Cookie Cache

The Chocolate-Butterscotch Crackles are cooling now. In the meanwhile, favorite cookie memories:

1. Peanut Butter. From Mrs. Potenski, who worked at the St. Mary's School library with my mom. She sent home a whole tin to me! I was fascinated by the crisscross made with fork tines.
2. Bakery Butter. From my great-aunt Tessie, who bought them near her home on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. She brought a rose-topped birthday cake for Dad's and Sis's April birthdays, and a little white box tied with red and white string for me. I couldn't believe my luck.
3. Tollhouse. My mother made these for Christmas Eve, and served them with homemade eggnog in her mother's crystal bowl.
4. Cream Cheese. These spritz cookies are Sis's specialty. Figgy loves them. Sis presses them out of a cookie gun into cute shapes like Christmas trees and ornaments. She has been making them forever. They are dainty and delicate.
5. German Christmas. My friend Irene's parents were from Germany, and on Christmas Eve, Mrs. Friedrichs put out a plate of amazing traditional German cookies, including one with a paper-thin wafer on one side of it.
6. Tassies and Thumbprints. Treasures from the oven of my mother-in-law, Mary, who lives in Bangor, ME. She's an excellent cook and baker. Her five boys, all grown men now, still clamor for the cookies--as does everyone else.  
7. Pia's Lemon Shortbread. I think her name was Pia? I think she worked as a painter for H.'s brother, John, who has a respected house painting business. One Christmas, we were up in Maine and the most delicious shortbread ever was on his farmhouse table. Long, buttery bars with an impossibly perfect crumb that just melted in your mouth, and notes of fresh lemon. I begged him to ask Pia for the recipe and finally, there it was, in ink on paper. However, when I made it, it did not hold a candle to Pia's. Must try to find it and try it again. 
8. Butter Cutouts. Below is the recipe I've been making ever since high school. I learned it in the Chef's Club, which met occasionally after school. I went with my friends [when we weren't running track, or cheering. My sweet friend Lorraine was a cheerleader.] I can't remember the name of our teacher, but she was the daughter of a friend of my mother's, named Mrs. Kileen, I think. Our Chef's Club leader was a young newlywed, pretty and nice. [We also mastered Baked Alaska and Fettuccine Alfredo in that DHS kitchen.]  I wrote this recipe in blue ink on an index card. It originally came from a magazine, but I don't know which one.

Jam-Filled Cookies

1 cup [2 sticks] margarine [Note: This was the 1970s, and my mother probably wouldn't have sprung for butter, anyway. But please use unsalted butter, softened, for best taste!]
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup confectioners sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
2 3/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar


1. Cream butter and both sugars. Beat in egg and vanilla.
2. Stir together dry ingredients. Beat into egg mixture.
3. Roll dough to 1/8" thick on a flowered [that's how I spelled it] surface. Cut with cookie cutter.
4. Put a teaspoonful of jam in the center of half of the cookies. Cut a hole in the center of the other cookies.
5. Seal the pairs into sandwiches. Bake on ungreased cookie sheet at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes, until golden brown underneath and just browning around edges.


Baker's Notes:

• I would not make jam-filled cookies this way now. You are generally instructed to bake the cookies, cool and then sandwich with the jam [raspberry preserves work nicely]. But I use this dough recipe for Christmas trees, Santa's boots, etc. I've strayed and tried others but always come back to this one. 
• Shape the dough into two thick disks, wrap each in waxed paper, and let chill maybe 30 minutes in the fridge before rolling. Not too hard, not too sticky. 
• I love to decorate the cooled trees with swags of melted chocolate, sprinkles and shiny silver dragées. I also like to dip the trunk of each tree in melted chocolate. 
• I think these cookies have come out better when I have mixed the dough by hand. 
• Store in tins between layers of waxed paper.

Sweet dreams.