A new spin on a very old-fashioned ice-box cookie
You KNOW it’s an old-fashioned cookie recipe when the recipe calls for sour milk and no eggs. My great aunt Lucille used to make these as currant cookies - and as she grew old, and then very old, it fell upon my mother to bake these for her at Christmastime. This year, it was my pleasure to bake The Sacred Currant Cookies. Mom mailed them off with the note “MariAnne made these for you this year”. My mom’s so sweet. I wouldn’t have minded if she took credit, but to her, it made her proud that her daughter would do this for her.
Beat together:
1/2 lb butter (salted, or add salt to the unsalted stuff)
2 cups packed golden sugar
1 teaspoon each baking soda and baking powder
vanilla to taste
Add 3/4 cup sour milk (I sour regular milk with the juice of half a lemon)
Then stir in 3 and 1/2 cups of flour.
Now. The original recipe called for a cup of dried currants. These were the ones I made for my 97 year old great aunt. Her recipe. Probably her grandmother’s recipe. She’s in Québec, hopefully enjoying them right now.
Here’s what I did to “Hungarianize” them:
Instead of the currants, I mixed in a cup of ground, toasted hazelnuts (see below for instructions on how to toast hazelnuts) and a cup of dried apricots which I ground in with the hazelnuts until they turned into little tiny apricot bits (God BLESS the food processor).
Roll into three logs in saran wrap or waxed paper and chill.
When they’re cold (in a few hours or the next day) slice into very thin slices and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.
I do this by loading up aluminum foil sprayed with PAM with about 3 dozen thin little cookies. Slip the sheet under the foil, transfer to the oven, bake, transfer the baked cookies onto the cool counter and repeat - that way they stop cooking IMMEDIATELY and you don’t have to go nuts getting them off the hot metal so they don’t overcook.
This recipe makes a BOATLOAD of really, REALLY good-tasting cookies. And the fragrance is heavenly!
Oh -if you don’t know how to toast hazelnuts, just toss ‘em in a shallow pan and into the oven at 350 F for half an hour. Remove and that’s it. I don’t bother slipping off the skin - I figure it’s just a little bit of fibre and I couldn’t be bothered.