The Cookie Recipes

My wife’s grandfather and his father before him were bakers.  My wife’s mother, before she died, shared fond memories of her childhood, one of which involved her father’s bakery and grocery store.  My wife has a picture or two of her great grandfather, standing in front of his grocery with friends, whose jobs were to run other businesses that were required to sustain the population of the small town of Sidney, Ohio about the end of the nineteenth century.

My wife’s mother, Mary, shared many stories and oftentimes she would fetch out of storage in some bureau drawer, trunk or shoebox, some piece of associated memorabilia that enriched the story of the moment, making it that much more personal.  My impression was that she had memories of an especially happy childhood in that quaint little town of so long ago in Ohio; pleasant memories that must have taken the ragged edges from other less pleasant memories that all too often are nested in childhoods passed.

Mary shared memories of playing in the bakery, sampling the cookies and teacakes and running barefoot between the trays in the cooling room in the back of the store. It was during one of these trips back in time that she paused and, excusing herself, disappeared into the back of the apartment.  When she returned she had in her hand a small hinged wooden box.  She took her seat once again and opened the box to reveal a small tattered notepad with pages bound at the end with a piece of coarse twine.  The thick pad had been gently folded to fit the box.  She carefully removed the object from its container and slowly opened it so as not to damage it any more than time already had.  From a distance the slightly yellowed pages appeared to bear characters written in the penmanship typical of times past.  The script was practically illegible.  The pale, faded sepia ink with which it was written had also been the unwitting victim of the ravages of time.  “This was his book of recipes.” She said, thus affixing the memory that she was revisiting to its rightful place in the continuum of space and time.  “I have so many memories” she said, “and I am running out of places to keep them.”  She held the box with both hands, as if by doing so she might protect it from further ravages of time.  “I don’t have the time or space to keep up with these kinds of things either.” She said, extending the box to my wife.  “Perhaps you would like to have this.” She suggested.  We spent the rest of the day chatting about various things before it was time for us call it an evening.  We had reached the end of our vacation visit and we would be starting out the next morning on the long return drive from California to Texas.

Some time after we returned home, I was called upon to sit a well somewhere in West Texas.  As a geologist, it was my job at the wellsite to identify the rock formation that the drillbit was penetrating by looking at the rock cuttings that were being washed up the annulus by the drilling mud.  My job also included detecting the presence of oil in the formation by the stains that are present in the rock particles.  One of the tools that makes this job easier is the binocular microscope that is always in the mudlogger’s trailer.  The other is the light box.  The latter is aptly named, for inside it is a small light bulb and an ultraviolet light tube.  There is a window on the top nested in a foam rubber attachment designed to fit around the eyes so that one’s vision is shaded from external light.  There are holes on either side of the box so that small trays of rock cuttings can be placed inside the box for viewing, and for manipulating the small rock fragments with a stylus or tweezers.  The small light bulb is for viewing the samples in “normal” light.  When the normal light is extinguished, the ultraviolet or “black” light will cause certain minerals to fluoresce in characteristic colors.  It is also very helpful in detecting the presence of oil.  High gravity, or light oil will fluoresce in various shades of light blue and heavier oils will appear to be yellow or orange.  Paper and shirtsleeves fluoresce in iridescent white as do the costumes of scantily clad go-go dancers of another time passed.  The smudges and stains that might be associated with each of these professions will appear as conspicuously dull flat blotches against the strikingly iridescent material to which they are affixed.  The UV light is also popular among crime scene investigators because it reveals the faint remnants of washed away blood and other things.  The next time you are the guest at a five-star hotel you might take along one of these portable devices in case you are interested in how clean your sink and bed sheets are.

I was noting the presence of roughly forty gravity oil in a sample from 10,000 feet in the Wolfcamp Formation when the idea struck me that whatever comprised the faded ink in that cookbook of times passed might be very readable under a portable UV light.  When I returned home my wife and I set about reviving theses formulas for the resurrection of long dead cookies.

