Try a taste of tradition
Every year JoAnne Kruger rolls out hundreds of gingerbread boys and girls for friends and family, a tradition she started more than 50 years ago when her daughters were young. Now, she’s delivering cookies to a third generation of recipients. We shared her recipe and tradition last year during the holidays.
Aside from the gingerbread cookies, another family favorite is a recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens magazine that Kruger clipped in 1952 for Candy Cane Cookies. She has continued to make the cookie despite the odds, she wrote. She kept the original clipping until one day it fell off the counter onto the floor and her dog chewed it up. Luckily, she had made a “traveling” copy over the years and so the tradition lives on at the Kruger home.
The original recipe called for half butter and half shortening, but she eventually began to use only butter.
Candy Cane Cookies
1 cup butter (room temperature)
1 cup sifted powdered sugar
1 egg (room temperature)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 1/2 cup sifted flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon red food coloring
1/2 cup crushed peppermint candy (processed in blender)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
Thoroughly cream butter and powdered sugar together. Add egg and extracts and continue beating until pale yellow in color. Sift flour and salt together and stir into butter mixture, occasionally scraping sides of bowl until all the flour is smoothly incorporated into butter mixture. With a spatula, press down cookie dough in bowl and smooth out the top. Divide dough in two, placing each half in separate bowls. Add red food coloring to only one half. With spatula, evenly spread dough in each bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rest in cool (not cold) place for about one hour. While dough is resting, pour crushed peppermint candy and sugar into a large measuring cup and mix thoroughly. Set aside for later use.
To prepare dough for shaping, with a knife cut each bowl of dough into 8 equal wedges. Working one color at a time, form 6 equal-size balls of dough from each wedge (48 in all), lining them up in rows on a jelly roll pan, being careful to keep balls of dough from touching. Repeat with other color. Have lightly-greased cookie sheets ready. Also, lay two sheets of wax paper on counter top to hold cookies for application of peppermint mixture.
To shape cookies, lightly dust flour-sack type cloth with flour. (An old-fashioned salt shaker filled with flour is a handy aid.) Using your fingertips, roll one red ball into a rope about 4 inches long, repeat with white. Lay the two strips side by side. With one hand holding the two ends together, use the other to gently twist the two ropes together to form a spiral effect. Lightly press the ends of the twisted rope. Place on cookie sheet and shape one end into a hook, forming a cane. Repeat until you have 48 cookies. To save room on a cookie sheet, place every other cookie in the opposite direction so that the hook of one is above the end of the other. Heat oven to 375 degrees.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes until ends of cookies turn pale yellow (do not overbake). Quickly remove cookies from the sheet, placing them about 1/2 -inch apart on one of the sheets of wax paper. Immediately spoon peppermint mixture on top of cookies. The cookies need to be fresh from the oven for the peppermint mixture to adhere to the cookie. Place next batch of baked cookies on second sheet of wax paper. With thin pancake turner remove first batch of cookies to airtight container large enough to hold all 48 cookies.
Carefully scrape up leftover peppermint and place back in measuring cup to reuse. Place third batch of cookies on first used wax paper sheet. Repeat as necessary until all cookies are baked.
Yield: 48 cookies
Approximate nutrition per cookie: 72 calories, 4 grams fat, (2.5 grams saturated, 50 percent fat calories), less than 1 gram protein, 8 grams carbohydrate, 15 milligrams cholesterol, less than 1 gram dietary fiber, 26 milligrams sodium.