Snow Day = Baking Day

Lenox Fruit Cookies - A Family Heirloom - yields about 8 dozen 2" cookies

1 cup butter ½ teaspoon salt

1 ½ cups sugar 1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 eggs, beaten 1 cup nuts (I use broken Black Walnuts)

1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved ½ cup raisins

in 1 ½ Tablespoons hot water ½ cup currants

2 cups flour 1 ¼ cups flour mixed with dried fruits

Cream butter, add sugar, cream well. Add eggs, then soda in water. Add flour, salt and cinnamon. Add nuts, fruits mixed with flour. Mix well.

Drop in small spoonfuls on greased cookie sheets. Bake 10 – 12 minutes at 400°.

These improve with aging and ship well. It wouldn’t be Christmas without them.

Digression:

In 1901 Methodist ministers went to Conference every spring and received their assignments for the coming year. They and their families expected to be moved from town to town within their conference every year.

If a minister was well-liked, his congregation would ask the Bishop to assign him a second year, perhaps even a third.

In 1903, my grandparents arrived in Hillsboro, the first time they had moved since their marriage in 1901. Their next-door neighbors gave them this recipe – which bears the marks of a old one, even for that time.

Dissolving the baking soda in water hearkens back to the time when NaHCO3 was a large, hard crystal, not a fine powder. And the practice of mixing the dried fruit with flour dates from the common occurrence of ‘seeded’ raisins.

Seeded raisins were large and sweet, but had hard seeds which had been removed by squeezing them out between rollers. This made a large, flat sticky raisin. Recipes calling for them frequently specified that they be quartered. Sifting them between the fingers with flour kept them from sticking together.

I frequently add a little freshly grated nutmeg to the dough, equivalent to a quarter-teaspoon or so. I think it compliments the Black Walnuts.