Christmas Cookie Family Favorites

Sherman Family Christmas cookie favorites include sugar cookies and date bars.

 

Every year my family looks forward to my mother’s cookies and fruit cake.  She bakes yule logs flavored with molasses, date bars, rolled sugar cookies, and fruit cake.

This year, I followed her recipe for sugar cookies and for the filled bar cookies, using chopped dates.  She sometimes substitutes part of the water with orange juice. I added a quarter teaspoon of orange extract.

 

My mother rolls her sugar cookie dough and then cuts them into shapes. I was lazy so I formed the dough into balls and then pressed them flat with the bottom of a glass.

This are my Mother’s recipes as she wrote them:
Filled Bar Cookies

Make date or other filling.

Preheat oven to 400°.

3/4 cup margarine 1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 3/4 cups flour 1/2 teaspoon soda

1 teaspoon salt 1 1/2 cups rolled oats

Mix margarine and sugar together thoroughly.

Mix together and stir in flour, soda, and salt.

Stir in oats and mix thoroughly. Place 1/2 the

crumb mixture in a greased and floured 9 x 13

pan. Spread with cooled filling. Cover with

remaining crumb mixture……patting lightly.

Bake 25 to 30 minutes until lightly browned.

While warm cut into bars and remove from pan.

Date Filling: Mix together in saucepan; 3 cups

cut-up dates (24 oz.), 1/4 cup sugar, and 1 1/2

cups water. (I have substituted orange juice

for part of the water.) Cook over low heat,

stirring until thickened. (About 10 minutes)

Cool.

Prune Orange Filling: Mix together in saucepan;

3 cups cut-up cooked prunes (drained), 1/2 cup

sugar, 1/2 cup orange juice, 2 tbls. lemon

juice and 2 tbls. grated orange rind(optional).

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until

thickened. (About 10 minutes) Cool.

Fig, Apricot,or Raisin Filling: Use date recipe

and replace with figs, apricots, or raisins.

 

 Sugar Cookies

4 1/2 cups sifted flour      2 cups sugar

  1/2 teaspoon salt          4 eggs, beaten

4 teaspoons baking powder    1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup margarine              2 tablespoons milk

Sift flour, salt  and  baking powder  together.

Cream margarine  and sugar together.   Add eggs

and vanilla.   Add sifted ingredients and milk.

Roll and cut. You will probably have to add

more flour as you roll. Sprinkle with sugar and

bake on an ungreased baking sheet in  375° oven

12 minutes.

To Fill Cookies:

Roll out dough  and cut  into  circles.   Place

teaspoon  of  filling  on  half of the circles,

keeping it away from  the  edges.   Cover  with

remaining circles  and  press  together  around

edges with tines of a fork.  Bake as for sugar

cookies.

               Raisin Filling

2/3 cup sugar    2 cups raisins    Dash of salt

2/3 cup hot water         3 teaspoons margarine

Combine ingredients and cook until thick. Cool.

                 Fig Filling

1 cup chopped figs   1 cup water  Juice 1 lemon

 1/2 cup sugar     2 tbls. flour   Dash of salt

Combine ingredients and cook until thick. Cool.

Sunshine in a Glass

Freshly squeezed key limes in limeade dispel the wintry gloom.

It’s always cold every winter in Kansas, but we usually get a lot of sunshine, which is cheerful even when you’re freezing.  This year it’s been cloudy almost every day.  I was hoping for a break from gloom when I went to southern California in mid-January, but it rained there, too.  I did get some sunny days, too, so I’ll stop whining.  While there, my daughter and I visited long-time friends Jan and Richard.   Their yard is a small orchard of citrus trees — Meyer lemon, key lime and blood orange.  Some years their harvest is so huge they don’t know what to do with it all, partly because everyone with tree is experiencing a boon year, too.

 I was happy to take a few pounds of their key limes off their hands, which I hauled home to snow-covered Kansas. 

Key limes ready for squeezing.

