Hi! I'm Jen, Tink, Cookie Lady, Magical Muffin Lady - All depends one which era you know me from. Back in the mid-90's, I worked at the Disneyland Hotel. I made a lot of cookies. I must have brought them to work, because one of my co-workers decided to call me the Cookie Lady. I can't believe that I can't remember the whole story.
I do, however remember the story of how I became the Magical Muffin Lady. This was only a few years ago when I worked in a call center that was huge. My boyfriend (at the time, he's my husband now), worked for a different contract than me, so we were far apart on the same floor of the building. Every once in a while someone would bring in a ginormous amount of muffins, for everyone (I'm talking probably close to 500 people, if not more. They were giant muffins, too. The kind that you would eat your daily caloric intake for three days with. Whenever these would be brought in, I would run over to grab a carrot cake muffin (Hubby, favorite), and keep it until lunch time. I'd sneak over to his desk and when he wasn't looking, I'd put the muffin on his desk and run away. After doing that a couple of times, his surrounding co-workers dubbed me: The Magical Muffin Lady. (I also made muffins for them once, after hubby was laid off.)
I've been married almost 8 years to my sweet man. We live in the Portland Metro area, almost across the street from where I work. Some of the people that I work with will be providing reviews on the cookies. I work in another call center, and he helps his friend with farming. We're pretty happy with each other, and most of the time, with our lives. We had an Italian Greyhound for over 12 years, and he went to the Rainbow Bridge earlier this year. He was the love of our lives. We don't have children and someday, we'd like to rescue and foster hounds. Our life isn't really exciting, but we really enjoy it.
I love to cook. Bake, more than anything. I've been a long time fan of the cookie. And the cake. and pretty much any dessert food. I don't know if I started with cookies, cakes or brownies. But I always loved to get the butter cookie boxes at Christmas, that were filled with homemade treats from my grandma. She always had at least 4 different types of cookies, some peanut brittle, fruity Christmas breads, and sometimes little bon-bons. It was always a menagerie of things that my dad and I fought over. My mom taught me how to bake from this books and from herself. She is pretty good at improv with her regular cooking. If she found something that she put together and liked, she would write it down. So, later, she was able to go off her recipe.
I am not that talented. My husband is, but I work from a recipe. Many that I make more than once, I learn quickly and am able to wing it a little. Chocolate chip cookies (Nestle Toll House)? Got 'em. Same with another cookie that has pistachio, white chocolate, dried cranberries, and oats - five minutes, I've got them in the oven. I have made many of the cookies in this book, many many times - old standbys for me. A huge portion, I've never made at all. That's part of this project. And, you can also print out the recipe and make it yourself. If you do? Please let me know if the comments and how they turned out.
I made the Coffee Fruit Drops today, well, last night. This recipe was picked out at random by my Friend, Christa. I asked my friends on Facebook to pick pages at random and that was the order I was going to make the recipes. This was page 69. Unfortunately, that was a picture page, as shown below.
So, I ended up just picking one of the recipes from that page. They are the ones that are darker then the rest.
Here are the ingredients, before being completely prepared (the apples had to be cut).
This was kind of a weird recipe to make. I had all my mixers and gadgets ready to go, and then I found out that you make the whole thing in a saucepan. Less to clean up ultimately.
Apples, all chopped up.
You slowly add all the wet ingredients, fruit and spices.
You have to heat it all down until it's all mixed together, the apples are soft and the shortening melts.
It looks like apple pie filling, right?
Then, you add vanilla, and add the dry ingredients.
After this, you scoop it out. You can kind of see that scoop thing in the saucepan. They say a "heaping" Teaspoon. One mistake I made was that I didn't notice that I had run out of parchment paper. I sprayed down one of the pans, but didn't have enough spray for both. The cookies ended up being either able to slide right off, the other ones didn't really want to come off without breaking.
Please excuse my cookie sheets. From so much use, they kind of look oxidized. The picture above is before they went into the oven.
This is after, with the scrape spot where I removed one cookie. I could not get a decent close up picture, they all turned out blurry and kind of weird looking.
I was pleasantly surprised when I tasted these. I think they are made from autumn. Luckily, I'm in the right time for these to take place. There area apples, walnuts and raisin. There's coffee, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. The only thing that is missing here, is a pumpkin flavor. They came out a little cakey, which may have been something extra that I accidentally put in the dough (I accidentally added baking powder with my soda). They are also not too sweet. There is only a cup of sugar in them. There is a definite balance going on here. The nuts gave a nice crunch. When they first came out of the over and cooled a little, the top was shiny and soft, and the bottom was perfectly crispy. The next day, they were soft, but flavorful. My husband really likes them, but probably mostly because it's one of the few ways he can have apples (he has an allergy to raw apples). I will get the report from my coworkers in a few days. Remember that most fruit nuts can be replaced with nuts or like fruit. Oh, I used Golden Delicious apples. They, normally don't have as much sweetness, or tartness, as in Granny Smith. I only needed two medium sized apples.
Coffee Fruit Drops - from Betty Crocker's Cooky Book (1963 ed.)
Chopped raw apple lends moistness to these cake-like drop cookies. The family will rave about them.
2 Cups peeled and finely chopped apple
1 cup strong coffee or 1 tbsp. powdered instant coffee dissolved in 1 cup of water
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup raisins
1 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. cloves
3/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups Golden Medal Flour
1 tsp. soda
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup chopped walnuts
Cook apple, coffee, sugar, shortening, raisins, and spices in saucepan gently until apple is tender. Remove from heat and cool.
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Add vanilla to cooked mixture. Measure flour by dipping method. Blend flour, soda and salt; stir in. Mix in nuts. Drop by heaping teaspoons on ungreased baking sheets. Bake about 1 minutes. Makes about 6 dozen cookies.
I hope you guys enjoy!!
From Missy:
At first glance the cookie isn’t anything spectacular. It
was in a bag and looked really wet like someone slobbered on it, but the bag
smelled good. Opening the bag the scent is noticeable but not over powering,
just enough to make your saliva glands kick start in anticipation for what it
may taste like. Touching it was gross but I feel its more to my dislike
of certain textures and how moist it was. At first bite there is one spice that
is very noticeable, can’t think of the name of it, could be nutmeg. Second bite
is kinda gross. 3rd bite had walnut and I had to spit it out.
All in all, Missy’s review of this old Betty Crocker cookie
recipe is: Ew.
I give it .5/5 stars. The .5 is because they
thankfully didn’t leave an aftertaste that was hard to get rid of.
From Nicole:
Well I really enjoyed it
personally- it’s not a cookie that would ever spark my interest to bake if I
saw it in a book but I may be a convert. It was like a delicate little pudding
of fruit cake, I liked the slight spice and the contrast of the nuts. It was
delish! - Nice work doll J