The fuzzy purplish light just on the edge of human vision cast a surreal image on the first page of that little book.  I could almost smell the fragrances of that ancient bakery.  Faint smudges of what was probably once butter or cookie dough, the partial pinky print, etched in the remnants of some ingredient were all that remained of that long dead creator of things good to eat.  I carefully turned the page and the story began.

The first page dealt with jelly rolls, sugar cakes, currant cakes and all the good things that make one awake on Saturday morning to hasten to the bakery on the square to purchase goodies to be eaten with milk or coffee.  Sadly, the first item on the list was tacked to the page with the Roman numeral VII.  Lost somewhere in unrecorded history were recipes I through VI.  I wondered what they were.  They probably had tasted good once. 

Page two told of lemon cakes, tea cakes and ginger cakes.  I read the ingredients aloud as my wife typed them into the desktop, my mouth watering as I savored what they portrayed.  First we recorded for posterity the makings of the jelly roll, two pounds of sugar, three pounds of flour, the list went on. 

Next came the sugar cookies, large quantities of sugar, volumes of butter, a quart of eggs, milk, flour, ammonia…..

WHOA!…..   Hold the damned horses, Clyde!  Sumthin’ ain’t right!

AMMONIA!!??

What was this guy doing?  Was he making cookies or washing the sink?  Maybe he tasted too much of the cooking sherry, perhaps he ate a little too much nutmeg, or maybe he’d been sucking on the hemp that he tied the book together with, if you catch my drift.

On the other hand, maybe he was thinking about washing the windows and included the word by mistake.  It happens occasionally.  My first thought was to discard that particular ingredient, or perhaps that recipe entirely.  I realized though, that if we were going to record this historically we must do it dutifully.  I read on…..3 oz ammonia, 12 lb flour.

Roman numeral IX was for sugar cakes NO. 2.  It was a variation of the first.  It required only one-third of the eggs that were called for in sugar cakes NO. 1, and it needed a little over half the milk that went into the first recipe; besides it called for only 1 oz ammonia.

Hmmm…….

There it is again.    Ammonia……..

Whom was this guy really cooking for?  I stared at the sugar cake page in the eerie iridescence of the purple light as I imagined the real reason for the “cooling room” that fronted in the back of his shop for a landing pad that served his patrons who made the long trek from Jupiter. 

“Nanu Nanu!”  they greeted my grandfather-in-law as they stepped off their little space ships.  “Do you have our order ready for sugar cakes NO. 2 with the extra ammonia?” they must have asked. 

I considered suggesting to my wife that perhaps we were meddling in something that is best left alone.  But before I was able to speak, the thought occurred to me.  “I wonder what your average Jupiterian pays for sugar cakes NO. 2 with extra ammonia?”  I also wondered about the media of exchange. 

The UV light switch timed out and my mind returned to the more normally illuminated world.  I turned to my wife, who was already looking at me.  We both spoke.

“AMMONIA?!”  we chimed.

“What would he possibly be putting ammonia in these things for?”  We both wondered aloud.  “Was ‘ammonia’ the code word for some secret ingredient that might otherwise be unacceptable to the city fathers of a small time-past Ohio town?”  I thought about my mother-in-law Mary, and her stoic beliefs regarding morality and my previously long hair.  Nah.  I was barking up the wrong tree.  There must be some other explanation.

Although we had a computer, we did not yet have access to the internet.  This was going to take some shoe leather.  We made numerous telephone calls and visited several grocery store bakeries before we uncovered the real solution to this mystery.  As it turns out, my grandfather-in-law’s “ammonia” referred to bakers ammonia.

"Baker’s ammonia" is the common name for ammonium carbonate.  It is also known by the curious name of “hartshorn,” a name which dates back to the time almost before God, if you subscribe to the time chart favored by some Christians.  We discovered during our search that the same people who reportedly visited America before Columbus did, and taught the native tribes lacrosse discovered this particular leavening in their Scandinavian homeland.  Hardy tribespeople of that frigid clime discovered, probably by trial and error that ground up reindeer antler contained an ingredient which took the breath away in an unpleasant manner and which, by the way, made their cookies light and crisp.

