Cookie Quest - Chess Pie Cookies

I've been trying to organize all my recipes lately - seemingly an insurmountable task - and in going through all of them, I found this one from my mom that I hadn't made in a long time. And that's the beauty of recipe organizing - we've been trying a lot of new recipes lately, some good, some not so good. This one isn't a new one, per se, since I can remember my mom making it when I was a kid, but it's definitely new to Matt.

Looks like the cookie monster's been here.

Part of the inspiration for making these cookies came from paging through a copy of The White House Cookbook by Janet Halliday Ervin that was given to me by my mother-in-law. This cookbook was published in 1964 and includes the entire text of the original White House Cookbook written in 1887 by Mrs. Fanny Gillette and Mr. Hugo Ziemann (then White House steward). The 1964 version contains not only the un-updated original text, it also contains a section on each of the First Ladies and a few recipes that they liked to serve during their time in office, ending with Lady Bird Johnson. This part was particularly interesting to me, both in terms of learning about the former First Ladies and because it put a lot of recipes into context. It was interesting to watch how the American palate evolved (at least through the '60s) and to see the strong British and French influences that remain. There are a lot of recipes that I want to try, including one for Maids of Honor, a treat that Matt and I tried for the first time during our visit to London over the summer. One of the last recipes in the book is for Chess Pie from the LBJ White House.

1 cup chopped pecans, ready to go

There is a note below the recipe stating that it is an old recipe, and inviting the reader to compare it to an even older recipe for Chess Cake dating to 1879. Chess pie is a Southern specialty - apparently originally from England - that seems to me to be pretty similar to the sugar pie of French Canada (except I think that one has cream in it). Lady Bird Johnson's recipe is: Mix 2 cups sugar with 1 heaping Tbsp flour, and add to 1/2 pound butter. Blend until light and fluffy. Add 4 eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition. Add 1/2 tsp vanilla and pour into unbaked pie shell. Bake in 300 degree oven until knife inserted comes out clean - about one hour. (The White House Cookbook p. 488). The older recipe is similar, but uses six egg yolks and no flour and calls for adding "some pretty jelly into the center" of the pie (p. 489). When I first read the older one, I wasn't sure why it's called Chess Cake. Bill Neal, Chapel Hill chef extraordinaire, can answer that question. His version of Chess Pie is slightly different than Lady Bird's - his is flavored with lemon rather than vanilla. What's interesting, though, is his note before the recipe: "In Tennessee, as many as six or seven of these pies, baked and cooled, are stacked on each other and sliced as a cake" (Southern Cooking p.191). The White House version said nothing about stacking them, but the recipe did imply that more than one was being made at a time, and maybe everyone just knew that you were supposed to stack them into a cake. I can't even imagine eating a slice of that cake - it must be super rich.

Ready to go in the oven!

Anyway, bringing this all back together, when I saw Lady Bird's Chess Pie recipe, I remembered that I had recently seen the Chess Pie cookies recipe from my mom, and decided to make those. Matt had never heard of chess pie in any form, but was sold on the cookies. The cookie recipe comes from the mother of a friend of mine from elementary school, and is a less egg-y version of the filling of a chess pie with some pecans thrown in. They're actually pretty similar to blondies - in fact, they're basically identical to my blondie recipe with only slightly less flour. The main difference, of course, is that chess pie cookies have chopped pecans in them while the blondies have chocolate chips. "That's a completely different thing," Matt says. Like the blondies, they are easy to make and very delicious. And also like the blondies, I feel a little silly that I haven't made these very often.

Chess Pie Cookies
From Mrs. Hackney

1/2 cup butter
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 13x9 pan and set aside. Melt butter over low heat, add brown sugar. Remove from heat, and stir in eggs, one at a time. Add in vanilla. Mix flour with baking powder and salt. Stir into brown sugar mixture and combine well. Add nuts. Spread into prepared pan and bake 20-25 minutes or til browned. Let cool before cutting into bars.

Cookie Quest - Raisinless Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I have a killer Oatmeal Raisin cookie recipe from my mom. I don't know where she got it, but I do know that it's a recipe for deliciousness. I've altered them endlessly over the years - subbing out the raisins in favor of various dried fruits, nuts, and chocolate - always with success. I'm now married to a man who does not like raisins (or any other dried fruit), so when I decided to make these cookies the other day I knew I'd have to switch it up. Also, I'm out of raisins and I was determined to make cookies with only ingredients I already had on hand.

Bet you wish you were here now.

Cookie Quest - Blondies!

I'm interested in making cookies that ship well lately, as I've got a customer on the west coast who keeps asking for some Becky-made cookies. My feeling, and maybe this is wrong, is that bar cookies are better shippers than regular cookies since the bar seems to be a little sturdier and it's easier to fit rectangular shaped bar cookies into rectangular shaped boxes. So far I've shipped her BB bars and brownies, which are the only bar cookies I make with any regularity. I like lots of bar cookies, like lemon bars and those crumble-covered fruit bars, but never make them because I won't get any help eating them at home. I've made them and taken them into work before, but transporting baked goods on the bus can be a bit tricky. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, sturdy cookies to ship. I'm open to ideas - what cookies do you make that ship well?

Straight out of 1988 Naples, FL

From Russia, With Love

Matt and I have a bad case of Olympics fever, and the only cure is watching a lot of the Olympics. We currently are watching the ski-athlon (I think that's how it's spelled?), which we learned is a cross-country ski event. I guess there is more than one way to cross-country ski, and this event combines them both with competitors changing types partway through. Seems weird to me, but this is coming from a girl who can't even master one type of cross-country skiing.

Cooking up some blini - just like pancakes!

Snow Day!

