{"id":7515,"date":"2010-05-27T04:00:13","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T08:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/?p=7515"},"modified":"2010-05-27T08:05:30","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T12:05:30","slug":"cookie-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/?p=7515","title":{"rendered":"Cookie Catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

This is the photo that appeared with Margaret Sullavan's alleged recipe. Jake Jacobs estimates that it was published around 1938.<\/p><\/div>\n

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I recently purchased a CD called Hollywood Cooks!<\/em> from Kathleen O\u2019Quinn Jacobs and her husband Jake. Collectors and vendors of movie memorabilia, the two have scanned recipes and food-related stories from myriad old movie magazines.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Naturally, I felt the need to try one of the recipes\u2014and since it was almost the end of the month and I hadn\u2019t yet posted a \u201cTwelve Cookies of Christmas\u201d<\/a> recipe I decided to share with you the recipe for Margaret Sullavan\u2019s peanut-butter hermit cookies.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Or not.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Here\u2019s what happened: I made the hermits yesterday. They were absolutely the easiest cookies I\u2019ve ever made, featuring very few ingredients: condensed milk, peanut butter, and graham-cracker crumbs (plus a little salt). They shaped up very nicely on the baking pan.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Unfortunately, they didn\u2019t pass muster in terms of taste.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Even my mother, who at 91 eats cookies at a rate that belies her slenderness, passed by the cookie jar (which I placed out in the open hoping she would eat some of the darn things) without even stopping.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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She may not be able to articulate where she is or who I am all the time, but her brain retains information about pets and cookies very well. She never forgets our dog Truffle\u2019s name. And she remembered that she didn\u2019t like this recipe.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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The problem has got something to do with the condensed milk, I think. It renders the texture a bit rubbery. And frankly the cookies just don\u2019t offer enough peanut-butter flavor. Or flavor of any kind.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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This probably makes sense. Actress Margaret Sullivan (1909-1960) is delightful in such films as The Shop Around the Corner<\/em> (1940) with Jimmy Stewart. And she\u2019s touching in No Sad Songs for Me<\/em> (1950), in which her character gets ready for death in a romanticized preview of Sullavan\u2019s own early demise.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Sullavan with James Stewart<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Nevertheless, nowhere in her daughter Brooke Hayward\u2019s family memoir Haywire<\/em> or in Lawrence Quirk\u2019s biography Margaret Sullavan: Child of Fate<\/em> did I find any reference to this mercurial actress\u2019s skill in the kitchen. She probably never actually baked a hermit in her life.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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In order to salvage my cookie post and not abandon Sullavan entirely, I am sharing a recipe that relies on her three main ingredients (plus a couple of additional ones!). I got the idea from Borden\u2019s Eagle-brand web site<\/a>, which features a number of recipes that involve condensed milk.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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I don\u2019t know whether Margaret Sullavan would have approved\u2014but I\u2019m sure that Brooke Hayward would have\u00a0enjoyed my non-hermits as a child! A relative of the ever popular Hello Dolly Bars, also known as Magic Bars, they\u2019re VERY sweet and chewy.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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My mother LOVES them.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Please keep your fingers crossed for me as I move on to my next movie-star dish\u2026\u2026..<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Before I get to my recipe, here is Miss Sullavan\u2019s version:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Margaret Sullavan\u2019s Peanut Butter Hermits<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Ingredients:<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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1 cup sweetened condensed milk (a little less than a 14-ounce can)
\n6 tablespoons peanut butter
\n1\/4 teaspoon salt
\n3\/4 cup graham cracker crumbs<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Instructions:<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Thoroughly blend together the milk and peanut butter. Add salt and graham cracker crumbs. Mix well. Drop by spoonfuls (I used a 2-tablespoon scoop) onto a\u00a0buttered baking sheet (I used two). Bake 15 minutes, or until brown, in a moderately hot oven (375 degrees). Makes eighteen hermits.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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NOT Margaret Sullavan\u2019s Peanut Butter Hermits<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Ingredients:<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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1\/2 cup (1 stick) sweet butter
\n1-1\/2 cups graham-cracker crumbs
\n2-1\/2 cups sweetened flaked coconut
\n1 cup salted peanuts (optional but good for crunch and peanut flavor)
\n1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
\n1-1\/4 cups peanut-butter chips
\n2\/3 cup peanut butter (I used chunky)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Instructions:<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9-by-9-inch pan with aluminum foil, and butter the foil generously.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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In a saucepan melt the butter. Blend in the graham-cracker crumbs, and press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the pan and up the sides an inch or so.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Place the coconut on top of the graham-cracker crust. Throw on the peanuts if you are using them. Pour the condensed milk over all.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Bake this mixture for 25 to 30 minutes, or until it browns lightly.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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While you are baking, use a double boiler to melt the chips and peanut butter together. Gently stir this mixture over the baked mixture.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Cool the bars on a wire rack for 15 minutes; then cover them with foil and refrigerate until the chocolate is set. (In my kitchen on a hot day this took more than 2 hours.)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
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Cut the baked stuff into bars. Makes between 16 and 60 little squares, depending on how big you want to cut them.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0 I recently purchased a CD called Hollywood Cooks! from Kathleen O\u2019Quinn Jacobs and her husband Jake. Collectors and vendors of movie memorabilia, the two have scanned recipes and food-related stories from myriad old movie magazines. \u00a0 Naturally, I felt the need to try one of the recipes\u2014and since it was almost the end of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[13,919,623],"tags":[1203,1202,1204,1205,1207,1206],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7515"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7515"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7540,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7515\/revisions\/7540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ourgrandmotherskitchens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}