12 Days of Cookies: Date and Nut Squares

Students, faculty and some of the super star lecturers from Cook ‘n Scribble’s fall’s BlogU intensive have put together a fabulous collection of recipes and reminiscences to add to your Christmas cookie repertoire. I’ve doubled every batch, am still baking and have long since run out of tins.

So bake on, Sistahs — and send in your favorites, too — The benefits of a sugar high at this time of year are wildly underrated. — Molly O’Neill

Back to Betty

This is the season of nostalgia and ho-ho-how about those retro yearnings? Carol Carlson, a private chef and food blogger, specializes in health-conscious family cooking. But as the snow began to fall in Colorado, she was pulled back to her childhood, her mother’s Betty Crocker Cookbook and the era when flour was white and sugar was abundant.

She upped the healthfulness of her mother’s date-nut bar recipe — but she went back to the “source.” She writes:

“What a happy day it was when my mother made Date and Nut Squares. Betty Crocker’s 3-ring cookbook lay open on the counter and I was allowed to operate the nut chopper. It was a simple mill screwed on top of a plastic jar, but to my ten year old imagination it was high-tech. I turned the small crank and was fascinated to watch the nut become pieces and fall into the reservoir.

Next to me my slender, hard-working mother (there were five of us children) stood at the counter, cutting hard, dried dates with the red-handled kitchen scissors. She frothed the eggs, checked the recipe, measured each ingredient and checked the recipe again. And then out came the Sunbeam stand mixer and soon, the metal beaters tap-tapping each other began to swirl a batter.

White mixer, red-handled scissors, nut chopper, and my mother in her ruffled half apron – promises that something sweet and delicious was in the near future. I wanted to create “her” recipe. Fortunately, my mother said: “I still have the Betty Crocker cookbook. I was able to salvage it from Hurricane Charlie (2004) because it was only water damaged. Let me see if that page is still there. Yes, here is the recipe. Ready?” I copied it down, and here it is.

I used a knife instead of a nut-chopper orange-handled scissors instead of red ones, whole wheat flour and a less-processed sugar. The result was soft, chewy sweetness — but not quite the heaven of my mom’s.”

Almost Betty Crocker’s Date and Nut Squares

Ingredients
2 eggs
½ c sugar [I used Succanat]
½ tsp. vanilla
½ c sifted Gold Medal Flour [I used organic whole wheat]
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
1 c cut-up walnuts
2 c finely cut up dates
Confectioners sugar for dusting

Beat until foamy 2 eggs;
Beat in ½ c sugar and ½ tsp. vanilla
Sift together and stir in :
½ c sifted Gold Medal Flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt

Mix in
1 c cut up walnuts
2 c finely cut up dates

Spread in a well-greased 8-inch square pan
Bake until top has dull (not shiny) crust

Cut into squares, cool and remove from pan

Temperature: 325 degrees, low moderate oven
25-30 minutes
Makes 16 2 “ squares

To sugar them, dip in confectioners sugar and shake excess off.