Cookies!

Eva and I do a cooking project every Tuesday and this week we made Sugar Cookies.
Melt-in-your-mouth-delicious sugar cookies!

My Great Grandma Tillie made sugar cookies all the time and they were such a favorite of mine when I was growing up in Michigan. Hers were kind of puffy and each one had a big fat raisin on top. Just one. Grandma Tillie also wore crimson nail polish and lived with a man named Mac, whose relationship was never completely clear to me. I'll have to ask my dad about that. Grandma Tillie was my mother's step-father's mother, so Dad may not know or remember. Now that I think about it, Tillie wasn't a blood relation to me at all.  She and the neighbor ladies used to sit and play cards in her kitchen on hot summer days. They always took off their blouses and played in their bras or slips. Good grief, the things I recall in my old age.

I recently bought a new cookbook that has 100 cookie recipes. And every one of them looks delicious. I wish Eva liked nuts, because the fact that she doesn't eliminates many of the recipes. There are bar cookies and drop cookies and roll in a ball cookies. I would like to start at Chapter One and just work my way through the book. One recipe that sounded good was a S'Mores Cookie. It had a graham cracker base, then a chocolate layer, then a marshmallow topping.

Do you have any memories from your childhood of special cookies?

Comments

[Kelli]

Yes! My Grandma made big white sour milk cookies with sugar and one raisin on top. They were delicious for dunking in cocoa - I still make them today. Very tasty. Thanks for the cookbook suggestion! Enjoy your baking time with Eva 🍪

[Mary]

It seems like we always had homemade cookies in the house. My sister has Mom's antique cookie jar and mentioned just the sound of the lid coming off reminded her of having a cookie for breakfast! My mom would often bake later in the day so that there were fresh cookies when we came home from school. Store-bought cookies were a rare treat for us! And there were cookies that were only made at Christmas and never during the rest of the year. I consider myself really blessed to have such great memories of my mom baking.

[Jean Thut]

Those look so good! I didn’t know you are from Michigan. I am from Battle Creek!

[Cathy]

My mom was good with cookies and always had some on hand, usually chocolate chip, for when we brought friends home from school with us. This was very common in high school because our house was only a block from the school.

[Gloria Yates]

I am from Ypsilanti. My mother didn't bake cookies but my MIL made big fat sugar cookies with one raisin in the center!! My husband said he would eat all the way around the raisin, saving it for last.

[Carol in Texas]

Peanut Butter cookies, with a cross made by fork tines. And at Christmas, pressed spritz with a half a candied cherry in the center. Pink ones had a red cherry and green ones had a green cherry. Today I make lots of kind os cookies……I love them. And there is a little bakery/lunch place here in our small town that makes delicious snickerdoodles and oatmeal raisin cookies, as well as a very good gluten free chocolate chip cookie, though gluten is not a problem for me, thankfully.. On Tuesdays a group of us lunch there after reading the Morning Prayer service and I always follow up my sandwich or salad with one of their cookies and coffee. Just lovely.

[Annie O]

What a great story, lol! I love cookies best for sweets—my favorite is a molasses crinkle that looks a lot like the cookie you showed, only dark brown, of course. You could always put nuts in half the dough.

[T Holzer]

Those look amazing, Nicole!

[sue s]

Gloria Yates, i live in Ann Arbor! My mom always made spritz cookies at Christmas, and an old college boyfriend taught me how to make chocolate no-bake cookies. Those are still my favorites!

[Jan]

Those sugar cookies look delicious! My sister & I have always baked cookies. The original Toll House recipe on the Nestles chocolate chip bag is our go-to. 🍪 We bake with solid Crisco instead of butter for big fluffy cookies. It's Michigan True Confessions Day here...I was born in Grand Rapids but we moved to Florida when I was 4 so I have very little memory of it.

[Melanie]

Grandma Tillie sounds pretty cool! Smartie cookies were my favourite growing up.

[Ina]

man, I sure wish Grandma Tillie was still alive because I would LOVE to meet her! I bet she was a hoot to have as friend or family member. ;p

You should ask your sisters what they remember about her. you gals could swap stories. make sure and tell Eva about the blouse-less card playing. she was be both shocked and amused. also, promise her that you will keep your blouse on.

I've been baking lots of brownies. decadent chocolate brownies.

[Taria]

What fun for you and Eva. They look delish. My grandma made what we called butterball cookies at Christmas but I mostly remember her sweet Czech yeast breads. My all time favorite cookies are simple Peanut butter ones my cousin makes. Mine never come out as good as hers. She is full of love and I guess I can feel that in her cookies? I'll have to get that book. My best cookies recipes are out of the Sunset cookie book. Those and ones from Jackie Olden who did a radio cooking show out of Los Angeles back in the day. I love cookies! Thank you for sharing.

[Pat in Nebraska]

In Marquette many years ago the school cooks would make a wonderfully chewy orange frosted bar cookie. I sure wish I could find that recipe to make them myself. The women who worked there then are long gone and no one seems to know who might still have that recipe.

[Robby H.]

What a fun memory! I just got that book. Is that where the recipe for the sugar cookie came from? I'd love to start there, if so.

[patty]

I remember cutting up maraschino cherries to decorate the cookie press cookies (we never called them spritz) at Christmas time for my Mom. The cherries had to be cut into very small pieces and I wasn't suppose to eat any. My Mom would make hundreds of these to pack up in disposable aluminum pie pans for gifts for my Dad's coworkers and bosses. I remember loading them in the car and Dad driving us around town to make the deliveries.