PORCHSCENE: Exploring Southern Culture

Holiday-cookie baking  brings loved ones closer, if only in memories

By Patsy R. Brumfield

The Southfacin’ Cook

            When I have to wipe the flour off my glasses, there’s been much baking underway. It’s my therapy in The Time of Covid, but it’s also my personal gifts for neighbors’ kindnesses and friends’ remembrances when, as Jackie DeShannon used to sing: “What the World Needs Now Is Love, Sweet Love.”

            After two days in the kitchen, I’ve got the “sweet” down pat. And I must admit that while the baking requires some effort, as I scan across my counters where dozens of cookies are cooling, it’s all been worthwhile. I need that, don’t you?

            First, I started with 6 dozen sugar cookies, sprinkled with holiday-colored sugar. Next came extra-nutty peanut butter cookies. For these recipes, I depend on my America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks, which I’ll use as exercise weights after the holidays. The ATK recipes are where I start with dishes outside my usual repertoire. These folks have tested recipes scores of times and every whichaway to Sunday. I am lazy enough to agree they must be right – they have a TV show, I don’t.

            However, my Gold Standard for oatmeal cookies comes from a dog-eared index card with my mother’s handwriting in pencil. It’s dated 1962 and is from our McComb next-door neighbor Gladys Pickett, who was quite a cook herself when she had time from working very hard setting type at the local newspaper, The McComb Enterprise-Journal, where I started my career in the mid-1960s.

            In other columns I’ve written about her husband Wilbur’s famed hot-sauce, which he brewed over an open fire on the Hughes School playground between our houses on Burke Street. Wilbur’s sauce-brewing was driven outdoors, I recall, by its potency and wallpaper-wilting properties.

            I also recommend Gladys’ recipe for Yeast Rolls, a legendary delicacy I try to assemble for occasional holidays. Looking at 2020, it looks like I’ve got time for them, so my entire family will benefit. My son, who’s been the beneficiary of other recent cookie baking, will probably groan at the sight of all this largesse, but we’ll both resolve to get to that 2021 exercise regime we’ve promised. Right.

            It’s at times like these I think about our North McComb neighborhood and all the joy it brought so many of us growing up. The DeCoux(s), the Morgans, the Ingrams, the Simmonses and so many more. And we were so fortunate as teens to be just one block away from the famed “White House,” where all the “cool kids” hung out.

            In later years, my mother hosted a grown-up party before all of us headed to Christmas Eve church at the little Episcopal Church of the Mediator in downtown. Many years later, a friend told me the joy at one of these get-togethers saved him from a self-destructive holiday depression.

            I’ll miss so many people this year – who can’t be together for reasons of health, germs or a call to the Hereafter. Of course my family members who fit in that category. I’ll especially miss my friend Billy Neville, who so graciously welcomed me to Jackson nearly seven years ago. He and I were frequent Christmas-church goers together and he was an amazing fount of history on our hometown. And my friend Joe Rutherford from Tupelo, with whom I worked at the Daily Journal more than a decade on top of a friendship stretching from the late 1960s. Both gone but not forgotten.

            And so, I’ll raise a glass to them at the appropriate time. But I’m also raising a cookie for everybody else. Oh, the trouble is: Which one?

            Happy holidays, friends.

GLADYS PICKETT’S OATMEAL COOKIES (1962)

(Forgive me, Gladys. I’ve taken a few modern liberties, but I don’t think you’d disapprove.)

EQUIPMENT: 3-4 large baking sheets, stand mixer, 2-Tablespoon scoop, measuring gear, 1 medium mixing bowl, whisk, parchment paper, metal spatula, cooling racks

INGREDIENTS

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups old-fashioned oatmeal (not instant)

1 ¾ cups sugar

Pinch salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ¼ cups vegetable shortening

5 Tablespoons whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup raisins

2 eggs, beaten

Preheat oven to 350. Prepare baking sheets with parchment paper.

In mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt, cinnamon, soda. Add oatmeal and combine.

In stand mixer’s bowl, cream shortening and sugar on medium speed until light, fluffy. About 2 minutes. Add egg, vanilla and milk. Mix about 30 seconds. Turning speed to low, slowly add flour mixture. When well combined, add pecans and raisins. Turn up speed to medium-high to combine, about 30 seconds.

Using scoop, drop cookie dough onto baking sheets (about 11 per sheet, with 2 ½ inches apart). Bake 16 minutes, turning and rotating halfway through baking time. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes before moving them with spatula onto cooling rack. Let cool to room temperature.

Makes about 7 dozen cookies.

GLADYS PICKETT’S YEAST ROLLS

INGREDIENTS

2/3 cup dry milk

1 ½ cups water

½ cup shortening (Crisco)

½ cup sugar

1 envelope yeast

All-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking  powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

Combine water, dry milk, shortening and sugar in medium saucepan and bring to boiling point. Off heat, allow to cool. When lukewarm, add yeast dissolved in ¼ cup lukewarm water (110 degrees). Add enough flour until it looks like pancake batter. Cover pan with a tea towel, place in a warm spot and allow mixture to rise until double in bulk.

Into batter, sift 1 ½ cups flour, salt, baking powder and soda. Add more flour until it forms a sticky dough. Refrigerate.

Two hours before eating, roll out the dough and cut into 8 pieces, then roll each into a ball. Place onto lightly greased 8 x 8 or round baking dish, cover with tea towel and allow rolls to rise (about 90 minutes). Brush tops with melted butter.

Bake in 400 oven for 7-10 minutes until golden brown on top. Serve while hot.