Eclectic Red Barn: Our passion for cookies!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Our passion for cookies!

Cookies - those tasty little treats that we all seem to desire. Just enough to satisfy our "sweet tooth" but not enough to blow our diet, unless we eat too many of them. By definition, a cookie can be any of a variety of hand-held, flour-based sweet cakes, either crisp or soft. While blogging, I have seen many recipes for cookies being posted. For example: I found these two recipes on Create It Thrusday linky party.

Ree's Brown Sugar Oatmeal Lace Cookies Double Chocolate Cookies

Each country has its own word for "cookie."

What we know as cookies are called biscuits in England and Australia, in Spain they're galletas, Germans call them keks or Plätzchen for Christmas cookies, and in Italy there are several names to identify various forms of cookies including amaretti and biscotti, and so on. The name cookie is derived from the Dutch word koekje, meaning "small or little cake." Biscuit comes from the Latin word bis coctum, which means, “twice baked.”(source)

The earliest cookie-style cakes are thought to date back to 7^th century Persia A.D. (now Iran).(source) Cookies were originally home made, plain Jane shortbreads, flat and hard. Here in the states, the Civil War forced professional bakers to kick up production to feed the troops. They created industrial mixers, steam-powered rollers and Ferris wheel-style ovens.

However, when the war ended, they were stuck with all of this state-of-art equipment and no demand. So, create a new market! Americans fell in love with mass produced animal crackers, vanilla wafers, and graham crackers. They were convenient and tastier than the average housewife could make. Next came gingersnaps and the famous Fig Newton. The future of homemade cookies was looking bleak!

Have no fear, a reactionary DIY era decided to produce the chewy, chunky drop cookies that we all seem to love today.
They were easier to make - just drop a dollop onto a cookie sheet and bake. No kneading, rolling, or cutting. Baking was now simple enough to be part of our everyday lives.

Drop cookies made it easy to bring children into the kitchen. Here is a recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies, from a previous post, one of the most popular cookie today.

I remember baking with my children and love to bake with the grandchildren. Flour seemed to be everywhere but in the bowl. They ate the cookie dough right out of the bowl, especially chocolate chip ones. Licking the spoon was heavenly. Not to forget the smell of freshly baked cookies! Oh what memories baking with your kids can bring and then more fun as you share a cookie just out of the oven.

Since I am trying to limit the amount of sweets we consume, I don't make home made cookies too often. My favorite is chocolate chip! What is yours?

I have to admit that the only store bought cookie that I buy is Oreo's. Do you have a favorite store bought cookie? Do you bake with your kids or have memories of baking with your children or your mother?

Share the experience of making cookies with your children or simply reminisce about it for yourself. While you are baking up a batch, give a big thank you to those DIYers who invented the drop cookie! Yeah!!

Linking to these parties:

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2 comments :

UnknownSeptember 5, 2013 at 5:50 PM
I especially love the smell of freshly baked cookies ... and eating the slightly burned and crispy ones :). Thank you for sharing and partying with us!
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AnnSeptember 5, 2013 at 5:57 PM
I have been wanting to bake cookies but I know that I will eat too many of them if I do. When my kids were little I tried to have them take turns helping with the baking because if I had two of them in the kitchen at the same time it always broke out in a fight
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