If you have ever taken a minute to observe a hungry infant, you have seen just how desperate they can be. It doesn’t matter if a bottle is delayed by one minute or ten, the reaction of hunger holds the same intensity. The need to eat is relentless and demanding. The cry for food is most often loud, angry, and repetitive. The craving so strong that their natural instinct is to fight for it.
Yes, Helen!
Today is the 25th of the Month and it’s
Cookie Day at North Star,
in this ‘the year of the Cookie!’
February’s cookie was inspired by one of my favorite book series
The Mitford Series written by Jan Karon.
Millions of Mitford fans will agree – it’s easy to put on a pound or two reading a Mitford novel! In scene after scene, you find colorful characters enjoying ravishing dishes like Puny’s golden-crusted cornbread and Father Tim’s baked ham with bourbon glaze. And before you know it, you’ve read several pages by the glow of the refrigerator lightbulb!
If you love the Mitford books, like I do, you’ll devour Jan Karon’s Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader, edited by Martha McIntosh
The book is filled with recipes for 150 dishes of your favorite scenes from each of the Mitford books. Today I have chosen Avis Packard’s Shortbread Cookie to bake!
Avis Packard, proprietor of The Local
In the little village of less than a thousand, everyone’s dinner – party or otherwise – began at The Local, unless they wanted to make the fifteen mile drive to Food Value. Of course, they could go out to Cloer’s Market, but Hattie Cloer was so well-known for telling customer’s her aches and pains that hardly anyone ever did that. Avis Packard once said, that Hattie Cloer had sent more business to The Local than any advertising he had ever run in the paper. One thing Father Tim liked about Avis Packard was the way he got excited about his groceries. He could rhapsodize about the first fresh strawberries from the valley in a way that made him a veritable Wordsworth of garden fare. “We got a special today on tenderloin that’s so true to the meanin’ of th’ name, you can cut it with a fork.” At Home in Mitford, Chapter 4
Avis’s Shortbread Cookies
5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Nonstick cooking spray for the pans, Confectioners’ sugar, for sprinkling over the cookies.
Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt into a large bowl and set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and granulated sugar on medium speed for 8 minutes, until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and continue beating. Add the vanilla, then add the flour mixture and beat until the mixture just holds together. Chill the dough for at least 1 hour before baking.
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Coat a cookie sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Use an ice cream scooper to scoop the dough out onto the pan.
Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges begin to brown. Remove the shorbreads from the pan, place on a plate, and sprinkle confectioners’ sugar over the warm cookies.
nibble, nibble, nibble…
crumbs on the plate.
nibble, nibble, nibble…
it’s almost too late!
Hurry-Up!
Or you’ll miss the last bite
of something that is great!
Every great baking day needs a faithful Cookie Tester!
“it’s th’ unblessed food that makes you fat.” -Puny Bradshaw Guthrie
hugs n’ blessings and yummy food that sometimes makes you fluffy!
it’s the monday giggles….
fruit
cheese
beer.
jelly
cream cheese
fear.
sets in to meet thee.
(hee-hee, i can find nothing good to eat, and it’s almost morning!)
so just
close the rectangular door
and remember it’s night;
in the morning there will be plenty
in the garden
to feed we!
hugs n’ home-grown blessings to sustain thee!
Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? …So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself… Matthew 6:26 & 34
