Bootsie Baker

When Bootsie and Zoomie stay together at Googie's, it means that, at some point, there will be cookie-baking. This first happened last summer, and the bakery re-opened last week when the two of them came to stay for several days.

Since Zoomie has dairy and nut allergies, I looked to the internet for a new, exciting, easy, fast cookie recipe with no milk, butter, or margarine. Fortunately, my search led us to Helen's Raisin Drop Cookies on the allrecipes site.

Since the kids both like raisins and I happened to have some on hand, this was the recipe we tried, and with great results. We halved it out of respect for Pa-pa's and my half-hearted dieting efforts, and ended up with about three and a half dozen small cookies that enabled us to properly honor the warm-cookies-and-milk tradition and leave a dozen or so for the kids to take home and share.

Bootsie dearly loves to commission a step-stool and help with all stages of the cookie-making from start to finish. Here is a chronicle of our process:

 
First she creamed 1/2 c. Crisco with 3/4 c. sugar; then, she stirred in two eggs, one at a time (she insisted on cracking them herself; that was scary), followed by 1/2 tsp. vanilla. Finally, she mixed in 1/2 tsp. baking soda, 1 3/4 c. flour, and 1 c. raisins (which I had soaked for about an hour and then drained).

Next (and yes, she is still wearing her nightgown), Bootsie dropped small teaspoonfuls of dough onto our cookie sheet. which we had sprayed with canola spray. Before popping our cookies into the oven, preheated to 350 degrees, she adorned them with some red sprinkles for aesthetic purposes. (This was her idea and not Helen's.)

Helpful Hint: Rather than turning Bootsie loose with the shaker jar, I shook some sprinkles into her spoon, and she dumped them with great finesse onto the little balls of dough. I learned this very helpful tip the hard way, and, sadly, I must come clean and admit that a few sprinkles were harmed in the making of these cookies.

After the cookies baked for about eight minutes, we removed them onto wax paper, leaving only one more step:

As Bootsie demonstrates here, the cookies are at their absolute best dunked into a cup of milk while they are still warm. Even after cooling, they remain soft and moist, and the recipe has found a permanent home in Googie's recipe box. We will definitely be making them again.

When Zoomie woke up, he corroborated our assessment that Helen's Raisin Drop Cookies were definitely keepers. We thank you, Helen, whoever you are.

However, although they are very easy to mix and bake, they are in fact very hard to keep. If you decide to try them (and we highly recommend that you do), I guarantee you they won't last long.

The Other Holiday Turkey

There are times when, for Thanksgiving or Christmas, I bake two turkeys.

One is the two-legged kind, the stuff of wishbones and drumsticks--the kind whose rich broth makes possible classic holiday fare like homemade noodles and dressing and giblet gravy. The other is my famous Brownie Turkey Pizza.

The recipe for the latter has been a staple of my recipe box--and of our family holidays--for nearly twenty-five years. It came my way via my hometown newspaper sometime in the early 1990s, one of those things I clipped out because it looked like something fun that the kids might like.

Basically, the Brownie Turkey Pizza consists of a boxed brownie mix prepared according to package instructions and baked at 350 degrees on a round pizza pan for twelve or thirteen minutes. When it has cooled, icing, nuts, and candy pieces give it its "turkey" design:

As you see, brownie toppers consist of generous portions of pecan halves, chopped Butterfingers (or walnuts--or both), and M & M's (or Reese's Pieces). These are arranged into turkey formation atop a still-gooey layer of canned chocolate and vanilla (for the head and neck) frosting.

Forming the turkey's beak and wattle are a single piece of candy corn (or a pecan half will work) and a small length of some sort of red gummy candy. Among other choices, you can enlist a gumdrop or a gummy worm for this purpose. This year I sliced the center out of a gummy spider I found at the after-Halloween clearance sales.

A couple tips make the decorating process easier and the outcome more successful. One is to make a pattern (approximately 4" by 6") for the head/neck unit by folding a piece of paper double and cutting freehand until you get about the size and proportions you want. 

Then, lay the pattern on the brownie where you want the head to be, and trace around it with a toothpick. Finally, if you apply the white frosting first, it will not be so likely to get swirls of chocolate in it.

From experience, I have learned that, once the frosting is in place, it works better to add decorations from the outside in. Doing this gives you a better chance of giving your feather structure a round, rather than more oblong, appearance.

Finally, be ready for a fight over the gummy worm or whatever you use for the wattle. No matter how many delicious morsels of M & M's or Reese's Pieces you use, and no matter how thoroughly you saturate the empty chocolate icing spaces with crumbled Butterfingers, every kid at your party is going to want that one irresistible piece of gummy candy.

I have found this to be true through two generations of turkey-eating children, and nothing I have witnessed hints that a change is imminent. It is simply a rule of the universe, and you just have to accept it.

The recipe I clipped from the Sedalia Democrat newspaper (adapted from a source titled "My Own Creation!") so many years ago is yellowed and chocolate-stained. Nevertheless, it has provided the blueprint for more turkey brownie pizzas than I can remember.

This past Thanksgiving is no exception, and, for posterity, let the record show that this year it was Sooby who got the wattle.