Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Retro Recipe: Betty Crocker's Good Kid Cookies


Every so often, I like to break out one of my vintage cook books I've collected over the years and try out a retro recipe. I have had this one from a Betty Crocker Cook Book bookmarked for ages. Seeing the recipe and photo that went along with it always cracked me up.

Cookies in the shape of faces? Oh heck yeah!



I was so excited to try it.

The recipe was super easy. It uses a Betty Crocker cake mix, of course, which makes any cookie recipe that much easier. I considered buying the cake mix that was on sale for a better price but wondered if somewhere, somehow, Betty herself would know and curse me for the rest of my life.


So I stayed honest and bought Betty.


The dough was a bit hard to mix since it calls for such a small amount of liquid ingredients but I worked it through with my hands. Does anyone else do that with thick cookie dough? Sure, my hands get messier, but the dough comes together so much easier and faster!


I rolled out my cookies and flattened them without any problems. Then came the supposedly fun part.


Cody joined me in the decorating process, although he did not make it past one cookie. The chocolate dough that is supposed to be used for hair and details turned out extremely sticky for me. It stuck to our fingers more than the cookie dough!


Cody got impatient, needless to say. He left the decorating to myself only to return to eat his cookie once it was baked. Typical.

After getting hair on every kid cookie, I realized it might have worked better if I used a pastry bag or a ziplock bag with the corner cut off. Piping may help here - though it is pretty thick dough. Either way, I liked how it came out for the hair - the stickiness of it added texture - but I was not even going to try to use the sticky mess for eyes, noses, and mouths. No way!


Luckily, inspiration struck and I dug out any colored candy or sprinkle I had. I used those along with some mini chocolate chips for eyes and used various sprinkles for eyebrows and mouths.


It was extremely fun making each kid cookie but it definitely became a lot of work! It made me laugh when I saw the page in the cook book that includes "quotes" from their 12 kid testers. I wonder how they managed this recipe! No kid I knew would have had enough patience!


In the end, they came out great. I joked that they looked more like middle-aged chubby adult cookies due to the small amount of rising the dough did in the baking process but they were fun and adorable all the same!



Good Kid Cookies
Adapted from Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys & Girls, 1957

Ingredients
  • 1 package Betty Crocker Marble Cake Mix
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup shortening
  • 3 tablespoons water, separated
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
  2. In a large bowl, combine your cake mix (not including the chocolate marble mixture) with the egg, shortening and 2 tablespoons water.
  3. In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup of your prepared dough, the envelope of chocolate marbling mixture, and 1 tablespoon water.
  4. Drop rounded teaspoons of plain dough onto engrossed cookie sheets.
  5. Using a small glass, gently press each ball of dough into flat round discs (I flattened mine to be roughly a quarter of an inch).
  6. Use the chocolate dough to form hair onto each cookie face.
  7. Use sprinkles, candies, and mini chocolate chips to add facial features.
  8. Bake cookies 8-10 minutes or until eggs start to brown.
  9. Cool cookies on racks.