Good evening, Kibitzers! Last week, we were in the midst of Winter Storm “Crazy Balls” and I was worrying all day that I’d lose electricity and/or internet. As it turned out, I did not. But I did have too much to do to stop in the middle of the snowy workday and make cookies, so you got snow photos. Today, you will get cookies.
These are my Grandma Edna’s cookies, and my favorites. They need to be eaten pretty promptly, because it seems no matter how you store them, they will dry out within a couple of days and be much less good. Luckily, that is no problem. The recipe makes a small batch — it claims to make 30, but those must be tiny Depression-era cookies because I am lucky to get half that many. They are buttery and chocolatey, and so good warm. This is why I will never be thin.
Let’s start with the recipe:
Edna’s Chocolate Walnut Drop Cookies about 30 (in your dreams!)
1/3 cup soft butter (= 5 1/3 tablespoons = 2/3 of a standard stick)
½ cup sugar
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons vanilla
½ cup flour
¼ cup cocoa
¼ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¼ to ½ teaspoon cinnamon (optional)
2 cups chopped walnuts or walnut halves
Preheat oven to 350°F. Cream butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla till smooth. Sift in dry ingredients; mix until blended. Stir in walnuts. Drop on baking sheets. Bake 10-15 minutes.
The butter should be pretty soft — I left mine out on the counter all day, but apparently my preferred room temperature is sufficiently cool that it was still firmer than I had hoped. I use unsalted.
Regarding the cinnamon, I use the half teaspoon because I like that flavor in chocolate. The quarter teaspoon is almost undetectable but will enhance the chocolate flavor (a bit of instant coffee will do this too). But if you hate cinnamon, leaving it out won’t impair your cookies in any way.
Pro tip in case you can’t help yourself: when salmonella is present, it is not inside a raw egg with a fully intact shell — it is contained in chicken poop and rides around on the outside of the eggshell, and contaminates the egg as it’s broken. So unless your egg already has cracks in the shell too small for you to detect, you can reduce the possibility of salmonella by thoroughly washing the egg with plenty of soap and water (or, say, vodka) immediately before breaking it. Then scraping the bowl and eating the remaining raw batter is much less risky. YMMV.
My grandma Edna and I hope you enjoy these. She was a lovely woman, gone much too early. Not that it’s ever time.
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Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.