Peanut Butter Cookies

When I was a kid, I hated peanut butter. I know this because my dad thought it would be funny to teach me to recite, on cue, a list of all the foods I didn't like. And then if someone ever asked me “Hey Blair, would you like some cole slaw?” I would just spout them all off without warning: “Don't like cole slaw, don't like mayonnaise, don't like peanut butter, don't like peanut butter crackers, don't like Tootsie Rolls, don't like spaghetti...” etc.

But then I grew up, my mom figured out a way to make PB&J appetising to me, and my grandpa introduced me to Reese's cups, which are still my favourite candy. In college, I was even known to have a spoonful of peanut butter for breakfast on my way to class, but somehow peanut butter cookies have always been low on my list. Maybe it's because they're somehow so often dry and crumbly instead of soft and decadent like their chocolate chip cousins. Maybe it's those weird fork marks on top? Or maybe it's just that, truth be told, when facing a tin of holiday cookies, I'd just rather go for something more reliably amazing.

That said, I strongly associate peanuts, if not peanut butter, with Eleanor (and rightly so, at least judging by how well-worn this recipe is). She always had a crystal dish of Planters nuts somewhere in her living room, and I was fascinated by the fact that there were just snacks available all the time in her house. (Also, I know they were Planters because she also had all kinds of Mr. Peanut memorabilia that must have come with the jars over the years.) I may not have liked peanuts, but I'd conquer that dislike if it meant I got to eat anything out of a crystal dish whenever I wanted to, especially if it was offered to me by a peanut wearing a monocle. So every time we visited, I'd sneak peanuts and think Eleanor was très glamorous.

But back to the affair at hand: I offered to make cookies for Judson to take to a game night with his friends, and when presented with the option between peanut butter cookies and oatmeal cookies, he chose peanut butter. (Since then, he's chosen three other desserts over oatmeal cookies, but I keep thinking I'll sneak them in one of these days).

I made him these peanut butter cookies, and it turns out they are awesome. I'm sorry, Eleanor-- I should have expected nothing less from someone who bought enough peanuts to be in the running as Mrs. Peanut. These are exactly what I've always thought peanut butter cookies could be, but never knew how to achieve: they're gooey, salty-sweet, and have a depth of flavour beyond just PEANUTS. Plus, they're somehow not overly greasy, which is also another personal pet peeve when it comes to anything peanut-related. They're incredible when eaten warm out of the oven (with a glass of milk, please!), but they're also delish at room temperature, even for several days after making them. Plus, they're easy and classic... though I clearly haven't figured out how to make those fork marks yet.

The Verdict:

4 spoons out of five. These are the best peanut butter cookies I've ever had, but I'm trying to reserve 5 spoon ratings for recipes that are more unique than this one. But again, let me reiterate: best peanut butter cookies I've ever had. Make these for a party, make these for a friend, make these for yourself and you'll see... just make sure whoever you make them for doesn't have a peanut allergy first.

The recipe:

Peanut Butter Cookies

The ingredients:

½ c shortening or Stork
½ c peanut butter
½ c sugar
½ c brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 ¼ c flour, sifted
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp milk

THE DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350F/176C.
Cream shortening, peanut butter, and both sugars in a mixer.
Add egg and vanilla, beating well to incorporate.
Sift flour, soda, and salt together, then add to peanut butter mixture alternately with milk.
Drop by rounded teaspoon onto ungreased baking sheet and cook 10 minutes or until flattened and slightly brown around the edges.

Yields 2 dozen cookies, not 3 dozen as listed on Eleanor's recipe... unless you make them much smaller.

Rhubarb Pie

I've always associated rhubarb pie with the Southern US. Maybe this is because my (other, very non-Yankee) grandmother was the first one who introduced me to it (mixed with strawberry pie filling in a too-red confection when I was a preteen), or maybe it's because, after that one ill-fated strawberry adventure, rhubarb went out of my head until I was 15, hanging out with a friend in Kentucky, and his dad brought me a piece of “fresh rhubarb, right off the bush! You have to try it, it's just so good!”

