Sandies: or, Using flour as a dye

I made these purely to play with my cookie squirt gun.

Sandies ¾ cups shortening (4½ oz) ½ cup powdered sugar (2 oz) 2 tbsp water ⅛ tsp salt ½ tsp lemon extract 1½ tsp vanilla 1½ cups flour (6 oz) Heat oven to 375°. Line your cookie sheets with ungreased paper. Cream the shortening until softened. Gradually add the sugar. (If using an electric mixer, you can simply put both into the bowl at the same time and beat them together.) Beat until light and fluffy. Add water, salt, lemon extract, and vanilla. Beat very well, whipping until it looks like cake frosting. Sift in the flour and mix well. Put through a cookie press. Or, shape into small balls and press each one about ¼" flat between your hands. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until golden at the edges. Anonymous recipe card

This recipe comes in the same handwriting as the ill-fated stuffed cupcakes, but that didn't worry me.

Our cookies begin with powdered sugar and shortening. I am always a little leery of shortening (even beef fat seems more trustworthy), but at least we would avoid any butter-related failures.

This recipe marks the beginning of the era of lard. We recently ran out of shortening (I tend to be a bit heavy-handed when brushing it onto the pizzelle iron). It proved cheaper to purchase a can of 50-50 shortening and lard than to pay for straight shortening. Since one creepy white fat looks just like another to me, I followed the prices. I've seen some people swear that lard is the magical secret of all their baked creations, and today we will find out.

I noted that the recipe doesn't call for any baking powder. Therefore, the only leavening in these cookies is what you beat into them. I therefore let the mixer run for a very long time to whip a lot of air into it. As I watched the bowl spin, I couldn't get over how white our cookie dough was. The spoonful of tap water did not make it look any better. It tasted like knockoff Oreo filling and looked unnatural.

We usually add vanilla for its flavor, but I really hoped it would dye the dough a bit. I don't trust baked goods that are the color of copy paper. Unfortunately, the vanilla didn't change the color at all. And so, to hopefully give the cookies a more natural tint (and also because the dough tasted a bit bland), I thought of our 1930s sugar cookies and added nutmeg. Our dough gained some brown specks, but it remained as unnervingly white as ever.

Here we get to the most surprising part of the recipe. When I mixed in the flour, the dough turned a (blessedly natural-looking) creamy color. Who knew you could dye foods with white flour?

You can really see the difference when you look at the residue on the beaters from top to bottom. I'm contemplating the bizarre series of events (starting at the lard factory and ending with my electric mixer) that led to white flour being the most colorful part of a cookie recipe.

And now, we get to the fun part: squirting all the cookies through the caulker! I only made this recipe because its directions end with "fill cookie press," so I was so excited that I didn't care that I had to throw a lot of misshapen cookies back into the mixing bowl.

The cookies were perfectly baked on the 8 minute mark, which is exactly at the lower end of the baking time written on the card. However, the oven smelled faintly of ham while they cooked. I don't know if that was the lard, or if I need to clean away the residue of previous dinners. As I hoped, the cookies puffed up very nicely in the oven. Letting the mixer run for an extra minute or six (before adding the flour!) did wonders.

These cookies were a lot better than the list of ingredients made me expect. They are so crisp, yet they nearly melt in your mouth. I don't know if this is a really good recipe, or if the lard made that magical difference. Either way, they were so good that they all disappeared while I wasn't looking.

So, while following the handwriting may sometimes lead to a misfire, usually it takes you to the best recipes you will ever find.