Wool and Spice

While I think you can buy many sweets that are perfectly enjoyable (cinnamon rolls, cheesecake), store bought cookies just don’t make the grade. With the exception of Oreos and Fig Newtons, there isn’t a manufactured cookie, whether from a giant conglomerate, a mall or specialty bakery that is better than a Snickerdoodle straight out of my own oven. It’s desperate times in this house when Nabisco or Keebler does the cookie baking.

One of my favorite cookbooks is a slim little paperback called Golde’s Homemade Cookies A Treasured Collection of Timeless Recipes. When I’m in the cookie baking mood, which is often, this is the book I pluck off the shelves first. I bought this book soon after it was first published in 1984. Let me tell you, Golde knows her cookies.

You won’t spend a lot of money or time searching for fancy ingredients for Golde’s recipes. And the cookies aren’t trendy. These are the kind of cookies your grandmother made when you were a kid.  The 130 recipes include selections that I tend to think are season-appropriate: Mincemeat Cookies for holidays, Light Lemon Squares for summer. And you can search for cookies by name or through the category index: cookies to bake with kids, chocolate-lovers, bar cookies, etc.

Even though I use this cook book a lot, I tend to make the same recipes over and over including Mrs. Vincent’s Snickerdoodles and Butter Pecan Turtle Bars. This week I branched out and tried some of the others. I made the Cream Cheese Brownies and yesterday, after buying zucchini at the market, I made the Honey Zucchini-Nut Bars. Both were judged a success by the resident cookie monster.

Honey Zuchhini-Nut Bars
from Golde’s Homemade Cookies

Prep time: 20 minutes
Yield: 40 bars (I got about 30)

1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup honey
3 eggs, well-beaten
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup shredded zucchini, squeezed dry
1 cup dates, chopped
1 cup walnuts, chopped
Dash of salt

Topping:
1/3 cup sifted powdered sugar

Grease a 9″ by 13″ baking pan and set aside. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Mix pastry ingredients together in order listed. Spread into baking pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until lightly brown. Cut into finger sized pieces. While still warm, roll in sifted powdered sugar. These freeze well, but wait to roll in powdered sugar after removing from the freezer.

These are sweet without being overwhelming. More like cake than cookies, they have a delicate honey flavor that complements the dates and walnuts. The zucchini just blends in but does give these golden cookies moisture and attractive flecks of green.

I liked that I didn’t have to take out my mixer, the ingredients can be blended with a rubber spatula or spoon. I did use up all my measuring cups because I laid out all my ingredients before hand, but the dishwasher was ready for a cycle anyway, so that worked out fine.

Next time, I might drizzle an icing on these instead of rolling in the powdered sugar, which didn’t really add to the recipe (and melted by the end of the day). And even though I show them with a fork, you don’t really need one.

I used local eggs, honey and zucchini for these and baked them early in the morning before the kitchen got hot. I froze half the batch to have on hand later. Next week at the market I plan to buy more zucchini to shred and freeze in 3/4 cup servings to make these this winter.

Note: My edition of Golde’s Homemade Cookies A Treasured Collection of Timeless Recipes was published in paperback by Williamson Publishing, Charlotte, Vermont in 1984. Amazon has a hardcover 2004 edition available from Gramercy Publishing. The cover is different and the index lists several recipes that aren’t in mine, but it could be they’ve just given the same recipes new names. The Honey Zucchini bars are still there, as are the Butter Pecan Turtle Bars and many others I recognize. At $9.99, it’s a bargain that will keep you baking cookies for years.

Tags: baking, cookies, Golde, Honey Zucchini bars