The second month of Inflation Baking concludes with crust cookies.
What are crust cookies?
I have been asking all sorts of people if they know what crust cookies are.
And the answer is a resounding deer in the headlights look.
Must be a midwestern thing.
What do you do with the extra dough that is left over from a pie crust?
You add butter and a cinnamon sugar topping. And bake until golden brown. Voila! Crust cookies.
In all honesty, I thought everyone did this.
Apparently not.
Of course, Cookie Thursday is a Thing was started because a coworker had never had a home made cookie. I mean, the idea is not entirely foreign.
And it being Inflation Baking I was sifting through recipes from the Great Depression and War World II, and I ran across this recipe that called for a oil pastry crust.
I had rarely head of such a thing. According to Alton Brown of Good Eats, the best pastry is a combination of Crisco or something similar and butter. And an oil pastry would fit in nicely with the Inflation Baking theme.
Inflation. The big bad this is currently plaguing the world. Along with all the other things plaguing us. Including an actual, you know, plague called covid.
This is due to a bunch of factors, most related to covid. There was an increase in buying because people were bored at home during lockdown that continued as the world started to get its feet again. There were manufacturing problems in Asia, due to covid. There was a shipping crisis because there were limited people to off load the ships, due to covid. There is a trucking crisis due to covid and desire for increased wages from the truckers. There is a gas price jump that is decades in the making and, in my opinion, fueled by corporate greed. The corporations seeking to increase profits do not come off well in this nightmare of a tale.
Inflation bites into people’s wallets that had barely had time to recover from the pandemic. Yes, a section of society is making more due to the Great Resignation, but cost of living has gone up dramatically.
And Cookie Thursday is a Thing is a one woman show, and she foots the bill. This is what started me on the path of Inflation Baking. It’s been 2 months since I used butter in Cookie Thursday is a Thing.
I would continue the Inflation Baking theme, but I have already chosen a new theme for July. And you’ll just have to wait until next week to find out what it is.
Next time you make a pie crust, reserve a little to make crust cookies. Or, heck, make a pie crust specifically for crust cookies. And I made a batch, using the vintage oil pastry recipe. Tastes good but structural integrity is lacking. I wonder if adding cheese to the pie dough would make that better. But that is an experiment for another month. The memory of these is an integral part of my childhood.
You won’t regret it.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 