Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Nostalgia on a Cookie Sheet


I grew up baking with my Aunt Esther in my grandmother’s kitchen. We’d hang up a sign on the kitchen door reading “Ye Olde Bake Shoppe” and make something delicious. So I was a baker long before I became a serious cook.

My Grandma Lupe didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, except for her favorite: peanut butter cookies. She’d magically appear right before the first batch came out of the oven and sneak one off the cookie rack as they were cooling.

Not surprisingly, peanut butter cookies became my specialty. I always entered a variety of my baked goods at the Ventura County Fair and I won many ribbons. But I earned blue ribbons for peanut butter cookies a total of five times. For three years in a row I was unbeaten.

I had the Betty Crocker recipe memorized for a long time. Of course, I did a few minor tweaks to it to make the cookies softer and sweeter.

When I was baking peanut butter cookies this afternoon, all these memories swirled up as my Kitchen-Aid beat the butter and peanut butter together. Unfortunately I don’t remember the recipe by heart anymore. I had to go by the Joy of Cooking’s recipe, which is not bad. But at least I do remember my tweaks.

So no produce from Persephone Farm in this recipe, but I did use locally ground flour from Bob’s Red Mill. Better go make a sign to show the Bake Shoppe is open.

Links:
The Joy of Cooking
http://www.thejoykitchen.com

Bob’s Red Mill Flour
http://www.bobsredmill.com

2 comments:

  1. I totally credit you for my cookie baking ability.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow, five blue ribbons! I've gotta try those cookies!

    ReplyDelete