ZEBRA COOKIES
10 june 2006

my grandma is a really good baker.

actually, both of them are. my dad's mom's specialities as a baker are christmas cookies (we usually make a minimum of a dozen different types every year), grape pies, angelfood cakes, & peach cobblers. my mom's mom's specialities are strudel, spritz cookies, hamentaschen/munn cookies, & banana cakes.

of course, as a kid i favored zebra cookies made by my grandma paula (mom's mom), primarily b/c of the chocolate involvement. so i called her up & had her dictate the recipe to me so i could give it a shot. she told me that it's written on the back of a university city political flier, which would make it over forty years old (as they moved to their current house out of u city in the mid-'60s). she thinks she copied it out of a magazine while she was getting her hair done.

it's true: my grandmas are pretty much awesome.

INGREDIENTS
1/3 of a stick of butter
2 oz bitter chocolate
1 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 t baking powder
1/4 t salt
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1/2 cup powdered sugar

METHOD
melt butter & chocolate in a double boiler. in a medium mixing bowl, sift flour, sugar, salt, & baking powder. add melted chocolate mixture, eggs, & vanilla, & stir with a heavy spoon till well-mixed. refrigerate for at least two hours.

preheat the oven to 375F. roll teaspoons of the chilled dough into balls the size of a walnut, then roll in powdered sugar. bake for 7 minutes.

DEVIATIONS & OBSERVATIONS
so this is a pretty easy recipe to make, even if you, say, don't have a double boiler. which i don't. i've made brownies enough times to know to melt chocolate on low/medium-low heat so it doesn't get scorched, & to melt it only about three-quarters of the way on the heat, allowing it to finish up on a cold burner so the chocolate doesn't burn. so, you know, i've got that going for me!

i WILL say that this is one sticky dough, though. hence the chilling, without which it'd be pretty much unworkable.

i also suspect that perhaps the recipe calls for 1/3 of a cup of butter, not 1/3 of a stick (which is only 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons), although my grandma stood by her 1/3 of a stick measurement after much prodding so i might be mistaken.

these cookies baked up a little cakier than what i'm used to, which i'd initially attributed to not enough butter (even if my grandma insists otherwise, b/c, after all, she's also known for egregious butter substitutions, like applesauce or olive oil, which, i'm sorry, but no) -- but which i now think may have something to do with the cookie sheets i've been using. (my other grandma gave them to me when i first moved b/c they bake hotter than the rest of her sheets & it's sort of a pain to deal with.)

the long & short of it, though, is that these cookies are way easy & also very tasty. although this particular recipe only makes about two dozen cookies, which, ok, i'm not sure how that could EVER be enough cookies for ANYONE, but maybe it worked b/c people were a lot smaller forty years ago? just a guess.

"Zebra Cookies" from my grandma paula, who thinks she got it from a magazine.