It seemed that the recipe that Olive Geiss had given our mother back in the early 1960s for her delicious sugar cookies, the ones that we had always called Olive’s cookies, that recipe might be gone for good. 

And then I remembered.

A few years earlier I had taken my mother to her brother Allen’s home, and I had made a video of the two of them along with Allen’s wife Jane talking about old times. In the course of that conversation Olive’s cookies had been mentioned, and I remembered Jane saying that she had the recipe.

So I called Jane and told her that my sister wanted the recipe. Well, I wanted it as well, but it was Donna that had set this in motion so… 

Jane said she’d be delighted to give Donna the recipe; just tell Donna to give her a call. What a sly way to extort a phone call from a niece!

Nor was it too high a price to pay. Once Donna had the recipe, she gave it to me.

Last month I put it to the test, and the cookies turned out great. Not as good as when my mother made them, but still quite tasty.

So here is the recipe as handed down, followed by a few comments.

4 cups flour
1 lb brown sugar
Pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup butter
3 eggs
1 cup evaporated milk
1 tsp vanilla

Bake at 400 degrees. The recipe had no time so watch carefully. They usually were nicely brown on bottom. 1 lb of brown sugar sounded excessive but she said the whole box which is one lb. I would just try a few for the first time to check baking time. Also just drop a spoonful for each cookie. I always frosted with butter cream icing. 

My comments:

As Donna gave me the recipe, it concluded with an instruction to add coconut on top of the icing, but my mother never did and I hate coconut, so I omitted that. My mother put red and green sugar on some of the cookies and left others just with plain icing.

The recipe assumes salted butter. I only used unsalted butter, so I added more than a pinch of salt. Use your own judgement.

Both Olive and my mother were very experienced bakers, so they knew how to handle a 400° oven and time it. Some of my cookies got a bit too well done on the bottom. If I make them again, I think I’ll go with a lower temperature as that’s what all my other cookie recipes use.

I filled two cookie sheets but this recipe could probably have done three, there was that much batter, so some of my cookies got a bit hefty.

I found lots of recipes on the web for butter cream frosting; the one I used was:

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/quick-buttercream-frosting-recipe