#great grandmother

wehadariverboatinourlivingroom:

I found an old recipe scrapbook- the kind in which you clip or place recipes that others have given you - and this one popped out at me.

My Grandmother wrote this by hand under the heading ‘Mother’s brown sugar cookies’. Her mother, of course, was my Great Grandmother (born in 1876) who raised 12 children and lived until I was about three years old. I do remember that she always had cookies of one kind or another for her visitors, so I may have eaten these cookies as a child.

The recipe instructs the baker to roll the dough and cut it with a cookie cutter, but after watching me struggle to roll out the sticky dough, my daughter suggested placing it on the cookie sheet by the spoonful instead. The result is what you see- round, soft and fluffy cookies. Following the original directions of rolling and cutting the dough likely would yield crisper and more biscuit-like cookies.

By today’s sugar-saturated standards, these cookies are not very sweet. They have a mild, faint sweetness that would be perfectly paired with a cup of coffee or tea, or a dish of ice cream. Those with a sweet tooth might like to frost them, or simply add more sugar than the recipe calls for.

It’s probably worth noting that we didn’t actually use any lard when we made them today… just butter.

They are displayed in a pressed glass compote which belonged to this same Great Grandmother, and then found its way to my Grandmother’s house, then to my Mother’s, and finally to mine. When I asked my Mother where Great Grandmother had gotten it originally, she shrugged and said, “Oh, it probably came tucked in a bag of flour.” I am not sure if that was a joke or not!