It's December, and
the holiday cookie baking frenzy has begun! In looking for inspiration, I was
paging through my mother's old recipe binder and came across this little
cookie book. Seeing this just made my heart swell. How I miss the glut of
recipe books that used to be published by various companies by way of promoting
their products. When I first set up housekeeping, these small company-produced
cookbooks were pretty much all that I had. These, and a subscription to Good
Housekeeping.
As I paged through this book, seeing my mother's check marks by certain recipes
made me smile. Yes, I recognized the check marks as being hers. Always bold,
always in pencil, and written with determination. The thing is, I don't recall
her ever making any of the recipes that she had checked. I get that. When
it comes to baking cookies, we all pretty much just want to stick with our
favorites. Is there any disappointment greater than spending a half a day
making cookies only to find them lacking?
Still, my curiosity is piqued, so I am going to make at least one of the
recipes that she checked. I'll report back. Meanwhile, enjoy these
vintage recipes and holiday baking tips. Despite its dated look, there is a lot
of good information here.
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4 comments:
What a lovely post! So many people now collect those old freebie cookbooks, libraries now acquire and catalog them, and -- in contrast -- I have to admit I got rid of quite a few in some cleaning-out frenzy. Louise at Months of Edible Celebrations was a wonder at creating great blog posts with her enormous collection of materials like this.
Have a great time baking!!
best... mae at maefood.blogspot.com
I love "dated" cookbooks! At some point when I was in my 40s I decided to weed out my rapidly accumulating stash of cookbooks and eliminated the oldest ones - big mistake! Those are the ones I miss the most. I would give my eye teeth to have at least 2 of Mom's old cookbooks containing a recipe for nutmeg drops - I've never found a recipe that looked quite right. Another one was for something we called "Cheese Pie", which was made with beaten egg whites (yes, uncooked), cream cheese, and lemon jello. Mom and I tried to recreate the recipe several years ago and came up with a good replica, but I'd love to remember the name of that cookbook.
I'm wondering at the Chocolate Revels and the instructions to "revel the chocolate into the white mixture" - interesting use of that word!
Most of all I love the efficiently written recipe instructions. Give me the old fashioned cookbooks with sparse directions. I grow so weary of today's blogging tendency to use 15 articles in every sentence and to assume I don't even know how to use my stand mixer: "In the bowl of an electric mixer which has been fitted with the paddle attachment, add the butter and the sugar and cream them together until...") Sorry, rant over. ;)
Hi Pattie:)
Ah yes, a golden oldie filled with memory sweet recipes. I do have this book stashed somewhere. I must dig it out although, I don't really need to since you were kind enough to share not only the booklett but the nostalgia as well.
Thank you so much for sharing, Pattie...I must say, if the comments so far are any indication, this booklet is going to spark much more!!! Will be pinning:)
P.S. Tomorrow is National Cookie Day!!!
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