Welcome Friends welcome back to the
kitchen welcome back to Sunday morning
and the old cookbook show today we're
going to do a recipe out of this little
cookbook sent in by a viewer thank you
very much I love getting these things
um this one's called Ma's cooking Ozark
recipes spiced with old Ozark Customs
sayings and superstitions
um
this isn't that old uh this is published
in 1966. so
it's as old as I am
um
and it's it's it's a it's a style of
cookbook that I've I've got about a half
dozen books like this in my collection
uh I consider them to be joke cookbooks
um and let me explain let me let me get
going on the recipe first we're gonna do
something called Mabel's molasses creams
so just like any cookie starts out with
some butter and sugar and we're gonna
cream that together
and the sugar
and we'll just get that onto cream
and what I mean by joke cookbooks
um so this is published in 1966 it's
published in the South it's published in
Missouri Osage Beach Missouri
um by a company called Ozark made
candies
it is a community cookbook a lot of the
recipes in here are submitted by members
of the community they want them
published
but it really plays on that down homie
um
Mountain William
sort of Trope uh the language of all of
the preambles is is written you're
supposed to read it in a
in a really sort of Southern uneducated
back in the holler kind of kind of voice
um
it's joking to the point that I I just I
don't find it funny but what I do find
very interesting are the recipes some of
the recipes are put in here to shock
like all of the ones that that use
possum and raccoon and that sort of
thing in 1966 I doubt many people were
cooking that way
is that a chinook
I spent far too much time at an airport
that was a chinook
um going by so look up Chinook
helicopter that just flew over my house
at about 1500 feet anyway so it's
written in a voice that reinforces
stereotypes
um and I I really don't like that but
like I said the recipes are solid
and one of the things that books like
this do is in a jokey way they're trying
to preserve recipes that are probably
being lost and the books themselves the
ones that I have are aren't always meant
for keeping like they're not meant to be
family heirlooms passed down I think
there's the sort of things that you
would see if you've ever eaten at a
Cracker Barrel at the side of the
highway in the US you know they've got
that General Store in the front this is
the sort of thing that you would find in
that General Store
um serious cookbook collectors would
look at this and say no it's not a
serious cookbook I look at it and say
it's not a serious cookbook but it has
some serious worth
in preserving a slice of culinary
history
okay the butter and sugar looks great so
we're gonna
crack in this egg
and get that all creamed together
so this is a southern recipe book from
the Ozarks the recipe is attributed to
someone from Missouri
and it calls for sorghum molasses so
it's called molasses cookies or molasses
creams but it specifically calls for
sorghum molasses and I happen to have
some really good sorghum molasses here
so we're going to put that in next
um
this is pure sorghum molasses
something that is and can be fairly
difficult to get I'm going to turn this
off because it makes a mess uh pure
sorghum can be a little bit more
difficult to get these days than it
would have been
um in the time period of this cookbook
the 60s and definitely even in the 60s
it would have been harder to get than it
would have been pre-World War II or
pre-World War One
so if you can't get sorghum
uh a light molasses or a lightly
flavored uh cane sugar molasses would be
fine
golden syrup would be fine a light
treacle would be fine
um even if what you have is um
corn syrup
go ahead and use corn syrup you're going
to miss out on the flavor that you're
getting from the Sorghum but the sugar
content would be roughly the same
so if you can get sorghum molasses uh I
highly recommend it so here I have some
flour and to that I'm going to add
Ginger
cinnamon and salt I'll give that a bit
of a stir
so there's a couple things about this
recipe that tell me that it's a it's a
fairly old recipe passed from generation
to generation and probably the first
couple times it was passed down is just
done verbally no one wrote it down and
one of the clues is that it calls for
five cups of flour about five cups of
flour not five cups specifically but a
boat and so that that sort of
loosey-goosey measure means that the
first person or the people who made this
didn't really measure everything was
done by sight and they just sort of
scooped flour in until it was done it's
about five cups so in this bowl I've got
four cups of flour and that's what I
added the spices to
this bowl I have the fifth cup of flour
and I'm going to hold that aside if I
need it I'll put it in if I don't need
it I haven't wasted spices by putting it
into that bowl the next thing is it asks
me to put the baking soda into
tablespoon of vinegar
and that tells me that it's a it's a
recipe that sort of stems from the dawn
of chemical leavening in North America
and that at the beginning baking soda
wasn't always good and so putting it
into a little bit of vinegar means that
you're testing it to make sure that it's
good something that in 2022 we probably
don't have to do and it's not the acid
in the vinegar that's needed to to
activate the baking soda because it
calls for buttermilk and the buttermilk
itself would have more than enough power
