Winning recipes from the Journal-News holiday cookie contest


THANKS ALL AROUND

Our thanks to all who participated in this year’s contest.

Note that we do not test the recipes, but present them exactly as they’ve been shared with us by bakers.

This year’s contest also benefited the Shared Harvest Foodbank. Journal-News employees who wanted to be taste-testers paid a fee, with all proceeds benefiting Shared Harvest. More than $50 was donated to the Fairfield-based foodbank that serves communities throughout Butler County.

Two local bakers with winning entries in this year’s Journal-News cookie contest are passing along recipes that have been a tradition in their families for decades. Another recipe came from a moment every baker dreads: too few treats to satisfy a hungry crowd.

More than 22 entries were received for this year’s cookie contest — quite a spread when considering the road conditions readers had to travel to deliver their treats Nov. 17, after the season’s first snowfall dumped nearly five inches of snow before noon.

AN ACCIDENTAL SUCCESS

Bonnie Storer’s husband, children and grandchildren love brownies. Actually, her husband, Jim, an AK Steel retiree, loves any kind of sweet. That’s a good thing because Bonnie and her mother, Pauline Fletcher, both of Middletown, are the queens of baking.

The duo bakes pies that are sold at local craft shows and bake by request in Storer’s kitchen. They also take special orders each week from seniors at the Middletown Senior Center.

“The pies are the first thing to go,” said Storer, a retiree from Middletown City Schools, who also sells her homemade sweatshirts at the craft shows.

At least once a month, Storer, 64, sends her husband to work with a tray full of her handy work.

“They think he’s a vending machine,” she said, laughing. Jim is also known to get at least a cookie or two packed in his lunch each day.

When Storer didn’t have enough chocolate chip cookies to fill a tray in September, she improvised.

She decided to bake brownies and place a lob of the remaining cookie dough in the middle of a few.

“They went nuts” at Xerox in Monroe where Jim now works.

A few weeks later, Storer was on Facebook when she saw a recipe for a brownie-cookie combo.

“Look,” the grandmother of four and great-grandmother of one recalls telling her family, “I already did this!”

And so her famous “Brookies,” which placed third in this year’s contest, were born.

But the pies are still king in her house and will be for generations to come.

For years, Fletcher, 83, kept the recipes for her famous pies in a logical place — her head.

Storer said she recently worked to get her mother’s homemade recipes in writing.

“If something happens to her, that’s the end of the pies,” Storer said. So in addition to mother and daughter baking pies together, Storer also takes detailed notes of the recipes.

It’s a lesson she encourages all bakers to heed.

“Get the homemade recipes before something happens,” she said.

Here’s Bonnie’s super simple recipe for Brookies

Ingredients:

1 box of brownie mix

1 package of chocolate chip cookie dough

Directions:

  1. In large bowl, prepare brownie mix according to package directions.
  2. In another large bowl, prepare chocolate cookie dough mix according to package directions.
  3. Add liners to cupcake pan. Fill liners half full with brownie mix.
  4. Roll cookie dough into small balls and place in middle of brownie mix in liners.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Check at 15 minutes with toothpick.

A LONGTIME FAMILY FAVORITE

A Mennonite cookbook from the early 1950s provided the inspiration for Bernadine Alderfer’s entry.

The longtime Liberty Twp. resident said the recipe for Molasses Sprinkle Cookies has always been a family favorite.

“I can remember having this recipe almost all my life,” she said of the cookies that took home second place in the Journal-News contest.

Alderfer remembers baking the cookies with her sisters and mother. That recipe later became the favorite of her two daughters.

Alderfer said she bakes several dozen cookies each holiday season.

The 14 different varieties are spread out among friends, family and taken to various functions around the holidays.

“By Christmas, I don’t have any left,” she said.

Alderfer begins baking her cookies in early December, debunking the myth many people hold that cookies cannot be frozen.

“Then you have the mess over with before Christmas,” she said of baking in advance.

Her signature, she said, is smaller-sized cookies.

“After a big dinner, smaller is better. Sometimes just a bite of something sweet is nice,” she said.

Here’s Bernadine’s recipe for Molasses Crinkle Cookies

Yields: 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

¾ cup shortening

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

4 tablespoons molasses

2¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

½ teaspoon cloves

Directions:

  1. In a large bowl, cream together shortening and sugar. Add egg and molasses and beat until well-blended. Sift flour.
  2. Add sifted dry ingredients to creamed mixture and mix thoroughly. Chill dough in refrigerator. Shape the chilled dough into balls that are 1 inch or smaller in diameter.
  3. Roll balls in granulated sugar and place 2 inches apart on a greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.

MORE THAN A HOBBY

Baking is more than just a hobby for Hamilton resident Kathy Baldwin, whose White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies won first place in this year’s contest.

As the kitchen supervisor for Partners in Prime, she oversees the feeding of more than 600 Butler County seniors every day through its Meals On Wheels program.

The kitchen staff at Partners In Prime begins their day early in the morning, preparing food not only for Meals On Wheels deliveries, but also for the lunch program at the Hamilton, Fairfield and West Chester Twp. locations.

“Altogether, we prepare between 900 and 1,000 meals every day,” Baldwin previously told the Journal-News.

One would think she’d go home and not want to lift a spatula. Instead, Baldwin spends at least three days around the holidays baking cookies and fudge for her family and co-workers.

She started baking as a child with her grandmother. She continued that tradition with her own children. Today, she’s often whipping up treats for her 11 grandchildren.

Her baking secret? Quality ingredients.

“Don’t buy the cheap stuff,” she said.

Here’s the recipe for Kathy’s winning White Chocolate Raspberry Cookies

Yields: 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

11 oz. white chocolate baking bar; divided into 8 oz. and 3 oz. portions

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

2 eggs

2¾ cup flour

½ cup seedless raspberry jam

3 oz. white chocolate baking bar

½ teaspoon shortening

Directions:

  • Melt 4 oz. of white chocolate over low heat. Set aside to cool.
  • Beat butter in large mixing bowl. Add sugar, baking soda and salt. Beat until combined.
  • Beat in eggs and melted 4 oz. of white chocolate. Beat in flour.
  • Chop other 4 oz. of white chocolate and add to mixture.
  • Drop mixture by teaspoons onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for seven to nine minutes, or until lightly brown on edge. Cool cookies on rack.
  • Heat the jam until melted. Spoon about ½ teaspoon of jam on each baked cookie.
  • Melt other 3 oz. of white chocolate over low heat. Drizzle white chocolate over each cookie. Refrigerate to firm up chocolate.

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