Cottage Cheese Cookies (1959)

One of the nicest-tasting cookies I'll probably never make again.

It’s surprising more people don’t know about Meta Givens. She did as much for home cooking and baking as Fannie Farmer, Irma S. Rombauer or the fictional Betty Crocker. She was a highly educated nutritionist and home economist who earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Missouri (Mizzou!) and then master’s degrees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Chicago in the early 1900s. After years of instruction and research, she produced a number of best-selling cookbooks, including The Modern Family Cook Book (first edition in 1942) and Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, Volumes 1 and 2 (first edition in 1947).

Ms. Given recommended Americans achieve adequate nutrition each day by eating servings of 10 different categories of foods, including green and yellow vegetables, citrus fruits, including whole grains. While many of her ideas focused on fiber, protein and nutrients, in each of her cook books she made plenty of room for treats as well.

Ms. Given was a big believer in the power of milk and dairy, so it’s no surprise her Modern Encyclopedia includes a recipe for this week’s Cottage Cheese Cookies – which also contain a lot of butter.

Cottage Cheese Cookies

From The Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, Volumes 1 and 2 by Meta Givens (1959 edition)

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

¼ tsp D.A. baking powder or 1/3 tsp tartrate or phosphate type

1 cup soft butter, ½ lb

1 cup creamed cottage cheese

Stiff red jelly or well-drained strawberry or cherry preserves

Have baking sheets ready – do not grease. Start oven 10 min before baking; set to moderately hot (425 degrees F). Sift flour, measure, resift with baking powder. Cream butter until shiny, add cheese and cream until well blended. (Press cheese with large curds through coarse sieve.) Add flour in 3 or 4 portions, mixing until smooth after each.

Shape into a ball, wrap in waxed paper and chill about an hr.

Remove half the dough at a time. Shape into a rectangle; pat and roll out carefully on a lightly floured pastry cloth into a 10 x 15-inch rectangle about 1/8-inch thick. Cut into 6 strips one way and 4 the other to obtain 24 2 ½-inch squares. Place a scant tsp of jelly or preserves in center of each square (do only a few sqs at a time), then fold corners of dough up to center, pressing all meeting edges together firmly. It is important edges be sealed together well so jelly won’t run out onto sheet. Place filled squares onto baking sheet. Bake about 12 min or until delicately browned. Remove immediately from pan to cake racks to cool. 4 dozen.

Challenges and Changes

I will start by stating that this is the first recipe of this blog where I nearly threw in the towel and decided just NOT to have a post this week. So many challenges.

First, Ms. Givens gives us a mixed up recipe, at the beginning telling us to have the baking sheets ready and oven preheated – but then we have to refrigerate the dough for an hour. She also tells us how to make ‘creamed cottage cheese’ after she’s included it in the recipe. This is definitely one to read a few times before starting. And, I'd like to know where she got her 1/3 tsp measuring spoon. Since my baking powder was phosphate type (not double action), I had to estimate.

So, the mixing part was fine. I ended up putting the cottage cheese through my mini-food processor as the ‘coarse sieve’ method wasn’t great. I chilled the dough. Then the real problems began.

Ms. Givens tells us in the cookie’s introduction that they should be shaped like ‘little square pillows,’ and emphasizes the firm pressing of all meeting edges so that everything is sealed tight. I shaped a few, putting in what seemed like a ‘scant tsp’ of preserves, and then tightly pressing all edges. I baked the a few test cookies for 10 minutes, during which time most of the edges easily spread apart.

So, Take Two. Despite the open seams, the tester cookies didn’t leak any jelly. I decided to use less jelly, and then REALLY pinch the dough together in the middle forming more of a ‘cushion’ than a ‘pillow.’

Still cute, right?

Nope. Not great. One cookie came out lovely, the other two not so much. A 30% success rate is not encouraging. It was brainstorming time.

Take Three: I decided to also try a triangular ‘turnover’ shape (there are triangular pillows, so why not), crimping the edges with a fork. I ended up having to crimp both the tops and bottoms of the cookies to really get a good seal. I also again reduced the amount of preserves in each cookie.

While not perfect, the triangles were definitely an improvement over the square pillows or cushions. Even if a little jelly seeped through, the crimps held better than the pinched seams. I went through the remaining dough making triangles. <SIGH>

The Ratings

Cookie Appearance: 8

Cookie Texture: 7

Cookie Mouthfeel: 8

Cookie Flavor: 8

Overall Cookie Rating: 8

The most interesting comment from nearly all the raters: this is not a cookie, it's a cherry pie or turnover. Well, you all will have to take that up with Ms. Givens. They're not wrong; they are just like little cherry turnovers made with pastry dough and not a cake-like batter, but the semantics of a 'cookie' perhaps will have to be debated. (NOTE: I had already decided next week's cookie - Wasp Nest Cookies - before receiving the survey notes and now I'm looking forward to seeing if they are deemed cookies or not as well.)

Nonetheless, the raters were more generous that I would have been in their place. While they tasted good, I definitely would have given low marks for the cookie's appearance. The tiny bits of cottage cheese in the dough brown in the oven which gave the cookies unattractive speckles. And then, as one rater suggested: "needs glaze or icing on top". YES. A little vanilla glaze drizzled on top, or maybe just a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar before baking would have made a big difference looks-wise.

I want to iterate that according to the rules of this blog, I don't add steps to the recipe unless it's just not working at all 'as-is,' and so I didn't try an egg wash to better seal the edges or give them a lovely sheen. Ms. Givens didn't mention it so I did my best without it - but I believe that with a little egg wash, the seams in the pillow shaped versions might have held better and also held sprinkled cinnamon sugar to the tops. If you attempt these cookies, I would recommend making an egg wash (1 yolk briskly mixed with 1-2 T of water) and seeing if the pillow shape can truly be achieved. I think they'd be pretty. I think it may be a while before I find out, though, as I don't think I'll be baking these again for a long while.

Next week’s recipe: Wasp Nest Cookies (1949)