Maida Heatter; Cookies are Magic and Chocolate is Forever

I used to make Maida Heatter's Blondies for an annual bake sale. My boss would come and buy up the whole plate! They have been a favorite recipe since I bought the Book of Great Cookies in the late 1970s.

Heatter passed away last year at age 102. I am relieved to know that baking desserts did not shorten her life. Because we are in the COVID-19 Lock Down in Michigan and I feel the urge to make cookies and eat chocolate like I haven't felt in years.

And yea! Here are some of Heatter's best recipes for cookies and chocolate desserts being published in new collections!

The instructions begin with all the basics--information on how to read the recipe, select and prepare your ingredients, the equipment needed, even storing your baked goods.

Cookies Are Magic is divided into drop, bar, ice box, rolled, and hand-formed cookies, and 'More!" which includes Madeleines, shortbread, lady fingers, biscotti and, well, more.

You will find Mrs. L.B.J.'s Moonrocks and Giant Ginger Cookies; Georgia Pecan Bars and Florida Lemon Squares; Peanut Butter Pillows and Coconut Cookies; Plan Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookies and Checkboards; Kansas Cookies and Charlie Brown's Peanut Cookies.

I love a chewy cookie and am eager to try Oatmeal Molasses Cookies with shredded coconut and nuts.

Chocolate Is Forever includes Simple Cakes; Special Occasion Cakes; Cookies and Bars; Pastries, Pies, Puddings and More; and Candy, Fudge and Chocolate Drinks.

Heatter tells how her Oreo Cookie Cake was inspired by a USA Today reporter telling her that Oreo cookies were the most popular commercial cookies in the world.

Heatter's mother served the F.B.I. Chocolate Layer Cake when J. Edgar Hoover came to dine. He threatened an F.B.I. investigation if he didn't get the recipe!

Who could pass up Positively-the-Absolute-Best-Chocolate-Chip-Cookies? They are my weakness! Turns out that polls show they are America's favorite cookie to make at home. Heatter tweaks the traditional Toll House recipe.

Black-Bottom Pie was a favorite of Pulitzer-Prize winning Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling, Cross Creek). Heater agrees and shares a 'glorious' recipe.

I love Heatter's Homemade Chocolate Syrup with 19 drinks and variations! I imagine having it on hand for Chocolate Banana Milkshakes in summer and Hot Mocha in winter.

I am going to get into the kitchen tomorrow and try the country fair prize-winning Buena Vista Loaf Cake, a "plain and wonderful chocolate loaf loaded with fruit, nuts and chocolate chips--almost a fruit cake but not as sweet." With a crunchy crust, I think it will be great with my afternoon cup of tea.

I received free ebooks from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Chocolate Is Forever: Classic Cakes, Cookies, Pastries, Pies, Puddings, Candies, Confections, and More
by Maida Heatter
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 9780316460149
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

Cookies Are Magic: Classic Cookies, Brownies, Bars, and More
by Maida Heatter
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 9780316460187
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

News, TBR, Quilts

We have been in social isolation but for me it's not been a boon time for reading. It has been hard to concentrate, but I am getting better. Luckily, I read my review books before the last minute.

We have been taking walks around the neighborhood, rarely seeing anyone. There have been dog walkers and some children on bikes, and parents with little ones in strollers. The school across the street is closed down.

But, Spring is showing its face here in S.E. Michigan. The crocus are in bloom, the daylilies and Sedum and daffodils and tulips are growing quickly.

The fitness center is closed, so no working with my coach. The community center is closed and so no visiting with the quilt group. The library is closed so book club is cancelled. The dentist office is closed. The restaurants are closed.

What isn't closed is our kitchen and I have baked a pie and cookies over the last week!

My mother-in-law majored in pie-making and shared this easy recipe with me years ago. Here is the recipe from her recipe book:

I have been making these cookies for close to forty years. I had no chocolate chips in the house so skipped the cocoa powder and substituted butterscotch chips.

I am also practising the piano again. I can almost play as well as I did as a teenager, lol. One music book I pulled out is Herb Alpert songs. I learned them in the summer of 1965, and playing them brings back a lot of memories.

I have finished reading 36 books this year! But of course there are lots more waiting for me.

In the mail:

• The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter. I read the author's novel Barren Cover and my review is quoted in the paperback edition!
• Little Family by Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Reading Now:

• Pelosi by Molly Ball
• The King of Confidence by Miles Harvey, about the leader of a cult on Michigan's Beaver Island
• Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution by Jerome Charyn
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was the book club read, now cancelled. Since I haven't read it since the 1970s I want to finish it...sometime...

On my NetGalley and Edelweiss shelf:

• The Story of More by Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah
• Chasing Chopin by Annik LaFarge
• The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
• Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates
• How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers
• American Follies by Norman Lock, author of Feast Day of the Cannibals, The Wreckage of Eden, and A Boy in His Winter
• Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin about Branwell Bronte
• The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible New England History by Meg Muckenhoupt. (At university, I wrote a paper on the roots of American cooking when colonists had to adapt their traditions to new foods.)  

On my physical bookshelf still to read are review books:

• Simon the Fiddler by Jeanette Jiles
• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson, author of Dead Wake 
• Country by Michael Hughes

Not a great photo, but I finished my yellow roses sampler and it is at the machine quilter.

I am working on the hand appliqued borders for my Hospital Sketches quilt. So many talented quilter have shared their completed quilts on the Facebook page run by the quilt designer Barbara Brackman.

I have three blocks of my many-faces-of-Emily Dickinson quilt. The one I am working on now was my first idea, Emily in her white dress and half hidden behind a curtain, looking out at the world.

The worst part of social isolation is not seeing our son, his girlfriend, and the grandpuppies! Sunny is getting SO BIG!

They are patterning social isolation for us.

I am sad to think that next month's book club may be cancelled. We are to read Miracle Creek and have a Skype visit with the author, Angie Kim.

But we all must do what we must. 

Stay home. Read good books. Enjoy your hobbies. Love your family. Stay safe.