Showing posts with label childhood recipes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label childhood recipes. Show all posts

Friday, January 22, 2010

Chocolate Malt Cookies aka DS-ers




As I sit engulfed in the intoxicating fumes of melting chocolate, (*NOTE: melt the chocolate in a double boiler or in the microwave, if you are brave enough to own one of those new-fangled contraptions!), I perform the age-old ritual of watching the oven while the cookies bake, barely patient enough to endure the 12 -15 minutes needed to transform flour, salt, sugar and vanilla (and a few other key elements) into divine and heavenly baked-chocolate morsels. I also know full-well that I will not be able to wait for them to properly cool, and so I will burn my tongue, as I do every single time I bake these cookies.

I am starting with this recipe because it is quite possibly the first thing I ever learned to cook. Even before I went to French school, where we were taught how to bake Madeleines, and to kids’ cooking school, where I even cooked fish, (something I would not willingly consume for nearly 20 years) I helped my mother bake these, my dad’s favorite cookies. And though I didn’t use any vintage bake-ware in their creation (I have a new Kitchen Aid stand mixer, a new silicone scraper and I recently bought new cookie sheets), I will remove them from the oven with a vintage pot holder, and store them (Oh really, who am I kidding, like there will be any left in 20 minutes!) in vintage tupperware.

Though the cookies themselves are FABULOUS, it is really the name that is the story. As I have been told, when my mother was a new bride in 1965, she was told she needed to cook and bake up a storm to please her new husband. She did so, even cooking meat for him though she was a life-long vegetarian. So one day, she lovingly whipped up a batch of these Chocolate Malt Cookies, thinking how my dad was sure to love them as he tends to love anything made with chocolate, and these were a family favorite, dating back to the 20s. Now my father is not one to hide his feelings, and unfortunately, the shape and color of the cookies bore a striking resemblance (in his mind) to animal droppings! He apparently proclaimed that he was Not Eating any of those g-d Dog S*it cookies. Somehow my mother convinced him to try one (though I can’t imagine how, as this was a man who jumped RIGHT on the “Real Med Don’t eat Quiche” band wagon of the late 70s) and he discovered that, in fact, they were perhaps The Best thing he had ever eaten!

So thus, his new favorite cookies, the ones I helped cook every year thereafter for his birthday and on many, many other occasions, and, in fact, on a nearly weekly basis during one memorable phase in college, were christened: DS-ers!


Ingredients:
1 cup butter (room temp)
3 oz cream cheese (room temp)
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
2 Tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 oz unsweetened chocolate; melted (double boiler or microwave - do not scorch!)
2 1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped nuts - OPTIONAL! My dad hates nuts so I don't include them

Method:
1. Melt the chocolate in a double boiler or microwave, being careful not to scorch it
2. Cream butter, cheese and sugar, then add egg, milk and vanilla
3. Stir in melted chocolate
4. Sift dry ingredients together, add the liquid and blend
5. Stir in nuts IF USING
6. Drop from teaspoon onto cookie sheet (no need to grease or line) OR use a small melon baller
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 min
8. Remove to wire rack to cool - ENJOY!