Grandma Frieze's Pineapple Cookies

 

My granddaughters are to coming to visit on Monday so I’m making paternal grandmother’s pineapple cookies.  Going to visit Grandma Frieze meant pineapple cookies in the cookie jar.  I have such lovely memories of visiting her that I want to create those same sorts of memories for my own grandchildren.  Frankly, the cookies are pretty popular with the grownups so I’m making a double batch for the 4^th of July week as family and friends gather to celebrate.  Grandma got the recipe out of a women’s magazine in the 1950s or ‘60s and the original is taped inside the front cover of her old Joy of Cooking which I inherited since my mother had given it to her in the ‘40s.  I’ve posted about these cookies before, but they are so delicious and perfect for these hot days that I thought I’d do it again.

Temp. 375           Time: 12 min      Yield: About 3 doz.

2 C. sifted enriched all-purpose flour                      1 egg

1 tsp. baking powder                                                      ½ tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. baking soda                                                            ½ C. drained canned crushed pineapple

1 tsp. salt                                                                             1 C. granulated sugar

½ C. shortening                                                                    1 T. granulated sugar

Heat oven.  Sift together first 4 ingredients.  Mix shortening and next 3 ingredients until creamy.  Mix in the pineapple, then flour mixture.  Drop by teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart onto an ungreased cookies sheet (I use no stick spray just the same).  Sprinkle cookies with sugar.  Bake until golden.

These cookies are moist and keep well in a tightly closed container, although if your family knows where they are they won’t last long!

Pineapple Cookies and an Anniversary


Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary and I am without the groom. Ours became a commuter marriage in June when Dave accepted a lucrative job offer in Prescott, AZ working for Lockheed Martin. Because of familial obligations and the fact that there is no ocean in AZ, I have remained behind in Gig Harbor, WA (and in Ilwaco at this moment), keeping the home fires burning as it were. The plan is for Dave to work until October 2013 when he will be old enough to collect Social Security. He is coming home for ten days in September, but his the 90th birthday of his mother trumps our 22nd anniversary so tomorrow will be somewhat sad for me. It is our first (and probably not our last) anniversary apart.

Not to worry. I will not be entirely alone. My daughter Amy is with me here at the beach and our friends Jo & Jon are arriving tonight for the weekend. We intend to go out for dinner at 42nd St. Café in Seaview to celebrate and today I indulged myself in another luxury for today I made pineapple cookies. I first blogged the recipe for these cookies three years ago, but I think they are worth another mention. My Grandma Frieze always had them in the cookies jar when we children came to visit and they are a favorite of mine and my cousins. They are tender and soft and the pineapple brings back memories of summers at Grandma’s. Unfortunately my own children never developed a liking for them and since I could eat them all on my own I do not often make them!

Although she has special needs, Amy does like to help me bake and because I do little of it any more she was willing to help this morning. Tomorrow we will fix up the table with the beautiful new French table cloth Dave sent me and then go out to dinner. At least it will stay clean this way!

Grandma’s Pineapple Cookies

Temp.: 375 degrees F. Time: 12 min (check after 10) Yield: About 3 dozen

2C sifted enriched all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

½ C. soft shortening (I use margarine or butter)

1 C. granulated sugar

1 egg

½ tsp. vanilla extract

½ C. drained, canned, crushed pineapple

¼ tsp. nutmeg (this makes them taste different. Grandma never used it and neither do I)

1 T. granulated sugar

Heat oven. Sift together first 4 ingredients. Mix shortening and next 3 ingredients until creamy. Mix in pineapple, then flour mixture. Drop by teaspoonfuls 2” apart, onto ungreased cookie sheet. (I like to use a little no stick) Sprinkle cookies with nutmeg (optional) and sugar, combined. Bake until golden.

Grandma's Pineapple Cookies

When I took my father’s ashes to the Missouri Ozarks I got to spend some time with two of my cousins who actually were raised on Whidbey Island when I was growing up in Bellevue. We talked about our grandparents who moved around a lot—back and forth between the Pacific Northwest and Missouri and house to house in Dade County, Mo and Vancouver, WA besides my uncle’s farm on Whidbey. The Washington years were largely during our childhoods so Thanksgivings, Christmases and Mother’s Days were frequently spent with them. Janice, my lone female cousin, and I spent a week with our grandparents in Vancouver many summers.

One thing that was ubiquitous about Grandma’s kitchen was pineapple cookies in the cookie jar when she knew grandchildren were coming. To this day I’ve not run across them anywhere besides my grandparents’ house or in my own kitchen. I had hoped to make the same sort of memories for my children, but they were not as impressed with pineapple cookies as my cousins and I were. Over the years I’ve not made them often because once I get going on them it is hard to stop and I don’t need to be eating an entire batch of cookies alone! Now I am old enough to have a fresh audience, my grandchildren. Gabriel, whose parents do not let him eat sugar, will not fall under the spell of pineapple cookies, but the granddaughters, with less strict parents, could become fans.

Long after Grandma had died I received her cookbook from an aunt before she died herself. It is a 1946 copy of Irma S. Rombaurer’s The Joy of Cooking which my mother had given to my grandmother the year after my grandmother had become my mother’s mother-in-law. Now don’t go running to look in your copy of The Joy of Cooking because the recipe isn’t in anyone’s copy but mine. Inside the front cover my grandmother taped a recipe she cut from a women’s magazine. My grandmother had long ago given me the recipe, but this is the recipe. For me it is a holy relic. I can touch the scrap of paper her small hands taped there.

When the rumors of a Frieze Family Reunion began to become more concrete the decision to take Grandma’s Pineapple Cookies was a no brainer. It’s what she would have done for the occasion so I will be baking up a batch or two to take to Shelton next Saturday.

I looked on the Internet and there are a lot of pineapple cookie recipes, too many to see if the exact one was one of them so here it is, the exact directions from a magazine long ago. It makes a soft sweet moist cookie.

Pineapple Cookies nutmeg makes them different

Temp.: 375 degrees F. Time: 12 minutes. Yield: About 3 dozen

2 C. sifted enriched all-purpose flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1 tsp salt, ½ C. shortening (because this recipe is from the days when shortening wasn’t evil, I use butter or margarine), 1 C. granulated sugar, 1 egg, ½ tsp. vanilla extract, ½ C. drained canned crushed pineapple, ¼ tsp. nutmeg, 1 T. granulated sugar.

Heat oven. Sift together first 4 ingredients. Mix shortening and next 3 ingredients until creamy. Mix in pineapple, then flour mixture. Drop by teaspoonfuls, 2” apart, onto ungreased cookie sheet. Sprinkle cookies with nutmeg and sugar, combined. (Grandma never used the nutmeg and so I don’t) Bake until golden. (I start checking at 8 minutes because every oven is different)