When I visited them in January, we squeezed a lot of key limes to make this refreshing limeade.   They use a sugar syrup to sweeten it.  The recipe for that syrup is in the link below to Richard’s sangria.  They have a handy citrus squeezer, which made the job go quickly.   I bought one when I got home, although I don’t know when I’ll use it again.  Click for the sugar syrup recipe, as well as a tasty  Sangria Recipe.

Key limes.

This key lime tree is loaded with fruit.

All photographs are of Jan and Richard’s key limes.

Emergency Chocolate Relief Act

Need some chocolate relief? Mix this cookie dough, form into cookies, freeze and then pop into the oven whenever you have a chocolate emergency.

Our annual book club Christmas party was on Monday night.  We exchange small, but wonderful gifts.  We bring a gift for each person, so we go home with a lot of loot. 

This year, Chris brought a recipe for “Emergency Chocolate Relief Act” plus the actual raw cookies in a plastic bag to put in our freezers.  The raw cookies were ready to pop in the oven whenever we were feeling faint and in need of chocolate. She even gave us a small cookie tray, which will fit into a toaster oven.  It was all wrapped in a festive tea towel.  Her mother, Judy, also a member of book club, gave us a small spatula to complete the ensemble. You can see it all above with the cookies hot from the oven. 

The recipe:

Take off all jewelry. Wash hands. Combine one roll of Nestle refrigerated chocolate chip cookie dough with a roll of another brand (such as Pillsbury) in the same amount.  Add substantial amounts of pecans and chocolate chips or pieces of candy bars.  Squish all together into balls. Slightly flatten and put in freezer bags.  Freeze. When you need a cookie or two or three, break out of the bag.  Put on baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.  Cool slightly.  Eat!  You’ll feel instant relief!

Make This No-Calorie Chex Mix

Here’s how to make no-calorie Chex Mix.  You won’t even get your hands dirty. 

Chex Mix Jigsaw Puzzle.

Queen Elizabeth II’s Scone Recipe

In 1960, Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain sent President Dwight D. Eisenhower her recipe for “Drop Scones,” which she had promised to give to him when he’d visited her at Balmoral Castle. Eisenhower was an avid cook.

Elizabeth II doesn’t seem like a likely cook, but she was an auto mechanic during World War II.  She could probably stir up a batch of scones, if called upon in the line of duty.

A photograph of the recipe she sent him is in a book about Eisenhower entitled, The Ike Files: Mementoes of the Man and His Era from the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, which was published by Kansas City Star Books and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Foundation.

The Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum is in Abilene, Kansas, which is where Eisenhower grew up.  It was the first presidential library I ever visited, which makes sense since I lived in Kansas.  (Although many people never visit the sites in their own states.)

We already had a “history” with Eisenhower, though. My parents had taken me as a baby to Eisenhower’s presidential inaugural parade in 1953, when we lived in Alexandria, Virginia.

Here’s Queen Elizabeth’s scone recipe.

Ingredients:

• 4 teacups flour
• 4 tablespoons caster sugar
• 2 teacups milk
• 2 whole eggs
• 2 teaspoons bi-carbonate soda
• 3 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 2 tablespoons melted butter

Beat eggs, sugar and about half the milk together, add flour, and mix well together adding remainder of milk as required, also bi-carbonate and cream of tartar, fold in the melted butter.

The recipe was typed, but at the bottom, written in ink and underlined, was the line: Enough for 16 people.

I don’t have the Queen’s instructions for what to do with the dough. Here’s a scone recipe from Epicurious.com that describes how to work, shape, cut and bake the dough.

Hearty Scottish Scones

Blogging friend Paula’s photos of scones and jam inspired me on this topic.  Here’s a link to Paula’s “Jamming” post.  She also included a recipe for scones and more information in her comment below.  Check it out.

To learn more about the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, which sells the book, go to www.eisenhower.archives.gov  I don’t get any royalties. In fact, don’t tell them I sent you.