Wisdom From Grandma

Every Christmas, my mother would pull out the eggs and butter and find herself surrounded by children eager to help her decorate her grandma’s special French cookies. Every year, when the cookies were finished, my mother said she would never make them again. It was too hard and time consuming to make the French cookies when we could just whip up sugar cookies instead. Yet, when the next year came around, she would once again pull out the yellowed recipe.

There was something magical about rolling out the dough, cutting out the cookies, glazing them with colored egg whites, and finishing them off with sprinkles and chocolate chips. If there were any cookies left a week after they were cooked, there was the added bonus of an even richer tasting cookie than the ones that were fresh out of the oven.

Ingredients:

2 cups sugar

1 cup butter (You cannot substitute margarine in this recipe)

6 egg yolks (keep whites back for frosting cookies)

2 Tablespoons sour milk (or add a few drops of lemon juice to milk)

1 Teaspoon baking soda

½ Teaspoon vanilla

3 to 4 cups of flour

Directions:

1. Preheat over to 375 degrees.

2. Soften butter.

3. Cream butter and sugar together.

4. Add egg yolks, sour milk, and vanilla.

5. Sift dry ingredients together and add a cup at a time until the dough will make a ball that stays together but is not too sticky. I usually end up using three and ½ cups of the flour.

6. Set extra flour aside to flour the surface of your waxed paper when you roll out the cookies later.

7. After mixing your dough, divide it in quarters and wrap each quarter in waxed paper.

8. Refrigerate for two hours.

9. Once your dough is chilled, work with one quarter at a time to keep it from becoming too sticky.

10. Use a few tablespoons of flour on your waxed paper to keep your dough from sticking and roll your dough out to a ¼” thickness.

11. Cut out your cookies. As you re-roll the dough, it will become harder to work with. When it gets too difficult to use, put it back in the fridge to chill and take out another package of dough to work with.

12. When your cookies are cut and on the baking sheets, brush egg whites lightly over the surface of each cookie.

13. You can divide the whites up and add a drop of food coloring to make a colored frosting if you’d like.

14. Decorate the cookies with sprinkles and chocolate chips.

Bake your cookies for about eight minutes, until they turn faintly golden. Remove them from the cookie sheets to cool. They can be eaten immediately, but are best if they are allowed to age for approximately a week.

Grandma’s chickens were great layers, so she always had plenty of eggs. One of her favorite tricks was to crack eggs into spaghetti sauce as the sauce was bubbling away. The eggs would develop a delicious spaghetti flavor as they cooked. Grandpa would scoop them out of the sauce and eat them over the next several days for lunch. My friend Connie has a version of spaghetti eggs where she shells hardboiled eggs and cooks them in the sauce. If you’ve never tried them, spaghetti eggs may sound odd, but they really do taste good.

Grandma knew that tea had healing properties well before there was scientific research to prove it. If you were stressed out, ill, or just a bit frazzled, Grandma would brew a cup of tea and offer you a homemade cookie. However, during the summer months, brewing hot tea can really be uncomfortable, so Grandma would switch to a refreshing pitcher of her iced tea.

Grandma’s tips for great tea:

1. Always empty the kettle completely and re-fill it with fresh water.
2. When brewing a pot of tea, use one bag for each guest and add an extra bag for the pot.
3. Don’t leave tea leaves or tea bags sitting in the pot or cup after brewing. Overbrewed tea is bitter.
4. Use fancy tea cups and take the time to sit and sip your tea.
5. Make refreshing iced tea by growing and picking fresh Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, or Peppermint. Bring water to a boil, pour over the leaves, let brew for five minutes, and strain the tea. Then, add several cups of your herbal iced tea to a pitcher of orange pekoe iced tea. (This tea is popular with children who don’t like straight herbal tea.)