Have you ever tasted raw rhubarb? It's literally the worst. It's so bitter and so sour and so terrible I thought I'd never recover. So after that I learned my lesson and moved on to eating it only cooked any time I could find it, which wasn't often in the States.

But then I moved to Scotland and it's all over the place here! Rhubarb muffins, rhubarb puddings, rhubarb jam for your scones in the morning, and best of all, it's never paired with strawberries! So now I love rhubarb. As long as it's not raw, that is. It's pearly and pink and pastel and it's amazing boiled with sugar, strained, and stirred into lemonade.

But I still associate it with the Southern US, and so I was surprised to find a recipe for it in the box. Eleanor may have been many things, and she may have spent a full half of her life in Florida, but she was, above all, most emphatically not Southern. So I guess I was wrong about rhubarb, but that's ok. That's what the project is about, after all: being wrong about inconsequential things and then figuring it out.

This recipe is really simple-- even moreso if you only read half of it, as I did, and somehow ignore the entire “double pastry” part and only make it with a single crust. Hey, we're not here to judge. Just to eat pie and drink hot coffee. But my favourite part-- beyond the simplicity of the recipe, beyond the beauty of cooked rhubarb-- my favourite part is that it's written on the back of a pre-printed recipe card for Armour Star Chopped Beef. What, you may be asking, is Chopped Beef? I don't know. Perhaps it is like chipped beef, but I've never had that either and I'm not about to do the research to find out.

So Eleanor hand-wrote the recipe for this rhubarb pie on the back of a card that I assume probably came with the box itself-- there are a handful of these cards in the box, all with handwritten recipes on the back. And all of them contain gems like this: “Cut contents of 1 tin chopped beef into 8 slices. Fry in a little butter.” I'm glad Eleanor wrote on the back of them-- I'm going to assume even she didn't like the idea of tinned beef and only saved the cards because she had written dessert recipes on the other side. When I first realised that the front of the card had a pre-printed recipe on it, I asked Judson if I should make the recipe for Chopped Beef, too-- but then we realised (with a sigh of relief) that there is no way to buy tinned beef over here in Scotland (or, I hope, anywhere), and that it's not even a recipe so much as just “remove contents from jar and eat,” so I'm not bothering with it. If you have a problem with that, we ask that you kindly take it up with management.

If you have a tart or quiche pan (like a pie pan, but shallower and with straight, fluted sides), this is the perfect recipe to use it. I have one, but forgot about it until it was too late. Alas. If you're not using a tart pan, I recommend increasing the amount of rhubarb from 2 cups to 2 ½ cups or so (4 large stalks is plenty). I've included a recipe for pie crust below, but it makes enough for a double crust. I only used half of it, because I didn't read the recipe well and was already planning on using the other half for a dish I'll be posting tomorrow, but the recipe calls for a double crust, so feel free to use the entire thing. I ended up liking it better without a top crust because it let the rhubarb shine through more, but I'm kind of meh about crust anyway. If you're one of those people who likes crust, then make the top layer, too.

The Verdict:

4 spoons out of five. I found myself wishing there was more rhubarb in the filling and that it was a little more tart. (The wish for more rhubarb could easily be remedied by cooking this in a tart pan, which is what I'll do next time). It's worth noting that the Brits we shared it with, who probably all have more rhubarb experience than me, loved it, so it's possible I'm the one in the wrong on this one.

The recipe:

Rhubarb Pie

The Ingredients:

The Crust:

2 c flour
½ tsp salt
½ c butter, cold
2 tbsp shortening or Stork
1 egg
3 tbsp ice water

The Directions:

CRUST:

Combine flour and salt in mixing bowl.
Cut in butter and shortening with a pastry cutter or two knives until mixture forms very coarse crumbs.
Make a well in the center of the mixture.
Beat together egg and water, then pour into well in flour mixture.
Toss the mixture with two forks until it almost forms a dough, then press it together into a ball with your hands as fast as possible.
Divide in half and wrap in plastic wrap or foil.
Chill 20 minutes in freezer or 90 minutes in refrigerator before using.
Roll out half of dough and press into the pie pan-- crust does not need to be parbaked before cooking the pie.
If desired, roll out second half of dough and place on top of rhubarb filling, pricking top crust to allow steam to escape.

