Janet’s Brown Sugar Drops

March 7, 2018 |

How many of you have a cookie named after you? Of all the cool things about my Grandma authoring a cookie book, I think one of the best is seeing your very own name in the title of a cookie! My namesake cookie is called, Janet’s Brown Sugar Drops. Sounds pretty cool doesn’t it?!

I’m not the only one with a cookie named after me in Cookies by Bess…there is a recipe for each women in our (immediate) family. June and Susan (Bess’s daughters), Toby and Joann (my mother and aunt), Paula and Cathy (my cousins), and Maude (my aunt’s mother). I have one more female first cousin (Becky) who doesn’t have a cookie namesake, but that’s only because she wasn’t born until after the 1980 edition was published. 🙂 When we republish Cookies by Bess, I’ll make sure Becky has her very own cookie! She can even pick it out!

Eventually, I’ll get to making all these namesake cookie recipes. Before I do, I’ll make sure to check with each cookie owner to see if there is a story behind the name, if they picked their cookie recipe, and/or if Grandma Bess just decided for them.

For now, I’m starting with mine…Janet’s Bown Sugar Drops! I have no story to explain why this recipe was named after me. I don’t remember Grandma Bess making these cookies for me when I was little, and I don’t remember my mom making them either. Regardless, I’m excited to have my very own cookie and even more excited to share the recipe with you!

As per my usual routine, I gathered all my ingredients together and got started.

I rated this cookie 1-star because it is really an easy cookie to mix up and bake! It’s one of the easiest recipes I’ve baked so far from Cookies by Bess. Chopping up the candied cherries took a little bit and was a little messy and sticky, but after I got that done, the rest was smooth sailing. I think I was done making these cookies in a little over two hours!

Once mixed together, the dough was pretty dry. I read the recipe a couple more time just to make sure I didn’t miss any liquid, but I had mixed it correctly. The only liquids are the egg yolk and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Now, I was curious as to how these guys were going to bake!

The dough was dry enough that I didn’t need to use a teaspoon to drop the cookies on the cookie sheet. I just used my hands to take teaspoon full pieces of dough. I could have formed the dough into balls, but decided to just place the dough cookies on the cookie sheet as is. This created a nice, kind of scruffy look to the cookies.

I greased the cookie sheets as the instructions said, but I realized it wasn’t necessary. The bottoms of the cookies browned a bit more with the greased sheets, so I ended up not greasing the cookies sheets with the rest of the batches.

Next, I wasn’t sure how the cookies were going to bake. I expected them to spread out some, but they didn’t. They held their scruffy looking shape and just flattened out on the bottom. I baked them for just 14 minutes, because the first batch browned a bit too much. The rest of the cookies browned just a bit, but basically stayed the same color as before baking.

I chopped up the pecans finely, so there aren’t too many big chunks of nuts, but there are tons of chunks of the candied cherries! The cherries and the scruffy look of the cookie give these guys lots of personality! They look like they might be soft and chewy, but they are actually a little crunchy. Finally, the brown sugar and pecan flavors are subtle at first, but then hit you with a very satisfying POW!

This is a great cookie to make when you are short on time and looking for fun/not too fancy cookies that your kids and family will eat up by the handful! Easily done because the teaspoon size makes them easy to pop in your mouth with a single bite!

Thank you Grandma Bess for giving me the honor of representing one of your famous Cookies by Bess cookies! I will cherish this honor and always be an advocate for my namesake Janet’s Brown Sugar Drops cookies!

Do you have a cookies named after you? If so, I would love it if you’d share it with me! Please send pictures and your recipe by going to our Join The Community page! I can’t wait to see your namesake cookie! 🙂

XXOO!

Janet