Holiday cookies at heart of sweet family tradition
Many of us have some sort of Valentine’s Day tradition, whether it’s something as elaborate as making dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant, or as simple as telling your sweetie you love him or her without having to be reminded it’s Feb. 14.
Edie Klebacha and her family have been marking the holiday celebrating romance and love in a lowkey way for more than 50 years — by baking cookies.
Not just any cookie, mind you. But one for which the recipe was carefully clipped from the newspaper when the Shaler, Pa., mother of three herself was just a child, and then handed down over the generations.
What makes the cutout cookies so special, Klebacha says, is that they’re not the sweet sugar cookie everyone expects. Rather, the miniature hearts are made with a simple, nononsense oatmeal batter that bakes into a crispycrunchy biscuit.
“It just tastes good, and with the oatmeal, I think it’s a little more nutritious,” she said.
A cookie that’s good for you is exactly what The Quaker Oats Co. intended when it introduced its first in a series of cookie recipes on cereal packages in 1908. The inaugural Oat Cakes recipe had just three ingredients: a half pound of butter, three cups of oats and two eggs to bind everything together.
In 1935, the company expanded its offerings with a sweet, refrigerator-style cookie it called Crisp Oatmeal Cookies on the Quaker Oats package.
The recipe Klebacha learned to make with her German mother when she was growing up in Wilkinsburg, Pa., and took with her when she got married, dates at least to 1958. That’s the year Bertha Paolina cut it out of The Pittsburgh Press on Feb. 2, and tucked it into a manila file folder for safe keeping.
She passed the recipe on to her older daughter when she got married, who in turn now bakes the cookies with her own two daughters.
The oatmeal treats are such a huge part of the family’s Valentine food tradition that everyone starts thinking about the cookies weeks ahead in January. And don’t even think about using the recipe at Christmas.
“I don’t think we’ve ever made them for any other holiday,” she said.
Keeping with tradition, Klebacha still uses a treasured heart-shaped metal cookie cutter with a green handle and scalloped edge that her mother used for so many years.
The original recipe, published in The Pittsburgh Press on Feb. 2, 1958, gave props to Mother’s Oats for adding “protein, nourishment and nutlike flavor” to the cookies.
I iced some of the cookies with a glossy vanilla glaze and decorated others with heart-shaped sprinkles and colored sugar. But they’re quite delectable completely naked. They were a hit at an office potluck.
‘TO MY VALENTINE’ OATMEAL COOKIES
2½ c. all-purpose flour
1 t. baking powder
½ t. salt
¾ c. (12 T.) butter or margarine, softened
¾ c. sugar
2 T. milk
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
1 c. quick or old-fashioned oats, uncooked
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl, and whisk to combine.
In separate bowl, cream together softened butter with sugar. Add milk, egg and vanilla and stir to combine. Add flour mixture and beat until well blended, about 2 minutes. (I used a stand mixer outfitted with a flat paddle.) Stir in rolled oats.
Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to ¼-inch thickness. Cut into heart shapes.
Bake on greased cookie sheets for 10 to 12 minutes, or until just golden, or a little longer if you like a crispy cookie.
When cool, decorate with tinted confectioners’ sugar icing.
Makes about 3½ dozen cookies.