No-bake cookie recipe perfect classroom lesson
In my last cookbook, “Further From the Farm,” published in 2010, I included a column answering a reader’s question about recollections of my earliest memory of a recipe and knowing about the art of cooking and baking.
My answer was immediate, and it connected to a recollection from my kindergarten class in September 1975. The classrooms of our small town elementary school in San Pierre did not have air conditioning and our teacher Mrs. Lois Haring knew that the lingering hot summer weather made morning learning sluggish.
She showed our class how to make an easy, rolled-into-balls “no-bake” cookie recipe which was “hands-on” and allowed all 24 (ages five and six-yearold) students the opportunity to help make the recipe and then enjoy the result. From measuring and pouring to stirring and creating the rolled cookie balls, everyone was assigned a task.
Today, the students of our class still have an extra special association with Mrs. Haring, since we were her first class teaching assignment after her college graduation. She retired in 2009 after 35 years of teaching and I recounted this memory with her last year when she gathered with my other elementary teachers to help myself and my classmates celebrate our 30th class alumni reunion in April 2018.
So many times, life’s classroom lessons return to resurrect memories.
During my spring semester teaching a few months ago at Purdue University Northwest, one of my students at the Westville campus shared her own no-bake cookie recipe for her demonstration speech assignment for my public speaking course.
It’s not exactly like Mrs. Haring’s version, but definitely similar.
Paige Seely, 18, of Chesterton just completed her freshman year and is studying business management. She described her “No-Bake Peanut Butter Cookies” as perfect for the summer months when extreme heat makes turning on the oven unbearable.
“Being a busy college student makes it harder to eat healthy and it is much easier to stop and grab something simple and satisfying as a snack for a break during studying,” Paige said.
“The cookie recipe is all-natural, easy to make, and probably healthier than cookies and snacks packaged and sold at the store.”
She emphasized the inclusion of vanilla extract as a key ingredient to give added flavor.
This also provides another important lesson for both classrooms and kitchens: Knowing the difference between using pure vanilla and the extract version sold in the spice aisle of most supermarkets.
Imitation vanilla can be used in a pinch for baking, but for recipes such as “no-bake” cookies, puddings, pastry creams and custards and icing used for cakes and baked goods, a true vanilla extract is always better.
While both “vanilla flavoring” and “imitation vanilla” might be based from the oil of vanilla beans, vanilla “extract” contains alcohol and is far more flavorful and potent.
How potent is vanilla extract?
In my 25 years of newspaper reporting, it’s not been uncommon from time-to-time of encounter stories or police blotter items about people who have become intoxicated by purposely drinking an excess amount of vanilla extract when other alcohol is not available to them.
Most recently, in January , a Connecticut police report made Associated Press headlines detailing a 50-year-old woman arrested for driving while intoxicated. The police report explained her breath smelled of vanilla and several small amber vials were found inside her car.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, in order for a vanilla flavoring to qualify to be labeled as “an extract,” it must contain at least 35% alcohol in the ingredients, which is the equivalent of a 70 proof liquor. Some popular brands, such as McCormick’s contains 41% alcohol which equates to 82 proof.
Paige’s “no-bake” cookie recipe only contains a half teaspoon of vanilla extract so there’s no danger of any flavorful fears of becoming “half-baked” from enjoying
too many of these cookies.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published three cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa@comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, P.O. Box 68, San Pierre, IN 46374.