There are several “gourmet groceries” in Houston, Texas which offer delicacies that range from common and exotic to downright macabre.  Without getting too funky here, I have often wondered how some of our ancestors discovered some of the strange things that are available for human consumption.  How many dead fungus tasters were required to separate the mushrooms from the toadstools?  Who found out that humans could acquire tastes for fish eggs, pig brains, chicken feet, sow’s ears, cow stomach, pig intestines, snails, grasshoppers, ants and the decanted juice from festering grapes?  These fall into the common to exotic category.  I would include a “macabre” category list but the Twinkie, in my opinion, has already been too heavily criticized over the years.  Some sources of our daily cuisine are not so unknown.  It is no mystery, for example, who determined that hair, roach pieces, mouse parts and rat shit are gastronomically acceptable.  It is most likely the same government agency, which determined that catsup is a veggie, despite the fact that they have led us to believe that its primary ingredient is supposedly the tomato, a fruit.  I have suspected all along that catsup is made from no, not cats, but recycled pizza droppings.

Besides, the guy who discovered that ground up reindeer antlers make a good substitute for cookie leavening must have been snowed in.

We talked about trying out some of my wife’s grandfather’s recipes for quite a long time before we actually followed through.  This postponement in pushing ahead and searching out the elusive hartshorn was actually caused by our unpleasant experience with our first try with one of the recipes which, by the way, did not require hartshorn.  We realized when we first examined the cookbook that we were dealing in bulk quantity.  Obviously, anything that requires six pounds of sugar and fifteen pounds of flour is going to be big.  We ruled out a short term lease on a bakery and even the rental of a commercial size mixer.  My mind ran wild for possible substitutes.  We already had a ten gallon pot that would hold most of the ingredients, but I could not picture myself mixing that stuff with a stick, and we did not have a large enough mixer.  Our K-Mart blue-light-special mixer called the mixer’s local and went on strike whenever we tried to beat more than five eggs at one time.  I did have a drill press in the garage though and I had seen a paint mixing paddle for five gallon paint cans at the local hardware store.  These could all be solutions to our dilemma.  The whole experience was pretty ugly and I don’t want to dwell on it.  I will share the low points, though.  First, getting the drill press cleaned up and into the kitchen was more than I care to experience again.  We washed the pot and we scrubbed the brand new steel paint paddle.  After getting the ingredients into the pot in the required amounts we turned on the drill press and lowered the spinning steel paddle into the aluminum pot.  The paddle got traction on the bottom of the pot during the mixing process and nearly dumped the whole mess onto the kitchen floor.  It would have, too, had it not been for my quick thinking and my reaction to raise the paddle.  We proceeded more carefully.  After the batter was mixed we put the first two trays in the oven.  A first bite told us that we must have left out a key taste enhancing ingredient.  A second bite revealed that the cookies contained an extra ingredient that we had not intended.  When the steel paddle nearly turned over the aluminum pot it had succeeded in gouging quantities of aluminum shavings from the pot and distributing them throughout the batter.

It was decision time once again.  I was faced with straining the entire five gallon batch of batter through a tea strainer to get out the shavings or to discard the whole batch.  Begrudgingly, we opted for the latter.

The following year I gave my wife a heavy-duty KitchenAid mixer with a three gallon mixing pot.  I am told that giving kitchen utensils as special occasion gifts is a guy thing that ranks slightly above gift wrapping a gross of condoms. Besides, I told myself, it will be a KitchenAid experience.  Everyone should have a KitchenAid experience, but that's a story for another time.

