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Ice-Box Cookies (C granulated sugar eggs C)
1 C granulated sugar 2 eggs 1 C brown sugar 1 C butter 1 C oleo 1 t cinnamon Mr Gertie Wells. 1/2 C milk 1 t soda 7 C Club House flur 1 C chopped nuts Cream shortening and sugar and add well beaten eggs, cinnamon, nuts, milk and soda. Add milk and flour alternately. This makes 2 rolls about 14 inches long. Wrap in wax paper, place in ice-box over night. In morning slice thin and bake about ten minutes. 1 C butter 3 C brown sugar 6 C flour 4 eggs
A classic refrigerator cookie: a stiff, heavily sugared dough chilled into logs and sliced. The dough is worked in an unusual order, and the baking temperature is missing entirely.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Icebox cookies sliced thin bake at 375F for the ten minutes stated; at 350F expect twelve to fourteen minutes. Pull them when the edges are set and just coloured — they firm as they cool.
- OleoOleomargarine, the period name for margarine. Use a firm stick margarine, or simply use 2 cups butter total, which gives better flavour and a crisper slice.
- Club House flourA brand name of the period. Ordinary all-purpose flour works; because a modern all-purpose may be slightly stronger, hold back the last half cup of the seven and add it only if the dough is too soft to roll.
- Order of mixingThe instructions call for soda with the eggs and nuts, then "milk and flour alternately," so the milk is listed twice. Dissolve the teaspoon of soda in the half cup of milk and add it alternately with the flour; the result is the same and the soda distributes properly.
- The hinge — chill it hardTwo cups of fat make a dough that will not slice unless it is thoroughly cold. Shape the rolls, wrap, and give them a full night in the refrigerator. Slice about 1/8 inch thick with a thin sharp knife, rotating the log so it does not flatten.
- YieldTwo 14-inch logs make a very large batch; the count depends entirely on how thin you slice, running from around nine dozen at a quarter inch to twice that at an eighth. The dough keeps several days refrigerated, or freezes well wrapped, so bake a log at a time.
- Sugar noteA cup each of granulated and brown sugar is modest for the flour volume; these are mildly sweet, spiced cookies rather than a candy-like slice.
Icebox cookies belong to the era when a home refrigerator — first the literal ice-box, later the electric unit — became common enough that a cook could count on a reliably cold shelf overnight. The appeal was scheduling as much as texture: mix the dough one evening, bake sheet after sheet the next morning without a second round of creaming and measuring. Community cookbooks of this kind are full of them, contributed under the maker's name and reproduced with her spelling and her brand loyalties intact, which is how a brand name like Club House ends up preserved in print.