The recipe posse opens the year with a score of plus 5, minus 10. A list of elusive recipes printed last week in this space drew responses from readers that I expect will yield five solid recipes. That’s the plus. It also drew 10 fresh requests for dishes past, most of them real long shots. That’s the minus.
This is how it goes: Find a few answers, pick up more questions. If you’re a glass-half-empty kind of person, this would equate to always running behind, but I see it as job security.
So anyway, here is today’s success story.
Kathleen L. Maika wrote last year in search of "the most delicious chocolate shortbread cookie ever," a recipe she had been seeking for two decades after enjoying the treats just once.
"My brother-in-law had been given the cookies by his good friend’s mom who had worked in (I’m pretty sure) the Aikahi school cafeteria," Maika said, outlining the chain of custody for these cookies. "This must have been about 20 years ago, give or take."
Although she kept bugging her brother-in-law, who kept bugging his friend’s mom, Maika never got her recipe. "Thanks for listening to my story," she concluded. "Maybe it’ll have a happy ending!"
Enter today’s heroine, Gaylynn Kalama, retired Aikahi Elementary School custodian, who read Maika’s request last week. In the 1980s, Kalama said, the parents and staff of the school put out a cookbook that included this recipe. It was contributed by cafeteria manager Suanne Miyata, who retired a few months ago. "This cookie is wonderfully buttery and chocolatey, still talked about till this day," Kalama wrote.
She sent the recipe, which I tried out last week. It is a keeper, one of those very special cookies that bakes up crunchy on the outside yet chewy on the inside.
Here is Maika’s happy ending:
AIKAHI CHOCOLATE SHORTBREAD COOKIES
1 pound butter
2-3/4 cups sugar
5-1/4 cups flour
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar well.
Sift flour and cocoa. Add slowly to creamed mixture. Add vanilla. Mixture will be dry and crumbly. Spoon out a small amount of dough and roll in your hands into a ball about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. Place on ungreased cookie sheet and press down slightly. Continue with remaining dough. Bake 25-30 minutes, removing when cookies are still a little soft (they will firm up as they cool; if you overcook them they will become hard). Makes about 5 dozen.
Nutritional information unavailable.
A FEW MYSTERIES SOLVED, BUT …
Thanks to all those who have sent in solutions to my recipe mysteries. Meet me here next week for a classic recipe for Banana Chiffon Cake, which several readers were able to find in their collections.
And we’re not done yet. Continuing in the category of school food, Dawn Mannering writes of her yearning for the French apple pie she enjoyed at Stevenson Middle School from 1955 to ’57. Anyone have it?
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Send requests to “By Request,” Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, Honolulu 96813; or email bshimabukuro@staradvertiser.com.
