Sunday, December 21, 2008

Recipe for Grandma's Cookies

From Grandma's Cookies


*** PDF download document to print out is at the end of this post ***

Preheat oven at 400 degrees

Ingredients for Dough:
6 eggs
5 pounds Gold Medal flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/3 cups oil
2 cups warm water

Filling:
walnut pieces chopped (about 4 cups)
vegetable oil
sugar
cinnamon

To make dough :
Mix flour, sugar and baking powder in a very big bowl
In a smaller bowl, mix the eggs, then mix in the oil, followed by the warm water
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry, forming one big mass - mix by hand
Roll the dough into balls about the size of a softball

To make cinnamon sugar you probably need about 2 cups total. No one has ever measured it, it's pretty much made to taste, although it seems to be about 1:3 proportion cinnamon to sugar. Here's an idea of how it should look
From Grandma's Cookies

Instructions :
Knead dough thoroughly and make into balls
Put flour on table and roll out one ball at a time
From Grandma's Cookies

Put oil on flattened dough, then cinnamon sugar mixture, topped by nuts
From Grandma's Cookies
From Grandma's Cookies

Roll into a log
From Grandma's Cookies
From Grandma's Cookies

Cut into slices about 1/4 inch thick (this might be too thin, but try to do thinner than 1/2 inch)
From Grandma's Cookies

Bake slices about 12 minutes (probably between 10-15)

Wearing an apron is a good idea...




And PLEASE follow the recipe as it's written here - we actually forgot to add the sugar until we'd mixed the flour with with wet stuff, and trying to mix it in afterwards was only possible with the help of many tedious batches in the food processor - 5 pounds of flour is a LOT!
From Grandma's Cookies
From Grandma's Cookies


Click here for the Word document that you can print. GGKay’s Grandma’s Cookies

The Cookie Team for 2008

Here is today's cookie team (the only pic with Hannah)
From Grandma's Cookies

GGK - Grandma Kay - family matriarch
From Grandma's Cookies

Hannah (daughter of Kay)
(see group pic above)
Jessica (granddaughter of Kay, daughter of Hannah)
From Grandma's Cookies

Ruriko (granddaughter in law of Kay, wife of Josh, the son of Hannah, shown with Remi
From Grandma's Cookies

Sarah (step-granddaughter of Kay, stepdaughter of Hannah)
From Grandma's Cookies

Aili (great-granddaughter of Kay, daughter of Ruriko)
From Grandma's Cookies

Remi (great-granddaughter of Kay, daughter of Ruriko)
From Grandma's Cookies

Eve (great-granddaughter of Kay, daughter of Jessica)
From Grandma's Cookies

Missing in person, but with us in spirit, Samantha (step-granddaughter of Kay, stepdaughter of Hannah)

A bit of family history

Did you know that each of these women in the family had a daughter at the age of 28?
Pretty cool!!!

Jessica had Eve in 2003
Hannah had Jessica 1975
Kay had Hannah 1947
Rose had Kay 1918
Anna had Rose 1890
Batcha had Anna 1862
Batcha (Beatrice) year of birth unkown, born and died in Russia (today Ukraine).

Grandma Rose came with her Uncle's family to the US at 10 years old, she was sent because she was the only one qualified to work, the family was confident that she could get a job. She traveled with her uncle, aunt, and several cousins. Her parents followed several weeks later, coming with her grandparents. She would grow up to marry her cousin Jack who had traveled with her.

Upon arriving in the US in 1900 she went to work in a factory in Brooklyn. She had to sit on a box and have special attachments for her feet to hit the pedals of the sewing machine.

Today, it's another generation helping to make the cookies, Aili, Remi & Eve, Kay's 3 great-granddaughters.
From Grandma's Cookies

Origin of the Cookies

These cookies have been made for many generations.
From Grandma's Cookies

Grandma Kay's mother remembered her own grandmother making the cookies in Russia before the family came over.

The family came from a shetl in what was Russia (today Ukraine), outside Russia, named

These cookies were made in Russia, made by Grandma Rose's grandmothers in her shetl in Russia, outside of Odessa, in the Khershon. It was a small village called Libeshovska.

The modern twist of the Cookies - no nuts!

Aili doesn't like walnuts so we made several rolls of the cookies without nuts. We think the original ones are better, but for those who don't like nuts the cookies without nuts are still pretty good.
From Grandma's Cookies

Kay's cookies experiences

Kay is 90 years old at today's cookie making.

Kay started making the cookies with her grandmother Anna when she was a little girl, and today she is making the cookies with her three great granddaughters.
From Grandma's Cookies

These cookies were made not just for special occaisions, these were the cookies. There were other cookies that were made too, but these were the special ones associated with grandma. They were made every few months.

These hands have made many, many batches of the cookies
From Grandma's Cookies

Hannah's cookie experiences

Hannah remembers making the cookies with her grandma when she was a little girl. Cookies were made whenever Grandma Rose had the stregnth to make them. Grandma Rose was under 5 feet tall, and she's make 500 cookies by herself. They were made several times a year, and all the grandkids would beg her to make the cookies.

The recipe was known to the women in the family but not written down. To get the written recipe the women had to follow the cooks around the kitchen estimating the quantities (and pulling out their hair when someone decided it needed a little bit more of something). Eventually a written recipe was established, although today when we made the cookies it was still from a very vague recipe that didn't have quantities of cinnamon sugar or nuts.
From Grandma's Cookies

25 years ago we made the cookies and Kay thought the cinnamon was bad, after making all the cookies, she insisted on getting new cinnamon at the store, and to exchange the cinnamon she brought the cookies back to the store - we're sure the customer service people thought they made a fair trade!
From Grandma's Cookies

Jessica's cookies experiences

Jessica started making cookies with Grandma Kay making them when her grandma would come to visit.

When Hannah was pregnant with Jessica she visited her cousin's house in Berkeley and it was the first time they made the cookies without their mothers. Until then Hannah had only made them with her mom Kay or grandma Rose.

Jessica asked to have the cookies made for the wedding with all the people in town. They were also made for the bar and bat mitzvahs of Josh & Jessica.

From Grandma's Cookies

Aili's Cookie Experiences

Today Aili didn't remember making cookies with all of us, but we remembered her - and photos don't lie!
From Grandma's Cookies


Aili Today :
From Grandma's Cookies