp. baking soda

¼tsp salt

Cream shortening. Add sugar. Cream well, egg, flour, soda, salt, lemon juice and rind.

Chill about 3 hours (or overnight).

Roll ¼-inch. Use cookie cutters {Editor’s note: most notably turkeys, bunnies, Santa on sleighs, at appropriate seasons of course. Put raisin in turkey’s eye; same for bunny’s nose.}

Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

cookie baking wintery blessings

do you have a stand-out family cookie recipe in your tin, one that comes out at least once a year, or perhaps every other week? how does your family favorite stand up to the one dear marlene just bequeathed me?

5 Comments

pull up a chair

Tag: baking

September 26, 2025

turn to sweetness

July 10, 2020

riding the COVID-coaster*

January 11, 2019

taking up the challah challenge