NATIONAL COOKIE DAY!

December 4, 2021 was National Cookie Day

by Lisa Rienerth and Kathy Petras

According to the National Calendar Day website, we can thank the Dutch for the English word “cookie”. It is derived from the Dutch word koekie, meaning “little cake.” The origin of the cookie appears to begin in Persia in the 7th century, soon after the use of sugar became common in the region. They then spread to Europe and were common at all levels of society by the 14th century. Cookies arrived in America in the 17th century with macaroons and gingerbread cookies being the most popular. 

Cookies have been a part of our lives for a long time. To find out what types of cookies the residents of Medina County liked to bake in the days gone by, I turned to the local papers…

Medina County Gazette, 9 June 1882

This recipe was reprinted from another publication and it seems to be a type of sugar cookie.  If you are curious about the ingredient saleratus, it is the precursor to baking soda. Notice the lack of oven temperature and baking time. I am thinking this is because they did not have electric or gas ovens in 1882, but wood and coal burning stoves.

Medina County Gazette, 14 February 1908

Here is a recipe for Good Cookies. Do not try this recipe as is! It is missing a very important ingredient...FLOUR. 

I tried to make theses cookies thinking maybe they made some type of cookie without flour back in the day. However, the batter was like soup. So...I put the batter in a cupcake tin and tried baking it that way. Well...they kind of exploded in my oven....so be sure to add a cup and a half of flour if you make these and add a few teaspoons of vanilla for more flavor. 

You will also notice this recipe does not tell you what temperature to bake the cookies at or how long it would take. I baked my second batch..the one with flour & vanilla..at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.

And...I only made a third of the recipe, because who needs 4 gallons of cookies? 

Medina County Gazette, 5 July 1918

The next recipe is from 1918 for Oatmeal Drop Cookies. It has quite a few ingredients which I do not add to my oatmeal cookies. One of them being "citron". Citron is a citrus fruit that looks a lot like a big, bumpy lemon.  Lemons and citrons grew in popularity during the 1918 influenza outbreak. Some how information began to circulate that the citrus fruits would keep you healthy and maybe even keep you from getting the flu. While this information was false, it did help lemon growers with their profits! 

The Lodi Review, 11 December 1947

This 1947 recipe for Chocolate Drops includes all the measurements, the oven temperature and the cooking time! However, it doesn't tell you what type of nuts you use for the chopped nut meats! Nut meats is just another term for the part of the nut people eat, but was it walnuts? Pecans? Almonds? I guess it is baker's choice. 

The Lodi Review, 22 July 1954

This Date with Spice Cookies recipe even has a border so you could "clip for your recipe file".  Mrs. Cliff [Doris] Padgett, sent in this recipe to the Lodi Review in 1954. I also baked these cookies. They were  delicious and easy to bake, because it gave you all the information you needed and none of the ingredients were unknown to me. 

These are just a few examples I found in the older local newspapers. Another place to find what types of cookies were being baked in Medina County is of course a cookbook. 

Old Cookbooks - Medina & MCDL

Published cookbooks are a great and popular way to share favorite recipes. The cookbook section at the Medina Library is still one of the most popular parts of the collection! And there are over 200 cookie cookbooks at the Medina Library alone!

The oldest cookbook at the Medina Library is a 1908 edition of  the Medina Cookbook that was compiled by the Ladies of the First Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Obviously a well loved and
well used cookbook

Treasure trove of family recipes, some written in "Fran's"
handwriting.

Besides all of the wonderful recipes printed inside, this cookbook, signed by "Fran", included pages at the back to write in your favorite recipes and it also contained recipes clipped from magazines and ingredient containers.  

Many organizations printed cookbooks as fundraisers, such as these:

Fundraising cookbooks from St Francis Xavier Church in 1970 and the Medina High School, class of 1996.

This cookbook is for sale at the Medina County
Convention & Visitors Bureau

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   And as recently as this past  Candlelight Walk in Medina, the 2021 Edition of the Medina Square Farmers Market cookbook was on sale.   These local cookbooks reflect their communities and provide names of some of our ancestors.

From 1990 through 2007, the Medina County District Library published a cookbook around the Holidays. Many delicious recipes were submitted by staff members. They were extremely popular with our members. For me, it is a trip down memory lane to see all the names of the staff that have come and gone in the 30+ years that I have worked here. 

Volume 13, published in 2003 was dedicated to cookie recipes.

MCDL Cookbooks

And December 3rd was National 3-D Print Day!

Did you see what they did there? 3-D Print Day on 3-December?

One of the joys of the VWMFH&LC's Makerspace is the 3D printer. You send an STL file to the Makerspace email address makerspace@mcdl.info and a few short hours and a little bit of money later and you have your 3D printed object.

Cookie Cutters

Once you find your favorite cookie recipe, you may want to use a cookie cutter to shape the cookies into cute and whimsical shapes.

Here are some really cute cookie cutters printed on the Makerspace's 3-D Printer:

Cookie cutters created on the 3D printer

And yes, you can make 3-D cookies using cookie cutters created on the 3-D printer:

Images taken from Thingiverse.com

You can easily find ready made files on these two web sites:

https://www.thingiverse.com/

https://www.myminifactory.com/

If you are artistic and tech savvy, this YouTube video shows how to use Adobe Illustrator & Tinkercad to create your own 3-D file designs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvcO2Pavwdo

I do wish the cookie cutter files came with the perfect recipe for the 3-D cookies.  After multiple FAILED attempts, I've decided I don't have the patience for 3-D cookies. The bear and the tree cookie shapes from the photo above swelled and closed up the "slots" that were suppose to fit the pieces together. However, several of the cookie shapes are new favorites in our house.

My daughter put some highlights on our new
favorite cookie shapes.

By the way, while the "blob" cookies from my experiments may have looked inedible, they were still quite yummy!

Sources for newspaper cookie recipes:

• National Day Calendar,  https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-cookie-day-december-4/
• Medina County Gazette, 9 June 1882, page 3
• Medina County Gazette, 14 February 1908, page 2
• Medina County Gazette, 15 July 1918, page 4
• The Lodi Review, 11 December 1947, page 9
• The Lodi Review, 22 July 1954, page 3
• April White, https://aprwhite.com/portfolio/how-the-influenza-pandemic-popularized-lemons/