Grape-Nuts Crunches

I love being a volunteer "Field Editor" for Taste of Home magazine! We talk about food ALL the time, plus as an added bonus, it is an extremely supportive group of women and men who are all very passionate about baking and cooking, what could be better?!?!?! We had a challenge this week to find our oldest cookbook, take the year we were born (in my case, 1963) and then pick a recipe between the two sets of numbers. So for me, it would be between 19 and 63. I fished out my Town Crier DeLuxe Recipe Book from 1938 and looked for a recipe where I had all the ingredients on hand - that's a challenge in itself, LOL. I picked page 43. There were four recipes on the page - Fudge Four O'Clocks (which I have already made), Golden Pumpkin Cookies, Grape-Nut Crunches and Gum Drop Cookies. Since I had recently bought a box of Grape-Nuts at the grocery store because it was on sale and I had a coupon, I decided to make the Grape-Nut Crunches. I think the name of the recipe was a "typo," because the name of the cereal is "Grape-Nuts," not "Grapenut." I didn't follow the directions exactly, but I did use all of the original ingredients. Grape-Nuts have been around for over 100 years, that's pretty remarkable isn't it? These cookies came out really well and my "taste-tester," Dominic, had two!!


Ingredients

2 cups brown sugar
1 cup shortening
2 large eggs, beaten
2 cups white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal


In large bowl, put the brown sugar and shortening and cream together by hand with a large spoon or with an electric mixer. Add the two eggs and beat well. In a small bowl, put the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and vanilla. Pour the flour mixture into the large bowl and mix well. Add the oats and the Grape-Nuts cereal and combine until all ingredients are well incorporated. The batter is a little crumbly, so I used my hands. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge a minimum of one hour. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.  Roll the batter into 40 equal-sized balls.  Place 12-16 balls at a time on an ungreased cookie sheet. Press each ball with the palm of your hand or the bottom of a drinking glass. These cookies do spread when baking.  Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the cookies start to turn brown. Remove from oven and let them sit for five minutes on the cookie sheet before removing them to a wire rack to continue to cool. Makes 40 cookies. Store covered at room temperature.

Southern Cinnamon "Cake"

Earlier last year during one of the trips I took to Maryland, I looked through a desk that belonged to my grandmother that is now in my parents house. I remember seeing this particular desk at my grandmothers apartment when I would visit her. Tucked into the desk, I found a recipe book and some other loose sheets of paper with recipes written on them. When I saw the word, "cinnamon" in the title of this recipe, I knew I had to make it! The original recipe had raisins, which no one here in my house would eat, so I omitted them. I also accidentally put an extra teaspoon of cinnamon in the muffin batter, which I didn't discover until after I baked them, oops. I decided to keep that extra teaspoon in the recipe, because you can never have enough cinnamon, right?!?!?!?! I thought this recipe came from my great-grandfather, because he was a baker, but when I flipped the piece of paper over, there was part of a letter written on October 11, 1943, that starts out, "My Dearest Catherine." I'm pretty sure the letter was written by my great-uncle to his wife when he was on the USS Charger in World War II. Pretty cool, huh? I love when a recipe has a bit of "history" to it. It's interesting it was called a "cake" because in the original directions, it says to use, "crinkle" cups, which I figured were cupcake or muffin liners. I decided that this "cake" actually tasted more like a muffin :)

Ingredients

1/4 cup shortening
1 cup white sugar
1 large egg
2 cups white flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup milk

Topping:

2 tablespoons white sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Put paper liners into a 12-cup muffin tin. Set side. In large bowl, put the shortening, sugar and egg. Cream together until smooth by hand with a large spoon or with an electric mixer. Add the flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and milk. Mix well and distribute batter evenly into the 12 muffin liners. In a small bowl, put the white sugar and cinnamon. Stir well with a small spoon and then sprinkle the white sugar and cinnamon mixture evenly on top of the muffins. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of a muffin comes out clean. Remove from oven and transfer muffins to a baking rack to cool. Store covered for up to three days at room temperature.