By: Samplineddie
Papa Harry's niece Sally, from St. Louis, and David Miller's grandmother, Molly Weiser, were both famous for their poppy seed cookies. The recipes David and Sheilah sent me were astonishingly similar, but frankly, neither one worked. Both were too soft to roll. I had difficulty trying to re-create those moments from the past. Our grandmas sifted flour, they had to! And what did they measure with? A glass, of course. Did they spoon lightly into a cup? I doubt it. I played with both recipes, made four versions, and sent a package with four samples each, to David in New York and to Sally's daughter-in-law Sheilah, in St. Louis. Amazingly, each picked this recipe. This "cookie" is really more like a cracker, not overly sweet, but as habit forming as a potato chip. If it's a rich poppy seed cookie you're after, add ground poppy seeds to Mama Irene's butter cookies or Grandma Ethel's Hamantaschen.
20 min
15 min
35 min
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Ingredients
Serves Tool
Serves To:USMetric| 2 | Tablespoon(T) | peanut or vegetable oil | |
| 1 | Teaspoon(t) | pure vanilla extract | |
| 1/4 | Cup(c) | poppy seeds | |
| 3/4 | Cup(c) | sugar | |
| 2 | Tablespoon(T) | peanut or vegetable oil | |
| 2 | large eggs, at room temperature | ||
| 1 | Pinch(pn) | salt | |
| 1 | Tablespoon(T) | baking powder | |
| 3 | Cup(c) | all purpose flour |
Preparation
Stir the flour, baking powder and salt together in a medium sized bowl. Set it aside. Beat the eggs, oil, sugar, poppy seeds and vanilla with an electric mixer on medium speed until thoroughly mixed, about 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture, beating until it is fully incorporated. The dough will be very sticky. Roll the dough out between two pieces of waxed or parchment paper until it is l/2 inch thick, making as many sheets of dough as are comfortable to handle. Without removing the paper, pile the sheets onto a baking sheet and place them in the freezer until firm, about 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line several baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove a sheet of dough from the freezer. Remove the paper and cut the dough into shapes with a 2 inch round cookie cutter. Gather up the scraps, re-roll, and cut out as many cookies as will fit on two baking sheets. Place the cookies an inch apart on the prepared baking sheets and bake, two sheets at a time, on the bottom third and top third oven racks, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through, until the cookies are nicely browned, about 12 to 15 minutes. Remove the cookies with a spatula and let them cool on wire racks. Repeat with the remaining dough.