Chocolate Jumbos

Merry Christmas and Happy Celebration!! 

I thought you might enjoy a favorite holiday cookie recipe, Chocolate Jumbos. They are a chocolate spice cookie with a butter cream frosting. They have a hole in the middle — and they just don't taste right without that hole. Even as I write this, my mouth begins to water for the taste of those cookies.

The recipe has been in the family since the 1800’s. We always make Chocolate Jumbos during the holidays and even now these cookies remain a family favorite. Recently my youngest daughter called me and said, “Mom, I want to make Chocolate Jumbos with you. I want to learn how to make them properly.” That made me feel good within my soul. To spend the time with my daughter carrying on a family tradition makes these cookies a taste of the past, the present, and the future.

This recipe is all we ever had to go by — just the ingredients, no other written instructions. I did make my own changes. I only use butter, no shortening.

My mother always rolled out the cookies with her rolling pin and used a biscuit cutter to cut them out into perfect circles. I have added my own flare by using a scoop. I scoop out the dough, put it on a cookie sheet I have sprayed with cooking spray, then flatten the dough with my hand. Using the handle tip of a wooden spoon, I swirl in a hole.

Have fun!! I truly hope you enjoy these cookies as much as my family does; a part of my life I share with you.

Back home...for a moment

This is the time of year I get transported back to my childhood in upstate New York. I sat on my front door step here in Charlotte a couple of days ago and ate an apple. It tastes different in the fall as the leaves softly float to the ground. Somehow it is sweeter, crisper, more delicious.

When I was a kid I would go out to the orchard in the back of our house. Now, I had to walk through the pasture and across the creek to get to it, but those mountain apples in that unkempt orchard were the best. They were small, red, and so very sweet. Many of them were “protein apples”, meaning they had a little worm in them — you eat around that part. But no chemicals, no GMO, just an apple. The cows liked them too. 

We also had a couple of winter pear trees. My father would lift my siblings and me up in the bucket of our tractor and we would pick pears in the fall and put them in bushel baskets. They would then be put in the cellar of our house and throughout the winter they would get ripe and we would have fresh fruit during the holidays. Mom would can many of those pears, too. I liked them better when you could hold them in your hand and bite into them. 

I think this year, as my family gathers together, I will ask my kids what memories they are fond of from their childhood. I’d like to know what brings them back home as they sit on their front door steps, too.

Right now, I think I need to get a cup of apple cider and sit on my front door step and go back to the Catskills for a few moments. I’ll return to Charlotte in 20 minutes or so.