The Sandpoint Eater

By Marcia Pilgeram
Reader Columnist

It’s hard to believe 11 years have passed since I created the dessert/cookie table for my youngest daughter Casey’s wedding in Chicago. It was everything we had envisioned it would be. For months before the July wedding, I baked family-favorite cookies, carefully packaging and freezing them for transport to the Windy City. When her older sibling, Ryanne, got married here in Sandpoint (more than 20 years ago!), I managed to whip out a five-tiered French vanilla cake, iced in Italian meringue, with a dotted Swiss decorative finish. 

I knew better than to attempt the same tall order for Chicago. Pre-baking and transporting frozen layers or finding a suitable kitchen to make it in Chicago seemed impractical; thus, we brought our vision of a cookie table to fruition.

If you’ve ever been to a wedding Back East — especially in the Pittsburgh area — chances are you have nibbled upon more than a cookie or two. Cookie tables have been popular there for a hundred years or so, when Italian immigrants arrived with their ethnic and cultural traditions — and their cookie recipes. Many families couldn’t afford wedding cakes back then, so the wedding cookie table tradition began.

It’s still a time-honored tradition to bake 10-12 dozen cookies for the dessert table (and indeed, it’s an embarrassment for any baker not included when the call for cookies goes out). Some of the most popular offerings on a Pittsburgh cookie table include thumbprint, buckeyes, lady locks and Linzers. The diehard cookie table ladies are known to travel far and wide to support a bride (family or not), flying or driving hours to add their specialty to the pedestal and tiered plates. At the end of most tables, you’ll also find creative packaging, and you’re encouraged to take home a cute little box filled with your favorite varieties.

Cookie table bakers never lack for recipes; and many of their creations have been circulating for generations. Cookies date back to seventh-century Persia, one of the first countries to cultivate sugar. Since then, we have perfected six basic cookie styles: drop, bar, molded, pressed, refrigerator and rolled cookies. Today’s cooks rely mostly on drop, bar and rolled cookie recipes, but I remember my mother carefully rolling cookie dough logs and chilling them until firm. Then she sliced the dough logs and carefully laid them on cookie sheets. 

My family is fond of peanut butter cookies and Mexican wedding cakes. Both require rolling a spoonful of dough into a perfect little sphere (or not, depending on the age of your juvenile assistants). I rolled and baked 30 dozen Mexican tea cakes for Casey’s wedding. Keeping with her jewel-tone theme, I sprinkled the cookies with various shades of edible luster dust once we plated the cookies. 

There’s power in flour, and all the accouterments, which is to say the options are endless. Need to decorate a cookie? No problem! Dozens of websites and Facebook pages dedicated to these supplies can get you hooked on the cookie obsession. Start with a simple cookie art class if you’re a novice. For professionals, cookie conventions are held throughout the country (and world), with master bakers teaching classes in 3-D cookies and icing techniques like wet-on-wet, wet-on-dry and dry-on-dry (oh, to be 10 years younger).

I still have more than my share of cookie supplies, including more than 100 cookie cutters, sorted by seasons and categories (amassed over the past 40 years), and when the grands were younger, I made elaborately themed cookies in whatever whimsical genre held their interest at the time. Sadly, they have mostly aged out of cute cookies and now prefer classics like chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal and rolled sugar cookies. In fact, besides National Cookie Day, which is celebrated in December, each of the aforementioned cookies have their own national day of recognition (as well they should). 

I so loved my mother’s oatmeal cookies. She used bacon grease for the fat and called them “ranger cookies.” I still have her faded, hand-penciled recipe in my cherished card file box. Half of my crew are vegetarian, so I no longer make them, but the delicious taste will forever linger in my memory. 

My recipe kind of resembles Mom’s, but I replaced the bacon grease with browned butter (which makes everything taste better) and added butterscotch chips (Ryanne’s favorite). A friend recently sampled one and alleged it to be the best damn cookie he ever tasted. You can be the judge.

Brown butter oatmeal scotchies

You will want to add these beauties to your cookie tray! The brown butter and rum add a whole extra dimension to this cookie’s taste profile. These cookies are small, so the mini chips and pulsed oatmeal give them a nicer (un-bumpy) look. Don’t double the batch and don’t let them burn! Yields 6 dozen cookies.

INGREDIENTS:

• One cup browned butter (recipe below)

• 1 cup light brown sugar

• ¾ cup granulated sugar

• 2 large eggs, room temperature

• 1 tbs vanilla extract

• 2 tbs dark rum

• 1 tsp baking powder

• 1 tsp baking soda

• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

• 2 cups all-purpose flour

• 2 ½ cups old-fashioned rolled oats  (pulsed lightly in food processor)

• 1 ¼ cups mini butterscotch chips (I buy mine at Miller’s  Country Store)

DIRECTIONS:

Brown butter instructions:

Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat; bring to a low simmer and cook, stirring frequently, until butter is browned and foamy with visible browned, solid bits — about 7-8 minutes. Set aside and stir a few times until cooled to room temperature, about 15 minutes, chill in fridge until it thickens up. 

Cookie instructions:

Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon into a bowl, whisk in the oats and set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream together browned butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until fluffy — about 2 minutes. Add in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, add vanilla extract and rum, mixing well. 

Add the dry ingredients and blend just until mixed (don’t overdo it!).

Roll the dough into uniform 1” balls and place on parchment paper-covered sheet pans. Chill until cold and firm (it will prevent the dough from spreading too much during baking).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Bake for 10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through baking time to ensure even baking. Cookies may appear slightly underdone when you pull them out; this is normal — don’t overbake! Cookies will continue to set up as they sit on the pans. Cool for about 15 minutes on the pans and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.