Leslie's Blog

There’s been a happy confluence of events recently; my foodie stars are aligned.

Connie was in touch earlier this month to remind me of fun we’d had a few years back baking cookies (and drinking wine) with two other friends. We’d spent an entire afternoon covered in flour, crunching egg shells on her floor, gossiping and getting sillier as the day wore on. We shared our recipes, turned out dozens of sweet goodies and divided up the spoils before going home.

Did I want to do it again this year? Of course!

This week I find myself in Maine visiting Best Friend whose lovely home includes a chilly attic with a treasure trove of books left by the former owner. I have an affinity for books; especially old books with yellowed pages and antiquated language. Best Friend’s attic holds hundreds of those tomes and many are for the cook. With cookie cooking coming up, this visit’s attic search was focused on finding cookery books about sweets. And, what a sweet I found! “Desserts in America, 1650-1900.”

I dug in. I started to read.

The cookie, A cookie. What is a cookie? Where did they come from? The earliest form of this favorite sweet is found in Persia around the 7^th century where sugar was also first used. Not as sweet then as they are today, they traveled well and the concept spread. Muslims brought cookies to Spain and by the 14^th Century forms of cookies were common all over Europe. Centuries later the cookie came to America compliments of the Dutch. Originally called koekje or little cakes, koekje was Anglicized to cookie. By the 1800’s cookies were a New Year’s Day specialty and tradition required families to provide one for a visitor to carry away in his pocket.

From America’s earliest days, there is no doubt that the cookie was widely enjoyed. Few American homes were without cookie making tools that included a rolling pin (called a molding pin), a plain board (called a molding board) a wineglass, tumbler or flour-dredging box for cutting the dough into discs. Tin cutters in the shape of animals, stars, crescents and leaves were also commonly found.

There is also no doubt that the simple Dutch koekje had spun off into recipes for hundreds of little sweet treats. By the 19^th Century, all Cookery Books featured at least a few receipts for cookies. According to my newly found book which quotes a New York hostess, “Cookies are proper for tea or for putting upon a salver to eat with jellies.” The lady goes on to describe the receipt for one of her favorites, a fragile cylinder to be served plain or filled with cream:

“The housewife will beat equal parts of cream, sugar, flour and orange water together for half an hour. Then pour a spoonful onto a very hot wafer iron and baked it for a mere minute until it was light brown. While the wafer was hot she was rolled it around a wooden roller or the handle of a wooden spoon and let it cool until crisp.”

The Naples biscuit was another early American sweet; it is the fore runner of our modern graham cracker. It was enjoyed by itself and used for thickening possets (sweet spiced hot milk curdled with ale or beer). These little cookies were baked in small tins and I read George Washington owned four (tins, that is).

Most early American cookies, then commonly called little flat cakes or drop cakes, almost always were flavored, instead of with vanilla, with rose or orange-flower water. More commonly than not, they would contain seeds, sometimes whole, sometimes ground by a mortar and a pestle. Cardamom, cinnamon and caraway were the flavors most used; sugar was often sprinkled on the top. All were baked in a “quick” but not too hot oven with several sheets of paper under the baking sweet dough.

When I pack my bag to come back home, my new Book Friend will come along. I can not wait to bake some of those old fashioned delights.

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I love marzipan; I also love the memories it holds. My little girl birthday cakes were always decorated with butter cream flowers filled with marzipan and during the spring Nana brought us sugared marzipan candies from Dubin’s, a favorite bakery in Brooklyn.

Ratafia Cakes (cookies) are made from almond paste, the essential ingredient for marchpane, marzipan. The book flopped open to that page when I first picked it up. It will be the first recipe I’ll try.

Untested Recipes for Ratafia Cakes (cookies)

Mix thoroughly:

• 7 ounces almond paste
• 7/8 cup sugar
• 2 egg whites
• 1 tsp almond extract

Form this mixture into 1” ovals. Place on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake at 325° for 15 minutes.

–OR—

Beat

• 3 egg whites until just stiff

Add:

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 TBS rosewater
• 1 cup of almond paste
• ½ tsp almond extract

Fold In:

• 2 cups of sifted flour

Drop by teaspoon onto a well greased cookie sheet. Bake at 325° for 10 minutes.