to activate that amount of baking soda
so the buttermilk goes in
and at this point I'm going to spoon in
the flour get that mixed in
so I've got about half the flour mixed
in at this point I'm going to mix the
soda
into the vinegar Foams up immediately
and into the cookie batter
and now just spoon in the rest of the
flour until I get a dough that is
scoopable
so for me
four cups of flour at this point and I'm
really close I think
um
I'm going to say four and a half cups of
flour will do it for my dough the mixer
is having trouble getting this last
little bit in so I'm going to say
four and a half cups is what I needed
now for everyone out there screaming
that the recipe calls for shortening and
not butter
and that I probably should have used
something like Crisco
maybe
vegetable shortening is one kind of
shortening lard is a shortening the word
shortening has more to do with what the
fat does with the flour and the gluten
structure
then to an actual product it has become
in our time period
um forever LinkedIn associated with
vegetable shortening something like
Crisco uh but the farther back you go
the word shortening was just used and it
was any sort of
fat that was hard at room temperature
that caused the flower or the the
structure of the gluten to react a
certain way it's shortened the gluten
and butter as much as some people would
argue that butter sometimes isn't
shortening in this instance butter is a
shortening and so Cooks weren't calling
for something specific
they were just calling for a type of fat
and you would use whatever you had and
in this case I'm going to say that my
family had a cow and we had butter
and the last step before baking is to
either flour your fingers and
Tamp them down oh that works quite
nicely
or use a fork dip the fork in the flour
and Tamp them down or dip the fork in
some water
I kind of like what my fingers are doing
here so I'm going to stick with this
because that's the first instruction in
the book
now the oven's preheated to 350 degrees
standard cookie baking technique about
10 minutes and while these are in the
oven baking I'm going to put the rest of
this dough on a tray the same way except
I'm going to put them really close
together I'm going to stick that in the
freezer and I can bake them
some weeknight when Julie and I have a
cookie emergency
thank you
hey Glenn hey friends cookies reading
um what a lovely afternoon so I'm in the
wild game section it says Mars cooking
okay these are to the Wild game no no no
I was a little worried there so there's
one two three four things raccoon
raccoons the possums a couple of possums
groundhog
terrapin
what's the Terrapin I think it's I think
it's like a turtle I think it's like a
turtle and there's snapping turtle
there's fried turtle
and I laughed because in when this was
published in the 60s
um a possum
would never
appear here but we have them now in our
yard and the raccoons don't like the
boss I would say these are lovely so
these are um
these are mabels molasses creams
but you didn't make them they make them
with molasses no no assuming since I see
the swordgo no but they have that lovely
sweet molasses sorghumi kind of flavor
to them very light spice mm-hmm the
spice isn't this it's there
the Sorghum comes through
but I think if you've never had sorghum
and can't get serving any molasses would
do
these are quite nice
they're a little drier than than I would
have thought but that would make things
oh good for dunking in tea
really good for dunking in tea
and that could also be you
you could have left them in a minute too
long
completely because they're soft
there and they're crunchy on the edge
sorry
they're really weird
they're really good lovely they are
lovely so
I'm gonna take this little book
Boyd I'm coming nah
I'm gonna take this little book next
summer
and we're gonna go to the family cabin
in the Ozarks in Arkansas is that where
it's oh it is it says right there
we're gonna cook in the old cabin in the
old family cabin in the Ozarks in
Arkansas
it will be the darkest
yeah I mean it's an old cabin right and
we're gonna we're gonna choose something
I might not
we're gonna choose a recipe that you
know isn't possible raccoon or squirrel
or groundhog we're gonna choose a really
good recipe we're gonna go down there
we're gonna cook it and we're gonna have
a real Ozark experience in the old cabin
I love that place yeah I do too I do too
some of the earliest motion picture of
me is me and my cousin Bobby and I in
diapers running around in front of the
old cabin
so
um yeah we're coming
thank you
see you again soon
Glenn I see you're eating that cookie
I'm a little concerned I only see like a
dozen here
I feel like the recipe was a lot bigger
what are the rest of the cookies did you
eat them all no no so
two trays from the cookies perfect yay
for later
put these into uh airtight container now
that they're frozen
and cook them
from Frozen yes we've been experimenting
with this with a lot of different
recipes preheat your oven 350 degrees
cook them from Frozen started at 10
minutes just like it says in the recipe
and then you might extend it to 11 or
12. there's usually a few more minutes
it they're
numb
around they tend not to flatten out as
much as your other cookies but they're
you know so same cooking maybe a minute
or two longer from Frozen into the oven
at 350. and so now we know that Glenn
did not I did not eat all the cookies no
where are the rest of the rest of them