Three years or so later we started talking once again about the cookie recipes, and once again the question arose, “where do you get kitchen grade ammonium carbonate?”  Christmas was nearly a month passed and we were fresh out of reindeers.  By this point we had been accessing the internet for some time.  We were informed by several websites that ammonium carbonate is available in most pharmacies.  When the first pharmacist told me that she did not have ammonium carbonate, I jovially replied that several websites indicated that ammonium carbonate is available at better pharmacies, she became visibly flustered but did not demand that I leave the premises.  I felt badly for my little joke.  Little jokes shouldn’t be mistreated.  I disproved the “available in most pharmacies” idea though, after visiting most pharmacies.  Later, my wife heard about a pharmacy near us that was famous for doing things to medicines that made them taste good.  They were also known to be well stocked in the odd things category.  I left work early so that I would get there before they closed.  This time the pharmacist who told me they didn’t have it was a guy, so I decided to try my little joke again.  The pharmacist didn’t miss a beat.  He must have heard it before.  With both hands flat on the table he looked me square in the eye.  “We’re not a better pharmacy sir, we’re the best.  You need to go to a better pharmacy.”   No leavening there, so I took my leave.  Once outside, the thought came to me, “Available in most pharmacies where?    Jupiter!?”  My body chilled as I thought about that long ago “cooling room” behind my grandfather-in-law’s bakery and the little purple guys who came for the sugar cakes NO. 2 with extra ammonia.

My wife and I kicked around the idea of making cookies for a while longer before we finally took the wholesale route and called bakery suppliers.  The one that had baker’s ammonia in stock was thirty miles away.  When I was a kid I got thirty miles from home less than once every two years.  “How much is this stuff?” I asked.  The conversation was engulfed in a large quantity of dead air, after which the person on the other end of the connection told me that a one gallon container costs sixteen dollars.  I broke the gulf by asking, “What is the smallest quantity you have?”  The voice replied “One gallon.”

My wife and I decided that if we were going to do this we should go ahead and get it. 

Last Friday we went down to the bakery wholesaler to get some baker’s ammonia.  By the time we got there the price was twenty dollars.  When we asked about the sixteen-dollar price, she looked at us as if we were from, you guessed it, Jupiter.  When that person behind the counter finally got around to asking for the name of my business and my tax number, I presented her with my geological consulting corporation business card.  She took it, eyeing me coldly.  “We’re expanding.” I offered.  She followed the fish eye with the information that the minimum order is normally seventy-five dollars.  Since this was a first time offense, she would let us off on probation.  Next time we would have to have a better story and we would have to open an account.  We agreed that the next time we would on both counts if she would sell us the baker’s ammonia this time.  To express our good faith we also bought fifty pounds of lard, which presently serves as a doorstop.

Last Saturday we made cookies.  The main thing I learned once again is that five gallons of cookie dough is a lot of cookies.  I grinned at my wife and commented that if I had gotten this many cookies when I was younger, I might be a different person.  She wasn’t amused.  It’s a guy thing, I guess.

We mixed all the dry ingredients first.  It was at that moment that I learned all there is to know about baker’s ammonia.  The plastic container is sealed with a clever little gizmo that is reusable and assures a good seal every time.  There’s a reason for that.  When I opened the container I discovered that the baker’s ammonia powder is inside a resealable plastic bag inside the plastic canister.  There’s a reason for that, too.  A couple seconds after getting the bag open I stumbled back and breathed once again with an audible gasp.  My wife, across the room, asked “What’s the ammonia smell?”

I remembered the website of a few days ago, which indicated that baker’s ammonia evaporates during cooking, the gas causing the cookie to be crisp and airy.  “Not to worry,” it encouraged, “for in small items like cookies the ammonium carbonate evaporates completely, although the kitchen will smell slightly of ammonia during baking.”  After the first two batches of cookies, our kitchen smelled like the stairwell in the parking garage at the First Annual Wino and Street Person convention in San Diego, California.  Twelve batches latter I couldn’t smell anything.  I couldn’t taste or hear anything either.