Cookies and cakes – Page 21 – Courage in the Kitchen

Dad and Leroy grew up a half mile apart along the Namekagon River. He and his wife Bert were good friends of my parents. Our families went to the same little Lutheran church in the country, we kids went to the same one-room school and played together and we got together for dinners and picnics from time to time.

Later when I was in my teens, Dad and I, Uncle Harold and their friend Pete met for breakfast on the opening day of deer season at Bert and Leroy’s. After a big breakfast we would cross the river in the dark on a rickety plank footbridge that Leroy had built across the stream. Most years it was icy and treacherous on those single planks, but I remember only once that someone slipped in, and that was when we were bringing a deer home from the hills.

Bert hunted too, and Leroy had found her a great place for a stand, stocked it with firewood and gallon jugs of water and built her a comfortable bench and gun rest. Bert would build a fire, fill the big coffee pot with water and have hot coffee for us as we wandered in from our deer stands. Once or twice, she had the first deer of the season dressed out by the time we showed up for lunch.

In the summers we had lots of fun together too. One particularly memorable event was the snipe hunt that one of the older boys and I organized for the girls in the south pasture. When our sisters came home crying and bitten by mosquitos, our sniggers soon changed to yelps as Leroy and Dad “taught us a lesson.” It hardly seemed fair, since they had told us about snipe hunts earlier that summer.

Bert and Mom often got together for coffee and conversation. They both believed in setting out fresh baked goods when someone stopped in. Bert’s Jumbo Raisin Cookies are delicious and stay soft and chewy. They impressed Mom so much that she made a copy of the recipe, and here it is.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups raisins
1 cup water
1 cup shortening
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. allspice
1 tsp. vanilla

PROCEDURE:

Put two cups of raisins and a cup of cold water into a saucepan. Cover, bring to a boil and simmer for five minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and allow the raisins to cool.

Preheat the oven to 350º

Cream the sugar and shortening in a large mixing bowl. Beat the eggs until lemon colored and mix them thoroughly into the creamed sugar.

Measure the flour, baking powder, soda, salt, cinnamon, and allspice into a sifter. Sift about three cups of the flour and spices into the liquid ingredients, stirring thoroughly after each cup of flour is added. Stir in the vanilla and raisins and the final cup of flour and mix well.

Drop the dough by heaping teaspoonfuls onto a well-greased cookie sheet and bake until lightly browned, eleven to twelve minutes.

NOTES: Don’t drain the raisins. This recipe makes about five dozen cookies. If you like soft and chewy cookies, this is a recipe you really should try.

“How do they come up with these names?” I asked myself as I was going through one of my mother’s recipe boxes. On a yellowed sheet of six by eight-inch letter paper, the kind you used to get in pads for a dime or fifteen cents at the five and dime, Mom had written “Mrs. Elwick’s Oatmeal Cake good.”

When I unfolded the sheet, inside was the recipe for “Lazy Daisy Oatmeal Cake” that my mother had written out, probably at Mrs. Elwick’s kitchen table. Neither my sisters nor I can remember a Mrs. Elwick, but Mom had a wide circle of friends and a lot of them were pretty good cooks.

Why should a cake made with oatmeal be called “lazy daisy,” I wondered. When I searched that fount of all wisdom for “lazy daisy,” Google returned over four million results in less than a third of a second. There are lazy daisy cafes, boutique restaurants, quilting companies, ceramics shops, gift stores, women’s clothing stores, spas, pet grooming services, and even a Lazy Daisy company offering “Antenatal and Baby Classes.” And who knows what else?

Besides oatmeal cake, I mean. There are dozens of pages with recipes for lazy daisy oatmeal cakes. It’s just the rhyme, I decided, but the fact that Mom had judged the cake good persuaded me to try it. As usual, she was right.

You have to wait a few minutes while the oatmeal is hydrating, but otherwise this is a quick and easy cake to make.

INGREDIENTS:

For the cake:

1 cup uncooked rolled oats (quick-cooking or old-fashioned)
1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

For the icing:

1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 T cream, half and half or whole milk
3/4 cup flaked coconut
1/3 cup chopped nuts

PROCEDURE:

Let two eggs and a half cup of butter come to room temperature. Heat some water to boiling. Put a cup of rolled oats into a small bowl and stir in a cup and one-quarter of boiling water. Cover the bowl and let it stand for twenty minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350º. Grease and flour a nine by thirteen-inch cake pan.

Cream the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat in the eggs and vanilla. Blend the warm oats into the egg and sugar mixture and stir thoroughly.

Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together and add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Beat well and pour the batter into the cake pan. Bake on a center rack for forty-five to fifty-five minutes. Test for doneness with a toothpick at forty-five minutes. If it comes out clean, the cake is done.

Make the icing while the cake is in the oven. Cream the butter and sugar together in a small bowl. Stir in the cream, half and half or milk and blend in the nuts and coconut.

Leave the cake in the pan and spread the icing while the cake is still hot. Broil just until the icing starts to bubble and turn golden.

NOTES: Mom noted that you can serve this cake warm or cold. Her recipe called for “regular” oatmeal, which is now called “old-fashioned.” I have made this cake only with old-fashioned oatmeal, and it was delicious.

You don’t really have to broil the icing if the cake is good and hot when you spread it on.