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Next up on the cooking journey was a batch of cookies. Let me tell you, this recipe makes a LOT of cookies! About six dozen. So this would be an excellent recipe to make if you need a large number of cookies for a particular purpose. The name on this recipe card is Nellie Buker. She was the wife of my grandfather’s brother Arthur, so that makes her Carol’s aunt and my great aunt. Art and Nellie did not have any children, so Carol inherited many of their items when they passed away, and many of the items I brought home were theirs. I have a large box stuffed full of their silverware with a bunch of different older pieces that I will share at some point.

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In the final photo, I have the cookies on top of a quilt. When we were cleaning out Carol’s house, we found two quilts in the attic. My mom washed them and they are in surprisingly great shape. Carol can’t remember where they came from, because it’s doubtful she even knew they were in the attic. She moved into the house with my grandma after my grandfather died, which would have been in 1989, and my grandma died in 1997. I think it’s likely Carol never even looked through the attic. Her best guess is that her Grandma Buker (my great grandmother) made them They are definitely hand sewn.

On to the recipe!

As I’ve mentioned before, I used half butter and half shortening. I like the flavor of butter and the structure of shortening.

Mixed it all up with the sugar

Then added the eggs, milk, vanilla, and flour, mixed and then added the soda, salt, and spices

Mixed that all together

Chopped up the dates and added them to the batter.

Chopped up the walnuts and added to the batter. You could add any type of nuts but walnuts were what I had on hand.

The recipe says to drop by teaspoon onto a baking sheet, bake at 375 for 15 minutes. I thought 15 minutes seemed way too long and I was right. My first batch (evidenced below by the darker brown color) I baked for 10 minutes. That was too long. They weren’t burnt, so if you like your cookies more on the crisp, done side, then maybe you’ll want to go for 10 minutes. I found that the sweet spot for me to get tender, lightly browned cookies was 7-8 minutes, so basically half of what the recipe said. If your cookies are bigger than the teaspoon size, maybe a longer cooking time would be needed as well.

I really loved the flavor of these cookies. They are a great texture and the dates add a different flavor than raisins (which I’ll admit that I don’t really care for).