very nice Cake drops

Grandma's original recipe

Very Nice Cake Drops.  Hmmm.  My first question was …. What exactly are they????  I really didn’t know what to expect.  Were they cakes?  Were they cookies?  Who could know with a recipe so vague!  Like most people, I thought that surely the internet could tell me.  The first stop I made was to some popular recipe websites, and though I did find “fruit cake drops”  and “cake drop cookies,” neither of them had a list of ingredients that looked right for Grandma’s recipe.  So I widened my search base and googled …. still with no luck.  Who would have thought that in this day and age where everything seems to end up on the net, I could find nothing that fit these ingredients?

Undaunted, I went to the Mennonite Treasury Cookbook, where the best of old and eclectic Mennonite recipes can be found.  Still nothing!  Finally I went to the only other source I could think of that might know what cake drops are – my mom.  She looked at the recipe for a bit, read the ingredients aloud and finally said “I think these must be soft cookies.” 

“Like schmondt kuchen?” I asked. 

“Yes, I think so.” 

Well, that made sense.  Schmondt kuchen are soft white cookies that are usually rolled and cut out with a round cookie cutter, then baked and frosted with homemade icing.  Around where I grew up, they’re commonly referred to as “Grandma Cookies.”  I thought it was quite appropriate that for my first crack at Grandma’s recipes that I should end up making some form of “Grandma Cookies”. 

Normally I would put flavoring like vanilla or almond extract in, but I wanted to keep the recipe as true to the original as possible.  One small change I did make was the addition of a little salt, just to bring the flavoring that was there, out.

very nice Cake drops

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 cup sweet milk (my mom and I guessed this must be homogenized 3% milk)
• 6 tsp. baking powder
• (1/2 tsp salt)
• 4 cups flour, sifted before measuring

I creamed the butter (softened ahead of time) and sugar together in a large bowl and beat in the eggs.  Then I poured the milk in and mixed well.  Finally I added the last three ingredients and stirred them in with a wooden spoon like one that I imagined Grandma would have used (though truth be told, I’ll probably use a mixer for all the steps the next time I make these cookies). 

What I ended up with was a very soft dough - much more so than the consistency of schmondt kuchen.  But since they were called “drops” this didn’t concern me too much.  Instead of rolling them out, I dropped them onto the pan with my meatball scoop and ended up baking them at 350°F for 12 minutes.  When I took that first pan out of the oven, I thought they looked so pretty.  I said to myself “These are very nice cake drops!” 

And they tasted even better!  I was a little surprised that even with the lack of vanilla or almond extracts, they were so tastey.  Perhaps it’s the amount of sugar (2 cups for 4 cups of flour is a lot!).  Not very healthy, true – but if I keep them for special occasions, then I don’t have to feel too guilty making them.     

I was originally going to frost all of the cookies, but when I realized how sweet they were on their own, I decided to do only half (half my family prefers plain cookies anyway).  I iced them with a simple butter frosting and then dipped the frosted cookies in flaked coconut and toasted coconut shavings.

Yield:  6 Dozen

 

Easy Butter Frosting

(this isn’t one of my grandma’s recipes, but it’s the one I used for these very nice cake drops!)

• 1/4 cup butter
• 3 – 4 cups icing (or confectioner’s) sugar
• 1/4 tsp almond extract
• 1/4 cup milk
• food coloring and shredded/toasted coconut (optional)

Cream the butter, sugar, almond extract and enough milk to make a spreadable frosting.  Add food coloring if desired.  Frost the cookies and immediately dip them in a bowl of flaked coconut, if desired.

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