Joe's Cookies
(I have no idea who Joe was - but that is the name on my mothers recipe card)
From: Helen Delano
Date: Tue Feb 13, 2001
1 cup butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
5 cups flour
4 Tbsp. milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
vanilla extract
almond extract
Cream butter and sugar. beat in eggs. Mix salt and soda into flour. Add 1 cup flour, 1 Tbsp. milk, 1 cup flour, etc. until flour and milk
are in (mixing well between additions) Add enough vanilla and almond, (I never measure flavors for this recipie- I've made it for over 40
years - maybe 1 tsp of each). Chill dough.
Roll thin on a floured board. Cut and place on ungreased cookie sheets.
Bake at 400ºF until golden (about 6 to 7 min. in my oven). Remove from sheet immediately and cool on rack.
These can be rolled a bit thicker for a softer cookie. They decorate well - colored sugar and sprinkles before baking or frosting after.
They make great stained glass cookies - put foil on cookie sheet, cut out large cookies - transfer to foil. use small cutter to cut a window
in the cookie. Fill window with crushed lollypop or lifesavers or similar candy. Bake as usual. Slide foil off cookie sheet to cooling
rack. after candy is hard, peel cookies off the foil (or vice versa).
Try to handle the dough as little as possible and use as little extra flour as you can - and when you gather and reroll scraps, rechill the
dough between handlings. I use my KitchenAid mixer, but have made half batches of this in food processor. As a desperate college student I even mixed by hand, but it gave me respect for pre-electric cooks.
Helen Delano