Chocolate Crinkles

Last week Julia asked if we could make "those good cookies that you roll in that white stuff."?

These are another of my old family favorites. The recipe came from a Betty Crocker cookie cookbook that my mother bought when I was in high school. Now, Mom hated to cook so I have never been quite sure why she bought the book, except about that time, I started baking whenever she wasn't home. She would say I could make something and then just take over the job because she didn't enjoy it, wanted it done and the mess cleaned up. So, I would ask Daddy if I could bake something while she was at work. Hey, he didn't care, in fact he encouraged my efforts. The only condition was that I have the mess completely cleaned up by the time she got home. Thus started my love of cooking and baking. Also explains why when the great white hunter and I got married, I could make a great apple pie from scratch, bake any kind of cookie you might want but had NO idea how to get a dinner on the table. That took a while, a few tears and more than one dinner unfit to eat.

So, I have been making these cookies now for about forty years, because one time when we were home on leave, she gave me the cookie book saying I had used it way more than she ever had or would. It is one of my prized possessions, even has a page where my youngest sister (now 46 years old) scribbled on a page while she was watching me bake. I think she was about four.

A few years ago they reprinted the cook book and the great white hunter bought me a new copy because the old one was starting to show the lovely hours we had spent together.



Julia and Colin really helped with these. I doubled the recipe so they each had the same amount of sqs. of chocolate to unwrap, eggs to crack and cups and spoonsful to measure. Then after the dough chilled, they each had their own bowl of "white stuff" to roll them in. They did a good job testing them after they cooled also. Yummmy.


Chocolate Crinkles

1/2 cup vegetable oil

4 sq. unsweetened baking chocolate (4oz.) melted

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoons salt.

1 cup "white stuff" (aka powdered sugar)

Mix oil, chocolate and granulated sugar. Blend in one egg at a time until well mixed. Stir flour, baking powder and salt into oil mixture. Chill several hours or overnight.

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Drop spoonfuls of dough into powdered sugar. Shape into balls. Place about 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets. Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Do not over bake. (You can tell they are done if they look dry on top....not real dry but you won't see any moisture) Store in tightly closed container.

Enjoy!