A Farmer’s Daughter Cook Book & Butterscotch Cookies Recipe

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I grew up in a heavily populated Mennonite community, and while I am not Mennonite myself, I spent many, many hours around the table and in Mennonite kitchens. My best friend from third grade on was Mennonite, and one of my favorite foods to this day is Paska (Easter Bread) that her mom would make for me every year. I was just mentioning it to her this year that those loaves are some of my favorite memories of my tween/teen years.

So I was delighted to be able to review Dawn Stoltzfus’ cook book “A Farmer’s Daughter: Recipes from a Mennonite Kitchen” – and I can tell you that this cook book does not disappoint. Good, family friendly food with simple ingredients are in virtually every recipe.

Welcome to the warm and inviting kitchen of Dawn Stoltzfus, a young Mennonite wife and mother who was raised on a dairy farm where simple, wholesome food was a key ingredient of the good life. In A Farmer’s Daughter, she opens up her recipe box, wipes away the crumbs and wrinkles from the well-loved recipes and shares them with cooks and food-lovers everywhere. She offers us over two hundred delicious recipes that reflect the comfort foods she learned to cook from her mother, the same hearty and creative recipes she made and sold at The Farmer’s Wife Market.

My family and I have enjoyed over the past number of weeks, many of the dishes I’ve prepared from the book, including these rich Butterscotch Cookies.

Butterscotch Cookies

1 cup half-and-half
1 Tbsp. vinegar
1/2 cup salted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (or 2 1/2 cups white wheat flour)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Combine half-and-half and vinegar. Set aside. Beat butter and brown sugar until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until fluffy, approximately 2 minutes. Add baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Beat well. Add flour alternately with the half-and-half mixture, beginning and ending with flour. Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for 12-14 minutes. These can be underbaked, but if you want to be sure they are done, insert toothpick in the center of a cookie, and if it comes our clean then you know they are ready. Frost if desired. Yields about 3 dozen.

I also made the Texas Sheet Cake:

Honey Oatmeal Bread

and A LOT of other tasty sides and meals from the book.

One of the best things about Dawn’s cook book though is her “And Another Thing…And Another Thing” that she has at the end of some of the recipes. Basically they are tips on how to enhance the recipe either for serving, storing or other foods to pair it with! They are very helpful and often the tips can be great time savers or ‘ah ha’ moments!

I know I’ll come back to this cook book time and time again, since my family was delighted with everything I made from it, many of the recipes I’m sure are going to become family favorites.

“A Farmer’s Daughter: Recipes from a Mennonite Kitchen” is available October 2012 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.

I was provided a copy of the book from Revell in order to read it prior to writing this review.

Tammy Litke, literally writes here, there and everywhere about this, that and everything, but her passion is and always has been keeping her family happy. She does so by making family friendly recipes, traveling to family destinations, watching 3D movies and playing video games with them and homeschooling her daughter.