Baking has always been fun for me since I got my first cookbook and started making little bitty cakes and pies and cupcakes in my tiny oven, before Easy Bake or maybe an early edition.  I just know I had little pans and made little things to eat.  Then I graduated to my mother’s pots and pans and stove.  Maybe that’s why I still have her old mixing bowls and still think they are the best bowls ever.

Today, I was hungry for my grandmother’s ice box cookies, but heaven help me if I make something that starts with a pound of butter when I don’t have a crowd in the house.  Yikes!  My paternal grandmother, Aggie, made these when I was little.  I keep her cookie jar, minus the lid, in my kitchen window.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

My mother made them, too.  Nothing was better than the cookie dough pressed into squared rolls and wrapped in waxed paper in the refrigerator.   As kids, we would sneak in and slice off a hunk, making no pretense of polite slices, and eat the dough raw.  Can’t believe how wickedly good it was.  I made them for my four kids when they were little, but I must have…okay, I know I did…been caught with the dough and they picked up on it.  One of them told me she couldn’t remember having these baked.  For your information, they are nice little butter pecan cookies.  Really.

I’m not sure Aggie ever ate the dough but there was a twinkle about her, so maybe.

Aggie on 39th St

Many years later, I was teaching a course for the American Red Cross on Safe and Healthy Kitchens and we had to tell the people that it wasn’t healthy to eat raw cookie dough.  That was the hardest bit of information for me to give anyone, nonbeliever that I am.

I’m trying to restrain myself from running to the kitchen to start creaming the butter and sugar right now.  Help!  You go make them for me.   Note:  The recipe doesn’t say how long to bake them.  What does that tell you?

Aggie’s Ice Box Cookies

Preheat oven to 350

1 lb butter

2 1/2 cups sugar

3 eggs

1 Tbl Karo syrup

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp sode

5 1/2 cups flour

1 cup nuts

Cream butter and sugar together.  Add eggs and vanilla.  Add 1 cup flour sifted with soda and salt.  Add rest of flour with nuts.

Work on board and make 4 loaves.  Wrap in waxed paper and keep in refrigerator.

Slice and bake as needed.