Happy snow day, everyone! We've been cozied up inside most of the day, although we did take a walk around the neighborhood in the afternoon, and are enjoying the bonus day at home together. The extra day is good, since I can catch up on some things that fell by the wayside this weekend, like this blog post! I was originally going to write about the chili I made for our little Superbowl party, but I got too wrapped up in making it to remember to take any pictures of the process and also forgot to take any pictures of people eating it when it was done. I'll just tell you now that it was good, and unlike any other vegetarian chili I'd ever made before.

Here are some crushed pretzels.

Happy Birthday Cake!

Someone just celebrated a birthday (hint: it was me!) and what's a birthday without cake? Matt likes to make my birthday cake every year so that I'm not making my own cake. I usually help out, since he's still a novice baker and I like to know what's going on. My mom used to make me an angel food cake every year for my birthday. It was the only cake she ever made from a mix, and it was because we were under the impression that making an angel food cake from scratch was too hard and complicated. Man, were we wrong! Anyway, a few years ago, a friend of hers gave her a recipe for angel food cake from scratch and convinced Mom that it was actually pretty easy. Mom has made it many times since then, and kept telling me how easy and delicious it is. But I've never done it. Until now.

The aftermath.

Cantaloupe Ice Cream

So!  It's been a while since I've posted anything on here, and after getting some flack about that this weekend, I've recommitted to my blog idea and am going to try to get back in the rhythm of posting.  I don't have pictures for this post yet, but they're coming!  But enough about me.  As I've mentioned before, one of Matt's favorite fruits is cantaloupe.  As part of my evil plan to get him to eat more fruit, I've started making just about every cantaloupe recipe I can find.  (Next up - grilled cantaloupe.)  Those of you who know my dad know that ice cream making is in the blood, so when I ran across a recipe for Cantaloupe Ice Cream in the Ben & Jerry's ice cream book, I figured it was worth a try for a couple of reasons.  Partly the 'Matt loves cantaloupe' reason, partly the excuse to make ice cream, but most compelling was the 'cantaloupe and ice cream - really??!' reason.

Rhubarb Snack Cake

Rhubarb was one of those fruits / vegetables that took me a long time to come on board with.  When I was a kid, it was mostly that I was terrified of dying from eating poisonous rhubarb leaves - although I was pretty excited about the opportunity to eat what looks like red celery.  Cool!  I worked my way into it as an adult when I spent a week in Anchorage a few years ago right when rhubarb was in peak season.  That was my introduction to rhubarb-based desserts (how many people say that about Anchorage?).  Over the years, I've made a few of my own, but I've yet to find a go-to rhubarb recipe that I can't get enough of.  The closest I've come was a friend's rhubarb sour cream cake that I neglected to get the recipe for when I had the chance.

Rhubarb, also called pie-plant.

BB Bars

As I think I said in my welcome post to this blog, my cooking and baking styles are pretty different.  When cooking, I generally throw a bunch of stuff together and hope for the best.  I rarely follow a recipe, except if I'm making something elaborate or something new.  In baking, it's the opposite.  I follow recipes, even the ones I have memorized, and I rarely make up something new.  This recipe, though, is something I made up a few years ago when I wanted to satisfy my simultaneous cravings for peanut butter cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and oatmeal cookies all at once.  Clearly I was in graduate school at the time.  My roommates served as guinea pigs as I tinkered with this recipe over and over again until I finally came up with a version that is the ultimate comfort cookie.  And there's oatmeal in them, so you know they're good for you.

These cookies are practically health food!

Old-timey Cooking - Brownies

I've been looking forward to making the Palmer House brownies since I made brownies the last time (which you can read about here).  Now, my brownie recipe is pretty different from the Palmer House one.  All the basic ingredients are there - chocolate, flour, sugar, butter, eggs - but the Palmer House recipe uses more of everything.  I mean a lot more.  For the same size pan.  This is madness, I tell you, sheer madness! 

I sprung for some of the good stuff.

Shrewsbury Cakewiches

Yesterday's Shrewsbury Cakes experiment was fascinating (to me, at least) because it felt like tasting the past.  Those of you who know about my past as an archaeologist (and the fact that I'm dating a historian) know that I have long been interested in recreating the past, and that's what I felt I was doing yesterday, albeit with some modern enhancements.  One of the things I couldn't get into in yesterday's post was the history of Shrewsbury Cakes themselves.  I mean, that post was already verging on novel-length, so it was a good thing I clipped it when I did.

Shrewsbury Cakes for as long as the eye can see.

Pineapple Pavlova

Matt and I spent the afternoon in Back Bay Saturday - we did some window shopping, I failed at actual shopping, and we spent some time in the Boston Public Library.  The Library is awesome, by the way.  There's a beautiful courtyard in the middle that seems like the perfect place to sip a cup of coffee while you read your new favorite book.  Our library trip was pretty successful - I checked out three new books that I've spent the rest of the afternoon flipping through and dreaming about what to make.  Here's what I know for sure:  We are totally making Thomas Jefferson's ice cream recipe (found in The Founding Foodies: How Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin Revolutionized American Cuisine.  Once again, we will learn that Ben Franklin invented everything.).  Jefferson also has an asparagus recipe with raspberry vinaigrette that Matt has requested (with raspberries!  He wants raspberries!  I tried to conceal my excitement about this.  I love raspberries!). 

We also checked out A Colonial Plantation Cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770.  A quick flip through reveals a lot of similar recipes to Amelia Simmons, and something called "Water Cake" that requires an hours worth of beating.  I might try to speed that process up.  And last but not least, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat's award-winning History of Food.  This was originally published in French, and as such, has more of a Continental feeling than my other early cookbook research.

Pineapple Pavlova - yum!