The Filling:

2-2 ½ c rhubarb, sliced into bite-size chunks
3 tbs cornstarch
1 c sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon lemon juice (optional but recommended by me)

FILLING:

Preheat oven to 425F/218C.
Mix together all ingredients and pour into prepared pie crust (recipe above, or use a storebought crust).
Cover tightly with foil and cook 10 minutes.
Turn oven down to 350F/176C, remove foil, and cook for another 45 minutes, until filling is set and does not wobble when nudged.
If using only one crust, you might need to lay the foil loosely over the pie during the last 10 minutes to keep the rhubarb from scorching as the filling finishes setting.

Yields one small pie.

"Beware the Ides of Cheesecake," or, Creamy Dreamy Cheesecake

In the second monthly installment of The Cheesecake Series, today we have a plain cheesecake dated Christmas 1978, with a note at the top that reads “hope you enjoy it!” It's written on sparkly Christmas stationery and signed “From Marge,” so I am assuming it came folded inside a holiday card. I love that idea-- long distance friends sending each other recipes when they can't visit each other in person. So old-school and cute.

Also, as an avid Golden Girls fan, I love that Eleanor and her friends were trading recipes for cheesecake long before the Golden Girls made cheesecake the dessert for women of a certain age to eat with their friends. (I especially love this because for a long time as a child I believed that the character of Dorothy Zbornak on the show was based on Eleanor, and that Sophia Petrillo was based on my Aunt Margie.)

I don't know how Eleanor felt about this particular cheesecake-- the recipe itself is in remarkably good condition, so it might not be one she made very often. I'm starting to feel like if you can find a cheesecake recipe that works for you, it's probably a better idea to stick with it than keep experimenting, but neither of the recipes I've tried so far have been particularly stellar, so I'm gonna keep trying. This cheesecake was definitely easier than the last-- no fancy ingredients (I'm looking at you, ricotta), and no weird steps like whipping egg whites into a meringue before folding them in gently. The crust, of course, was supposed to be made with graham crackers, but since I have no access to those and didn't want to make my own, I used digestive biscuits. This made the crust a little lighter in colour and a little thinner than I expected, but it was still delicious.

However. I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but both times I've made cheesecakes from the box, they've risen like crazy while in the oven, then fallen, slumped, and browned on the top. This one was still good-- Judson took half of it to work and his colleagues gave it a resounding thumbs up, so I know it's not just me who thinks it was good. It's denser than the last one, but manages not to be overpoweringly heavy. It's incredibly creamy and has a really faint lemon flavour that's offsets all that creaminess really well. If I could find pie filling in this country, I'd serve it with cherries on top, but alas. Maybe next month.

The Verdict:

3 spoons out of five. It's good, it really is. But if yours looks like mine, you probably wouldn't want to serve it to the Queen of England when she drops by for afternoon tea. (Also note: pictured here I served it with Nutella, but if you're interested in authenticity, you'd better have it plain)

The recipe:

Creamy Dreamy Cheesecake

The Ingredients:

16 oz cottage cheese
16 oz cream cheese
16 oz sour cream
4 oz butter (1 stick, if you're stateside), plus extra for greasing the pan
4 eggs
1 ½ c sugar
3 tbsp flour
3 tbsp cornstarch
½ tsp lemon juice
2 tsp vanilla
1/3 c graham cracker or digestive biscuit crumbs

THE DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 325F/162C.
Blend all ingredients except crumbs “until smooth like sour cream.”
(If yours is like mine, you might still see some tiny lumps from the cottage cheese, but as long as there are only a few, you're good.)
Heavily grease the bottom and sides of a springform pan, then sprinkle the crumbs in and shake to distribute evenly.
Pour the cheese mixture smoothly and quickly on top of the loose crumbs to avoid shifting the crumbs around too much.
Bake for one hour, then turn off oven and without opening the door, leave the cheesecake in for additional two hours.
Place cheesecake on counter (not refrigerator) to cool completely (this will take several hours), then refrigerate until serving, up to overnight if needed.