Welcome Friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to Sunday morning
in the old cookbook show today we're
going to do a recipe called Gold Label
peanut cookies
from the Gold Label baking powder uh
cookbook
um this was sent in by a viewer thank
you very much there is a soft spot in my
heart
for uh these little pamphlets
advertising pamphlets throw away
advertising pamphlets for baking powders
and baking sodas
um to me these represent a giant shift
in the way that North Americans baked uh
cakes and cookies and biscuits and all
of those sorts of things
a shift away from using yeast and beaten
egg whites in order to give lift and
Loft and airiness to chemical leaveners
certainly chemical leaveners existed
before the mid-1850s
but they weren't trusted by most Cooks
they weren't easily accessible by most
Cooks um Pearl Ash being the one that is
most commonly referred to
they tasted bad and they weren't really
safe to eat and of the hundreds and
hundreds of cookbooks that I have
prior to 1850 I can count on one hand
the number of recipes that I've been
able to find that call for a chemical
leavener such as Pearl Ash
so these little cookbooks
um are out there in the marketplace and
they're serving a whole bunch of
purposes
they are
they're inventing a new class of recipes
that use this new product in order to
leaven them so you're showing people a
new way to make things that they've
already been making for you know
hundreds of years
they're also sort of assuaging your
fears about whether this is safe to eat
or safe to use and then each
manufacturer is attacking the other
manufacturers saying that their product
is going to kill you and only theirs is
safe it's a very interesting sort of
subset of recipes history and
advertising I really like it now I'm
supposed to using mortar and pestle or
food chopper I'm going to use my food
chopper
I think that's fine enough so I I know
that every time I talk about Pearl Ash
and chemical leaveners people let me
know that you know they read uh some
sort of historical novel
and
you know the Chuck Wagon cook goes out
to the fire and grabs some Ash and makes
biscuits
um
in historical fiction
you see that all the time but in the
actual cookbooks from the time period it
just wasn't done it just wasn't done it
wasn't used
people didn't trust it there's no real
historical record of that happening
but you know uh why would you let
reality get in the way of a good story I
mean that's that's human history in a
nutshell so
in the stand mixer
creaming the butter and the sugar
together
and then in this bowl I have flour and
our baking powder and salt
and we'll give that a mix
if you're using modern technology
there's a couple of things in this in
this recipe that aren't as important
today tells you to sift this combination
three times before putting it into the
mixture
and that's sift after measuring you
don't really need to sift anything
anymore if it tells you to sift it after
measuring
2023 not really all that important also
tells you to beat the egg lightly before
putting it into the mixture
because I'm using a stand mixer
not as important if I was doing this by
hand with a wooden spoon in a bowl yes
beating up the egg first before adding
it to the sugar and butter would
definitely be helpful
next ingredient is two tablespoons of
milk
put that in
and then we spoon in the flour mixture
now
texture
and so this is just ground peanuts um
not to the point where it's peanut
butter
but it did release a lot of the peanut
oil
very interesting mixtures so in that
goes
so for the most part this is just a
standard cookie in the way that it's put
together and sort of the ingredient list
what I think is going to be really
interesting is the way the peanuts
um
the way the peanuts were treated we're
not using peanut butter most peanut
butter cookies today of course use
peanut butter and I think this this
ground peanut is a very interesting
could bring an interesting texture and
flavor to the cookies
and last cookie
on the tray and it gets as with all of
them a half a nut meat in the middle and
into the oven they go now no baking
temperature or time given because
everybody knows
that you bake cookies at 350 degrees for
8 to 12 minutes no need to put it in the
recipe
hey Glenn hey Friends cooking hints oh I
could hint before my cookies it is
better to use milk than water for mixing
okay why is that I don't know
for cooking generally says cooking
generally and that you know you should
um you should be very careful regulating
your oven heat okay so this is Gold
Label peanut cookies
um
not a peanut butter cookie but it's a
ground peanut you grind the peanuts up
okay it's it's um
really soft and fluffy which you don't
usually get with the peanut butter
cookies right because of the
oh
works for me
it's a very good like subtle peanut
flavor like it's not overpowering like
that
I think you could put a little dollop
pajama on top
for those of us who like a little PB and
J
could stand uh you know spilling a
little vanilla into the mix because
there's no vanilla in it I don't think
it necessarily needs it but it would be
a nice addition
did me
but I do like it that's a nice cookie
it's a really simple one it doesn't make
too many I mean there's is all of it
there's a few more but not like you know
50 cookies this is half the recipe okay
that's pretty awesome the other half is
frozen and like I always do put them in
the freezer already portioned out
stick them in the oven frozen cook them
for the same amount of time and they're
fantastic all right okay
so an alternative to a peanut butter
cookie
thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
how'd you eat your cookies so fast I
just threw it right in I'm just done
didn't you see I was like
it was embarrassing I realized I was
talking and