Category: Cookies and cakes

Grandma Libbey’s Soft Ginger Cookies

Our camp cook’s wife, Lorraine, shared her recipe for soft ginger cookies after I begged for it at one of the sumptuous Christmas open houses she and Chris hosted. As I have mentioned before, I really prefer cookies that remind me of cake rather than crackers.

I do like crackers, particularly when they are smeared with a nice ripe Brie or Camembert or are supporting a generous slice of aged Cheddar from Wisconsin or Cave Aged Gouda from the Caves of Faribaultt. I also use crackers in lots of recipes for everything from Italian Meatballs and Jerri’s Salmon Loaf to Nellie’s Rhubarb Raisin Pie and Phyllis’ Bar-B-Que Burgers, and of course, Jerri’s Oyster Stew demands oyster crackers.

I do enjoy an occasional crisp cookie, but I would sneak an extra one of Grandma Libbey’s Soft Ginger Cookies before I reached for a crisp sugar cookie. Lorraine got the recipe from Ms. Diane, as Chris calls her, who is married to his brother David. She contributed it to “Feeding the Flock,” a cookbook published by The Baptist Church of Grafton, Massachusetts.

In a note at the end of the recipe, she explains, “This recipe comes from David’s Grandma who made it frequently to celebrate, to console and to be enjoyed with cold milk.”

I think Diane says it all. It’s time to bake some cookies.

INGREDIENTS:

1 large egg
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups molasses
1/2 cup sour milk
1 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
2 tsp. baking soda
5-6 cups all-purpose flour

PROCEDURE:

First make the sour milk. Put one and one-half-teaspoons of vinegar or lemon juice into a measuring cup. Add enough milk to make a half cup. Stir the mixture and set it aside. Preheat the oven to 425º.

Beat the egg, sugar and molasses together in a large mixing bowl. Add the sour milk and beat well. Add the oil and beat until it is blended with the other liquids.

Sift the salt, ginger, baking soda and flour into a separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the molasses mixture a cup at a time, beating well between additions. If the dough is not firm enough to roll out after the last cup has been stirred in, add more flour.

Transfer half of the dough onto a well-floured surface. Use a spatula to turn the dough until it is covered with flour. Roll out the dough to a quarter-inch thickness. Cut with a floured cutter and place the cookies about an inch apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake for six to seven minutes until the center of the cookie is set.

Work the scraps into the remaining dough and cut more cookies. Knead the final scraps into a ball and roll it out to make the rest of the cookies.

NOTES: If you want extra sweetness, sprinkle a little granulated sugar on top of the cookies before putting them in the oven.

Depending on the size of your egg and the kind of molasses, you may need to add a little more than six cups of flour. This recipe makes five dozen three inch cookies.

Madge Prewitt’s Apple Cake Revisited

Our friend Rich and I picked apples yesterday at his family farm near Luck, Wisconsin. Rich now uses his old home as a hunting shack, so most of the time there is no one to disturb the deer that, as Rich says, “give the tree a haircut” on those years when it bears fruit. They do a good job, too. Any apples within reach of a hungry deer disappear when they are ripe.

With Rich’s step ladder and and an apple picker loaned to us by a neighbor, we were able to harvest the apples the deer could not reach. Our prize was a lovely red giant nearly five inches in diameter that Rich managed to snag from a branch near the top of the tree. We drove home with more than two bushels of apples in bags and boxes to share with friends and neighbors.

While Rich and I were gathering food, Jerri was busy making her favorite apple cake with Haralson apples from another friend’s tree. She had found the recipe for it in the Louisville Courier Journal many years ago when we lived in Murray, Kentucky.

Jerri enjoyed the food column in that excellent newspaper very much and tried many of the recipes. One of the best was for a moist apple cake contributed by Madge Prewitt. Mrs. Prewitt died June 3, 2009 at the age of 90 at Corbin, Kentucky, but we shall remember her always for her delicious cake.

In the course of baking this cake for over forty years, Jerri has made two small adjustments that we think make a great cake even better and more foolproof. Apples are falling off the trees right now. If you see an apple tree that you think needs attention, stand up straight, put a smile on your face and ask the homeowner if you could pick a few apples to make Madge Prewitt’s Apple Cake. Offer to share a couple of slices, and you may well get an enthusiastic “It’s a deal!”

INGREDIENTS:

For the cake:

3 1/2 cups chopped tart apples
2 cups sugar
1 cup butter
2 eggs
3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. each cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves
1 cup English walnuts

For the glaze:

1/2 stick melted butter or margarine
1 T hot water
3/4 cup sifted confectioner’s sugar.

PROCEDURE:

Do not peel the apples. Just wash and quarter them and remove the cores. Chop the apples into a quarter-inch dice. Combine the sugar with the apples in a large mixing bowl and set it aside. Sift together the flour, salt, soda and spices. Chop the nuts into quarter inch pieces, put them in a small bowl and stir a little of the flour mixture into them.

Grease and flour a nine-inch tube pan. Preheat the oven to 375º and melt the butter.

Stir the melted butter into the sugar-apple mixture. Beat the eggs until they are lemon yellow and stir them into the mixture. Blend the dry ingredients into the apple mixture and stir the walnuts in last of all.

Turn the batter into the prepared tube pan and bake for about an hour. Ovens do not all bake the same, so check for doneness at fifty-five minutes. A toothpick inserted halfway between the tube and the outside of the cake should come out clean. Take the pan from oven and let it cool for twenty to twenty-five minutes. Use a knife to release the cake from the sides of the pan and central tube, then carefully tip the the cake onto a plate and allow it to cool to lukewarm.

To make the glaze, beat the melted butter or margarine and hot water into the sifted sugar and drizzle the glaze on the warm cake.

NOTES: Mix the batter by hand to preserve the texture of the apples.

The cake needs to be quite warm but not hot when you remove it from the pan. If the cake is too hot, it may break when you tip it onto the plate. If this happens you may have to eat the damaged part and explain to your guests that you couldn’t wait to taste this delicious cake.

An earlier version of this recipe appeared in “Courage in the Kitchen” on August 26, 2012.