What's Old is New Again

When my grandmother passed away several years ago, I inherited her cookbooks. She was an avid baker and baked nearly every day. My mom said that when  she was a kid and came home from school there would be some sort of dessert on the table. Sometimes it wasn't a baked good, but a pudding or something, nonetheless every day she made something. I cannot possible imagine making a sweet treat every day of my life. First off, I'd be enormous. Second, that's not very healthy, even with all natural ingredients, that's a lot of fat and calories. I guess there's a reason why she had such high cholesterol. Although I almost never saw her eat any of it. My grandfather was the one who liked the sweets.

She made a wide variety of recipes, which we always called, Grandmom's Cookies or Grandmom's Applesauce Cake. She did make up her own recipes for things, but she also did a lot of baking from the Better Homes and Garden's cookbook. She wrote many notes in the book...use 1/2 cup of sugar instead of 3/4 cup or V. Good when she liked it. The book was obviously used hard. At some point in time, my grandfather duck taped it. It's the 16th printing and the most recent year printed is 1948.

I've decided to make some of my favorites from the cookbook, as well as some new recipes that I've never had before. A lot of the recipes call for shortening, which I don't use, so I'll replace that with butter. Otherwise I'll try to keep to the same recipe.

My sister and I would sometimes fight over who was going to get the last cookie or bar. I didn't tell her I'm making these desserts even though we live in the same town. No, it's not because I want to hoard everything for myself, it's because she's currently on a diet. Isn't that nice of me. :)

I currently live in her house and use her rolling pin to make some of her recipes. Every time I taste one of the things she used to make, I'm transformed back to a little girl eating that item at the kitchen table. It's kind of strange, but neat at the same time.

I recently made Snippy Doodles out of the book. They lasted about a day and a half, so I guess I know why my grandmom baked every day. Recipe and pictures of the Snippy Doodles to follow.